Anthony Newman

Clutter is not a good thing.

New job goes a long way to explaining it. And as part of that new job, I’m not allowed to blog about technology — even in a consumer context.

The rest of the quietness stems from laziness. Oh, and devoting my meagre participatory efforts to Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

However, one piece of commentary springs to mind. This Christmas, recession or not, town has just been crazy busy. Intolerably so. Every time I’ve ventured in to do some present shopping the hordes of people have driven me away. I’ve bought nearly every single present online. No wonder Fopp, Woolies and other retailers keep going under. Sad but true. If it’s not price that kills them, it’s convenience.

I am so, so, SO impressed with Tops Pizza’s online ordering system. Seriously friendly and advanced. Some of the best bits:
* All of the offers are available online
* After ordering, it automatically creates a username and password for you without having the user registration as a separate step
* The AJAX interface makes adding to basket instant
* You can customise your pizza and add instructions to the kitchen
* After ordering you get live notification of when your pizza’s being prepared, when it’s out for delivery, etc
* They give proper information about what’s vegetarian, got nuts, gluten etc in it (with one mistake — their seafood pizza is not vegetarian!)
* The interface is cartoony and friendly
* It’s fast
* Your user control panel remembers your nearest store and even logs your favourite orders, lets you resend last order, etc

For a pizza delivery company, that shows an amazing amount of work in user experience, design, process integration… I’m flabbergasted. In a very good way.

My G-shock (see earlier reviews) is a great watch, and a perfect example of the modern. Sure, it’s got analogue hands, but also a digital display, timer, stopwatch, world time, multiple alarms, date display and electronic backlight, in a sophisticated, ultra-waterproof, completely abuse-proof steel and plastic case nearly 2cm thick.

Time to compare and contrast. Courtesy of eBay (an increasingly crap place to find bargains, incidentally), I received an old Timex manual watch, billed as being from the 1960s. Here’s what it can do (don’t worry, it’ll be brief):

* Tell you what hour and minute it is (no second hand)

* Strap itself to your wrist (the strap is new)

It hasn’t got date, backlighting, or any of those other fancy things. It’s not even splashproof.

I already adore it.

As well as being slimline and classic in appearance, with big, stylised numerals, it’s very easy to read, even in dim lighting. It’s very low-profile on the wrist, so it’ll fit under the sleeves of my bike jackets. It’s light, and the leather strap makes it comfortable.

Because it’s a manual, it needs to be carefully wound every day. It ticks a few times each second to let me know it’s working. So far, it keeps excellent time, despite not being Swiss or being emblazoned with ‘25 jewels’ on its face. What more could you want from a watch?

Most importantly, it makes me feel great to be wearing something older than I am — even if it is a cheapo Timex, the 1960s equivalent of a 10-buck Casio today. It looks great, it makes me feel different, and I hope it’ll keep ticking for years to come.

TVU (following up from earlier this week) have cancelled my course (that’s two out of two, folks), and the interview letter I received was a mistake. I only found out because I called to query. I also asked about my long-missing refund for the first cancelled course, and had to call a separate number, only to be told that by shocking coincidence the cheque was going out today. Indeed.

Domke (Tiffen), on the other hand, left me with my jaw on the floor. My one-month-old F-3X broke where the strap connected to the bag by a plastic buckle. I saw it coming (see first review) but was still disappointed. A quick email on a bank holiday Monday, and a reply the very next day, promising a metal-buckled bag would be made up specially for me, and asking for photos so they could re-engineer their bags in the long run. Great communication and a very satisfactory proposition.

And that, folks, is what marketing is all about. As Seth Godin points out, marketing is in everything from your letterhead to how your staff answer the phone, but I’d say that more than anything marketing is what your company delivers: the quality of its products, its service and its communication. TVU have failed on all counts by cancelling my courses, not keeping me informed about those cancellations, not responsively issuing my refund, and making me do the chasing around their organisation, first when I wanted to register and now at the other end of the process.

I didn’t deal with Domke at the start of the process, but they made sure my query got to the right person, quickly, and have promised me the perfect outcome without me having to ask for it. That creates a loyal customer.

I live in Reading — Thames Valley University is a stone’s throw from my flat. They do evening courses. I want to do evening courses. It’s a match made in heaven.

Except that judging from my experiences with them so far, they couldn’t run a bath.

The first course I applied for was a photography one. It took them three weeks to answer my questions about the course. Then they passed me from pillar to post on the phone to get me registered. Then they cancelled my course on the day it was due to start.

Nearly a month later I still haven’t had my refund.

So, I’m going to sign up for their introduction to motorcycle maintenance. I might learn something I don’t already know. It’s only six weeks, 90 quid, in the evenings.

But oh no, it can’t be that simple.

I apply online, about a fortnight ago. I get a letter in the post today, containing a request to come to an interview before I get accepted onto the course. How weird — the photography course was twice as long and more expensive, and they didn’t want an interview for that. And this is an ‘introduction’ — what could they possibly need to know from me? What could I possibly need to know from them? I thought I’d just turn up and they’d show me how to shim my valves or change a tyre, or at the very worst start at the beginning with lubing a chain and changing the oil.

But the mystifying facts continue: the interview will be two hours long (for a course that in total is only 18 hours), on a Wednesday during working hours (for an evening course), A FULL WEEK AFTER THE COURSE IS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN! Ridiculous!

I’m going to ring them tomorrow. I’m really not holding out much hope.

Not really a post about usability or a review this, but I had to write it.

These earbud headphones are going cheap now, and they’re great.

I’m not a proper audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. But I can appreciate the difference between shoddy earphones and quite good ones. The Sennheiser CX300s fall into the latter category. I don’t suppose they equal Etymotics or Shure, but they’re definitely cheaper. And when you run the risk of losing or breaking your headphones on a daily basis, that’s important.

