Banning the Ban: Why Prop 8 is a Step Backwards

In 1960 when Barack Obama's parents were married in Kansas, inter-racial marriage was still banned in 22 states. In a historic year in which we seem poised to elect our first non-white president, Proposition 8 seeks to ban another minority from enjoying that same basic right.

You do not need to approve of gay marriage in order to believe that banning it would be wrong. I disapprove of a wide variety of practices, but that disapproval in no way entitles me to take those rights away from other people.

How would you feel if your daughter married a Latino? an African-American? an Asian? a Muslim? an atheist? Even if you don't like the idea, do you really believe that your personal choice should make it illegal for everyone else?

One of the first political issues I remember was the repeal of a landmark gay rights ordinance in South Florida, where I grew up. In 1977 Dade County forbade landlords from rejecting tenants based on sexual orientation. Anita Bryant got involved, as if her public standing as a beauty queen and orange juice spokesman gave her a pulpit to hand down judgments. Representing herself as a Christian and a mother, she made a lot of hateful remarks, inciting fear of people who wanted only to rent an apartment and live in peace.

My mother pointed out the repeal was a backwards vote because of its wording: if you were for gay rights, you voted "no" and against it, you voted "yes." She thought confusion might have contributed to its repeal.

Prop 8 is also a backwards vote. A recent headline in the San Francisco Chronicle pronounced "Margin shrinks in defeat of gay marriage ban." The house signs against Prop 8 read "Vow to Vote No on the Marriage Ban." I'm still trying to figure that one out. Unfortunately it took another 20 years until 1999 for Miami to pass an ordinance guaranteeing lesbians and gays equal protection under the law. Let's not make the same mistake in California by writing discrimination into our constitution.


US Senator Dianne Feinstein on why Prop 8 is discrimination.

Opponents of gay marriage often cite the harm that legitimizing non-traditional families will do to children. But this is a wrong-headed argument. The only children who will be hurt by Proposition 8 are the children of gay couples if it passes.

We tend to focus on weddings and falling in love, but contracts like marriage are far more important in protecting children when families separate. Who gets custody? How is property fairly divided, when one spouse has given up her career to support the other? Through the 1970s, state governments encouraged by the Catholic church resisted making divorces easier to obtain because the Vatican nobly sought to protect women and children from abandonment and poverty. But the larger issue was removing discrimination against women and providing economic parity, so that divorces would not leave families suddenly poor and women had the means to take care of their families.

California is an incredibly diverse and tolerant state, with a wealth of voices, peoples, languages, and beliefs. Over the years, California voters have shown leadership and courage on immigration, technology, environmental issues, and civil rights. Proposition 8 seeks to set one group apart and deny them legal recognition and protections for their families. Is that the kind of change you want in your community?

pillow menu

I arrived at the Holiday Inn in Salt Lake City late Thursday to find five fluffy pillows and a pillow menu on my king-sized bed.

I felt momentarily like Goldilocks. Soft or firm? Too many choices....

easy as 1-2-3

I was shopping for eye shadow and noticed Maybelline had literally baked the documentation right into the product.


The instructions are stenciled onto the cakes. Ever in search of a write-off, I bought it.


Plus who can resist something named Chocolate Mousse?

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the magic map machine

AAA has closed its headquarters downtown and opened a bunch of branches out in the neighborhoods, so you no longer have to drive to them.

Imagine my delight to find they're not only open Saturdays (including for DMV services) but they offer self-serve maps! There was no line for a live agent, but I headed right to the machine to check it out.

You insert your membership card and then choose up to 8 frequently requested items. Wineries. California Tour Book. Utah parks, A9. Just like buying a Snickers bar and a bag of CheeseIts.


The only problem is the map machine's located inside the AAA office, which must be open for you to use it. It would be a lot handier at the airport, or a gas station, or the rental car office, at least for people who don't love to spend as many hours researching a route as I do.

"Yes, but then I wouldn't be nearby to restock the maps," the agent said, a little hurt at the thought of being replaced.

"Fair enough," I conceded. "But I'll bet you could make money from on-the-spot renewals."

*

green is for...?

that existential feeling

Today I tried to check out Acrobat.com. Except first the log in didn't work.

Then I was invited to participate in a survey, that asked 1000 (okay 27) questions on things I didn't know or care about, like the performance of the Adobe website, and whether the layout made it easy or hard to do things.

Generally I answer surveys as karma, so that other users will participate in my research, but this was taking a quick password retrieval a bit too far. Also it wouldn't let me skip any questions. So I bailed.



Finally, when I was allowed to log in to CONNECTNOW (a service very like one we worked on at Macromedia six years ago with the FlashCom team), the screen was blank, I had no friends, and they disconnected me.

Talk about a welcoming out-of-the-box experience: "you were alone in the room for 20 minutes" :( Doesn't it make you just want to ConnectNow™ ?

which came first?

from the otherwise quality-obsessed folks at aviary.

404 redux

diy box?

I ordered a free refill of checks from Washington Mutual. The branch called me when they arrived to see if I wanted to come in and pick them up or they should mail them. Appreciating this small-town touch, I decided to walk in.

The agent handed me a dark blue plastic bag.

"Where's my box of checks?" I asked.

"In there," she said. I opened it to be sure. "We got too many complaints that the packages didn't fit in people's mailboxes."



They still give you the box. It's just flattened, with instructions on how to pop it up.


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double take

don't be evil

Test your software Google. The pernicious redirect notice only affects people who are signed into G land.


It's not like you don't have enough resources.


*

3/3 update: looks like Google (or Firefox?) got a clue and fixed this remotely. A perfect example of the dangers of software that continuously updates without user consent.

dynamic content sometimes breaks

pay by cell phone

Spotted today in San Francisco. Kind of curious. Would you try this?



I have a prepaid meter card, which sort of works if you're out of quarters. There's no interface on the meter so you have to keep inserting and removing it and hoping it deducts the right amount. If you reinsert it to check your balance, it grabs another quarter.

come back later

This restaurant was too popular.

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selling the premium experience

Sundance (as in the Sundance film festival) just took over the Kabuki movie theaters at Japantown. The Kabuki is the site of the San Francisco International Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the US, and so is beloved among serious movie goers. Still the complex had fallen into disrepair, the sightlines were poor, and newer theaters easily surpassed the Kabuki with stadium seating.

Sundance has taken a novel approach, remodeling the entire complex, adding digital projection capabilities, installing bars and restaurants, upgrading seating, and introducing the ability to reserve your seat online. And it's entirely green: coffee spoons made of potatoes, that kind of thing. They’ve had a great selection of high-brow entertainment since they opened, and I’ve been twice.

The first and primary obstacle is price. All this luxury comes at a premium. Movie going is in decline, and prices above $10 don’t help, nor do 20 minutes of previews and commercials at the local Century. For the first time in my life I see fewer than three movies a month in a theater; this after working in movie theaters for more than five years, including a stint as a projectionist in college, simply so I could see more movies.

Not wanting to blast too far beyond the $10 barrier, Sundance introduced a set of amenities fees. These vary from 0 (for the lone person who goes to the movies at noon on Tuesdays) to $3 for Saturday nights. Most of the time the fee is $1-2; it’s the rule rather than an exception This is coupled with matinee pricing and discounts for seniors and students.

And while I understand peak demand pricing in principle (say for Saturday nights versus 5 p.m. on Wednesdays), it irritates me in practice. Plus it’s just too complicated:


Oh, and the base prices posted on the website are wrong--they're for the other Sundance outpost in Wisconsin. In San Francisco matinée adult tickets cost $8.50 plus amenities fees. But you get the idea.

I was appalled that two tickets to the Kite Runner Sunday at 4:30 cost $24! I picked out our reserved seats on the touch screen and began to complain to the friendly cashier. He handed me a brochure on what all those amenities were for: remodeling, and no commercials. I guess I wasn’t the only one unsold on the complex pricing.

But then I went inside the theater. Even the tiny screening rooms were spectacular. Brand new seats. Big spacing between them. Mood lighting. Prominent recycling bins. Everyone came in and found their seats, in a hush. The whole movie seemed better.


