design

I’ve had a Blackberry Pearl for a few months now and, in general, I love it. It’s a great phone. I love that I can check scores on ESPN and use Google maps and — as a surprise bonus — I can send and receive phone calls and text messages. Here’s what bugs me: The keyboard lock feature is not smart. Like most “candybar” type phones with an exposed keyboard, there is a way to “lock” the keys so you don’t accidentally dial numbers when it’s in your pocket. If you hold down the pound key (#) for a couple of seconds, the keyboard locks. Issues:

1. To unlock the keyboard, you push the pound key and the call key. But if you hit the scroll ball, you get a screen with options “Unlock”, “Emergency Call”, and “Cancel”. If you choose “Unlock”, instead of unlocking — which is what you’d expect — it tells you to push the pound key and the call key to unlock it. Okay, yes, I know that. Why is one of the options “Unlock” if it doesn’t actually unlock the phone? Not smart.
2. When someone calls, if the keyboard is unlocked it automatically unlocks so you can answer the call. But when you finish the call it doesn’t return to locked state; you have to hold the pound key to lock it again. Not smart.

Those aren’t major bugs, but I wish there was a way to correct them. I found some software to let me change the color of the LED behind the scroll ball, but the only hack I found to change the way the keyboard lock feature functions doesn’t seem to work.

Zeldman does a spectacular job explaining why I hate when people use Word as their email editor.

SpacecraftKits.com has an interesting way of keeping their costs low. They do it

“through mass production, and by putting the extensive assembly instructions and fact sheets … online, rather than mailing them to you.”

I think that’s a great idea. That way if they want to revise some part of the instructions, or add schematics or notes or ideas from people who might have experienced problems, they can allow all customers to see the new instructions without having to send recall notices or try to track exactly who owns their product. This gives a company the ability to hyperlink instructions with tons of additional information, as well as definitions and photographs. I really think all toy manufacturers should do this. It would also be great for furniture makers - Sauder and those places that make built-it-yourself desks and bookcases, etc. That way you could order that missing bolt or screw or broken piece of shelving directly from the manufacturer …

“It’s the interface, stupid!”

I got in a discussion recently about text messaging on mobile phones. I don’t understand why so much money is being pumped into this concept. Even those nifty little thumb-keyboards are not going to get people to start sending eMail over their mobile phones en masse. Y’know why? BECAUSE IT’S A MOBILE PHONE!

Why do we have eMail?

1. To transfer files
2. To send spam
3. To communicate with someone who cannot or will not allow us to reach him on a telephone

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I’d like to tell you how cool fengshui.com is. But I can’t. Because instead of a useful resource on Feng Shui or anything worth visiting, there’s nothing at the site except some mindless doodles. How. Annoying.

You’re much better served by a visit to Lillian Too if you want to learn about Feng Shui.

Anti-Mac - By exploring alternative interfaces that transcend the principles behind conventional graphical interfaces, a human-computer interface emerges that is based on language, a richer representation of objects, expert users, and shared control.

I’ve spent five minutes short of forever tooling around with this site … I think I have the basics decided … must give mad props to peterme for an excellent frames vs noframes arg …