The straw that breaks a camel’s back is significant only to the camel.
Facebook, Pretty Please?
My poor Facebook friends. I put up with their incessant quiz results. They get to put up with my whining about it. One Facebook friend of mine (Hi, David!) questioned whether Facebook is even aware of the issue. Ha!
Okay, time to make sure. Do I get bonus points for asking on Twitter? I said “please.”
Big Three: We Don’t Need to Compete
Don’t forget to read the fine print. And I’d apologize for the language, but it’s mild compared to how I feel.
It’s like buying a car, but without getting the car.
Neither Politics Nor Religion
It’s said that one never speaks of politics or religion in polite company. Here I’ve done both. In fact, my definition of a true friend includes being able to discuss both and showing up to help on moving day.
Why do we talk politics? What’s the point? Is it to win votes for your candidate? Or is it to feel superior to the “idiots” who disagree with you? Good luck with both of those.
My new goal is to avoid being a new media douchebag, and I’m not sure it’s working. In my attempt I am swearing off writing about partisan politics. (Yeah, I’m reserving the right to write about political issues and religion.)
In my political burnout I’m also unsubscribing from “offending” blogs. If I unsubscribe from you please don’t take it personally. I’ll resubscribe after the elections.
Or, maybe I won’t.
Google’s Real Reason for Chrome
Call me cynical, but I think there’s more to Google’s new Chrome browser than a stable platform for web apps. At least, I hope so. My experience with Chrome has been a mixed bag. Although I love Chrome’s clean appearance, it has issues:
- Adobe Reader makes all of Chrome’s tabs inaccessible until the document is fully loaded.
- Attempting to select all the text in a text form field by pressing CTRL-A sometimes results in selecting the entire page.
- Streamed audio using Windows Media plugin in one Chrome tab will stutter like a skipping record while another tab renders.
- Chrome even has issue with Google’s web apps (especially Google’s web apps?). For example, the “J” key doesn’t always mark an item as read in Google Reader, especially if there’s only one unread post.
No, if stability was its goal, Google would have (should have) waited.
Google is an advertising company. The more data Google gets, the better it can target its advertising. I can imagine Google’s engineers sitting around a conference room table, scheming to get even more data from us. “I know,” one particularly devious engineer must have laughed. “What if we could get all the searches people do on any web site, not just on Google?” “How could we ever do that?” another might have asked. The answer was simple: make sure they use a Google tool for all searches. Chrome’s Omni bar is that tool.
Every URL you ever type into your Omni bar goes straight to Google, whether you press enter or not. If you use the tab key to search other sites from the Omni bar, Google gets that, too.
Sure, it’s possible to hide this data from Google, but do you want to give up all the help the Omni bar provides as you type? Not me!
And that’s what Google’s betting on.
What do you think? Are you buying Google’s story?
Or am I being too cynical?
Cartoon courtesy of Geek and Poke, under Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivs. 2.0 license.By
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One More Inane Blog Post on the Intertubes, This One About Bathroom Paper Towel Dispensors
I got to bed late last night, so today’s post is lame and rambling, just like always.
Scott AdamsThe restrooms at work have those motion activated paper towel dispensers. You know the type: wave your dripping hand in front of the sensor, it dispenses a length of paper towel. Want more paper? You have to tear off the sheet before it will give you more.
My first reaction: I wish I’d invented these. They’re everywhere. Somebody’s making money.
My next reaction: this was a solution in search of a problem but didn’t find it. Motion activation in the restroom must be a great idea, right? After all, who wants to touch levers in the bathroom after someone else who was doing you know what? And motion sensors for most of the stuff in the restroom makes sense. You wouldn’t want them activating at random times. That could waste water or soap. Worse, they probably wouldn’t activate until long after they should. (Reminds me of the April fool’s announcement that the automatic toilets would flush after every other use to save water, but I digress…)
The concern about waste doesn’t apply to paper towel dispensers. If the paper is dispensed before it’s needed, it just hangs there waiting. It doesn’t go down the drain. It doesn’t somehow prematurely age. And as a wonderful side effect, it’s ready when you are.
So why not design the paper towel dispenser to always have a length of paper ready to tear off? When paper’s torn off, it would dispense another length. No hand waving necessary.
Requiring tear sensors wouldn’t add cost; the motion activated dispensers already have them. If you’re concerned that someone will take (and waste) an additional length of paper merely because it was so readily offered, have the dispenser delay for a few seconds before dispensing another length.
My work here is done. Time to go home (or find something else to rant about).
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Stupid Dancing Girl Ad
Oh yeah! I want to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars from a mortgage company that advertises using a stupid dancing girl ad!
I guess, like for spam, there are enough idiots that respond to ads like this to make running them worthwhile. It’s sad, really…
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Nordstrom: No More Pianists
Nordstrom will no longer have live piano music in its stores, claiming its customers “compliment canned music more often than live musicians.”
Ignoring for the moment Nordstrom’s laughable excuse for wanting to save money, this is sad news. My children take piano lessons. Their piano highlight of the year is to play at Nordstrom during the Christmas season. It seems to be a hit with the shoppers, too, as quite a few would walk over and visit with my children between songs.
Maybe Nordstrom will keep the Christmas student pianist tradition. As the article says, “stores may bring back live music for special occasions.” Plus, Nordstrom doesn’t pay the students.
Next time I’m at the mall I’m going to take a quick trip by Nordstrom’s customer service desk. I can only imagine the line of shoppers that will be waiting there to compliment the canned music.
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I Don’t Get Facebook
There. I said it. Let the ridicule begin. Another old fogy doesn’t understand social sites. As my niece says, “What ‘ev’.”
I started social networking on MySpace. Yeah, I know — I’m a little old for MySpace, regardless of what the experts claim. I signed up to see what my daughters were doing online and to see what all the noise was about. Noise is right. MySpace is awash with clashing colors, huge background images, and tiny fonts. And the noise isn’t limited to visual. I’m blasted with bulletins on whether my teenage friends enjoyed their last kiss, whether they prefer Pepsi or Coke, if they’re double jointed, and if someone’s smacked them in the butt in the past week. Let’s hear it for transparency…
I joined Facebook when it opened to non-college students. I liked the clean interface, no soft porn masquerading as dating site ads, and no Bambi’s wanting to be my friend so I could visit their websites. People use their real names so I didn’t have to remember who “<3 Y0ur Fa\/3 [jk]” is.
Unfortunately, Facebook changed when it opened up for external aps. What a mess! With MySpace, if I find a cool widget, I can put it on my profile. No mess, no fuss. When I add something to my Facebook profile, Facebook wants to spam all my friends with requests to put it on their profiles and then every time I change something, spam them again. What’s worse, most of these “cool” apps don’t seem to work unless my visitors also installs the same apps on their profiles. What?!
Of course, my friends are installing these apps, and I’m getting spammed with requests to compare tastes in movies, be a pirate, and see if someone has clicked “YES” on me (oh boy!). I’m ignoring most of this stuff and probably upsetting my friends in the process. So much for Facebook helping me in the friend arena…
Now Facebook seems to think they can publish my online purchases made on other sites. If I want you to know I bought Rogaine, Cialis or just a new Telecaster, I’ll post it here. I don’t appreciate Facebook making money by telling my friends my secrets.
Guess I’m just unsociable.
P.S. Oh, joy! I just logged on to MySpace and discovered that MySpace is going to spam my friends, too.
Update: Hugh Macleod at gapingvoid posts on the same topic, “Why Facebook Might be Consigning Themselves to the Slushpile of History.”