Still, I resisted. Another Sunday afternoon I debated whether to go to the Landmark theater or the Kabuki, giving in only when I couldn’t find parking downtown. On my way to see Persepolis, I stopped at the beautiful snack bar and got a cup of Peet’s tea for $1.75, the same price as at Peet’s. They had boutique gelato and local chocolates and a decent looking panini, all at normal prices. Did I mention the full bar? Yes, you can now drink wine at the movies.

They have a few kinks to work out. Because they show Sundance Channel shorts, the theaters are dark when you walk in so it’s hard to see the seat numbers. And otherwise civilized patrons still leave trash on the floor—a habit I will never understand. (Who do they think picks it up?) But otherwise I'm sold.

So how do you sell customers on a premium experience? I don’t think it’s having a fee structure that’s too complicated to explain without a chart. Sundance Kabuki should just charge more: the $12 movie, $14 on Saturday nights. I’d do a combo with the Balcony Bar: a movie and a drink for $20.

They could give out coupons to introduce the concept to new patrons, to encourage you to come in and see what it’s all about. Now is the time to introduce a loyalty program for discriminating movie patrons, a club I'd like to part of.

They might look to Apple Computer, or to MaxJet, companies that have done a good job of selling premium products. But in this case, the bottom line is the customer experience, which really is superior. Now to fill the seats.


*
On a related tangent, this week SF Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer looks at restaurants adding surcharges to pay for city-mandated health insurance.

P.S. I was telling this story to a friend when I realized why the Kabuki is breaking down their pricing this way: if they increase ticket prices, they have to give a percentage to the movie studios.

So theaters (which have to make their own investments in not just chairs and popcorn poppers but also state of the art digital projection equipment) are trying to find a way to fund their own facilities. Makes perfect business sense in this day and age of DIY publishing and distribution. But still irks me as a customer.

poll taxing

What’s the matter with the polls?

If Election2008 brings us anything, it will be increased public perception about how damaging and mistaken surveys can be. Barack Obama is expected to win South Carolina by 12 points and wins by 28. Polls predict Mitt Romney will win Nevada by 5%; he wins by 35%. The latest polls for Florida, with a margin of error of 4%, variously have John McCain winning by 3 and Mitt Romney winning by 6.

What’s going on?

My mother raised me to be skeptical of statistics. The example she often used, tellingly, was that birth control pills raised your incidence of heart attack 400%. But as she pointed out, if you read between the lines the numbers were still minuscule: 5 women per 100,000 versus 1, something like that. (I was packed off to college with a year's supply.)

Most polls are extrapolations made from relatively small amounts of data. I love talking to customers, and you can learn something useful from talking to a handful of customers. The danger is when you take what you hear and treat it as representative of all your customers.

Time Magazine routinely polls fewer than 1000 Americans nationally and then reports that the top concern is the war in Iraq or the economy. The original poll, if it’s reputable, may have some nuance that’s usually left out of the reports picked up by TV news or radio stations. Or the language of the poll may force undecided voters to make a choice. There’s nothing worse than being asked which is more important, fear of recession or health care and not being able to choose: Both. Or None of the Above.

Polling methods are not good at projecting uncertainty, and they’re complicated in an election where regions have different priorities, and you don’t know who will actually show up. Preference does not always predict behavior.

Back to 2008...
Polls for this election have been based on very small numbers of likely voters. Most have fewer than 800 respondents. Many are limited to members of specific political parties, even as more Americans identify as independents. This leads to undercounting.

Polls also suffer from lags. Results released yesterday don't take into account Obama's huge win Saturday. This is a perfect example of why a longer primary season would benefit the country and the candidates. Instead of having to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for national advertising by appealing to special interests (Clinton, Guiliani, Obama) or being personally obscenely wealthy (Romney, Bloomberg, Edwards), candidates would have time to campaign on the issues.

In the four weeks since Iowa, there’s been a different front runner and winner in each state. The mainstream media tends to leap on the polls and results, focusing on the horse race, even though the next contest is a very different set of voters and issues. Michigan doesn’t have the same composition as New Hampshire or South Carolina. I’m sure someone in those states has the same priorities as I do. Well, maybe.

There are also unintended consequences in a race where the Democratic field is led by a very viable female candidate and a very viable African American candidate. As my cousin said of John Edwards, who we both favor, it’s a bad year to be the white guy.

Political analysts repeatedly miss the effect of attacks on Clinton and Obama. Sure, I’m ultimately going to vote based on the issues and which candidate I think is best prepared to be president given the difficult state of the country. But I do take it personally when Hillary Clinton is treated differently from the men she’s running against by the press and by other candidates. There’s no surer way to get women or African-Americans to keep coming to the polls in record numbers than to keep telling us that we—our votes—don’t matter.

This isn’t just an issue for well-to-do voters. Working class voters, especially women, who have suffered under the Bush Administration’s disastrous policies are turning out in record numbers. Perhaps they weren’t home when the pollsters called—they were at work, or picking up their kids at day care or at church. True, that's not as sexy an explanation as white voters in New Hampshire lying about voting for a black candidate. As South Carolina's Democratic primary demonstrates, African-American women are a constituency to be reckoned with.

Race matters. And gender. And age, but not in the way you think. For all we hear about the youth vote, voters under 30 comprise roughly 10% of the electorate. Two-thirds of all voters are 45 and up. My grandmother, who is 91, never misses a chance to choose who will represent her issues.

While a big Obama victory in South Carolina's primary is hardly a surprise, the Associated Press called the race before any votes were counted based on exit polls. Didn't they learn anything from 2000 or 2004? This is CNN:
The NY Times was slightly more cautious. "Obama Is Seen as Winner in South Carolina," but their infographics told the whole story:

Despite the excitement and high ratings for this race, the mainstream media seems determined to shut down debate as soon as possible. They stopped covering Mike Huckabee weeks ago, although he looks set to pick up delegates and possibly victories in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. They don't allow Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul to debate and keep encouraging John Edwards to drop out, even though he's raised enough money to stay in. How does any of this serve democracy or stimulate debate on the issues Americans care about? Especially those of us who live in states that don't vote in January, or haven't made up our minds?

Polls can be self-fulfilling. They tell a story you’re expecting, from people you expected to hear it from. It's like asking customers if they want a red car or a blue car, and when they say they want a silver car, ignoring them and checking the blue box, or throwing away their input.

Forecasting falls down:

• Where opinions are volatile and changing
• When you can’t tell how representative the people you’re talking to are
• When you’re missing a sizable segment by taking too small a sampling.

There is a great story that remains underreported, and that is one of turnout. Record numbers of voters continue to casts ballots; as much as twice the participation of the last presidential campaign. People want to be counted.

Never trust a pol[l]. Or just go read Dave Barry.

rtfm

Yeah, good luck.

Macworld

Crowds were fierce! You could barely cross the street without being mowed down. Also both middle-aged and middle brow. Apple has finally reached the masses.


The MacBook Air felt lovely in my tiny palm but continues Apple's unfortunate tradition of spongy keyboards. I'll keep my old clicky keys with a little noise and resistance, thank you very much.

Obama girl?

That logo's getting awfully popular. And maybe with Oprah teaming up with Discovery Health, that's no accident.

Facebook grammar

Harvard's admission standards must be slipping.

Very LOLcat, if you ask me.

And then there's the existential. Mitt Romney would be proud of Noah.

Delta is really fast...

no toys for you

when an upgrade isn't

I know, it's been a while. I've been working on the launch of an exciting new language learning platform, rolling out white papers on service performance management, and oh yeah, this little thing called NaNoWriMo. If the words didn't count toward my 50,000, I didn't write them.

Last week, Lonely Planet rolled out an upgrade to its online forum, the ThornTree. I've been on the TT for 7 years, during which time I've seen one significant upgrade that went forgettably smoothly. The site wasn't especially pretty, but it worked. Round the clock, round the world, for tens of thousands of users every day.


