James's Weblog

For the third year in a row, Mitch and I lost track of time and missed the APE comics convention. Argh!

That reminds me: I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t like most modern comic books. I’ve flipped through a number of issues of various titles, but none of the mainstream superhero stuff looks interesting to me.

Have I merely outgrown them? Perhaps, but I still like watching shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League. I have no problems buying trade paperback collections of 1970s and 1980s superhero comic books.

Is it nostalgia? Am I merely out-of-the-loop on current storylines? Am I totally confused because they’ve turned the worlds I knew upside-down and inside-out? Are my expectations simply higher because comic books are now at least three times as expensive as they were when I fell in love with them? Probably all of the above.

Nonetheless, when I look at the pages of modern superhero offerings, I can’t help but think: “Wow, yet another Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane wanna-be.” Comic books certainly look a lot better than they used to; the artwork is crisp, detailed, and stylish. Colors are no longer limited to flat sections of uniformity; better paper and better printing technology now allow spectacular, rich gradients and subtle shading.

But somehow it all feels so soul-less. Comic books have gone the way of MTV with flashy art, extreme closeups, and gratuitously skimpy outfits on abnormally buoyant women.

Get rid of the expensive, glossy paper and the flashy CG coloring. Bring back the cheap newsprint and flat colors. Sometimes less is more. Airbrushed colors don’t belong with iconic art. And stop aping Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane.

And bring back the Charles Atlas and x-ray specs ads too. Those kicked ass.

There’s a lot of confusion out there about rechargeable battery technology.

Is the memory effect real? Do modern rechargeable batteries suffer from it? Should you discharge batteries completely before recharging? Should you charge batteries whenever they’re not in use? Does overcharging damage the battery? What are the differences between NiCd, NiMH, lithium-ion, and lithium-polymer batteries?

In this case, confusion leads to disinformation. Some people often say to discharge lithium-ion batteries completely to avoid the “memory effect”, even though most of the sources I’ve seen say that completely discharging a lithium-ion battery is bad.

Forget it. Batteries should be more intelligent. Sure, there currently are “smart batteries” out there that report things such as chemistry type, number of charge cycles, voltage levels, and temperature, but do users care about these things? Do users know what they mean? The batteries (or the devices that use them) should be smarter and tell users what matters:

• Estimate time left on the current charge. Making accurate estimates is difficult, because many devices do not consume power at a constant rate. Manufacturers want to avoid complaints from users who say, “your device said I had 1 hour and 15 minutes of battery life left, but I really had only 50 minutes!” Instead, device manufacturers often don’t say anything at all.

  Truly smart batteries or devices could generate statistical data and usage patterns. Even with variable power consumption, they ought to be able to use such data to compute reasonably accurate estimates. When in doubt, they should be conservative with their estimates.

  If nothing else (and to rip off an idea from Mac OS), if you can’t be accurate, be less precise. For example, a better estimate might be “About 1 hour” or “About 30-60 minutes”.

• When to recharge. Smart batteries or devices can know their chemistry type and could tell the user the appropriate charging behavior to follow. Messages such as, “You should recharge your device now to maximize the lifetime of the battery” could be used to supplement existing low battery warnings. Overcharging should never be a problem; smart devices already detect when the battery capacity is reached and stop automatically.

As much as I like PalmSource (the company that makes Palm OS), its registration forms always bug me.

There are always questions that are required but don’t apply to me, such as job title, company name, number of employees, what distribution systems I use, what type of market I’m targeting, and so on. Admittedly, the majority of registrants shouldn’t have any trouble answering these questions. On the other hand, a significant number of Palm OS developers are hobbyists who don’t represent their employers, and these days a lot of people are unemployed.

If your marketing department demands that you require demographic information in your registration forms, remind them that disinformation is worse than no information. If nothing else, provide “not applicable” or “I don’t know” options.

For anyone curious about what’s so special about my dream keyboard that I mentioned last December:

• Buckling-spring construction. It’s equivalent to an old IBM Model-M keyboard. Unlike the flimsy, cheap membrane keyboards most people use, buckling-spring keyboards are solid, are built like tanks, and last forever. True, they are much noisier, but my typing already sounds like a jackhammer, so it shouldn’t be much worse.
• Integrated TrackPoint. Some people hate these things, arguing that a normal mouse is better. While I won’t argue with that, a TrackPoint and a mouse aren’t mutually exclusive. Modern operating systems support multiple pointing devices; why not use both? If you need to do a lot of mousing and only a bit of keyboarding, use the mouse. If you need to do a lot of keyboarding but only a bit of mousing, you can use the TrackPoint without taking your hands off of the keyboard. It’s the best of both worlds. It rocks for coding, and I think all keyboards should have this.
• Windows keys. Some people hate these things too, arguing that they’re nearly useless. If they bother you that much, there are versions without them. Me, I think they’re useful. Use an application such as WinKey to assign keyboard shortcuts to Windows-key combinations. For example, I set Win+p to open the command prompt, Win+i set to start my web browser, and Win+v to open my volume controls.

