There's a lot of evidence that opiates aren't useful for treating non-cancer, non-end-of-life pain. For most regular stuff, people just get addicted and a burden on society. Most doctors are compensated on patient satisfaction, not outcomes or efficient use of healthcare resources. Patients are more satisfied when they get the opiates that they ask for, at least in terms of rating their doctors, even if they are long-term worse off for it..
Take a look at SageTV Media Center (sagetv.com). It's a great mult-platform DVR / media center. It's easy to set up and use, has great hardware support, has an active user community, and has a nice low-power hardware extender. It's also reasonably priced.
This is very interesting. Does she use Parallels and do a "side by side" virtualization, or does she use a more traditional "windows in a box" type"?
I'm contemplating that my next machine will be a Mac, but I still have to run some Windows software. I am researching alternatives though, but I suspect that I won't be able to find them for everything.
It wouldn't be hard for the web browser of the Pre to be better than PalmOS Treos, as Blazer was developed in 2001 by Handspring. My impression, having used it since 2003, is that it hasn't been updated since it was first developed.
See, I'm in your situation with a 700p that I've had for 2.5 years that is slowly biting the dust.
I worry about Palm's ability to follow through and keep supporting the Pre. Signs indicate that they will have to, since people have come to expect this since the iPhone. Also, Palm has been making noises that the Pre will be a longer term sort of device rather than the current year's model that gets forgotten about. Another change that speaks in terms of the Pre being a longer-lasting device is the potential for the app store. By getting part of the sales from apps in the app store, Palm generates revenue that encourages them to support the device.
I do find the stylus to be a hack though. The Treo's screens are small, so a stylus is needed since the controls were equally small. Another reason for the stylus is that older touchscreens did not have as fine a sensitivity as that in the Pre or the iPhone.
The thing about the Treos was that most of the hardware was fairly similar from the 600 all the way to the 700p and the Centro. It keeps costs down.
I've been a Palm user since the Palm Pro and I don't recall them having a good onscreen keyboard.
There's no way that PalmOS could have supported anything like the iPhone. Additionally, Palm never had the balls to challenge the wireless providers in order to have the kind of control over their phones that Apple does over the iPhone. I think that each of the Treos that I owned (600, 650, 700p) had at most one firmware upgrade.
Additionally, PalmOS remained basically unchanged. It was great as an organizer, but does not really work well for in a modern multi-media device. For example, they never updated their browser, and if you want to use Opera, you always have to approve the network usage before you can start using it.
PalmOS has been dead for years, it just didn't really know it.
The Palm, WinMo, and BB app situations were very similar: there were many places where you could get software, but prices were too high. For WinMo and BB, you also had the additional concerns of figuring out if the app you wanted was the right one for your device. At least Palm had the right idea in making their OS standardized across all their (few) devices.
If there's no real information about the platform and no dev tools yet released, what exactly is there to promote? That's the problem I have with the hype, like over at treonauts.com.
I've been a Palm owner for a long time (7 devices, from the Pro to the 700p), and this summer I suspect that I'm going to get an iPhone. I got excited about the Pre when it was first announced, but there's been such a paucity of actual information that's reliable, that I haven't been able to stay excited, or even interested. In addition, Palm's support for their devices has grown to be horrible. I think my each of my Treos only ever got one firmware upgrade apiece.
A lot of the iPhone's continued success has been the app store. Sure, it could be better organized, and the rules for app approval could be more clear and less capricious, but overall it's been a success.
I was interested in Android, as a Sprint phone would supposedly be forthcoming, but that hasn't materialized, and there hasn't been a critical mass of apps. I suspect that with shenanigans like this, there won't be for the Pre either. And that's why I won't be getting the phone, even if it is awesome. Perhaps when my contract w/ ATT runs out in 2 years, the ecosystem will be different and I'll make a different choice. Who knows?
I've been happy with Sprint overall, but feel that they do little to try to keep someone as a customer. Additionally, their phone selection has historically been pathetic.