BBC bought Lonely Planet a month ago, so I'm not sure it's fair to blame the latest debacle on them. And TT4 is a disaster. An instructive one for any designers or developers, determined to improve on what came before.

Rule number 1 of redesign: if it works, don't break it!

What went wrong:

• A site that delivers thousands of page of text now has severe legibility problems. Fonts are poorly spaced, and smaller than they were. The main body of the thread--the most important information on the page--was shrunk to make room for oodles of tiny indecipherable icons. (Okay, there's a legend, if you want to figure out what distinguishes a half-filled circle from a star.)
• They didn't test it with users. They didn't ever ask for input. And TT users are a loyal, opinionated bunch. Many of us have spent 5-10 hours a week answering travel questions on this site for years. No one paid us. No one thanked us. We fought and flamed each other and bitched to the mods. We did it, because it was pleasurable.
  
  To make matters worse, RomanB, the only full-time employee for the TT, left after the BBC acquisition. So all the announcements come from CarolBat LP, who may in real life be a lovely person or an incompetent one, but who I know simply as the hapless bearer of bad news:
  

  As communicated previously, we were unable to completely replicate the current Thorn Tree on launch of TT4, and will continue to roll out changes.
  
  I understand there is functionality you are used to that's missing. We are aware of the most popular features and will endeavor to roll them out as regular releases. We know, so many little thing make such a big difference!
  
  Please visit our Work In Progress thread under the About Thorn Tree branch for updates on further releases.

  
  
• They didn't replicate the original functionality. They took away critical productivity features, like being able to see recent activity on all the threads you'd answered. But they did add tags and blogs.
  
  
• They removed the ability to set preferences, so the boards default to recent posts instead of recent replies. And I can't figure out how to stay logged in, so I can post. So, I don't. To add insult to injury, they didn't accurately preserve the historical number of posts. I was close to 10,000. Now I have 900.
  

And on and on. I know it sounds like minutae, but in terms of user experience, this is what matters.

The first few days, posters ranted on the boards, waiting for a moderator to notice. CarolBatLP's info posts got more concilliatory. A bunch of regulars jumped ship by setting up their own board or threatened to; it's not like this is the only travel forum online any more.

Here's where I think they miscalcuated. While the site is used by backpackers from 20-70, many of the regular posters—people who have time and patience to help Brits with prior arrests or Cuban passport stamps understand the details of the Visa Waiver Program or college students find a hostel in NYC—are over 40 or semi-retired or disabled. (Or like me, self-employed.) The very people who are sensitive to massive changes in functionality and legibility. The mood on the USA board is morose.

A few parts of the upgrade are fine. For years, LP did little to monetize the hundreds of thousands of page views and return traffic. You can't begrudge them advertising on their own website.

And I suspect many of the missing features are the result of a lack of specs or docs on how TT3 behaved. Usability issues like those I've cited might not be apparent to a casual developer or new UI designer. It would take hard-core users to feel the pain of having to click to reply every time you want to post instead of just showing the reply field by default.

But I sure wish we could persuade them to turn back the clock and pull this upgrade until it's ready for prime time. Unlike Facebook, Lonely Planet doesn't understand the enormous value of its user base, the huge cost if all those people jump ship. Which we'll do, as soon as it's not fun any more.

Despite the flaws, I'm reluctant to give up the TT entirely; I have a long investment in it. Too bad Lonely Planet doesn't feel the same way about its online community.


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recent publications

"A Seat at the Table" about NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving

letter to the editor in Forbes Small Business about Nouveau Riche University

"Kaiten-zushi" in the BluePrint Review.

“Famous Jewish Criminals” in November's storySouth

“Dostoevsky & The Idiots” in the July Mississippi Review issue, Partly True Tales

“Ísland” appears in the BluePrint Review

“Meetings of the Mind” and “View Finder” in the BluePrint Review mo(nu)ment issue, available in print or as a download from Lulu

An article about intellectual property issues and lessons learned in the course of making “Joyce to the World,” a documentary about Bloomsday, will appear in Artelligenz in the near future

“Photos I didn't take in Mazatlan” Cautionary Tale, also available from Lulu.com in the 2006 Best of Cautionary Tale

“Why do you think they call it 'submission'?” Reflection's Edge

“The Ballad of Curly_Sue” Exquisite Corpse

“Unattached on the Road” The New York Times

“Top 10 (Bad) Excuses for Not Voting” Christian Science Monitor

“What I was Watching” and “Flowers in Her Hair” The Noe Valley Voice

“Fossils,” “Swing State Summer,” and others The Raw Story

“The Shrimp Tax” Hostelworld

“Baked Alaska” Subside.zine


Tags: writing, publishing

stung

Whatever you do, don't click the corner. Don't even hover your mouse near it.



I'm sure I didn't click.



Not that there was any real news to report: a major earthquake, Halloween monster teeth with lead, the Fed cuts rates. Free content comes at a price.

this is not a joke

Astonishingly, AT&T sent a 12-panel bilingual guide to reading my cellphone bill.



Rather than, I don't know, making the bill easier to understand.



[Real version has twice as many panels!]

opera vision

I've been a subscriber to San Francisco Opera on and off for more than 10 years. When I first moved here, I joined the hordes for standing room, which had its own precise etiquette for lining up and dashing in the doors to try to grab one of the few good spots for leaning for five hours. Like a high-class game of Musical Chairs, with elderly ushers chasing you across the marble intoning, "Don't run!"

Over time, I've moved around the opera house, occasionally splurging on orchestra seats (today over $100) but just as often enjoying performances from the balcony. It's well known among music lovers that the best acoustics are in the nosebleed section.

The quality of offerings varies considerably, but service from the opera organization rarely dips below stellar. There's a good reason for this. Even with average tickets above $70 and most performances at near capacity, box office only covers half the costs, so the opera depends on contributions and on building long-term relations with subscribers. Their well-heeled subscriber base is aging, and there's always tension in programming between commissions like Phillip Glass' "Appomattox" and crowd pleasers like "La Boheme" and "The Magic Flute."

Even in years when opera offerings are less than tantalizing, I try to subscribe to a minimal number of performances because of the privileges afforded to subscribers. These include the ability to exchange tickets for another performance or upgrade to better seats without charge, along with several backstage tours and invites to rehearsals. Once I lost my tickets and called the box office; they looked me up and sent me new ones. San Francisco Opera, despite my paltry contributions over the years, still treats me royally.

This year, I decided to get nosebleed seats for a half season. After all, I could upgrade or exchange them at will. The half season for balcony sides was sold out, so I took the whole season. The tickets are only $15 each, little more than a movie.


Then I got a letter from the new director, excitedly announcing Opera Vision. The company would broadcast the opera on high definition screens in the balcony. They hoped I would try it out, and like it. They listed the affected performances.

Unfortunately I had only Opera Vision for all ten operas. I guess I wasn't that open to new technology. When I e-mailed and then called to see if they could switch my tickets, they upgraded me to dress circle for the entire season. I'm in the 2nd row, in the $90 seats.

I love the opera. I'll include them in my charitable donations this year and maybe next year, I'll splurge on the more expensive seats. Most companies, especially those offering subscriptions, would do well to follow their example.


*

the return of interstitials

Some days it really does feel like 1999 again. I was catching up on the season premiere of "30 Rock," which has episodes posted on the NBC website.


The episode was sponsored by Excedrin Back and Body, repeatedly. The video player is wrapped in huge Excedrin ads, top and bottom. And there's an ad in between each chapter. Unfortunately it's the same ad.


When I reloaded, because the player reset at minute 16, I saw ads for Journey Diamond Jewelry. It reset anyway, at the same place. The third time, esurance.

What kind of headache-inducing branding is this? If you're going to take ad money, at least hire someone to test your video player. I still don't know how the episode ends.


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walk around the block

I'm off to NY and Boston tonight, and as I research transit connections, I'm struck by how poorly mapping tools work for pedestrians. Here's a perfect example. I'm taking the AirTrain to the LIRR to Keith's apartment:


Mapquest wants to send me in circles because of one-way streets. Except that I'm walking.