My experience involves numerous crap pairs, including the Apple earbuds; some well-regarded Sony EX70s; some other Sony ones; and some non-earbud Koss pairs that I had a few of. They were good too, especially for the price, but the build quality and comfort were mediocre and the sound isolation non-existent. 

The CX300s are quite similar to the EX70s, but are clearer and with less bass. Because they’re in-ear headphones, they offer good isolation/noise reduction once you fit the correct size of soft rubber plug onto the driver unit. This means you can use lower volumes and get clearer sound at the same time, and it also ensures they stay well in your ears, even in the gym. Because they’re low profile and rounded, you can wear them under a motorcycle helmet quite easily.

The build quality is excellent: after a couple of years of full-time use, they’re still pristine. The cord has survived a lot better than the rubbish ‘anti-tangle’ covering on my old Koss sets. 

The 3.5mm plug isn’t fancy gold, but that hasn’t mattered a jot. The connector is L-shaped and robust. The cord itself is long — a metre? — but that’s more of an asset than a liability. With my Sonys, the standard short cord (.3 metre?) was too short, and using the extension attachment made them too long and added weight. 

The only downside to these headphones is that the rubber cord transmits vibration straight into the ears, even more than other in-ear phones I’ve used in the past. It’s especially teeth-gritting when the edge of a piece of paper rasps down the wire — a common event at my desk. But I can live with that!

Mugs: would be universally better with two handles. Apparently, in medieval times, there were ‘tygs’, three-handled mugs ideal for sharing wine. In modern times, we all get burned hands trying to pass drinks round.

Sinks: really need to be standardised, especially the fancy ones you get in bars or clubs. I feel like a moron when I can’t figure out how to turn on the tap.

Motorcycles: have a superior control system to cars. Clutch and accelerator are two controls that require delicate, gradual use. On a car, you use your big clunky feet; on a motorcycle, your advanced hands. Gear selectors, by contrast, require very little delicacy. Car requires hands; bike relegates it to your feet. On a bike, you can use all the controls simultaneously, without ever having to move your hands or feet. By contrast, a car driver going from lock to lock then changing gear looks like he’s having a fit. When performing a hill-start, the car driver needs to use the handbrake or perform difficult heel-and-toe work on the brake pedal and accelerator. On a bike, the rider can easily use the rear brake (foot) and accelerator (hand) simultaneously, or use the front brake and accelerator both with the right hand, if desired.

Where car drivers win? Easier to hold in the clutch with the foot. Less wet and cold ;)

Windows Vista: I just need to get this out of my system. Every morning, when I turn on my work laptop on its dock, Vista picks a random combination of screen orientation, resolution and colour depth. Sometimes I’ll only have my external monitor at 800x600; sometimes I’ll have both screens mirrored at 1024x768; sometimes I’ll have just the internal screen at 1680x native resolution. It’s maddening and entirely without discernible pattern. I put it to sleep in exactly the same way each evening, with exactly the same settings. On the occasions I lift it off the dock to work single-screen, it launches each new window on a phantom external monitor, and I need to use the ‘move’ shortcut to pull it onto the real screen. I truly hate Windows.

Motorcycle dealers: the easiest job in the world?

I took my first trip in a while to a motorcycle dealers yesterday: Metropolis in Vauxhall. I’d heard some really bad things about them on tinterweb, but was actually pleasantly surprised.

But on reflection, it was really the bikes that made it for me — as usual in bike dealers, the retail experience itself was pretty poor.

First up, all the bikes outside (approximately 30 of them) were in poor condition. It appears that they never get brought inside (I can’t see where they’d go!), and as a result there are rusty chains and fasteners all over the shop. They’re used bikes, but I’d expect anything I was about to drop four grand on to be free of preventable rust.

Inside, of course, the new bikes are free of rust — and since the first display is of gorgeous Ducatis, it makes for an impressive entrance. The 1098, Hypermotard, various Monsters and Multistrada all look great.

But moving on to the other manufacturers there’s a distinct lack of care on show. A Gixxer is missing a seat cowl; the Gilera Fuoco has lost an indicator. Little things that make you worry.

I was impressed by the Aprilia Shiver and the Moto Guzzis, and of course my old favourites the Triumph Speed Triple and Scrambler.

Which made it doubly annoying to find I was really let down by the bike I actually came to see, the DRZ-400SM. I’d not noticed before how poor the finish is, even compared to my current low-end Suzuki. The plastic is poor, the metal looks like cheese, the design looks agricultural. It may be reliable and easy to service, but give it six months of English weather and everything that isn’t seized or rusty would round off as soon as I looked at it. No thank you.

Anyway, back to Metropolis. In common with most bike dealers, you get thoroughly ignored if you’re not a rich, gullible-looking 50-something man who is clearly looking for a replacement for his BMW 1200GS. Most of the young staff we passed were gossiping about their recent spills. We didn’t even get a hello, let alone a sales pitch, until we’d been in there for over half an hour. To be fair, they might have sensed that I wasn’t buying today — but I am going to be buying in six months, and a good impression lasts.

All this factored in, I still had a good time — and that’s because I, like most motorcyclists, love motorbikes. Put us in a cold warehouse with some Ducatis and Triumphs and we’ll happily wander around for hours boring our girlfriends with anecdotes about specific types of engine. I can’t imagine an easier sale than a motorbike, in Summer at least. How very different to the world of family cars, where enthusiasm for the latest Ford Mondeo can only be thin on the ground. The sales pitch to a bored man, his bored wife and screaming children must be a real uphill struggle. “Look, cupholders!”

Wow, cameras were different before I was born. My dearest partner’s father has just given me a Praktica Super TL, a big old clunking SLR originally released, I believe, in 1968: when men were men, women were women, etc.

