The Daily Interface

Banning the Ban: Why Prop 8 is a Step Backwards

2008-10-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

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."

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green is for...?

2008-06-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

that existential feeling

2008-06-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

from the otherwise quality-obsessed folks at aviary.

404 redux

2008-05-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

diy box?

2008-04-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

don't be evil

2008-04-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

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.

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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

2008-03-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

pay by cell phone

2008-03-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-27T18:39:00.001-08:00

This restaurant was too popular.

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selling the premium experience

2008-01-31T17:40:00.000-08:00

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.

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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

2008-01-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-24T15:19:00.000-08:00

Yeah, good luck.

Macworld

2008-01-16T19:22:00.001-08:00

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?

2008-01-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

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

Facebook grammar

2008-01-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-12-30T22:45:00.000-08:00

no toys for you

2007-12-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

when an upgrade isn't

2007-12-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-11-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.