Erik Neu: Super Catch-All

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:00:08 GMT

A great think about being a biker is that you don't need a second driver to accompany you when dropping your vehicle off at the shop for work. Even if you are driving a few extra miles to get a reputable mechanic.

Print-Lock for Software

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:00:05 GMT

Feature Idea for computer software: Print Lock. There are a few documents I have that I never want to print. The most common reason is that the doc contains confidential information, and I don't want it going to a shared printer. The other reason is that the doc is WAY too long, and what I really mean to do is print a Selection (using the MS-Office Print Dialog term) from it.

This need suggests a feature idea to me, albeit one of tertiary importance, but then, all the MS-Office enhancements since Office 97 have been in that category. Here's how it could work.

To implement the Print Lock:

1. Select the Print Lock checkbox.

2. Optionally enter text that will be displayed when a user tries to print the document.

Behavior when a user tries to print the document:

1. System displays a dialog that says "Print Lock has been set on this document. [Optional text added, if any]."

2. Dialog includes buttons: OK, Print Anyway.

3. OK cancels the attempt to print.

4. Print Anyway proceeds to print.

Useability of Everyday Items: Flaw in the Telephone

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:46:20 GMT

It is way too easy to unintentionally end a telephone call. Push the wrong button, and zap--your circuit is ended. Compare this to the typical computer application which at least checks with you before it carries out your "command" to leave unexpectedly.

Back in the old days, before pushbuttons, it was somewhat harder to do this--you would have to depress the switchhook for a couple of seconds. Still, it could be done--toddlers, animals, or stray objects falling across the phone the wrong way.

This has happened to me a few times recently when I was switching from speakerphone to regular mode on a cordless phone. Some phones I have had use the SPKR button as a toggle--so pressing it while you are on speakerphone mode changes it back to handset-mode. Others, however, use the TALK button to switch back, and assume pressing the SPKR button is how you want to hang up!

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:20:47 GMT

Huh, how about that?! I just did a search in Google:
" thermostats elevator 'door open' button 'not hooked up' "
I really expected it to be too many search terms to yield any results, but I got 3 items, one of which had a very long discussion of these and other "mechanical placebos". The responses here do make the good point that the Door Open buttons always serve a definite function in Firefighter's Operation mode.

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:20:45 GMT

It can be annoying, when you have entered an elevator that is parked at a floor (typically the lobby), and, just as the "dwell-time" delay is ending, and the doors begin to close, someone rushes toward the elevator--not fast enough to get through the doors on their own, but close enough that someone on-board feels obliged to press the Door Open button, causing the doors to re-cycle again, and delaying your trip up. It gets more annoying when it happens repeatedly on the same elevator trip. I'm pretty sure it is also generally less efficient--from a big-picture traffic-handling (i.e., throughput) perspective. Yet it seems un-mannerly to refrain from attempting to hold the train for one's fellow.

I have a solution.

After registering your floor call in the elevator, move as far away as possible from the button panel. That way, when you see someone rushing toward the elevator, instead of reaching over and hitting the Door Open button, you can just stand there and look sympathetic as you watch, helplessly, while the doors slide together, and your brief elevator journey begins, without undue delay. Or for extra-credit, make a show of reaching, ineffectually, toward the panel, as the doors close and you take off.

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:20:41 GMT

A colleague told me she had been told by an acquaintance in the industry that airfares are sometimes lower at night than during weekdays. The underlying logic being that deep-pocketed businesses do their booking on weekdays, whereas price-sensitive consumers are more likely to search at night or on the weekend.

The story has some hallmarks of an urban legend--superficial plausibility. The airline industry does do some funky things with fares--just the kind of baffling situation that might incubate an urban legend. It just seems too easy to see through for industry--start having corporate travel agents work night shifts.

Forget What You Learned in Driver's Ed: How to Adjust Mirrors to Eliminate Blind Spots

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 03:46:56 GMT

I came across these instructions for adjusting your automobile side mirrors to eliminate the notorius "blind spots" on each side. I've been trying it for a couple of weeks, and it seems to work quite well. So well that it makes me wonder why the practice hasn't spread.