Travel times are estimated based on driving. Subway stops are listed but don't always include the lines. Which is fine if you want to go to Lafayette Avenue but doesn't help you figure out how to get there.

So what's the best way to get to Daisy and Lydia's by MTA from Amtrak? Bus...subway...taxi? Who knows! Fortunately they're meeting me at South Station. Those Google cartographers need to get out of their Bauer's shuttle bus a little more often.

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See you in 10 days.

inter-facial

I've noticed an increase in online booking tools for small businesses, especially ones that cater to busy professionals. This is a great development as a consumer. It means I can check late at night to see if there's availability for a massage with Rose without having to call during open hours and fish for information.

For a sole proprietor trying to maximize billable hours (and not interrupt a facial or a massage to take a phone call), online booking is a lifesaver. It's a virtual receptionist who's always working.

The tools are ready made, not developed by the person who works on your skin or shoulders. And mostly they work admirably on the front end. I haven't seen what details the salon receives, although I imagine it's similar to Open Table, another upscale booking service I enjoy using because it's fun to imagine fine dining at exclusive restaurants, when you can get a reservation.

Massage
The Flash appointments UI for UNCOIL could be prettier, but the steps are numbered, which makes the sequence and dependencies clear. Their booking table updates faster than most AJAX apps.


I got a confirmation immediately and an appointment reminder by e-mail more than 24 hours in advance, so there was still time to cancel or reschedule without penalty.

There's room for improvement--the fields were spit out of a database and didn't feel very personal. But it's very handy functionality, and less creepy than those automated appointment reminders Kaiser leaves on my voice mail, often at 6 p.m. on a Saturday with no way to change them.

Skin deep
Kimberly Skin Care uses Genbook, which has a prettier interface that matches her website branding and logo. It's also a little simpler because you don't have to choose an aesthetician.


In both cases, I appreciated the summary that listed address, phone number, and price for service. Too many day spas obscure what they charge behind fancy names for services—chocolate coffee wraps and hydrating facials. This allows them to inflate prices and then discount, but it makes you feel like you're buying a car. There's nothing more stressful than being unsure if someone's ripping you off, while they wrap you in fragrant compresses and play Hawaiian music to soothe you.

Unfortunately appointment services may come at a high "convenience" cost to the small business. According to their website Genbook charges $2 per appointment! It's not passed on to the customer, but it's high enough to make me pick up the phone and call.

*

As a note, I found Kimberly and UNCOIL Massage on my own and paid for all treatments received, as I do with all products and services I mention on this site. No coverage was solicited. I highly recommend both, and not just for checking out the interface.

any way you want it

Somehow, it always comes back to burgers. Arlene and I stopped in at the newly opened Custom Burger/Lounge. We were going to split a burger but she likes hers well and I like mine rare, so we each got one.


Custom Burger/Lounge has a menu with a million choices, and you fill out a checklist, which I suppose gets you exactly what you want, assuming you've been craving a wild salmon burger with cheddar and balsamic marinated onions on a pepper potato bun with Romesco sauce. Yeah, that's how I felt.

We couldn't decide whether to get something boring that we knew we'd like or something weird, so we got a little of each.

The people who work there couldn't be nicer, but for me, it all boils down to expectations. Because my burger was well done.

They'd asked me to make 100 choices and then ignored the only one that mattered. They don't cook the burgers to order. Custom indeed.


*

deals on wheels

Another service nod for Enterprise rent-a-car. Despite renting an economy car for $18 for a single day (plus another $14 in fees), I was treated warmly and royally.

The agent who checks you in sees you all the way through the process. They do still try to upsell you, as you wait in the garage and watch the freshly washed Cadillacs and Suburbans go by. In my case, he offered a Nissan or Volkswagen for an extra $5.

When my Aveo didn't materialize in 5 minutes, I ended up with a free upgrade to a red Dodge Caliber, a muscle car with 100 miles on it. I felt like I had won the lottery, proving that a business should always overdeliver.

Employees at Enterprise at LAX are clearly rewarded for delivering personal service. Everyone from the shuttle driver to the agents who checked me back in was friendly and sincere. When they asked how my visit had been, they waited to hear my response.

By contrast, I once went to pick up a car at Burbank before Thanksgiving. I had a reservation, and the Budget agent, after failing to upsell me on CDW, decided to badger me by asking for a bunch of extra phone numbers. (He had my cell, and I wasn't staying at a hotel). When I refused, he snarled loudly enough so that everyone in line could hear, "You know, we don't have to rent to you."

He also noted that I'd tried to get a convertible on Priceline but not had my bid accepted. Being cheap is apparently enough to get you blacklisted at Budget.

Flying is stressful enough, and driving in LA is no picnic. I wouldn't hesitate to return to Enterprise and look forward to giving them more than $18 worth of business. How many services can you say that about?


*

flying the trendy skies

I hopped a Virgin America flight to LA this week. Virgin seems to think it's running a nightclub. Even the signs at the airport say "Are u REDy to party?"

The planes are brand new, and the lighting has a definite Miami club aesthetic. The lead flight attendant heartily welcomed us to "Southw--- You didn't hear that, right? --Virgin America flight 384."

Everyone loved the seatback entertainment. The guy next to me even put down one of his two cell phones to play with it. Three generations of women in front of me watched Hannah Montana and Kelly Clarkson videos. Grandma needed a little help with the touch screens, but even she was singing along by the end.

The college student on my right popped out the game controller, kicked off her sandals, and played cross-legged in her shorts.

I spent half the 55-minute flight adding songs by Thievery Connection and David Bowie to my playlist. The media player interface could use some work. (They even use the wrong icons for next and previous.) Air Canada's enRoute is better designed. But this is a case where having a complicated UI keeps passengers busy and distracted, exactly what flight attendants need.

I tried the much vaunted online chat, but each time I logged in, I was the only one in the chat room. So much for a party.



A lot of features aren't implemented yet. You can't shop or send e-mail, and if you try to order a snack, a message tells you to wait until the food service. But WiFi is reportedly coming next year. The handheld game controllers also take credit cards. And every seat has an outlet, which is ultimately a lot more useful flying cross-country than songs by Beck or Dan Zanes.


The oddest part was the Journey button, which uses Google maps to show flight progress. This display info was slightly delayed, but it was also wrong. San Francisco to LA was listed as 520 miles; it's only 430 to drive.

So the good news is Virgin America has crafted a distinctive user experience, in the blue potato chip vein. Unfortunately that level of care was only occasionally applied to their flashy website.

The first bad sign was the fare went down after I bought my ticket. I sent a friendly e-mail to customer service, describing my disappointment and hoping for an iPhone-like credit, or at least a free drink on my birthday. (No such luck. Maybe I should have appealed directly to Sir Richard.) Fair enough. However you can't easily e-mail VA because each time you try, the site asks you to create an account. But you can't use an e-mail address already in their system.

The morning of my flight, I was able to check in online but the pop-up boarding pass window appeared blank and then reported an error. When I refreshed, the Travel Manager said I had no upcoming flights.

(After I got home, I found a PDF on my desktop with the boarding pass contents, but I'd gotten no feedback anything was downloading.)

For the return, I tried logging in on three different computers and was able to retrieve the reservation but not check in. The greeter at LAX, dressed in a white suit, like a reality show host, said about 30% of people were reporting the same problem.

To be fair, it took less than a minute to check myself in. It helps that Virgin America is located in the international terminal at San Francisco and LAX. At the moment, they have more employees than passengers, at least at midday.

But overall, the hip new kid in the neighborhood is making friends of all ages and persuasions, in an era where everyone loves to hate the airlines. On the shuttle to pick up my car, the people all around me (three retired travelers and a well-dressed woman in her 30s) were buzzing about how much they liked the vibe.

Understanding the importance of sealing the deal, Virgin America has already sent me a discount coupon for a future trip. I'm surprised they haven't done any social networking promotions: their service is ripe for sending a picture of yourself on the plane to a friend. The website doesn't even let you e-mail your itinerary yet.