Go to an airport w/ one of those "Airport Wireless" stores. They have both the N800 and N810 on display and usable. They're pretty nice and I forget how small they are.
Yes, SageTV has it's problems (just check their forums) but when I was evaluating media center servers + front ends, it offered the best feature set and ease of use. I love the fact that you can buy client boxes (like the MVP or the HD one) that entail no maintenance, are silent, and use less electricity.
There are a lot of things in SageTV that point to the fact that it was originally developed by developers for developers. The default interface is butt ugly and not very user friendly. If it wasn't for the SageMC interface that some guy developed, I would not have purchased Sage. Many people still have to make a registry change to increase their Java heap size. Lots of people do report problems with their setups though. However, the software is now present on Mac, Linux, and Windows, which is great.
Also, the company is not very communicative. There is one "community liaison" type who frequents the forum, but he often gives snarky or non-helpful answers. There is a core of long-time users who answer lots of people's questions and in a sense throw their weight around. It's a lot like the typical open source community...:)
If you want to, you can tweak the hell out of the software and install all sorts of stuff (like a NetFlix watch it now viewer, etc). Most of the tweaking can be done via a remote control through the client box. However, the architecture for plugins makes them difficult to install and get working. They also offer a software client that you can use from a PC.
I don't like the fact that they have an obfuscated database format.
Overall though, I've been very happy with SageTV. It was easy to set up and get working and I've had no major problems. Plus, the transition from Tivo was pretty easy in terms of the user interface.
With a single-tuner TiVo, you can watch an already recorded show while recording something else.
However, TiVo just released a dual-Tuner card, which would allow recording of two shows at once while watching a pre-recorded one, or recording one show while watching something on live TV.
I have a single-tuner TiVo and almost never watch live TV. For some events, like the Oscars or whatever, I'll record it, but watch it delayed, so that I can skip boring parts or commercials. I've found that there are really very few times when I would want dual-tuner capability.
There are a number of companies that produce software that work with their expert users. I know that The Mathworks (makers of Mathmatica) definately do long term, expert user usability studies. MS does it as well.
As a disclaimer, I am a User Interface Designer / Usability practicioner. Like all things, there's truth to both what you and Dr Nielsen say. I've seen some horrible, sad things (software, web pages, consumer devices) that have been designed without the input of "people of my kind". Any time you interact with something that is difficult to use, or just moronically designed, that was a missed opportunity. In most cases, the costs are not borne by the company, but by the consumer. However, customer support and product returns b/c of usability issues are just the result of poor decison making by the manufacturing company.
Witness cable company PVRs vs the TiVo. The TiVo interface (and remote!) get nothing but raves, while the cable company PVRs get nothing but blahs. Or consider google vs the other search engines that existed at the time is started. Google did suck a better job of giving users what they wanted (easy access to searches, no bloat, & fast accurate search results) that it has become the clear and favorite search engine.
To speak to an industry closer to my own experience at the moment (I design speech recognition telephony applications), reflect back on the times when you've called a company and your call has been answered by a horrible touch tone or speech application. Lots of touch tone apps were designed in house because they are relatively easy to develop. As companies want to deploy more complicated applications, in-house development staff generally isn't up to the task to designing applications that callers can actually use successfully. That's where I (and my company) step in.
To speak to your example, just because something is terminal based, doesn't mean that it has to be difficult to use. Ever use a website that requires you to enter a date manually, then when you hit "submit" it gives you an error that basically says "please enter the date the right way". Why can't the developer do a quick check on the string submitted, try to format it correctly, then only give an error if it's either not a date or an ambiguous one? I believe that was the example given in the article.
My wife is a doctor, and at the hospital where she works, it's all terminal based systems. She says that it does a lot of things of that nature to help each user along and that it's quite easy to use.
The problem with "usability" people is that often they are not involved in the design process. A design for something is handed to just prior to the product being released to manufacturing. So they have no ability to change things, just make comments and find flaws with the product that rarely get wrapped back into the product.