The camera itself is great, and despite basic specs (1/500 top speed from the cloth shutter; ISO 1600 max; obviously no automation) it’s a brilliant example of pre-electronic innovation. Instead of a memory remaining readout or film window, there’s a little dial that you set to the number of frames on your film — manually. There’s another little dial which you set to remind yourself whether you’re using B&W, colour, slide or other film — again, manually. There’s a shutter lock, but unlike my Nikon FE (a decade more recent), you engage it manually by twisting the shutter release button 90 degrees. There’s also a film quick-loader, a bit like the Canon QL rangefinders.

But it’s all the gubbins that came with the camera that really delighted me. The manual, receipts and other documentation for a start, stored in a handsome hard leather gadget bag that’s a million miles away from today’s ergonomic bag designs. It’s like an old doctor’s case: thin strap, little in the way of dividers inside, square as a housebrick and just as heavy and uncomfortable to carry. Of course, it’s also bloody hard to get into, much like the ‘neveready’ case that came with the camera. Again, rock-hard, inch-thick leather, press-stud closure, red velvet interior. Absolutely useless for shooting with, though, and it makes a big camera even larger.

The Praktica takes an M42 screwmount, and as standard it came with a 50mm f/2; mine’s got a Pancolar 50mm f/1.8, which aside from a stiff, long-throw focus ring, is quite lovely to handle and complements the industrial design of the camera well. Comes with a screw-in rubber hood, too.

As a backup is a wonderful Tamron Adaptall lens, 85-210, constant f/4.5. I’ve not shot with it yet, and I’m sure it won’t be amazing, but I love the handling and again the little innovations. It’s got a built-in sliding lens hood; a slider that falls easily to hand to switch between automatic and manual aperture metering; brilliant grippy rubber rings for aperture, focus and zoom; and all the useful information you used to get on old lenses, like depth of field scales. Coolest of all though is the Adaptall system itself, which through use of adaptor rings (currently £10-25) could fit the lens to near enough any lensmount. That’s the benefit of fully manual cameras, I guess: simple mounts, no CPUs to worry about.

Of course, the telephoto lens, adaptall mount and 2x teleconverter all come in their own cylindrical leather pop-closure cases. I’m sure that the manual would have come in one too, if they could have managed it.

With a bit of tin foil a new hearing aid battery got the meter fired up, and all the shutter speeds seem to work. The stop-down metering is a bit confusing for a youngster like me, but it’s not too bad. The great size and heft and the clear yellow focusing screen both help improve the handling. I’m really looking forward to shooting with it. Let’s hope there aren’t any light leaks!

Having taken a few jaunts out with this bag now, and subjected it to a 40mph tumble down the road (accidental), I can say that I’m very pleased with it. It rather proves that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

The strap is great — I spent the whole of yesterday waiting for it to start digging in, but its width and rubber grip meant it never got beyond ‘slightly uncomfortable’.

It’s so flexible and well-sized that when nearly empty, my stuff didn’t feel like it was rattling around, but I could cram a scarf and a section of the Guardian in without any trouble at all.

The end pouches are big enough to hold (each) a Sigg bottle or my phone, wallet and small digicam, meaning I can keep my important stuff right where I can see it and get to it easily.

I managed to get my camera out quickly on a few different occasions, but never felt that my stuff was going to drop out accidentally. And the construction is reassuringly robust.

I’ve lined the bottom of the bag with a teatowel for a bit of extra padding, but other than that my only complaints now are the slightly jingly clip (where is my electrical tape?) and the too-small back pocket — I wanted to keep my moleskine in there but can’t.

Really pleased.

I’ve just received my Domke f3x camera bag.

I confess, I’m a camera bag addict. I’ve got (mentally counts) six, and I’ve only got three cameras. Suffice it to say, there needs to be a bag for every occasion: trekking in Sri Lanka is very different to a city break.

So, I needed a bag for a city break, in this instance. All of my bags were sorely lacking in a few departments:

* Space for camera stuff *and* other stuff — most of my bags are small
* Unobtrusiveness — most of my bags (Lowepro, Tamrac) look like camera bags
* Easy access/anti-pickpocketness — my only big bag (Lowepro Slingshot 200AW) goes on the back, and while easy to access (sling mechanism), is also vulnerable to thieves.

I wanted a medium-sized shoulder bag that would be big enough for stuff, with multiple pouches, that didn’t look like a camera bag and was easy to swing round to keep an eye on in pickpocket areas.

Looking around, I couldn’t get away from Domke.

I discounted Lowepro, Tamrac and all the other shiny-black camera bag makers.

Billingham makes me sick in my mouth.

Quite a few other brands you can’t get in the UK.

Naneu Pro was a bit too boxy and military for this job.

So, which Domke?

The F2, F1 were too big; the F5x was too small. The F6 looked great, but no side pockets, two clips to undo and the divider it comes with won’t hold a body with lens attached. Also, it’s got a thin strap.

So, the F3x. Small, two end pouches, thick strap, front and back thin pouches, and a big squareish space in the middle, which features two lens loops and a velcro-on optional divider.

If that description sounds lazy, that’s because www.cambags.com and hundreds of other places will give you a good enough description.

I chose it in black canvas, although I thought about both olive and sand. Went for the scaredycat choice.

I got it for (inc P&P) £59, from eBay. I feel bad that I didn’t get it from a respectable local camera shop, but seriously, this bag was listed at £89-£109 from those kinds of shops.

I have to say, I’d have felt really ripped off if I’d paid £109.

Why? Well, it’s just a stout canvas bag. A good-sized, well-built, made-in-USA, just deep enough, designed for the photojournalist on the go canvas bag, but a canvas bag nonetheless.