I just hope they remember my name after they get popular.

the mystery box

I'm famous for never cooking. I live in a city with great restaurants, have no children, and would rather eat a BBQ pork bun than leftover chicken.

But this week, I was inspired by the constraints imposed by a local farm's mystery box. For $25, they'll meet you at a nearby restaurant and hand over a huge box of whatever's fresh. Mariquita is famous for its basil and delicate chard, and I'd had their wonderful pimientos de padron at Incanto. They have a CSA, but I don't cook enough to plan around regular mystery deliveries.

So I got my guerrilla box and picked up a huge bag of basil for my friend Arrigo to make pesto (and I hope, give some to me). The basil took up half my back seat.

The box contained potatoes, heirloom tomatoes as big as your head, purple, orange, and bright red peppers, erbette chard, two kinds of carrots, padrones, lovage, dino kale, eggplant, parsnips, and basil. Enough for a family of ten. I spent the next 48 hours slicing and simmering. I even got The Joy of Cooking down from the shelf. (Parsnips?)

Lessons from cooking that are applicable to software development:

* If you have good ingredients, you don't need to do much to them. Padrones need a quick flash with olive oil and salt in a pan. Tomatoes and basil need washing and slicing.

* While improvising is fun, basic technique and recipes make a big difference in the end product. Why reinvent the wheel?

* It's not six times more work to make six dishes than one, from a production perspective. After I'd committed to tomato sauce and oven-roasted potatoes, it wasn't hard to get eggplant, padrones, and caprese salad going at the same time. Caldo verde led to sausage and peppers. Small projects may be individually gratifying, but they're not very efficient.

* Once your kitchen is filled with ingredients, you find ways of using them because they're there. This is good and not so good in terms of end product. I still believe in a healthy mix of regulars (olive oil, garlic, eggs) and as needed players (salmon, sausage, lavender salt). But dino kale is like the employee you only needed for one special feature, and now they're still there, working in obscure code. Does calling it "dino" kale make kids want to eat it more?

* Cooking isn't a job for one person. It's more fun to have someone to bounce ideas off, to share the chores with, to stir while you chop. Also it's nicer if you have a kitchen like chefs on TV do.

* You can make perfect omelets but be terrible with eggplant.

* Good tools help, but you don't need 100 gadgets to distract from the task at hand. I love my carving knife, my teapots, my Aero press. I just wish I had a dishwasher, and a prep chef.

* As much as you taste your own cooking, the really satisfying point is when someone else enjoys it.

Lovage, anyone?

*

world where you live

I'm sitting at the gastropub waiting for my friends to arrive. It's packed because of the concert up the block, so I've ordered the fastest items: mussels in white wine and garlic, Belgian fries, which come with three dipping sauces, and a glass of fume blanc. Luka's menu has pages of obscure microbrews, cocktails made with high-end spirits and fresh muddled juice, well-priced wines by the glass.

The people next to me are also grabbing a bite before the concert. It's a middle-aged madhouse, a reunion tour. I slide over to make room for them to sit down, and now they're having a culture conflict with the waitress.

Guy #1: Give me a Bud--
Waitress: We don't serve Bud.
Guy #1: No? How about a PBR? Anchor?
She shakes her head.
Guy #1: What do you have--
She points to the four-page menu. It's dark, and the type is small, and I realize he's trying to avoid finding his reading glasses.
Guy #1: on tap?
Waitress: I'll bring you a Stella.
Guy #2: Make that two.
They look like brothers.

Woman with them: A margarita, please. Jose Cuervo is fine.
Harried waitress: We don't serve Cuervo.
Woman: Okay.
Guy #2: Any nachos?
She points to the menu in exasperation and goes off to place drink orders that vaguely correspond to what they asked for.

Guy #2, reading the menu: What kind of bar is this? Oysters and mussels. And tuna tartare.
Guy #1: Tartare. What is that, sushi without rice?

Unfortunately they don't keep reading, or they'd find the burgers and macaroni and cheese. Somewhere in all this, they reveal they're Jimmy Buffett fans, which helps me place them back in South Florida where I grew up. Parrot heads.

And while I'm amused, and I've been that server, trying to explain to my mom what's wrong with sweet wine or Cool Whip, I know they're not wrong. They've driven all this way to see Neil Finn, an ageless pop singer without a shred of pretense. All they want is a beer and a plate of nachos, not a lesson in Belgian brews and mignonette.

The fries are good, I tell them for future reference as we head out. Three hours later, Crowded House is playing like it's 1988, and we're all singing along to "Better Be Home Soon."


*

Charlie is convinced that opening act Liam Finn (Neil's son) is really Bret from "Flight of the Conchords."

customer service hell #687

We decided to go see Crowded House at the Paramount. I searched for best available seating on Ticketmaster.com and wasn't thrilled with what it offered. The closest seats were off on the far edge. There's no feature for prioritizing parameters or asking to see other available seats, like on an interactive airplane seat map.

Last time I used Ticketmaster to buy a ticket for "Avenue Q," I arrived in Las Vegas and discovered my seat was on the far edge of a half-empty theater. I'd paid $15 in fees and been given the worst seat in the house. The usher moved me to fourth row center when I protested, but I was still annoyed at the "convenience" fees.

So I decided to call. First I looked on the website to see what the extra cost for talking to a person would be. I couldn't find it. I called and asked.

Agent#1: Hello, thank you for calling Ticketmaster.
me: Is there a fee for phone service?
Agent #1: No. It's the same as buying online.

She found seats I wanted, took all my info, and totaled it up: $167.30. When she got to the end of the transaction, she mentioned a $3.20 per order fee. Sigh.

Before I hung up, she sweetly told me I'd won a complimentary 3-month magazine subscription. And some other trial service I politely declined.


A day later, I hadn't received the e-mail confirmation. I had a confirmation number, so I looked on the website. But I didn't want to create another account.

I search around the website, find a phone number, and call back. It's voicemail hell, and I'm desperately trying not to get ditched to the automated system. I press 0#0#0# Eventually I get a live person.

Agent #2 asks for 10 tons of personal information. Mailing address, credit card number, event and venue, date. (Of course I started the call by saying: I have tickets for Crowded House at the Paramount in Oakland.) Five minutes later, she's reading the terms of my ticket when I remind her I just want my confirmation e-mailed.

Agent #2: Oh, I can't do that.
me: What?!
Agent #2: I'll have to transfer you to customer service.

Agent #3 collects all the same info and then says he can't e-mail me either! (How is this possible? I ask. Ticketmaster customer service doesn't have access to e-mail?)

But he confirms the e-mail was sent to the right address and offers to fax me. He then recommends that I log on to their website for more complete info. He also tells me the 10 steps to get to my confirmation.

I try to set up an account and discover I already have one. I reset my password. I click account history because no current events are listed. Eventually I find the receipt and print it out.

Yesterday, 48 hours after my original purchase, I received an e-mail from Ticketmaster confirming my purchase. Oh yeah, it's in the spam folder. But still, not sent until two days later.

Overall: D-

Good luck if you can find the information on outrageous fees anywhere on the site. (Balcony tickets had a $9.25 service charge, but orchestra seats were $10 more per ticket. Plus the $3.20--for talking to an agent? for will call?)

curbside pickup

After I replaced my printer last week, I was stuck with the usual dilemma: what to do with the old one, besides adding to the landfill. Fortunately the underground economy is alive and well in San Francisco.

When my neighbor got a new sofa, we dragged her futon to the corner, attached a "free" sign, and it was gone before dinner. My favorite desk, designed to fit in a corner, came from the street in Glen Park; my boss at the time, a thrifty Scot, agreed we couldn't just leave it there and stuffed it in the back seat.

My inkjet was broken, but it was accompanied by a perfectly functional flatbed scanner.

This is how efficiently the system works:

1. I posted on Craigslist in the free section at 2 p.m.
2. The first reply came in less than 10 minutes.
   
3. I e-mailed and asked when he wanted to pick it up. He said he could be by around 4:15. (At this point, convinced he was real, I deleted the ad.)
   
