Just as I thought | Gene Cowan's weblog

If only God were on Facebook

2009-06-30T19:15:00Z

Stages of grief, step three: profit

2009-06-28T18:02:00Z

Billboard Magazine reports that yet another faction of the Michael Jackson hangers-on is advocating for a burial at Neverland, Jackson's Disneyland-knockoff ranch. The thought is that it could become another Graceland, a shrine.
Michael Jackson was a talented young man who was exploited shamelessly by an industry and a family who sought fame and fortune. The sad truth is that the man became a freak show. Spurred on by the lack of a normal childhood he retreated into a bizarre parody of childhood, acting as any 12 year old would with unlimited funds to spend. And as long as he brought in the cash, he was manipulated by those around him.
Now that he is dead, these same people are contemplating the opportunity his death provided - to exploit him in perpetuity without the messiness of the actual man and what further oddities he might have presented.
I truly believe that the people around Michael Jackson exploited him, squeezed him dry, and ruined his life. Now they want to ruin his death.
Just for once, leave him in peace.

The Carpal Tunnel Tax

2009-06-26T20:48:00Z

The next time some PC apologist claims that there's an "Apple Tax", you can point out that purchasing a Mac means you don't have outrageous surgery bills resulting from the design of your laptop. Case in point: take a look at my MacBook Pro's wrist rest:

... and that of a Sony Vaio.

The only way this could have been made less inviting and more annoying is if the entire case were covered with quills.

Wild Ad

2009-06-26T03:39:00Z

Oops.

Mash-up Mania

2009-06-06T18:17:00Z

Two more mash-ups that I did when I should have been working.

You know what Big Hands mean

2009-06-04T15:45:01Z

Here's the new Palm Prē, the next iPhone killer.

1: I can't understand why hardware companies can't wrap their mind around design. This phone looks like it came in off the 1993 bus. The internet is filled with amateur artists creating very cool and modern phone concepts, why can't corporations take a spin around the web then maybe hire a decent industrial designer? The iPhone came out two years ago and still looks 10 years ahead of this.

2: Before the iPhone hit stores, pundits claimed that a phone without a physical keyboard was ridiculous, that it would never work, that no one would accept it. Now the iPhone is a smash hit and you don't hear anyone complaining about the screen-based keyboard. So, with a couple years of insight, what did Palm's Apple-veteran engineers do? You know, the engineers they hired away from Apple who claim that they are uniquely positioned to compete with Apple 'cos they worked with Steve Jobs? Well, surprise, surprise: they created yet another slide-out, plastic keyboard.

3. People are all excited about the fact that this phone runs apps based on HTML, CSS and Javascript — you know, webapps. Funny, when the iPhone came out that's how it ran apps as well, and people were pissed off about it. Now that the iPhone runs both webapps and compiled apps, people give Palm's ~~crippled selection of apps~~ a thumbs up. Weird. [John Gruber points out the difference here: Palm's "webapps" not only run on the phone without having to be web-based, they also take advantage of APIs into the WebOS that Apple's implementation doesn't allow. Whether this is a security nightmare about to be unleashed or not is left up to the reader to decide.]

4: Maybe Engadget has giants on their review staff. Maybe the camera is foreshortening. Or maybe Palm is so used to touch screens that require a tiny, easy-to-lose stylus that they forgot to measure typical fingers. Seriously, look at the size of that keyboard. Look at the size of that touchscreen. Can you imagine trying to target your big fat finger on this device?

Oh, and just a tip to the marketing team: naming the device using a diacritical — the Palm Prē — means that 99.9% of reviewers won't properly name your device. Who the hell knows where the ē is on a keyboard? Intercaps like iPhone can be typed on any keyboard without thinking. If you're gonna use a symbol or diacritical, stop right now. Don't bother. No one else will.

Golly, why didn’t I think of that?