I was impressed by the quality of the canvas and stitching, and the design seems perfect for what I want. The pouches are big, the lid reassuringly large and features a little zip pouch, the access to gear easy. Domke even include a little luggage tag for your £109. But most importantly, the strap is wide and has rubber sewn-in to give it grip. Should be all-day comfy if I don’t overload it.

There are other nice touches:

* There’s a removable hand strap that clips on to two loops, usable with lid closed or open. It’s nicely done.

*There are two small loops on the back for strapping on a tripod. I won’t use them.

*The end pouches, and the main lid, also have velcro pads to keep them shut.

One of the main factors that attracted me to this bag is that it’s not really padded. The base has padding, but the sides do not. That means it’s lighter and more flexible, more body-hugging. Having received it, I do wish there was a smidgeon more padding in the base and divider.

Unfortunately, there are also gripes if I’m being picky (and if I’d paid £109, I would be picky):

* The divider doesn’t fit so well onto the lens loops. There’s not enough soft velcro on the loops.

* The metal clip that keeps the lid closed is a bit tinny. The hardware is painted black, and the clip has a sharp edge so I know it will scratch through.

* The hardware holding the strap on is plastic. I was aghast. It doesn’t feel particularly strong, but I guess I have to trust it… Seems odd that a non-load-bearing flap clip is metal while the whole bag is hanging from plastic.

* There’s rather too much Domke branding for a bag that’s pitched at being unobtrusive, although at least it’s red on black and doesn’t stand out too much.

* It is possible to reach inside the bag with the lid shut.

Nevertheless, all in all a pretty decent purchase — let’s see how it holds up to real use!

I used to like Amazon a lot. I never bought very much from there, but around the time when the original Xbox was launched, I got invited to a usability session for their website that I found fun and interesting. Since then, I’ve followed them with interest, and been a frequent customer — most regularly for DVD rentals (a service now handed over to Lovefilm).

But most of the time I go elsewhere for my purchases, and the trend is increasing. If I want a CD or DVD, I go to CDWow or Play, or even HMV. If I want camera equipment, I go to 7dayshop. Etc. It’s just simpler and less hassle.

That’s because Amazon has, irretrievably I say, ballsed it up. At least for the kinds of things I buy.

It all started with the product range. As soon as the top navigation bar said ‘Books, CDs, DVDs… and 43 other categories’, you know you’ve got a navigation nightmare on your hands.

Doubly, trebly, a thousand times so when they added marketplace sellers. Not even that good an idea in theory (how to add competitors to your shop and confuse your customers in one easy step), it’s ridiculous in practice. One of the great things about Amazon was free shipping over a certain value, which encourages consumers to shop around for extra stuff to tip them over the limit. Of course, marketplace items don’t count towards that limit. And it’s hard to see (from the search results) what’s shipped direct and what’s not.

Marketplace sellers also pollute the results. You go try searching for USB keys. Jesus, hundreds of crappy, poorly described, randomly priced entries.

Not that Amazon’s entries are very good themselves, probably because of the sheer breadth of what they’re listing. You really have to rely on the reviews if you’re to buy anything — and the reviews have always been the best thing about Amazon.

OK, so from the thousands of poorly categorised, poorly described products you’ve selected one that you want to buy, and you’ve either chosen a marketplace seller or Amazon direct. Either way you could be shafted: through the marketplace because they’re not necessarily vendors you’d trust, and Amazon basically washes its hands of the transaction if you’re not satisfied; or through Amazon direct, because your product might well be out of stock. My bookshop-working friends tell me of the staggering number number of people coming in and saying ‘I tried to order it from Amazon but after six weeks it still hadn’t arrived’. That’s because the book was out of print and Amazon didn’t have an updated listing. So much for the long tail.

Then you’ve got the mockery that is super-saver shipping. I’ve had stuff arrive from Hong Kong consistently faster (CD Wow back in the good old days). And how about Amazon Prime? A good idea in theory, but a very slippery slope: do I really want to be paying a monthly fee for shipping even if I don’t buy any products? Do I want to get tied into a monthly minimum level of consumerism in order to get value from my payment? Scary.

But it’s after the purchase that things go right downhill. The recommendation system, which used to be so amazing, so vaunted as an example of data mining done right, now throws up the most random and bizarrely crap recommendations to myself and my friends. Even the ‘perfect partner’ offer is rubbish: “people who bought this camera bag also bought this identical camera bag in a different colour! Buy both together and save precisely nothing”.

Perhaps it’s choking on data? Perhaps it’s confused by me buying gifts? Either way, I get a load of crap that I don’t want to buy recommended to me every time I visit, not to mention in my inbox.

So, the range is bewildering, the marketplace system a liability, the delivery poor, and the follow-up random.

What’s good about Amazon?

Firstly, the reviews, of course. Amazon had first-mover advantage on this one by a million miles and still it’s the best place to research a product. Especially David Hasselhoff compilations and cheap Bic pens (track six, Hot Shot City, is particularly good).

Secondly, the keen prices on common items. That’s buying power for ya.

Thirdly, the wide range (yes, I want it both ways). Sometimes you want a toolkit, a cookery book and a digital camera from the same vendor, without the hassle of typing in your credit card details three times.

Fourthly, the ‘look inside’ feature on books. That’s just great. Not quite as great as browsing books in a shop, but I can do it while naked and lying down. Bookshops tend to frown on that kind of behaviour.

Fifthly, the packaging (at least for common items like DVDs). Minimal and protective.

Sixthly, the wish list. This largely in combination with the huge range. I actually use my Amazon wishlist to store products that I have no intention of ever buying from Amazon or having bought for me. It’s just a convenient place for me to list products that I like for later reference, and it happens that Amazon has pretty much every product in the world on its database. And yes, I’m aware that this will be affecting my recommendations, but honestly, it doesn’t explain some of the bizarre ones I’ve got. And no, I’m not sharing what they are.