4. I left it on the street with his name on it. When I got home at 7, it was gone. I hope he's as happy scanning as I am printing.
   

Sometimes I love the internet.

*

ceilings

I paid $10.25 to see "The Bourne Ultimatum" the other night. I know, movie tickets haven't been $6 since I was a kid, but it was the first time I'd paid that much for something that wasn't at a film festival.

The price was odd, as if Century's experimenting to see at what point people notice and stay home. The $10 psychological barrier held prices in place for a long time. Movies were $7.50, then 8, then $8.75 and $9.25. Somewhere--in NYC--they were probably $10, but I hadn't paid it.

Coincidentally, I also recently broke the $10 point for a cocktail. It was a fine drink, but did I have to leave a $2 tip?

Once you've paid $10, what's the next tier? Is it $15 or $20? Because honestly, $10.50 versus $10.25? $11.75? It's all the same. Makes me feel sorry for the cashiers.

$3.50 for a bottle of tap water is another story; candy doesn't seem as much of a ripoff. My friends with kids don't complain about the high cost of entertainment though; they complain about how expensive babysitters are. Every part of this story is inflationary.

Meanwhile, this summer's top films are setting box office records. Not because so many people are going to the movies--quite the contrary, the decline's not as steep as newspapers, but almost as bad--but because film revenues are listed by total box office take rather than number of tickets sold. This means a weekend of "Superbad" or the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" takes in more money than "Gone With the Wind," unless you can find an economist who adjusts for all those price increases over the years. Tricky, eh?

Those widely reported box office opening weekends don't tell you anything about the cost of making a film, or promoting it, or video sales. Or profitability. All puffery and air.

Unless you own a movie studio, though, the real question is value. At what point do people stop going to the movies, or to wine bars. $11 a glass for a mediocre bottle I can buy at my corner store for $20? Come on over to my place.

Pricing is a slippery slope—or whatever the converse is, as it creeps forever higher. Eventually you get tired of banging your head on the ceiling. Regardless of how much or how little we spend, customers like the notion of deals. Make sure you provide that experience.


*

drinking ink

Wouldn’t you know, my Epson printer stopped working right in the middle of a deadline.

I hadn’t used it since I printed my boarding pass to fly to Canada three weeks ago, and at first, I got streaky output, and then none. I tried replacing the cartridge and only succeeded in covering my hands with ink.

I checked online to see where the nearest in-stock cartridge was. $34 at Office Depot. I didn’t even know if that would fix it.

I searched “Epson Stylus CX5200 ink problems” and found a litany of complaints. Sounds like I was lucky to get three years out of it. The ink nozzle apparently jams at some point, and while it’s possible Epson can be persuaded to repair or trade up, I might as well buy a newer printer. It would cost essentially the same as replacing two ink cartridges.

I didn't want another Epson, because they stop working if any of the four ink cartridges is out. Also I needed to print out fifty pages by noon tomorrow.

I quickly located the model I wanted, an HP Deskjet F4180 with fine reviews. It was on sale at Best Buy for $79.99 minus a $4 discount. They had one in stock. I decided to wait until they opened the next morning and did more editing on screen.

Epson: C-

I got to Best Buy at 10:04 and went to computers. No dice. There were two other HP models for $79.99 and $99.99 but not mine. The aisles were filled with other back to school printers. Fortunately I'd written down the model number and price at home (I couldn't print them out).

I waited for anyone to notice me. One guy was on the phone and avoided my eyes. I walked over to another guy on the phone and asked for help. He said he’d call someone. No one came.

I finally went over to three guys in blue shirts and found someone who used a giant new iMac to look up the printer online and then climbed a ladder to find one for me.

The store was full of employees on the phone and talking to each other. Five guys from the Geek Squad huddled outside the front door. As far as I could tell, none of them except my guy was helping a customer.

The cashier rang up the printer. Except it came up at full price. She told me I had to take it to customer service, and they would match the price online.

Total time: 20 minutes, and I got my printer for $75.99 + tax, including a starter cartridge. But too many hassles and no benefits from in-person service.

I'm thrilled Best Buy has a flexible work policy. Too bad they only seemed to have one results-oriented employee in the store.

Best Buy: D+

Once home, the HP printer was a delight to set up. Decent installation docs (this means not as pretty as Apple's, but they worked). Ink didn’t get all over me.

Minor deduction for not working straight out of the box. I had to use the CD to install the driver, unusual for a Mac printer install. And I had to reboot before the scanner worked consistently.

There are 10 different utilities for faxing and scanning and scanning to faxes. Not cutting down on complexity exactly. And several annoying requests to register. (Who registers with the company that makes OCR technology?) I searched the print dialogs and eventually located the economy draft setting.
Total time: roughly 40 minutes. Less to my first printouts.

HP: B+ for now. The cartridges cost half what Epson's do. Maybe I'll write twice as much.


*

See also: out of ink

ripple effects

This past weekend's meltdown at LAX was a good lesson in best practices: have a backup system.

17,000 people were held in the airport and on their planes following long flights because homeland security could not access computers to verify their status. In the old days, agents would have evaluated the passports of those entering and used their best judgment. Today, you can't go anywhere without a computer.

Quick, list any of the last five phone numbers you called. (Your mother doesn't count.) I didn't think so.

The great part of automation is our brain cells are no longer occupied remembering phone numbers. But the bad part is we no longer can remember phone numbers when we have to. Like when you leave your phone on the plane, or the computer crashes.

Each time we build a more comprehensive automated system, it typically replaces skilled workers who knew how the system functioned and perhaps made judgment calls. The workers who remain no longer understand how the computer works or how to escalate problems.

In the case of the airlines, their growing inefficiency is masked by changes in how data is characterized. For example, American may have a 71% on-time arrival record this summer, but that only tells half the story. A flight from San Francisco to LA is listed as 75 to 80 minutes, but that's padded. Actual flight time is 50 minutes.

If flights were listed as 55 minutes, would more flights or fewer be late?

The most remarkable part is that no crimes were committed out of rage, unless you count forcibly holding passengers who can't stretch or drink water a crime.

With a hub and spoke model, this is only going to get worse. A blizzard at O'Hare or a thunderstorm in Houston paralyzes the whole fleet. Flights are scheduled too close together, and there's no motivation to provide accurate information, or do something sensible, like send everyone home. The system is only as strong as its weakest link.


*

broken paths

At last, an error message befitting its iconic masthead.




See also: Better Luck Next Time

the medium is still the message

I'm struck repeatedly in surveys about cellphone usage and blogging how little traditional journalists and academics understand new mediums.

Sure, teenagers and people in their early 20s spend a lot of time on the phone talking to their friends. Didn't you?

On nights I didn't walk over to Peter's house or Jay's, I did homework on the phone with Doreen. Sometimes my friend Susan, who was rich, called from her car on her way home from riding the horses, and we'd talk for an hour or two. This was in the 80s.

I talk less on the phone socially today because I'm a grownup, so I have a lot less time, and because I prefer e-mail or text messaging, which are more efficient. Plus I have a car, so I can hang out with my friends in person. As far as I can tell, the main difference for teenagers is that you can talk to your friends on the phone at the mall or at the gym, not just holed up in your bedroom, hoping your parents won't hear. And compared to 1980, long distance is basically free.

Cellphones will continue to replace landlines. Smart phones let some of us leave laptops at home. And while I don't mean to diminish the impact of communications technology on our lives, it's hardly a teenaged thing. There are plenty of Twitterers over 40.

It's not technology creating the generation gap though; that's been there all along. We're just so used to thinking of ourselves as rebels that we forget we're old. Old teenagers.

*

Blogging distinctions are equally inane. Comparing The Daily Interface to The New Yorker or Valleywag is losing sight of what makes a blog a blog: it's self-published and distributed. It's online. Blogging is about democracy in publishing, not writing.

In my view, a multi-author blog like The Huffington Post is an online magazine. DailyKos is an old-fashioned online community, one that publishes a lot of original content through blogs, but whose primary function is to discuss.

