Alsop's Small Thoughts

Complaining about Nikon Coolpix

It's my fault. Just like it's any consumer's fault -- for buying a product without adequately researching it. I lost my last digital camera: left it in a hotel room or rental car or whatever. So I decided to buy a new one on a whim. Went to BestBuy. Looked for the following: Digital camera that was small enough to be pocket sized, had 5x or better optical zoom, and 6mp or better resolution. Ended up with a cool looking, black Nikon Coolpix S550.

So what's my problem? I hate the Nikon Coolpix S550. The shutter speed is fine but the functions of the camera are so slow that I have missed really important shots. (Like my girlfriend's son's graduation from 8th grade.) These are functions like the time it takes the camera to wake up (not turn on, which is relatively fast); like the time it takes to react to zooming in (to refocus and set up the photo); like the time it takes to store the image to flash disk.

It keeps on going, though! The Coolpix S550 comes with a stupid little USB adapter that means the only way to move the photos off the camera is to remove the flash disk, put it in the adapter and put the adapter into the computer; at the least a laborious process. (Couldn't these people take a clue from the designers of the Flip video camera.) And why do digital camera designers insist on putting the on/off button right next to the shutter button? I turned the camera off at least three times today when trying to take a picture. And then, when you want to recharge the battery, you have to remove it and put in a little dock that itself has an entire power cord. (The camera I lost, from Lumix, had a battery dock that plugged directly into a power plug; no cord!) 

Thank you, dear reader: Now that I've got that off my chest, I'm going to buy another new digital camera.

The Department of There Is No Justice Department

When I worked at New Enterprise Associates, one of my most successful investments and one of my most energizing experiences was working with Xfire and its outstanding CEO, Mike Cassidy.

The only really troubling part of that experience was when Yahoo! sued Xfire for infringing its intellectual property. It was a spurious claim; we could never figure out what motivated the claim, other than some mysterious political infighting inside Yahoo!

But, in the way of the world, they had more money to pay lawyers than we did, so the company settled with them so that it could be sold (which it was to Viacom). It cost the shareholders a lot of money. It really reduced my personal opinion of Yahoo! as a company, since it had been founded on what I perceived to be a principle of innovation and open competition in an information economy, rather than legal bullying, and had never previously sued a venture backed startup for infringing on its intellectual property.

Yahoo! recently posted this note on its site:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/multiplayer

The irony is that, of course, no one who was involved with suing Xfire back then is actually still on the "The Yahoo Games Team" to remember that Yahoo! sued Xfire, extracted its toll, and is now freely referring people to the site, claiming to have "no formal connection".

There is no justice.

What's Wrong With iPhone

First, we spent $600 to get me one. Second, it is great for making friends, once people have figured out that's what you've got. Third, it IS beautiful. But iPhone is not perfect. Here's what's wrong with it:

    1) The keyboard doesn't work for big fingers. I read what Walt and David and the others said about how the keyboard works better than expected. I assume they have thin, graceful fingers that are well manicured. Mine are big, clunky and have uneven fingertips. Try as I might, I miss on about 20% of the key presses. I'm also anal so have to backup and correct and often miss again on the same key: usually, the P, L and A, all keys at the edge of the keyboard. So it's takes me at least 30% more time to type than on the Blackberry and twice as long as a regular keyboard.
    2) The priority setting between network and client and between one task and another is still to be worked out. I find myself having to wait for the device to check mail, find and register a WiFi network, open a message (usually spam) with lots of addresses in the To: field, and open the SMS application. It's not as snappy as something as beautiful as this device is should be, disappointing on comparison to a Blackberry and about on par with the Treo.
    3) Battery life is better than a Treo and worse than a Blackberry. The latter is true because Blackberry doesn't try to do as much. The battery life is actually remarkable for such a device with bright colors and display. Indeed, Apple introduced a new Macintosh battery manager this spring, largely as a result of the experience it had developing the iPhone, and my Macbook Pro instantly got 30% better battery life (from about two hours to a little more than three). So Apple clearly learned a lot about battery performance from developing iPhone. But it still needs to be charged overnight; it won't last through the second day if you use the phone, the SMS, WiFi and the other apps in a reasonable mixture.
     4) The camera suffers from being in the iPhone. Because the phone is designed for minimal physical complexity, the camera can't be more than a snapshot feature. No flash. No zoom. (Both features of Blackberry Pearl and Curve.) No lighting pre-set. (My favorite feature of digital cameras; hold the shutter release down halfway to set the lighting, then focus and snap the picture.) No video feature. No little mirror and a button release so you can take pictures of yourself!
    5) No apps to install. Yes, I know that Apple wants to keep it simple in its first release to improve reliability and useability. But no apps! There is already a list of apps that you can get to through the browser. The iPhone IS simple enough that you find all its functions really fast and start to want more within a week. I want more!
     6) No stored or remembered passwords. This also means no cut&paste, but it hurts most trying to enter passwords to enter web sites on Safari. This morning, I hung out at Perk Presidio to enjoy the sun (absent for several days). Logged onto the WiFi network at the Perk. It's AT&T's WiFi network!  You do remember, f course, that AT&T is the exclusive provider of cell service for iPhone, so you might expect that AT&T would put special effort into making their own network really easy to log into on the iPhone. Guess what: They didn't. AT&T's WiFi network is possibly THE most difficult network to sign on with the iPhone.
    Some genius in the WiFi group at AT&T decided to arrange the login fields across the top of the page: user name, drop-down list of service providers, and password. (Have you ever seen anyone separate the username and password fields with a drop-down list? Ever?) You also have to check a box saying that you have read the AT&T service agreement. If you don't do any of this, all the fields are cleared and you have to start over again. And iPhone's WiFi thingie will store WEP passwords, but won't store URL logins. It's a joke that will only help customers realize how poorly managed AT&T is as a company.

Funny story: I think Apple knew that I was going to write bad things about iPhone. I wrote a summary of the points I wanted to make in a Yahoo Mail message while I was sitting at the Perk. When I sent it, the message failed to send (it was the only one of several that failed). It then disappeared. Couldn't find it on the iPhone, on Yahoo Mail or anywhere else. So I might have missed a point or two from that original summary, but I am amazed at how sensitive Apple is to people's feelings about iPhone and how good they are at detecting and responding to those feelings in real time....   

iConfused iSyncing iPhone

Got my iPhone. Very cool. Excellent chick magnet. And it's actually useful. Or it would be useful if I could figure out how to synchronize my data! I've got copies of my personal data (contacts, calendar and notes) in nine different places: Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Entourage, Apple Address Book & iCal, Yahoo Mail, Google Gmail, Plaxo, iPhone and RIM Blackberry. So far, I've used Microsoft Exchange as my absolute reference point: I rely on and make sure that I am managing that particular copy of the data and that copy is what gets synced out to Outlook, Entourage, Blackberry and (via Outlook) to Plaxo.

But iPhone doesn't synchronize directly with Exchange. It also doesn't synchronize with Plaxo or anything but Apple's own programs, Apple Address Book and iCal as well as Apple's .Mac service. Plaxo doesn't synchronize with .Mac, Exchange, Blackberry or Entourage, but it does synchronize with Apple Address Book, Outlook, LinkedIn (hadn't even thought of that one!), Yahoo and Google (among others).

In the process of seeing what I have where, I've discovered that I have a copy of my contacts but not my calendar at Yahoo, but it is way out of date and I don't know where it came from. I have several copies of my contacts at Plaxo, including one copy where there is a duplicate of most but not all records; I can't tell where the records came from originally. I haven't checked Google because I'm beginning to think this is out of control.

I want one entity to take responsibility for maintaining -- permanently and reliably -- a single copy of my personal data. I want it backed up, logged, and secure. And I want everybody to stop pretending that they are the ones that do this and acknowledge that entity as the source point for my data, with which they will promise to synchronize according to some minimum standard. In other words, don't re-label my email fields or reformat my phone number without asking (both of which have happened somewhere along the line and been synchronized back into my core database).