So. Most of my problems would be solved by

a) getting rid of the sodding marketplace (that’s what eBay is for, although that’s shit in its own way — perhaps another post is in order), and

b) better product database management (for stock levels and recommendations).

Neither of which I expect to see. Instead, I expect Amazon to jump into the only four remaining product categories they don’t currently list: sex toys, live animals, human organs and automobiles. Now that’s a shopping cart I’d like to see.

ATMs

The ATM (or cash machine, hole in the wall, etc) was invented some fifty years ago by an Englishman with a bright idea.

Since then, they’ve taken on new functions — topping up PAYG mobile phones; printing mini statements; taking deposits; advertising the bank with with swizzy full-colour touchscreens. But for all their convenience, they’ve still left some staggeringly basic issues unresolved.

1) Security
Money transactions are closely connected with security, for obvious reasons. ATMs provide the most direct and frequent interaction with an individual’s money — not only through withdrawals, but even PIN change facilities. Yet they take very little action to protect the user.

In Sri Lanka, ATMs are kept in individual locked booths — private and safe. Not in the UK; they’re right on the high street, totally exposed to PIN-thieving eyes. And UK ATMs also make a nice loud beeping sound whenever they’re dispensing money, which is a great way to alert a waiting mugger.

Very often, the machines are adorned with signs saying ‘if you notice anything suspicious about this machine, please report it/don’t use it’. The big problem with this is that there are dozens of different ATMs in the UK: each looks different, takes your card in a different way, has a different keypad and screen, and a different menu structure. The user has no way of knowing whether the machine is acting correctly or whether it’s been tampered with.

2) Consistency
Which brings me to my second criticism, consistency more generally. I can understand how different banks would adopt different user interfaces, and how different generations of ATM could still be in use across a bank’s network. But goodness, inconsistency WITHIN an ATM’s interface?

Pretty much every hole in the wall I use says ‘enter your PIN and press the ENTER key to continue’. 90% of them continue upon entry of the fourth digit of my PIN, without the need to press ENTER. Not a big problem on its own, until I come to use the 10% of ATMs that *do* require me to press ENTER, where I stand for some seconds waiting for the machine to do its thing, before I figure out that it’s waiting for me. It’s infuriating.

The ATM is a standardised service, pretty much. If you go to the machine, chances are you want to do one of two things: check your balance, or get cash out. Yet there are a dazzling number of ways to present these options, and every bank seems to have gone for a different one.

Other irritations
What’s more, the screen-side buttons that have become a de facto standard are incredibly irritating: they never line up with the option on the screen, leaving the user worried that he’s going to choose the wrong option and accidentally shut down his account.

Despite the astonishing power of modern computing, ATMs still have the slowest interface around. Not just when verifying data with the bank, but when navigating menus, responding to button presses. The whole point of the ATM is speed and convenience. By contrast, the machines I use to buy my cinema and train tickets are as responsive as my home machine — so it’s clearly possible.

ATMs frequently go out of order. Surprisingly few give you enough warning of this fact. Instead of a small text warning on the screen, why not dim the illuminated banner over the top of the machine, or turn the screen into a big red ‘X’ or no-entry sign? With the LINK network providing free, inter-bank cash machine service, it wouldn’t be that difficult or un-competitive for the bank to direct a user to the nearest working machine, either.

What’s good about ATMs
Perhaps I’m being unfairly harsh. They do have some useful flourishes.

* The LINK network — for those of you not familiar with it, it means I can get money out from any bank’s ATM, not just my bank, for free.
* The flashing bar that reminds you to take your cash
* The incredibly tough keypads (which go through some quite amazing testing) that also feature braille (and a frequently vandalised headphone jack)
* The incredibly tough screens, too
* The audible feedback when you’re entering a digit on the rather unresponsive keys
* Their sheer ubiquity. If you’re never more than six feet from a rat, you’re never more than six hundred from a cash machine (at least in towns). It’s a very, very useful service.

Now here’s a great product if ever I saw one. The logic is flawless, the idea simple. Here’s how it went down:

Everyone trips over their laptop power cords.
Apple creates the Magsafe power adaptor.
Designers look around to see what other cords we routinely trip up on/tug on.
Designer spots headphone cord.
Gets to work.

The result is Replug: a black (or white, your choice) rubbery tube, bendy in the middle and about 6cm long, plus the 3.5mm headphone plug on one end. It sticks into your headphone socket, your headphones go in the other end, and you can start listening to music.

The idea is that if there’s significant lateral force, the tiny metal headphone jack itself separates from the 6cm black bendy bit, saving your ears from being ripped out and your audio player/headphones being damaged.

Fundamentally, Replulg is designed with the sole intention of improving usability. However, it fails in a few ways.


1) The jack is ‘popped’ into the plastic tube rather than held on by magnets, which is clumsy and makes it hard to reattach.

2) The whole thing is long (nearly as long as my nano), which means it has plenty of leverage to pop itself off, and is inconvenient in the pocket. Although I haven’t used it while walking yet, I can imagine my music will go dead many times from accidental separation.

3) Because there’s no magnet holding the connection, a slight bit of force in nearly any direction will start to break the electrical contact, making the sound drop in and out in my left ear in normal use, even without popping the connector off.

4) Unlike a laptop plummeting to the floor, when you clutz your way into the cord for your music player you’re usually left with a tiny iPod harmlessly dangling from your headphones. This is a much safer situation than having your music player drop into the road/under the wheels of a car/onto your kitchen floor. I can see it working for laptop headphone users though.

5) Additionally, the ‘fat’ separation mechanism prevents the system working with recessed headphone sockets like the iPhone.

So, not quite the wonder product I was hoping for. Version two will probably be much more usable.

I’ve been thinking today about petrol stations. Odd, but true.

