mobrec

So
If you buy this unit, you had better hope that you never need support for it from Magellan. Their phone support direct-dial number merely dumps you with a 'call cannot be completed' message every time you call. If you actually do get to a human, they really don't care much about customer support.

My unit shipped with a defective mounting bracket. After numerous calls to support I finally talked to someone in support who promised to send replacement parts. Several calls later I find that the parts are suddenly on back order and won't arrive on the promised date. The support supervisor told me 'I am under no obligation to do anything further about it'. When I asked the 'supervisor' his name, he made up some Anglicized name through his heavy accent.

Hello, Magellan, be careful who you outsource your support to — how hard is it to find people who actually understand support? Or does it count against them to actually provide support versus doing the classing dump and run. Immediately after this phone conversation, I returned this defective unit and will buy a Garmin. I have owned several Garmin products in the past and I have never had support issues with. Ever.

I took a chance on Magellan because of price and learned once again that you get what you pay for. And, yes, Magellan, I have related my poor experience to others who also bought Garmin. Not that I expect any positive response from Magellan. Buyer Beware — Magellan support sucks.

Technorati Tags: magellan, gps, suckage, defective, crapsupport, buygarmin

So
Last night I (manually) downloaded iTunes 7.2 aka iTunes Plus as it was not showing up in Software Update. Not much to see, other than the 'new' DRM-free music being on offer.

What I did notice was that 90% of the music that I searched for came back as 'not found' in the store — including stuff that I had purchased from iTunes in the past. Granted, the majority of the music was not mainstream/pop, but, still, it appears to expose a huge gap in iTunes offerings. Perhaps it was just a search engine malfunction. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: apple, itunes, itunesplus, music

So
Interesting visualization of national flags by color. It is somewhat remarkable the consistency in choice of colors across the various cultures and aesthetics.

Technorati Tags: flags, color, visualization, ideas

So
Google's Erik Schmidt has recently made some comments that have recently gotten a load of tongues wagging, but really is anyone surprised?

I have often thought that development within Google has been aimed precisely at gathering as much info about individuals as possible. I would imagine that the evolution was something like this:

_Hey, we have all of these people that we are showing advertisements to, wouldn't it be cool if we could individually identify them. Setting a cookie won't work, because that can turn off cookies or use different systems. Let's get them to login by requiring a login to enable certain parts of search. Check. Now we can associate everything that they search for with an identity.

Hmm, not that many people are finding that compelling enough to login to Google. Let's do what Yahoo did and offer them email. We'll use the gimmick of providing loads of storage, more than anyone else is currently offering to encourage them to dump as much of their email in there as possible. As a cool side effect, we now have access to all of their email contacts and can scan, parse and dissect their email contents as well. And now that they are using mail, they will tend to stay logged into Google all the time, so we can track searches, etc more consistently.

Great now let's see if we can find out what they like to do. Yeah, we'll give 'em a calendar so that we can track their activities, too. And look, we now get access to more contact information. Let's provide notifications of events via SMS, now we have their mobile phone numbers, too. Maps will help us know what kinds of places they like to shop, visit or hangout at. Good, good, good.

Let's not stop there, because we really want to know more private/confidential information that they have. That Writely thing looks pretty interesting, let's buy that and Google brand it along with a spreadsheet. Now we can scan, parse and mine their resumes, budgets and whatever other highly personal stuff they are willing (or stupid enough) to put in our online offerings._

As so it goes with the youtube and feedburner acquisitions (what do they like to watch?, what feeds do they read). It would not surprise me if at some point in the future that they acquire Joost to get even more targeted information on viewing habits as well as another easy avenue for advertising.

It sort of reminds me of the short essay Brian Eno wrote in A Year With Swollen Appendixes that was a sort of futuristic look at the lengths that advertisers would go to try to personalize their message. The tactics used, included customizing radio broadcasts, news reports and even people to try to entice a buy or garner attention for a message.

Technorati Tags: google, data, privacy, advertising

So
Anyone looking for a Joost invite? Send me an email or leave a comment and I will send you one while supplies last.

Technorati Tags: joost, invites, webtools

So
Project Joey is a concept that is being explored in the Mozilla labs. It acknowledges that there is just too much stuff in most web pages for a mobile device browser to deal with. So Joey allows you to select and essentially cut and paste data of interest to your mobile device. I think this is fantastic and represents sort of the missing link for tools like Google Notebook and Soho Notes. The value of the tool dramatically increases if the information that I have cribbed away is available both on the web and via my mobile.

Project Joey brings the Web content you need most to your mobile phone by allowing you to easily send it to your device. You can quickly mark content that is important to you and have that content always available while using your mobile phone.

The premise is this: you can use Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS content, and Live Bookmarks to your phone through the Joey Server. The Joey Server transcodes and keeps all of the content up-to-date. You can then use your phone's browser or the Joey application on your phone to view and manage what you have uploaded.

You can even take an early cut of Joey out for a spin.

Technorati Tags: webtools, mozilla, firefox, mobile, projectjoey

So
A scientific paper to be published finds that the height of a ceiling can affect how a person thinks a feels.

“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling can stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.

So does this mean that you do your best thinking at the mall or in airports which tends to have sweeping open spaces and not while sitting on the toilet as has been the prevailing thought for some [think of the number of times you have seen Rodin's The Thinker humorously hunkered down on the head]?

Technorati Tags: ideas, cognition, architecture

So
Jacob Nielsen's recent article on the BBC carried the title Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'. I would agree that those sites that implement AJAXy eye candy are not doing their users a service, but I also believe that used well, 'web 2.0' elements can add to the user experience. Flash-based sites, however remain in the absolute toilet of web offerings and should be avoided at all cost.

I also take Mr Nielsen's views with a grain of salt as he seems to have this near luddite view of the web being a text-only medium (though I note that he is actually including a link to a video on his site now). All other interaction and decoration seemingly spurious in his thought. I, however, think there is an intelligent application of any of the new features. After all, it's about usability, not one man's aesthetic.

Technorati Tags: webdev, usability, design, web20

So
Another fine waste of time. Flickrvision shows recently posted photos on Google Maps. Strangely compelling to watch.

Technorati Tags: webtools, flickr, googlemaps, mashup, photography

So
This article on the WSJ Online about having a good google search value for your name gave me a chuckle. Since I de-cloaked about two years ago, I am (not surprisingly) the number one search result for my name. By de-cloak, I mean that previously I was very conscious about not leaving many personally identifiable signs on the internet over the previous 10+ years or so that I had been using it. Note that that includes, usenet, gopher, telnet, command line ftp and all of that pre-browser stuff. After many complaints from people trying to (legitimately) find me (or find out about me) I created the mobrec.com domain and linked in most all of my online stuff.

Back to the WSJ article — So unless there are a huge number of new Campoamor's online (or those wishing to pretend that they are), I think that I am safe in having 'a name that Googles well', as will my daughter.

Technorati Tags: google, search, names, mobrec.com