However, if talented, qualified UI designers are involved through the requirements and design process, you can get excellent results. As devices and services get more complicated, the role of a UI design and usability team will be more and more vital.
I work as a UI designer for ScanSoft, so I've got quite a lot of experience in this area.
Sorry, speech is here to stay. You just can't do a lot of complex interactions with touch-tone technology. In addition, since traditional IVR applications are relatively easy to implement, most were designed in-house by people that have no place doing so. I agree that for some number of interactions, if well designed, a touch-tone application can be as effective as a speech application. However, as the technology becomes more mature and companies want to implement more complex applications, speech has clear advantages.
For the most part, there is higher caller acceptance of speech applications than touch-tone ones. I do think that some substantial reason for this is that most speech applications are designed by real UI designers and not in-house like most historical touch-tone apps.
With speech, you can capture things like city or stock names. You can even capture people's names and addresses. The possibilities are only increasing
Depending on the calling population, it could make sense to implement a touch-tone mode that callers can switch between as needed. For any of the applications that we design, there is always touch-tone fallback where possible.
Now, there are even "how may I help you" type applications that can come pretty close to capturing free-form utterances that are in-domain for the particular client. This is pretty cool, and accuracy is improving all the time.
Well, for a company that's the right size, yeah, that would work. I work with companies who need solutions quite a bit larger than that, like a number of airlines in the U.S. My company provides speech recognition telephony applications, but isn't a CTI vendor. I agree though that even on this larger scale, it's a no brainer, but unfortunately, I'm not a sales guy.
As a professional UI designer in the telephony arena, I mostly some with your rant list. To add some info though:
1) What also bugs me (and in general, people hate and/or ignore) are messages like "please pay attention, as our options have changed". I've known companies that put that sort of messaging into their applications and just leave them there for months.
2) In general, callers like that sort of question. You can always just hang up on the agent when you're done with your business. Sure, it might be rude, but you'll get off the phone those 10 seconds faster...
3) Totally, it's best to be unobtrusive so that caller's can do other things and pay minimal attention to the phone while on hold.
4) While a great idea, this technology is pretty expensive and tricky to implement, at least from what I've seen over the past five years. When companies implement it, callers totally love it, and in theory, it reduces agent talk time. But, getting companies to understand that sort of thing isn't easy.
6) Holy crap! No way! Soothing, non-intrusive music is usually best, unless you've got a specific need for something else. Playing Dixieland would totally interfere with #3 and #5.
Verizon Wireless is a big offender in this regard. They play (or at least, they did several months ago when I last called) messages that are basically ads when you're on hold. Every time I call, I complain to the agent about it, and I additionally send an email to customer service. I also tell all my friends on Verizon to do the same. I'm already a customer! I don't need to be pitched to.
- All smartphones (or PDA phones) allow you to turn off the phone and still use the PDA functions. However, I've seen some airlines create rules that say that if you have one of these devices, you can't use it at all, since the flight attendants can't verify that the phone part is turned off. Even worse, United at least, is banning use of Intel Centrino Mobile laptops. So, if you have one, make sure to peel those stupid little badges off your computer.
- Accessing the PDA functions while on a call hasn't been an issue for me. I find that my wife has a similar situation when she wants to save a number in her non-PDA phone while she's on the phone. With my phone, I switch into speaker phone for that short period of time. And, of course, if using a headset, it's not a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of evidence that opiates aren't useful for treating non-cancer, non-end-of-life pain. For most regular stuff, people just get addicted and a burden on society. Most doctors are compensated on patient satisfaction, not outcomes or efficient use of healthcare resources. Patients are more satisfied when they get the opiates that they ask for, at least in terms of rating their doctors, even if they are long-term worse off for it..
The BMW i3 is a purpose built electric car.
There was also Better Place which was working on standardized EV battery pack swapping infrastructure (batteries, mechanisms, equipment, etc).