They’re really important to us Brits. Not only do we fill up our cars (or bikes) there, we also do quite a bit of shopping.

Unfortunately, I think the two have got into a bit of a fight.

With the advent of chip and pin (although they existed before*), it’s now possible to have ‘secure’ (use of inverted commas deliberate) payment for petrol, right at the pump. This is good for a whole load of reasons:
* Time is saved because customers don’t have to walk to the cashier’s office
* Time is saved because there’s no queuing: there are as many paypoints as there are pumps, and you’re never stuck behind someone not paying for petrol
* As a motorcyclist, you don’t even need to get off your bike to fill up and pay, which is great if you’re lazy like me
* It’s possibly more secure than using chip’n’pin inside, because there’s nobody watching over your shoulder

The timesaving in particular is useful. Petrol stations, especially at peak times, are incredibly crowded, and their layout is rarely optimised for having a dozen cars queuing. This is no Disneyland. Pay at pump is a great solution to forecourt congestion. However, there are downsides:
* Cost of fitting/modifying pumps
* Arbitrary £60 maximum pumping limit (which I imagine many cars exceed)
* People in petrol stations might lose their jobs

But the big problem I suspect is the fight with commerce. Most petrol stations are now general stores, selling (I guess high-margin) sweets, booze, food, along with the usual chocolates, papers, and tired flowers. If people can pay at the pump, they won’t walk past your sweets on the way to the till. It’s retail suicide, and exactly why supermarkets use all their incredibly clever tactics to encourage you to walk further, past more displays of products, just to get your bread and milk.

However, conversely, I go out of my way to visit the only petrol station in the vicinity, just because it has pay-at-pump.

*Here’s the footnote: Tesco used to have pay-at-pump before chip and pin — and you could fill up without any form of authentication! So if I lost my card and you found it, you could fill up with petrol to your heart’s desire, at least until I reported it stolen.

Other things I love/hate/just found out about petrol stations.

Lifehacker recently told me something I never knew: that car fuel gauges often have little arrows on them pointing to the side of the car that holds the filler cap. Genius. I always used to crane my neck to look in the wing mirrors down the side of the car. Problem solved. I don’t think my Accord had this feature, though. The problem would be solved even better if petrol pumps were more accommodating: several times I humiliated myself by trying to fill up when the hose wouldn’t reach.

Bikes have no such problem. Most have the filler cap just in front of your groin. So it’s easy: pull up to the pump and stay seated, holding the bike upright. If you get off first, then your filler cap won’t be at the top of the tank and you won’t be able to fill it up completely (I’m anal like that).

The problem with bikes comes (pay at pump excepted) when you need to get off and pay. Unless you’ve positioned the pump to your right, your bike will lean onto its sidestand and trap you like an idiot against the pump. The lack of reverse gear means you need to paddle your bike around like an arse to give yourself enough room to get off.

Some BMW bikes have the fuel tank under the seat, with the filler cap under your right thigh. So you can put the bike on its sidestand and fill it up to the top, just like a car. They’re civilised like that.

Uncivilised is the practice of asking motorcyclists — no, I mean telling motorcyclists — to take off their helmets. Fortunately, not a policy I’ve come across, and I’m pleased to hear it’s dying out. Idiots.

Anyway, that’s my ramble for today on forecourt usability issues!

Asus eee PC — adding my opinion to the discussion

I’ve been following the eee PC for a while, but only today do I feel I can really contribute to the ‘it’s great’ ‘no it’s not’ debate. I’ve finally seen one in the flesh, you see.

You know, for kids
I saw it at Toys ‘R’ Us. This itself is one of the most interesting things about the eee (although the eee isn’t the only computer-related item that the shop sells, I should add). It’s a laptop aimed quite squarely at children, and indeed RM (Research Machines) sells it to schools. It’s not stuffed in an unapproachable row in Dixons.

It’s clear to see why: small keyboard suits small hands. Cheap, so breakages aren’t such an issue. Solid state, so more reliable. It’s like a mainstream OLPC (and intentionally, too).

Christ, it’s tiny
I like to think I was prepared for the size of the machine, but I really wasn’t. It’s like one of those portable DVD players, or like opening up a hardback book in landscape. The Macbook Air may claim to be portable, but this really is astonishingly mobile, for a few reasons:
* Size. Thin is great, but the overall dimensions matter much more. The eee will fit in a normal ‘man bag’ — anywhere you could fit a small textbook. You don’t need to change your life to add an eee to it.
* Weight. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to pick up the eee, but it’s made of plastic and very small. I can’t imagine it would weigh more than said textbook. You won’t leave it behind, because carrying it won’t tire you out.
* Robust. It’s got a solid-state drive and few external ports to break, so you might not even bother with a laptop sleeve. You don’t get the mental drain of worrying about breaking an expensive possession when out and about.
* Cheap. Unlike the MB Air, if your eee breaks you shed a few tears and buy another one. You can back the whole thing up onto a USB stick that you can buy for 30 quid. You’re not troubled by theft.

The Macbook Air’s runty twin
Much of the same arguments levelled at the MB Air can be levelled at the eee, but almost exactly inverted:
* Networking. The MB Air has no Ethernet port; the eee does
* Size. The Apple goes for thinness; the Asus is thicker but smaller
* Optical drive. Neither have one built-in
* Keyboard. The eee’s is tiny; usable, but not comfy for long periods. The MB Air sacrifices portability for a decent keyboard.
* Screen. The eee’s biggest flaw — 7 inches and low res isn’t really a boon to productivity. The MB Air again didn’t compromise here.
* Connectivity. While the MB Air has one USB port, the eee has three USB ports and an SD card — which admittedly is essential to expand the meagre solid-state storage that’s built-in. I don’t believe the eee has Bluetooth, while of course the MBA does. The eee does, however, have a VGA port.
* Battery life. Both get about three hours; not great but OK. The Magsafe on the MBA is great, of course; apparently, the eee’s AC adaptor is like a mobile phone’s — tiny. How sweet.