2009-06-03T22:30:00Z

The New York Times sez:

President Obama said that he was receptive to Congressional proposals to require every American to have health insurance and would make employers offer it, but he said there should be exemptions for people who cannot afford coverage and for small businesses.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but... isn't that just answering the "I don't have health insurance" problem with a cheeky "Well, go get some?"
This is like requiring people to have food and forcing them to have a home. Except, of course, for those who cannot afford it.
Brilliant! All we need is a sticky note that says "get health insurance today or else!"
This will solve everything.
And it's not punitive, oh no. If you can't afford coverage... or work for a small business... then, well, no one will force you to have any of that pesky health coverage.
In other words, just like right now.
Oh, and I suppose it just never occurred to Congress that requiring employers to offer health coverage is pretty ineffectual when it comes to the people who need it most: those who don't have an employer.

Government by the credit card generation

2009-05-29T21:16:01Z

The reporter on KCBS asked the woman what she thought of the California budget crisis.

"They spend too much! Just stop spending so much money!" she insisted.

There's little more irritating these days than know-nothing know-it-alls who proclaim that the bureaucrats are to blame for the huge California budget problems. I can't help but wonder how many initiatives this woman has voted for that added to that spending, while voting down any initiatives designed to pay for them.

It's very simple, and yet people don't ever point the finger at themselves, where the blame belongs. California is ruled by voter initiatives. Any moron can get anything on the ballot with enough signatures, and every moron's opinion is shared with enough other morons to assure those signatures. Case in point: Proposition 8.

There's little discretion among elected officials. The people vote themselves a big, expensive initiative that'll cost a huge amount of money — take, for example, Proposition 13 in the 70s, which froze property tax rates for homeowners when it was passed, thereby shifting the tax burden to those of us who bought a house after that... and also requires many tax hikes to pass a voter referendum. So, once people vote for an expensive project, they'll be asked to approve a new tax to pay for it... and of course, no one votes for a tax hike.

This is how you get insane deficits.

"They should just spend less!"

Moron.

This is not 20/20 customer service

2009-05-29T21:14:00Z

My eye doctor's shopping center office hours today are 9am to 5pm... but closed for lunch between noon and 2pm. I was told that they'd reopen at 2, so I could come by to pick up my contact lenses.

When I arrived, I was confronted by a Post-It note proclaiming, with a smiley face, that they'd be closed until 3:30 for a birthday lunch.

Inside the office, the woman sat, pointedly ignoring me. I tried calling her to get her attention, the phone went unanswered. I knocked, she gave me a pointed "not gonna get up" look. Finally, other employees approached and she was forced to get up and open the door.

"You told me you'd be open at 2," I said.

"It's not my fault if there were patients here and I couldn't have my lunch," she snipped. She had a sour look on her face.

"I didn't come here just to piss you off," I replied.

When I entered the office, there were five employees, eating lunch. Five.

Is it just me, or does that mean that they could stagger their lunch hours and keep the storefront open just in case, oh, I don't know... someone wants to come by and give them money?

I took my $200 worth of contact lenses and left, knowing that it would be very unlikely that I'd buy anything there in the future.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Sexy, Microsoft-style

2009-05-27T15:28:00Z

This is the new Zune HD. Even iPod devotees are calling it "sexy."

Me? The first thing I noticed is that Microsoft couldn't do something as simple as sizing text to fit the width of the screen.

Speaking of poor usability, we visited Innoventions at Disneyland, a thinly-veiled Microsoft marketing venture disguised as a "house of tomorrow." Evidently, the house of tomorrow is designed such that you can't swing a cat without hitting an LCD screen. They're everywhere — all over the walls, on bookshelves, mantels, tables and the piano. Everywhere one looks there's a lit up digital photo or status display. It would be impossible to get to sleep in a house that is never dark.

And all over this house was evidence of Microsoft's lack of user understanding: with all the big screens in the kitchen or on the walls, people were touching them, expecting something to happen. But they aren't touch screens, they're just static displays. From the first moment people were confronted with Microsoft's idea of the house of the future, it was a big, huge fail.

Upstairs at Innoventions, the crowds were swarming around some high tech futuristic game called "X Box 360." Wow!

It's telling that people were wandering around with their fingers all over their iPhones. Like the rest of Tomorrowland, Innoventions was a decade or two behind reality.