I know these things save lives and all, but I really hate the ones we have in our home.

When their batteries get sufficiently drained, they emit a short, annoying, loud chirp once a minute. It seems to me that whoever thought this up never lived in a home with a smoke detector in every room. It takes around 10-15 minutes to track down which smoke detector is complaining, because:

• We have a lot of smoke detectors.
• The chirp is too short to get a good fix on the location immediately.
• Funny acoustics can play tricks.
• I have to wait a full minute to refine each guess.

Ten to fifteen minutes isn’t a long time, but it’s longer than it ought to be. Listening to the shrill, piercing chirp doesn’t make the time spent any more enjoyable. (And why do these chirps always seem to start in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping?) The chirps seem to go on forever; just how low on power can the batteries possibly be? At my old apartment complex in Berkeley, I listened to one go on for weeks.

What I don’t understand is that the smoke detectors are wired to get power from the house. The batteries are supposed to be used only as a backup. How are they getting depleted so quickly?

Of course, a good high-tech solution would be to connect all the smoke detectors to a network and to have a central monitoring system.

Better low-tech solutions:

• Use a rechargeable battery; signal a warning only when the battery can no longer retain a sufficient charge.
• Use visual cues instead of (or in addition to) the chirps for battery warnings. For example, a smoke detector could turn off its power LED when battery power is low (and thereby save electricity too); it could release a short, brightly colored ribbon and let it hang; or it slide open a hatch that reveals some brightly-colored material underneath.
• Use less annoying chirps and chirp more frequently. It’s silly to design a smoke detector that can signal a low-battery warning for several weeks. Even two chirps in quick succession would be a huge improvement.
• Get a dog.

Don’t you hate it when you’re having a face-to-face conversation with someone, and then the other person gets interrupted by a phone call? Don’t you hate it when you get a call in the middle of a meeting or a class, and the person keeps calling you back, wondering why you don’t answer?

Forget built-in cameras. Forget about doubling as a portable gaming console. Forget Bluetooth and web-browsing.

What I really want is a button on my cell phone that, when pressed, answers an incoming call and responds with a pre-recorded message saying something like: “I’m here, but I can’t talk right now. Leave a message, or call back in ten minutes.”

Ok, I’ve run into enough poorly designed “e-commerce” sites to irritate me.

I admit that I know nothing about business, but it seems clear to me that one of the primary goals should be to make it as easy as possible to separate willing customers from their money. If people want to give you money, don’t make them jump through hoops.

For example, an alarming number of sites I’ve visited require me to create an account to buy something. This is a turn-off.

• For a first-time shopper who might never visit your site again, it’s an extra, unnecessary step.
• An account implies that the customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card number will be stored on file for who knows how long. No thanks.
• Accounts require passwords. This means that customers either make up new passwords (which they probably will have forgotten, should they ever return), or they re-use passwords they’ve used elsewhere. In other words, that’s either one more password they need to remember or one more place from where someone can steal it.

  I suspect an overwhelming majority of people re-use passwords. As a consequence, most customers must ask themselves: do I trust your site with my password? (It suddenly strikes me as odd that I would trust a site with my credit card number but not my password, but I do.) Even if the answer is yes, that’s one more decision the customer, who has already decided to buy something from you, has to make; that’s one more point where the customer can change his or her mind.

Please, don’t require accounts. Provide them as a convenience to repeat customers, but don’t make them a barrier to first-timers. Make the first-timers happy, build up trust, and they’ll be more likely to come back.

Second, give shipping/handling estimates up front. Make them easy to find. Don’t require the customer to “check-out” first. Ask for the country and the postal code (or city/state) if you must, but do not force the customer to enter a name, street address, email address, or credit card number first. Absolutely do not require that the customer create an account first. The customer is going to find out how much shipping/handling is eventually; why hide it? If you wait until the end, you risk upsetting them and guaranteeing that they’ll hesitate before returning. Tell them at the beginning. Be honest.

(Also, if you do use accounts, it would be reassuring to know if your site hashes or encrypts passwords before storing them.)