These two different approaches to the concessions required for portability are fascinating. I appreciate the rationale behind each of them, as difficult as it is to accept compromises. I understand that addressing each of these flaws will either add to the price or take away from portability.

So, why does the eee work?
Part of the reason is of course the size and price. It’s a piece of consumer electronics, like a mobile phone — accessible to everyone. The expectations are very low, which is why the limited processor, storage etc aren’t a problem. Unlike the MB Air, there’s no confusion about whether it’s meant to be your primary or secondary machine. Instead, it’s competing with PDAs. In many cases, it’s cheaper than PDAs, too.

I want to emphasise a point that not everyone seems to appreciate: the price isn’t just a factor at the time of purchase (although of course that’s very, very important); it’s a feature in its own right, because it affects how you treat the machine. Buying a £2000 Rolex doesn’t just put a hurdle in front of me at the checkout, it prompts misgivings every time I consider a trip to a rough neighbourhood. Exactly the same with the eee: it has been priced to be used, not cosseted. Great choice, Asus.

Laptop for the gadget-toting generation
It’s built for how individuals interact with computers, too. It recognises that you’re already living a gadget lifestyle. When you’re out and about, you’ve probably got your iPod with you, synched to your main machine back home. So you don’t need masses of storage in your laptop for music. If you’re a gamer, you don’t use a laptop — you take your Nintendo DS Lite (which looks rather like the eee, incidentally).

Get the important bits right
Instead (as the MB Air figures), the most important qualities in a laptop are an internet connection and portability. That’s because most of our time is spent on the web nowadays, or if not, then dealing with text and images. This is where the screen and keyboard falls down, admittedly, but the same argument is put forward for SLR cameras vs point-and-shoot digicams, and the response is the same: you’ll always get better results with the tool you’ve got with you than the one you left at home because it was too big.

As a corollary, when you’re crammed on the bus/train/Starbucks table, a 15” laptop is too big. Even a 12” laptop is too big. A hardback book, on the other hand, is small enough that you want to get it out and use it, without drawing attention to yourself or having to clear a space.

Amply sufficient
The small solid-state drive (plus an 8GB SD card and/or a USB stick) and limited processor is just fine for documents, maybe some photos, some basic applications, a couple of videos. It’ll run Firefox and OpenOffice. It’ll probably be rubbish at running XP or OS X, but really, I don’t see a problem with using a Linux distro. After all, this is a piece of consumer electronics.

It misses out Bluetooth, but who cares? You’re not going to be synching your phone, because the eee is on the same rung of the usage ladder as your phone: it’s subordinate to your main PC. You’re also unlikely to be using your phone as a modem over Bluetooth, because that’s what Wi-Fi’s for.

Usable, not flash
Rather than using fancy materials, Asus chose to make the eee from tough plastic. Cheap for a start, but also robust. It looks like there’re no exposed buttons or levers to worry about when dropping it into a bag. The small screen with big frame means the LCD probably isn’t vulnerable to cracking. The SD card slot is a great touch — as well as adding valuable storage space, it means many digicam owners will be able to upload photos to Flickr without needing to add a separate USB reader or cable to their arsenal.

Fitting it into my life
How would I use it? Hmmm, not sure — but I’d find a way. Funny thing is, the eee is so groundbreaking because it lets you take a ‘real’ computer, with a real keyboard, trackpad, network connection and software, where you otherwise wouldn’t think to. Years of conditioning need to be stripped away. I’ve got a laptop, but popping into a coffee shop with it is out of the question — it would need to be a planned trip, because I’d have to change my bag for a laptop case, and wander around with a grand’s worth of aluminium bumping against my hip. So having a computer in my bag all the time is a bit mind-blowing. I’d probably use the eee wherever I’d otherwise read the National Geographic; to browse the web, email, work on reviews like this, play emulated games, read my RSS feeds, upload photos… the basic, everyday stuff for which a Core Duo laptop is overkill.

Different from the competition
I’ve mentioned PDAs, but leaving the OLPC out of the discussion, the eee’s real competition isn’t other laptops — certainly not the 800+ quid microlaptops from Toshiba and Sony. Instead, the competition is Nokia’s E90 smartphone, the N810 internet tablet, the iPod Touch, maybe the Blackberry or Nokia E61i. Small devices with expandable memory, the ability to load third-party applications, Wi-Fi, ideally a keyboard. Interestingly, they’re all more expensive than the eee (certainly SIM-free)

But on a sliding scale from desktop to tiny mobile phone, they’re all a step down from the eee. Keyboards shrink to thumboards; seven-inch screens shrink to four inches; storage becomes megabytes instead of gigabytes. Real applications become phone utilities. More portable — less usable. This reveals the niche of the eee. It blurs the distinction between today’s consumer PDAs and small laptops.

If you don’t understand it, it’s not meant for you
For some, those that operate at the top end of the sliding scale, that’s a compromise too many on functionality. For those who love PDAs and smartphones, the eee is still too big, because it won’t fit in a pocket. And as a web browser, both the N810 and the Touch have their advantages. But I expect there are a great number of people who, like me, want a computer with them but are way too scared of losing or breaking their main machines, or just flat-out don’t want to lug them around all day on the offchance of needing to do a spot of web-browsing. Until now, getting a micro-laptop as a second machine has been an extravagance, an expensive indulgence. The eee is cheap enough that all these connection-craving geeks with man-bags can get very close to justifying another purchase, cheap enough that they’ll carry it around without worrying, and functional enough that it won’t frustrate with too many limitations.

Frankly, I’m sold.

Two pearls for you:

Floordrobe. This one’s pretty self-explanatory for anyone messy like me.