Take a look at SageTV Media Center (sagetv.com). It's a great mult-platform DVR / media center. It's easy to set up and use, has great hardware support, has an active user community, and has a nice low-power hardware extender. It's also reasonably priced.
This is very interesting. Does she use Parallels and do a "side by side" virtualization, or does she use a more traditional "windows in a box" type"?
I'm contemplating that my next machine will be a Mac, but I still have to run some Windows software. I am researching alternatives though, but I suspect that I won't be able to find them for everything.
Thanks.
It wouldn't be hard for the web browser of the Pre to be better than PalmOS Treos, as Blazer was developed in 2001 by Handspring. My impression, having used it since 2003, is that it hasn't been updated since it was first developed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazer_(web_browser)
My impression is that apps running in Classic won't sync with anything. Agendus does not pull calendar data from the Pre's WebOS calendar.
Perhaps it will sync if you buy a third-party syncing solution.
Also keep in mind that Classic costs $30.
Here's a link to their FAQ: http://www.motionapps.com/classic/?p=faq#mid
See, I'm in your situation with a 700p that I've had for 2.5 years that is slowly biting the dust.
I worry about Palm's ability to follow through and keep supporting the Pre. Signs indicate that they will have to, since people have come to expect this since the iPhone. Also, Palm has been making noises that the Pre will be a longer term sort of device rather than the current year's model that gets forgotten about. Another change that speaks in terms of the Pre being a longer-lasting device is the potential for the app store. By getting part of the sales from apps in the app store, Palm generates revenue that encourages them to support the device.
I do find the stylus to be a hack though. The Treo's screens are small, so a stylus is needed since the controls were equally small. Another reason for the stylus is that older touchscreens did not have as fine a sensitivity as that in the Pre or the iPhone.
The thing about the Treos was that most of the hardware was fairly similar from the 600 all the way to the 700p and the Centro. It keeps costs down.
I've been a Palm user since the Palm Pro and I don't recall them having a good onscreen keyboard.
There's no way that PalmOS could have supported anything like the iPhone. Additionally, Palm never had the balls to challenge the wireless providers in order to have the kind of control over their phones that Apple does over the iPhone. I think that each of the Treos that I owned (600, 650, 700p) had at most one firmware upgrade.
Additionally, PalmOS remained basically unchanged. It was great as an organizer, but does not really work well for in a modern multi-media device. For example, they never updated their browser, and if you want to use Opera, you always have to approve the network usage before you can start using it.
PalmOS has been dead for years, it just didn't really know it.
The Palm, WinMo, and BB app situations were very similar: there were many places where you could get software, but prices were too high. For WinMo and BB, you also had the additional concerns of figuring out if the app you wanted was the right one for your device. At least Palm had the right idea in making their OS standardized across all their (few) devices.
Perhaps you want a Myka? http://www.myka.tv/
If there's no real information about the platform and no dev tools yet released, what exactly is there to promote? That's the problem I have with the hype, like over at treonauts.com.
I've been a Palm owner for a long time (7 devices, from the Pro to the 700p), and this summer I suspect that I'm going to get an iPhone. I got excited about the Pre when it was first announced, but there's been such a paucity of actual information that's reliable, that I haven't been able to stay excited, or even interested. In addition, Palm's support for their devices has grown to be horrible. I think my each of my Treos only ever got one firmware upgrade apiece.
A lot of the iPhone's continued success has been the app store. Sure, it could be better organized, and the rules for app approval could be more clear and less capricious, but overall it's been a success.
I was interested in Android, as a Sprint phone would supposedly be forthcoming, but that hasn't materialized, and there hasn't been a critical mass of apps. I suspect that with shenanigans like this, there won't be for the Pre either. And that's why I won't be getting the phone, even if it is awesome. Perhaps when my contract w/ ATT runs out in 2 years, the ecosystem will be different and I'll make a different choice. Who knows?
I've been happy with Sprint overall, but feel that they do little to try to keep someone as a customer. Additionally, their phone selection has historically been pathetic.