My current conclusion: I'm going to have to remove (delete) all my contacts everywhere except in Microsoft Exchange and start over again with that one copy, in order to get to the point where I can have the same contacts and calendar information in all of my devices: Mac, PC, Blackberry, iPhone and the web.

The Phone I Really Want From Apple

I really hope that Apple doesn't do what a lot of people are speculating about and calling the iPhone (even though Motorola owns the name and is using it), which is like an iPod with a cell phone embedded. I don't want to listen to music on my phone. I actually want a phone that acknowledges that we all use computers and the internet.

I use a Macintosh. I want Apple to design and introduce a phone that works so well with my Macintosh that I am compelled to buy it. I want the Apple Phone (and I hope Apple uses this to introduce a third product line that is different from both the Macintosh and the iPod) to show me my email like my Treo 700p does but without using Microsoft Exchange to do it. And I want it to know about all 6,572 cards I have in my Macintosh Address Book and let me connect with them naturally and easily. And I want it to know that I am in a meeting from my schedule and keep the phone from ringing when I am. I want the phone to be really, really smart because it knows that I use a Macintosh.

After Mac users get this phone (and crow incessantly about special they are as a result of this magical device), then Apple can introduce a version for Windows users (who will be discovering that Vista probably doesn't work as well as everybody thought it would, no matter how pretty the desktop is).

Good Thinking, Motorola!

In all the coverage of Motorola's acquisition of Good Technology (over the weekend for a reported $500M), no one has remembered that this is the second company acquired to get synchronization technology. That's right, Motorola already bought Starfish in 1998. I think they paid something like $200M for that company (founded by Philippe Kahn). Starfish made something called TrueSync for PDAs. This from a Business Week commentary about Motorola in its August 10 issue of that year: "Thanks to Starfish, Motorola says, phones released within the next 18 months will store addresses, telephone numbers, and other data, just like 3Com Corp.'s (COMS) Palm organizer." I'm still waiting.

Must passwords be hard?

I just bailed on a registration that was required to buy a book that looked nice. I bailed when I got this message: "Password must be at least 6 characters long, and contain at least one alphabetic and one numeric character." My standard e-commerce web password has six characters in it but only alphabetic. I can't handle coming up with yet another password or remembering which password I used to register for which site. Can't do it. So Pictopia.com just lost a sale for sfgate. (Nice looking book called "Mystical San Francisco". Maybe I'll get it in a book store, which doesn't require any kind of password at all!)

What dumb nerd thought that that particular site needed to enforce a different password format. What the heck is so important about Pictopia's products that it needs to be a pain in the keister to its customers to achieve "better" security.

Mac2Mac

I bought a new Mac, a 15-inch MacBook Pro based on the Intel DualCore chips. I've just got to say that the experience has been a real pleasure. The guy in the Apple store was direct and efficient; it took about 15 minutes to conduct the transaction, including getting two extra power supplies because I always like one each in the office, at home and my briefcase. This morning, I started up the new machine and it asked me if I wanted to transfer stuff from an old machine. I said yes, hooked the two machines up by FireWire cable and about three hours later, my new machine had sucked everything off the old one. Wow! Pretty smart business to make it THAT easy to upgrade to a new computer.

T-NotSoMobile

Why does T-Mobile block Port 25 in its WiFi hotspots? Blocking Port 25 means that my mail program, Apple Mail, cannot deliver the email I write while I sit in airports and coffee shops, which is exactly why I pay $29.95 a month to T-Mobile! I have an EV-DO (otherwise known as Mobile Broadband) card from Sprint that I pay $60 a month for. And I can always deliver email with that card. So right now I am sitting in a T-Mobile hotspot at DFW and using the Sprint card to deliver my email. What, am I stupid for paying T-Mobile $30 a month or what?

Someone who has actually studied passwords

A reasonable percentage of my gripes about customer service involve passwords. Companies sometimes focus more on security (protecting something worth protecting) than on customer service (providing the desired service in a convenient way). I just read this blog post that reviews this inherent conflict in password protection. Feel free to comment or email if you've seen more; I'd like to be well educated in this topic.