Flog. Fake + blog — usually contrived for marketing purposes.

A good neologism bangs two concepts together so hard that it produces diamond: crystal clear and so economical and enduring you can’t believe it didn’t always exist. 

The very best state of affairs for a computer user is for commands to execute and complete instantly. Well, that’s not quite true: I know that when something really does happen in the blink of an eye, I get confused and think that the activity hasn’t happened at all. Best then is a clunk, whirr click situation where you have the sense of movement but no delay.

However, this is clearly not a perfect world, and computing tasks have duration — whether it’s downloading an email, uploading a photo to Flickr, installing an application or backing up your hard drive. This would not be a problem except that such durations are so variable, and are in many cases indistinguishable from a crash.

A shame then that so many of these tasks give no feedback to the user: whether of time elapsed, time remaining, or progress.

So what am I looking for?
* A progress indicator bar is useful and easy to read, although not as useful as it may first appear — what am I supposed to do with an arbitrary figure that may or may not sit on one number for a few minutes?
* Better is a time-remaining indicator, although this is far from perfect either — many installers say ‘less than one minute remaining’ for fifteen minutes; many others politely inform you that you have 68 hours to wait. Neither is useful.
* Best perhaps is verbose logging: show me exactly how many files you’ve processed out of how many. Show me the name of the file you’re modifying, so I can guess why progress seems to have stalled: that 600 MB data file is probably taking a while. Show me the reams of commands scrolling up the screen; even if it doesn’t mean anything, it gives the illusion of business and actually makes the user happier when tolerating delays.
* Better than the best is when the application also tells you what it’s going to do and sets expectations before beginning. Too many applications leave you blindly clicking on a button without knowing whether the system check/installation/whatever will take ten minutes or ten hours. Then you’re left with the ‘abort button dilemma’: am I about to (foolishly) cancel at 98%, or am I leaving it when it’s hung? Best leave it five more minutes just in case.

My favourite backup application, SuperDuper, is great at all of this: it tells you exactly what’s going to happen to your source and target domains (which it names, reassuringly), and whether it will take a while. Then the progress indicator gives you loads of detail: a progress bar for a quick check; a list of tasks coloured in green and accompanied by tick-marks when they’re completed; a detailed report of how many files have been processed and how many are remaining; an equivalent figure in MB; and a running total of MB/sec, with time remaining presumably drawn from that. Pick a stat, any stat. Good thing too, the developer clearly understands that there’s nothing more worry-inspiring than a backup application, and does everything possible to tell you that things are going Just Fine.

The very worst applications provide no such information: a spinning wheel, an hourglass indicator, or my absolute favourite, the fake progress indicator: a horizontal bar that, once full, simply starts again. Lying to the user is never a good way to keep them happy. My pet hate at the moment is web browser uploads: to the untrained eye, absolutely nothing is happening; the page is stuck ‘loading’. Only by watching network activity can one see if anything is going on. My Macbook Pro, sleek as it is, has no hard disk activity light, so I can’t even use that as an indicator.

But the lack of progress indicators is not the only sin committed by applications running lengthy processes. It’s probably not often possible, but a ‘pause’ button is useful to accompany the ‘abort’ button. And there needs to be some explanation to go along with abort: will it leave my original files unchanged? Will it clean up its temporary files? Will it dump me right back to the start of the process or (better) act like a ‘back’ button to let me start again with the same configuration?

Even more evil are those processes that force you to close all your other programs (without explanation why), then don’t give you any progress indicator, and then force you to restart your computer at the end — occasionally, and most heinously, automatically. Then the user really is sitting out a jail sentence the duration of which hasn’t been revealed to him. Do I waste an hour of my working day going for a walk only to find out that the process was done in 30 seconds? Or do I sit here and watch the minutes turn into hours of unproductivity?

Most annoying of all are applications that keep errors to themselves, wasting potentially hours of your time. I’m thinking here of LaCie backup, which doesn’t tell you to shut down applications before running a backup. Quite reasonably, I presume that it’s one of those intelligent applications that can ghost and backup open files. As the progress meter tots up, I gather that I was correct. Instead, some hours later, the process completes and promptly tells me that hundreds of my files aren’t backed up. Have a nice day. What *should* have happened is that an error box under the progress bar filled up with file copy errors as it went along, giving me a chance to spot the problem and restart the backup after just a few minutes. Tut tut LaCie.

So far, I’ve only really dealt with processes that one invokes, aware that there will be some delay — an installer or defrag, for instance. What about those commands that one invokes accidentally? I’m thinking here of innocuous menu items or UI buttons that give no indication of what they’ll do, and automatically start a process. How to solve this is a more involved matter (and I don’t claim to have any easy answers) but it leads me to Vista, which is where every usability article eventually ends up. My point here is that invoking a simple command or process should not interrupt the user (and God forbid with a slow, pop-up, blacked out window like Vista), just for the sake of telling them that they’re about to do something and do they want to continue. Doubly so when such a warning window misses the opportunity to provide any useful information about the process about to be invoked.

The lesson is simple: In the absence of reassuring, clunk-click mechanical feedback, designers need to make the effort to keep their users in the loop about what’s going on inside their whirring, shiny electronics. Visual info, as much of it as possible, needs to be accessible and explained at every step so the user can step confidently forward. Warning and friendly completion beeps should provide subtle audio cues. Scheduling and completion reports free the user of the shackle that ties him to his PC without worrying about the outcome (especially when paired with error-handling rules — there are few things worse than coming back expecting a hideously long process to be finished, only to find it bombed out early on and is waiting for your input). Yet at no point should all this information be forced on the user; long processes should be background processes wherever possible.

Back now to my typewriter (*ding* click click click tap tap tap) and manual camera (clunk, ratchet, click). I can trust them not to hang.