Go to an airport w/ one of those "Airport Wireless" stores. They have both the N800 and N810 on display and usable. They're pretty nice and I forget how small they are.
Yes, SageTV has it's problems (just check their forums) but when I was evaluating media center servers + front ends, it offered the best feature set and ease of use. I love the fact that you can buy client boxes (like the MVP or the HD one) that entail no maintenance, are silent, and use less electricity.
There are a lot of things in SageTV that point to the fact that it was originally developed by developers for developers. The default interface is butt ugly and not very user friendly. If it wasn't for the SageMC interface that some guy developed, I would not have purchased Sage. Many people still have to make a registry change to increase their Java heap size. Lots of people do report problems with their setups though. However, the software is now present on Mac, Linux, and Windows, which is great.
Also, the company is not very communicative. There is one "community liaison" type who frequents the forum, but he often gives snarky or non-helpful answers. There is a core of long-time users who answer lots of people's questions and in a sense throw their weight around. It's a lot like the typical open source community... :)
If you want to, you can tweak the hell out of the software and install all sorts of stuff (like a NetFlix watch it now viewer, etc). Most of the tweaking can be done via a remote control through the client box. However, the architecture for plugins makes them difficult to install and get working. They also offer a software client that you can use from a PC.
I don't like the fact that they have an obfuscated database format.
Overall though, I've been very happy with SageTV. It was easy to set up and get working and I've had no major problems. Plus, the transition from Tivo was pretty easy in terms of the user interface.
Todd
Here's a listing of Human Factors (and associated) graduate programs, which is published by the HFES. http://www.hfes.org/web/Students/grad_programs.htm l
Todd
With a single-tuner TiVo, you can watch an already recorded show while recording something else.
However, TiVo just released a dual-Tuner card, which would allow recording of two shows at once while watching a pre-recorded one, or recording one show while watching something on live TV.
I have a single-tuner TiVo and almost never watch live TV. For some events, like the Oscars or whatever, I'll record it, but watch it delayed, so that I can skip boring parts or commercials. I've found that there are really very few times when I would want dual-tuner capability.
Todd
Mount some kind of sharp spikes to your case in front of where the fans vent. That should solve your cat problem.
Todd
And the worse part is that it was pepperoni pizza! Pig cannabalism!
Todd
"The jerkstore called, they want you back..."
George Costanza
Oops! I meant MATLAB.
Todd
There are a number of companies that produce software that work with their expert users. I know that The Mathworks (makers of Mathmatica) definately do long term, expert user usability studies. MS does it as well.
Todd
However. How about a Japanese live demo? ScanSoft SpeechWorks Speechify product demos.
Todd
As a disclaimer, I am a User Interface Designer / Usability practicioner. Like all things, there's truth to both what you and Dr Nielsen say. I've seen some horrible, sad things (software, web pages, consumer devices) that have been designed without the input of "people of my kind". Any time you interact with something that is difficult to use, or just moronically designed, that was a missed opportunity. In most cases, the costs are not borne by the company, but by the consumer. However, customer support and product returns b/c of usability issues are just the result of poor decison making by the manufacturing company.
Witness cable company PVRs vs the TiVo. The TiVo interface (and remote!) get nothing but raves, while the cable company PVRs get nothing but blahs. Or consider google vs the other search engines that existed at the time is started. Google did suck a better job of giving users what they wanted (easy access to searches, no bloat, & fast accurate search results) that it has become the clear and favorite search engine.
To speak to an industry closer to my own experience at the moment (I design speech recognition telephony applications), reflect back on the times when you've called a company and your call has been answered by a horrible touch tone or speech application. Lots of touch tone apps were designed in house because they are relatively easy to develop. As companies want to deploy more complicated applications, in-house development staff generally isn't up to the task to designing applications that callers can actually use successfully. That's where I (and my company) step in.
To speak to your example, just because something is terminal based, doesn't mean that it has to be difficult to use. Ever use a website that requires you to enter a date manually, then when you hit "submit" it gives you an error that basically says "please enter the date the right way". Why can't the developer do a quick check on the string submitted, try to format it correctly, then only give an error if it's either not a date or an ambiguous one? I believe that was the example given in the article.