I can remember clearly, back 25 years ago in driver's ed class, the instructor explaining how to set the side mirror (singular--this was before right-hand mirrors had become common), so that it showed a little bit of the side of your car. He even quizzed us as to why we should set it this way. The answer, of course, was to provide a reference point, or context, for what you were seeing. Now I see how misguided that practice is.

The best defense I can think of, other than tradition, is that by giving you a reference point, you can ascertain with an immediate, un-thinking glance even as you are pulling away, that your mirrors are adjusted as you expect. Whereas with the blind spot elimination technique, you can not verify so quickly and casually that the mirrors are set right; there is a brief calibration process that is needed, and it is definitely best undertaken while not in motion.

So, I find myself wondering whether this practice falls into the "safety feature that you are not sure whether you want to become dependent on" pattern. That is, if you get accustomed to this practice, will you be disciplined enough at all times--when driving someone else's car; when driving your spouse's car and you don't anticipate getting on a multi-lane road (which is typically when the blind spot becomes a consideration), but plans change, and you do--to take the time to perform the calibration?

(Some other cases of this pattern are: auto-shutoff irons, anti-lock brakes.)

Denouncing Pork-Project's At Home

Tue, 02 May 2006 03:13:35 GMT

I'm not holding my breath, but I hope this campaign tactic catches on:

And so, in a reversal of tactics, challengers here and in other states like Montana, Ohio and Rhode Island are telling voters what the incumbents have brought home, in the hopes, it seems, that the national controversy over the pet projects known as earmarks has come home, too.

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:49:11 GMT

Air Canada is offering flight passes, a subscription model somewhat like the one I suggested a year ago. Prices are pretty crummy, at least from the perspective of a leisure traveler--$540 to fly within the eastern half of Canada, for example. I'm not clear if they can be used to buy tickets for others, or are good only for the named traveler who bought them. It looks like they are focused on the business traveler, as opposed to my idea for obtaining more marginal-traveler leisure business, while not cannibalizing your high-margin business-travel business.

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:56:39 GMT

As I've observed before, it hard to find a good, simple cell phone. Apparently at least one manufacturer is starting to think this way; from a NYT article on batteries for electronics:

The Nokia 1100 cellphone may not offer Bluetooth networking, a camera or even a color display, but it can go up to 16 days without being recharged. Colin Bullock, a senior engineer at Nokia in Dallas, says that stripping away the extras and using a black-and-white display sharply reduced the slow drain on the battery, something the engineers call the "quiescent current."

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 01:59:13 GMT

Dell's AC power adapters come with a cleat and captive strap, in order to neatly secure the cord, when wrapped up. A very nice example of value-added packaging.

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 01:25:14 GMT

I've read a few lengthy articles in the past couple of years, "pushing back" against the rising concern regarding the obesity epidemic; I blogged about one of them. These articles tend to claim that: 1) Fitness, not fatness, is the important thing; 2) That the hue and cry over fatness is, in large part, moralistic and aesthetically-driven, rather than health-driven.

Now it appears there is a large study that indicates that obesity is, in fact, a risk for heart disease independent of fitness, and the more significant of the two. In other words, obese and fit is not nearly as good as trim and fit (in fact, it appears that obese and fit is worse than trim and un-fit). I strongly suspected as much--though it is a perilous business to hang one's hat on the latest study, because surely there will be another that comes along to cast doubt on the predecessors!

The other thing I can't get over, in all these articles, is that they treat the "fat and fit" case as if it were a significant occurrence (which it certainly isn't, in my experience), rather than an interesting, but mostly hypothetical, alternative hypothesis.

Update on www.FilmValues.com

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:59:54 GMT

Since I occasionally get emails regarding my post on the disappearance of www.FilmValues.com, I thought I would provide such update as I can. I still have no idea what happened to the site. I have searched, briefly (including newsgroups) without success. The best replacement I have found so far is KidsInMind.com.

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:49:16 GMT

Also, (in regard to the idea of a selective reading from a novel) what about book previews? Why not have book previews, just like we have movie previews? I personally love movie previews, and they often entice (and more often, dissuade) me to watch a film. Why not thave the same thing for books?

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:43:55 GMT

More advanced thinkers than I on the theory that very good architecture and design could slash the amount of living space we feel need to be comfortable.

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:48:33 GMT

On our prior cordless phone, you toggled off of speakerphone mode by pressing the Talk key. That phone had a separate off key, I think.