Lots of traditionally trained journalists blog—they'd be foolish not to. So do depressive cat lovers and food fetishists. There's nothing innately good or bad about a platform. Results vary depending on who uses it and how. There's no reason bloggers can't spell.

Looking at the antique typewriters at the Royal Ontario Museum Monday, I was struck by the indexed models as personal printing presses. It's no accident that I (who received my only failing grade in elementary school handwriting) became a writer after learning to touch-type. Or that the first software programs I learned inside and out were word processors and desktop publishing tools.

RIP PageMaker, and the Olivetti that preceded it. You made my ideas look good.

I wonder whether I'll come to feel the same about WordPress and Blogger, long after they've been replaced by the next new thing.


*

steal this book

I was at the gym Thursday, when this story in the NY Times about plagiarism caught my eye. Two years ago, I worked with Jason on a design project, and it’s every artist’s worst nightmare, to find your ideas attributed to someone else. But the more I learned, the more complicated the story and proper resolution got.

I come at the issue of protecting—and monetizing—ideas from multiple perspectives. I do work for hire, but I’m also a freelance writer with a love for narrative non-fiction, appropriating the words of real people and not always with their permission.

Producing a feature documentary forced me to wade into the morass of fair use and international copyright law. And as a software designer, I'm equally unhappy with overuse of patents and 90-year copyright extensions as I am frustrated by the web 2.0 ethos that artists should give everything away for free. Most of us profit so little from our art, it’s an extra level of insult not to be recognized.

Individuals and companies do borrow and steal all the time, some consciously, others less so. The title of this entry is an allusion to Abbie Hoffman, who I've never bothered to read. In the early days of the reality TV craze, I described a workplace version of “Survivor” to a friend, who was looking for ideas to pitch. She wasn’t excited by it, but I couldn’t help being annoyed when “The Apprentice” shot to fame.

I haven’t seen either Lynn Lu or Jason Mortara’s pieces except the videos online, so I can’t fairly weigh in on the circumstances except to recognize the similarities and differences and note the issues I've confronted myself.

I see two issues. The first is attribution. The second is permission.

Quoting without referencing is plagiarism, at least in the academic world. Of course if something’s famous or public enough—the Eiffel Tower, Elvis—the reference is implied. Most viewers won't assume you're claming to have created the original. And generally, if you acknowledge people who inspired or helped you, you derail claims of theft or resentment.


Permission can be trickier. If you reference someone else’s art without their permission, they’re more likely to find out about it. But they also may view it as an homage.

If we’ve never met, if I’ve never plausibly seen your work, we probably both came up with the same idea separately. And if I find something online, it may be hard or impossible to determine the creator.

Lawsuits rarely solve ethical issues though. I particularly disliked the comments that implied that Lynn, because she’s an Asian woman, is entitled to rip off Jason, because he’s a white man. Even if he were Disney and therefore rich and powerful, that wouldn’t entitle anyone to misrepresent their work or violate their copyright. Robin Hood to the contrary, it's no more honorable to steal from a rich man than a poor one. (You are more likely to get caught. Music industry attorneys seem to delight in making examples of students. It's easier than cracking down on Chinese factories.)

I much prefer a universe where licensing fees aren't exorbitant and where artists get paid for their work. And inspiration is acknowledged. Living in a remix culture as we do, I suspect we'll see more dialogues like this.


*

remembering Ingmar Bergman

A moment of reflection upon the deaths this week of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonio.

When I studied film making in college, film was a stepchild of the Drama department. So freshman year we were enrolled in set design and acting seminars until we would be allowed to watch John Ford and Sergei Eisenstein sophomore year.

Jesse Kalin taught a film class in the Philosophy department. I didn't understand philosophy; Decartes always struck me as someone in need of a good editor, or therapist.

But Mr. Kalin was a passionate cinephile, and he encouraged us to find movies showing all over the campus, whether they were part of the regular campus programming or for French class. At one point, I think Fritzi and I were going to a movie a day, all in the name of homework.

For my campus job, I was the projectionist for the senior film seminar. One year, the filmmaker was Kurosawa, and it was halfway through the first semester before I realized I should be paying attention. Blasé from too many years of working at movie theaters, until "Throne of Blood" caught my eye, then "Yojimbo" and "Dodeskaden."

Ingmar Bergman was the subject for our senior film seminar, guest taught by Jesse Kalin. We imagined by the time we graduated we would speak fluent Swedish. Instead I felt like I'd spent a winter in Scandinavia.

Bergman's films were remarkably varied, and my reactions to them equally strong. The worst like "The Virgin Spring" and "The Silence" struck me as heavy-handed allegories, a harsh Lutheran universe. I couldn't relate to the characters and their endless angst. The blood red relationships of "Cries and Whispers" exhausted me.

But his best went far beyond symbolism. "Wild Strawberries" was humane and funny; a story of an old man's dying that even a frivolous 19 year old could related to. "The Seventh Seal captivated me. I did a presentation on "Persona," watching the famous merging of identities montage repeatedly, until it was like a memory.

I drove to Coral Gables with my mother to see "Fanny and Alexander," a cautionary tale about using imagination to defy the authority of bad stepfathers. And "The Serpent's Egg," Bergman's disturbing meditation on the rise of the Nazis and the psychology of the emprisoned, stayed with me all these years.

*

Antonioni I found more mysterious, forever confusing "8 1/2" and "La Notte," which I saw the same week. Antonioni was languid where Fellini was ironic perhaps. He reminded me more of Alain Resnais, making elliptical films, with characters who may or may not have been what they seemed.

It's hard to imagine anyone making a film like "Hour of the Wolf" or "L'Avventura" today. And all that Swedish we were supposed to learn? Nothing.

not invented here

I'm home from the great hot north and bursting with new topic ideas: Can con. The en route system on the airplane seat backs. Canadian identity branding. Information design problems in the TTY subway map.

But I'll start with a common problem, epitomized by the remodel of the illustrious Royal Ontario Museum, familiarly known as the ROM.

The ROM is an old-fashioned multidisciplinary museum, filled with Ming tombs and woven canoes and dinosaur skeletons and antique typewriters. The original entryway was characterized by elegant arches in light brick, next to a church with a mosaic proclaiming knowledge of god to be within reach of all men. (Indeed.)


The first indication the design is all ego is the labels: the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal or occasionally the Dora Chin Crystal, not the Royal Ontario Museum.

The next is the chairs.

The other phase of restoration, called Renaissance ROM, is lower profile but more promising. Alan Pourvakil and W Studio are sprucing up the carpets and sofas and shining up the old parts "to elevate the levels of comfort and accessibility, and provide a welcoming environment for visitors to rest, reflect, and socialize." Modest goals, and ones they succeed at most admirably.

Throughout the buildings are artifacts from all these years and versions, like stairs that don't connect the galleries, or elevators that go from B1 to 1 but not to 3. No one's rationalized the annexes, or reconciled the exhibition approaches. You can't get there from here.

*

Earlier in the week, we wandered around Kensington Market and stopped in at Courage, My Love. My friend Johanne described shopping there as a college student, a generation ago, while I admired the classification system for walls of unique beads and buttons.

The owner overheard us and described how he took vintage buttons and had copies made in Indonesia. We walked over to the cases displaying exquisite imported sunglasses from the 50s and 60s. He admired a few, then pointed to a particularly awful pair of early 70s op art.

"These," he said disdainfully. "It's as if the quality people went on vacation and left the designers in charge."

*

Every new release, another generation of software designers and developers tries to put its imprint on the look and feel. Some are satisfied with usability enhancements, making the product seem simpler, more streamlined. But most redo the command names and keyboard shortcuts and workflow blithely, forgetting how hard it is for busy customers to relearn everything they liked (or took for granted) about the original.

The cardinal sin in product development is designer-centered design. People are not chomping at the bit for a Frank Gehry word processor, a Mark Zuckerberg social network, a Diana Wynne synthesizer. I don't really want a Google phone; I want one that works.

Rock stars are fine to adorn my feet, not to serve my needs. When it comes to satisfaction, it's all about me.

weCal

Jerry set up a Google Calendar for my trip to Toronto. I feel like I just got married.