My wife is a doctor, and at the hospital where she works, it's all terminal based systems. She says that it does a lot of things of that nature to help each user along and that it's quite easy to use.
The problem with "usability" people is that often they are not involved in the design process. A design for something is handed to just prior to the product being released to manufacturing. So they have no ability to change things, just make comments and find flaws with the product that rarely get wrapped back into the product.
However, if talented, qualified UI designers are involved through the requirements and design process, you can get excellent results. As devices and services get more complicated, the role of a UI design and usability team will be more and more vital.
I work as a UI designer for ScanSoft, so I've got quite a lot of experience in this area.
Sorry, speech is here to stay. You just can't do a lot of complex interactions with touch-tone technology. In addition, since traditional IVR applications are relatively easy to implement, most were designed in-house by people that have no place doing so. I agree that for some number of interactions, if well designed, a touch-tone application can be as effective as a speech application. However, as the technology becomes more mature and companies want to implement more complex applications, speech has clear advantages.
For the most part, there is higher caller acceptance of speech applications than touch-tone ones. I do think that some substantial reason for this is that most speech applications are designed by real UI designers and not in-house like most historical touch-tone apps.
With speech, you can capture things like city or stock names. You can even capture people's names and addresses. The possibilities are only increasing
Depending on the calling population, it could make sense to implement a touch-tone mode that callers can switch between as needed. For any of the applications that we design, there is always touch-tone fallback where possible.
Now, there are even "how may I help you" type applications that can come pretty close to capturing free-form utterances that are in-domain for the particular client. This is pretty cool, and accuracy is improving all the time.
It's a very interesting field.
Thanks.
Todd
Well, for a company that's the right size, yeah, that would work. I work with companies who need solutions quite a bit larger than that, like a number of airlines in the U.S. My company provides speech recognition telephony applications, but isn't a CTI vendor. I agree though that even on this larger scale, it's a no brainer, but unfortunately, I'm not a sales guy.
Todd
As a professional UI designer in the telephony arena, I mostly some with your rant list. To add some info though:
1) What also bugs me (and in general, people hate and/or ignore) are messages like "please pay attention, as our options have changed". I've known companies that put that sort of messaging into their applications and just leave them there for months.
2) In general, callers like that sort of question. You can always just hang up on the agent when you're done with your business. Sure, it might be rude, but you'll get off the phone those 10 seconds faster...
3) Totally, it's best to be unobtrusive so that caller's can do other things and pay minimal attention to the phone while on hold.
4) While a great idea, this technology is pretty expensive and tricky to implement, at least from what I've seen over the past five years. When companies implement it, callers totally love it, and in theory, it reduces agent talk time. But, getting companies to understand that sort of thing isn't easy.
6) Holy crap! No way! Soothing, non-intrusive music is usually best, unless you've got a specific need for something else. Playing Dixieland would totally interfere with #3 and #5.
Verizon Wireless is a big offender in this regard. They play (or at least, they did several months ago when I last called) messages that are basically ads when you're on hold. Every time I call, I complain to the agent about it, and I additionally send an email to customer service. I also tell all my friends on Verizon to do the same. I'm already a customer! I don't need to be pitched to.
Thanks.
Todd
- All smartphones (or PDA phones) allow you to turn off the phone and still use the PDA functions. However, I've seen some airlines create rules that say that if you have one of these devices, you can't use it at all, since the flight attendants can't verify that the phone part is turned off. Even worse, United at least, is banning use of Intel Centrino Mobile laptops. So, if you have one, make sure to peel those stupid little badges off your computer.
- Accessing the PDA functions while on a call hasn't been an issue for me. I find that my wife has a similar situation when she wants to save a number in her non-PDA phone while she's on the phone. With my phone, I switch into speaker phone for that short period of time. And, of course, if using a headset, it's not a problem.
Todd