Our cordless phone has a nice useability glitch. There is a big key on the left that says "TALK (end)"--in other words, and on/off toggle. Next to it is a key that says SPKR--to switch to speakerphone mode. So the question is--what do you do to turn off speakerphone mode? My intuition says: toggle the SPKR button. WRONG! That ends the conversation.

Like many useability glitches, the way you stumble into it involves a Murphy's law corrolary: the worse possible time. Just imagine--you make the dreaded call to customer service, and since "wait times are averaging 13 minutes", you turn on the speakerphone and lay the phone next to the keyboard. 13 minutes later, when the CSR starts to answer, you pick up the phone. Intending to put it in handset-mode, you press the SPKR key again, AND HANG UP!

As a tangent, this makes me realize that the IRV platform in general lacks any feature along the lines of "Warning--you are about to terminate your connection! Is this what you want to do?"

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 17:58:03 GMT

We do a lot of shopping at Sam's Club, so when they offered a Discover card with 2% cash back, we applied for it. 2% is quite good, I have a Visa that gives 1%. I think I have found their trick--it looks like they are going to send your "rewards" check monthly.

I just received a check for $1.41. Hardly even worth cashing. Which, I think, is exactly the point--a significant percentage of the checks will probably just be tossed in the trash. Like picking up a penny, they will not be worth the calories it takes to monetize them!

It quite a diabolical strategy, the opposite tack of most cash-back cards. The typical cash back card--if my experience is an indicator--doesn't do much of anything to remind you that you even have a balance to cash in. I had to call, well after a year, to ask to get my rewards check. Prompt, monthly, automatic payment--on the surface, it would appear to be beyond reproach!

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:24:05 GMT

I've been using first NetFlix, then Blockbuster, for almost 3 years, to have DVDs delivered straight to my mailbox. For a fixed price, I get to have 3 movies out at a time. I typically try to balance this: 1 kids movie, 1 family movie, 1 grown-up movie. So as any remotely geeky reader will undoubtedly have already inferred, I am thinking that the "queue" functionality they provide could be improved to support this kind of requirement.

As things stand now, you get only 1 queue. You can re-arrange the priority of items within it, which directly translates to the order you receive them. So, if you are returning your family movie, but the next item in the queue is a grown-up movie, you can set a new order that makes a family movie the new #1, so that that will be the replacement you receive, thus keeping your "inventory" balanced.

I know they want/need to keep things simple, but wouldn't it be nice if they offered an advanced option for multiple queues, a number corresponding to the number of movies your plan lets you have out at one time (3 in my case)? That would automatically keep your inventory in balance.

UPDATE: My friend Gim says that NetFlix does have this feature.

Travails of Putting Together a Modest Home Theater Setup

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 01:46:33 GMT

Travails of Putting Together a Modest Home Theater Setup

HSA Double-Billing Concerns

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 03:56:39 GMT

This year, my employer offered, for the first time, a combination high-deductible/HSA insurance option. To induce people to try it, they offered a one-time sweetener. I crunched the numbers, and determined that I couldn't lose: if I under-spent the limit, I was money ahead; if I came out on the nose, it was break-even; and if I exceeded the limit, I was ahead (because I wouldn't have co-pays). So we signed up.

The part I was concerned about was the paperwork. They offer this "crossover account" thingy, whereby you automatically get your reimbursement check as soon as the EOB hits. That's good. But then you have to pay the provider, when they send you their bill. That's seems okay, because you have already received the reimbursement.

Here's my fear: double-billing. If the provider double-bills Blue Cross, Blue Cross will notice, and reject the second bill. But will I notice? I have put together a workflow to help ensure I do, but what a pain.

And sure enough, I have my first case of double-billing. I paid, by mail, on 2/18. Two weeks later, I received another bill, dated 2/28. So unless the U.S. mail was doing very poorly, the excuse was not that they crossed in the mail. It was presumably that the latency of their payment processing resulted in a second bill being sent out.

So the next question is, what if I had not noticed, and paid a second time? Probably they would have noticed, and cut me a check for credit. But you never know...