Of course I've used group calendars for work: Outlook events, Basecamp deliverable dates. But this is hour by hour and focused on pleasure rather than deadlines.

Timezone support is sub-optimal. The Persian concert at the music garden is at 7 in Toronto but shows up at 4 on my screen. Even though I'll be in Toronto tomorrow when it occurs.



We have so much to squeeze in: Niagara Falls (did you know they can turn the falls off?). Just for Laughs. The jazz festival at the beaches. Two farmer's markets. The Spiegel tent show. The shoe museum. Dinner at Batifole. Rooftop bar hopping. North America's best Cantonese for dim sum...And of course a stop at the pharmacy, for a little name brand price comparison.

See y'all in a week, when I'll report back on the state of horse tartare, Canadian street theater, and ice wine.


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feedback loop

Finally spent a little time playing with an iPhone last week and while it's pretty enough, I suspect it wasn't tested by many women.

In the default vertical mode, the "keys" were too small for even my small fingers, and I kept pressing the wrong letter. But worse, they don't respond to taps from nails. In high school, I tried to learn the guitar, only to discover my nails were too long to play chords (although perfect for picking the strings on the right hand).

I did not cut my nails for the guitar. I took singing lessons instead.

Apple may be skilled in the business of behavior modification, especially the hypnotized blogging masses and happily (for my stock portfolio), Wall Street. But I'll wait for the next version.

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Last night, I went to a birthday party at the Presidio bowling alley. I've always loved keeping score, and regret that the old oil pencil on transparency system has been replaced by a computer.

Because no one else on my team could figure out how to add a player, I ended up in charge, pressing the keys so we could skip when I was at the bar or Michael was practicing his perfect form.

Not a perfect interface, especially the "Wow dude!" graphics when you bowled a gutter ball or (once) a strike. But tactile, and so, gratifying. Even if I did break all my nails. Or maybe it was just the familiarity of the experience, that and being blasted by Van Halen on the jukebox around midnight.


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This week I signed up for another 10 or 20 beta web services. Most of them asked--make that, begged--for user feedback. So I sent some.

One fun utility is a non-browser based web-enabled desktop application. Only it didn't show up in my dock, even though I'd installed it in the Applications folder. When I switched applications or tried to force quit, it didn't appear to be running, even though it was.

The default location was the upper right corner of your screen, conflicting with Spotlight. Also the default text color was red. Was this the kind of feedback they were looking for?

I got a sweet personal e-mail back, explaining why they'd made each of the choices I'd just protested. And encouraging me to write again! And tell them what I thought.

One of the first rules--for usability testing, for a listening tour--is to just listen. No matter how politely or passionately you defend your design choices, the main result is you shut off responses.

I know they thought red was a good text color. I'm not going to tell them twice it's a problem, not unless they're paying for my time. And these are the good guys: they test their software with customers and make it easy to communicate with the team. They read their e-mail.

Still, I'd rather not cut my nails to fit your guitar. Think I'll take up singing instead.


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biometric scans

For a privacy advocate, I still get giddy over playing with new technology. My gym just put in fingerprint-activated access. All I need to do is touch the pad, and I can work out between 5 a.m. and 2 a.m.

Of course I signed up!

Imagine what shape I'll be in if I work out at midnight. And it's my neighborhood gym, not the FBI, or Google. I'm not sure they even matched my ID card to my fingerprint.

Naive?

Absolutely. Especially about the likelihood of working out at midnight. Good thing my finger isn't tied to my line of credit. Yet.


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atomic units

I was wandering around Black Oak Books in Berkeley last week realizing why bookstores are doomed. As a culture we don't read books any more, just collections of articles. I say this even as I'm longing for a juicy novel to sink my teeth into--and feeling a bit frazzled writing my own.

Five years ago, the music industry went through its own atomization. We reverted to the purchase of songs, not albums.

Of course when I was a kid, people still bought vinyl 45s. But cassettes and CDs put an end to the age of the single, that and stupid pricing, charging more than $1 for a song.


Remember the heydey of album rock? Of course not. Some of you were conceived to "Moondance" or "Dark Side of the Moon."

Craigslist isn't the only reason newspapers are in trouble. Our loyalty has shifted from the collection and publisher to the author or content theme. I may like this song or article. But that rarely extends to the publisher's venue because thanks for aggregation, there often isn't one.

Why subscribe to Harper's or The New Yorker when ALdaily cherry-picks the best articles for me? Worse, how do I get the paper onto my iPhone?

No one cares what network their favorite TV show is on, if they still watch TV. I just want someone to TiVo "Flight of the Conchords" or "30 Rock" so I don't miss it. (It's too slow in the living room, on my neighbor's wifi.)

This is the age of the search word, the index, the distracted consumer. We live in mobisodes. We can't concentrate, but we sure do consume a lot of bits. Unfortunately they mostly leave me hungry. And tired.


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the friendly northern skies

Yesterday I used American Express miles to book a free ticket on Air Canada. Oh, that it were as simple as that sounds.

Amex's program, Membership Rewards, is notable because the miles bank in your account and can be transferred 1000 at a time to different partner programs. Over the years, I've used it to top off tickets on virtually every US airline. United and American aren't members, but their code share partners are. Mexicana booked a United ticket to Australia. Continental got me to Seoul on Korean Air. US Airways got me an American flight to Miami. Delta booked Air France to Amsterdam. (That's me--never a Mileage Plus Premier executive, forever a dabbler.)

So I was excited to learn after consulting Air Canada's lovely looking Aeroplan website that a flight to Toronto was only 25,000 points. (Did I mention their logo has an infinity sign in the middle?) I enrolled in the program and called to see if they would hold a reservation while I checked the dates with my host. No, they said. I had to transfer the miles now.
I protested that I'd had to wait a while on the phone--and there was only one seat left on the red eye for 25,000. If I did it on the internet, the agent assured me, the transfer would be instantaneous. She would stay on the line. I hesitated. My e-mail is rarely instantaneous, and the Amex site warned a transfer could take 48 hours.

An hour later, I had Jerry on gTalk and Aeroplan on the phone, and the Amex site in front of me--but the seat on the red eye was gone. I could fly a day earlier and return later. Now I needed to check dates with my client.

I went ahead and made a one-way transfer of the points. But when I logged back onto Aeroplan, the 25,000 seats were gone for nearly all of July, and August, even if you were willing to spend a night in Calgary. Toronto Film Festival in September, maybe?

I was starting to despair. Two hours had gone by, and my Aeroplan account balance still said 0. I could add more points, without any guarantee of ever getting my seat.

And there were warnings the site didn't work with Macintosh computers, even though most of the features seemed fine. The availability calendar, though, the one feature I really needed, displayed garbage.

Currently, more than 90% of our members access our website using the Windows operating system and a recent version of the Internet Explorer browser; aeroplan.com was designed with this fact in mind.... Members who are unable to book their rewards online are invited to call 1-800-361-5373 to speak with one of our agents in order to complete their booking (note: these calls are subject to the service fee).

One of those stats that makes me crazy. Of course 90% of their site visitors use Windows, if the Mac experience is unreliable!

Finally I picked up the phone. Now if I were calling an American airline, I might act angry, but how rude can you be to Canadians? An enthusiastic agent immediately found the flights I wanted and booked them. Yes, there would be an extra $30 charge for talking to her, even though I was a Mac user. (So was she.)


Aeroplan is also testing out a "voice print" technology, to identify you on the phone. An automated voice asks you to repeat your membership number three times. I tried doing so twice and failed twice before giving up. Now this might make sense for a bank--but a frequent flier program? Where you log on using a phone, which has already numbers on its keypad?

If this were a U.S. airline, I'd worry John Negroponte was trying to steal my voice print. But the worst scenario I could come up with was an impersonator trying to fly to Newfoundland.

Late last night, as I logged onto Aeroplan to grab a few screenshots, I found more than 20 flights on the dates I wanted for 25,000 miles, including the red eye. Hey, at least I'm going to Toronto.


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