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:42:52 GMT

The NYT has an article suggesting keystroke-logging is going to be the latest PC security threat. I have actually been surprised it hasn't been a big problem before now--this could be the avian flu of trojan horse problems. Biometrics, anyone? (I believe a thumbprint scanner would be immune to software-based keystroke logging. I think it would be theoretically susceptible to hardware-based interception, but that is much less of a worry.)

Final Word on Sony Qualia

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:54:59 GMT

I have no idea why I have periodically checked in on the Sony Qualia brand effort, but I have. I thought of it tonight for the first time in years. Every time I Google it, there are fewer and fewer entries. Anyway, looks like it has achieved the fate that seemed very obvious. A former Sony employee writes:

I'm ABSOLUTELY ELATED to see that Qualia is getting the AXE. I always HATED Qualia both as a brand and as an idea when I was a Sony employee. The products were awful. It was everything that Sony should not have been doing: going after a small niche of customers instead of the mass market, targeting the rich expecing them to pay more when they are often more price/quality conscious, relying on the brand when the product quality wasn't there. Remember all the product recalls for those multi-thousand-dollar Qualia products? No? Good- because that means you were smart enough to stay away from those idiotic products.

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:44:17 GMT

I am thinking about the huge number of crashes we saw during snowboardcross, and the several falls during figure skating and ice dancing. I wonder, with the time delay--where they edit down the number of competitors shown--if we are seeing a disproportionate number of falls?

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:43:13 GMT

I don't care for the new style in ice dancing costumes for the women. They are so revealing and garish that they are a distraction. Frankly, I think they would be on more solid ground, aesthetically, if the women danced nude! Or they could just revert to more traditional, less burlesque costumes.

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:41:13 GMT

Yet another article stating that rising property values are driving the stiff property tax increases that are squeezing homeowners. I agree with the conclusion (i.e., the stiff increases are occurring, and are painful), but not the premise. Rising property values don't drive taxation, rising spending and budgets drive taxation.

Suppose a municipality has a hot real-estate market, where prices go up 12% per year 3 years in a row--a 40% total increase in valuation. Let's assume taxes are assessed based on market value. Let's also assume, for the sake of simplicity, that the town is completely full--there is no new construction. Therefore no new sewer lines, no new schools to be built, no new roads. So you would expect the town budget to be essentially flat--it should go up at about the rate of inflation, but no more.

However, since real estate values increased by 40%, if no adjustment is made to the property tax rate, then property tax revenues will increase by 40%, overflowing the town's coffers. The town would have three choices. One, find a way to spend all that extra money. Two, save the money for the future. Three, find a way to bring the real level of taxation in line with budgetary requirements and expectations.

The key is to change the rate. There are two levers, working together, which set the real level of property taxes: the valuation and the rate. So if the valuation goes up sharply and unexpectedly (what might be called a windfall profit, if it happened to a corporation!), then the compensating adjustment would be to decrease the rate, so that the overall level of taxation remains constant, and in line with the budgetary requirements.

Another way to look at the problem would be a scenario involving declining valuations. Assume valuation in a town decline uniformly by 10%. However, nothing changed in the town's spending needs. Would you expect to see the real property taxes decline by 10%? No, what would happen is that the rate would be increased to compensate for the decline in valuations (or more likely in that scenario, a combination of partially-compensating rate increase, combined with emergency budget reductions).

It is nauseating to hear the specious, self-serving arguments, so frequently advanced by officeholders, that the heavy increases in real taxation are not in fact tax increases, but are merely the obvious and unavoidable by-product of the hot real-estate market.

The exception to this argument would be the case where increases are spread unevenly within a taxation jurisdiction. For instance, if a subway is being built, and prices skyrocket for homes in the vicinity of the planned stops. Or the few remaning extraordinaly large land parcels (1), zoned for residential use, are experiencing a disproportionately heavy hit. In those cases, the pain is localized, and can truly be explained primarily by rising valuations. But I think it is pretty clear that those scenarios are very much the exceptions, not the rule.

In fact, the second scenario is where the article begins , but it moves rapidly away from that, and without doing a good job explaining why it is a special case.

(1) E.g., a single family house on 30 acres in a typical suburb, where lots are 1/3 acre of less; since the land component of the total price is rising dispropoprtinately, it will have a very heavy impact on a taxpayer whose residence is disproportiantely composed of land, rather than dwelling/improvements.