Google Super Toilet

Update – Wow, days after writing this post, all of a sudden my reminders are starting to arrive.  I am pretty good at SEO, so my article is well-positioned, but I’m still surprised.  I know that in some cases, a company will issue fixes only when someone asks, sometimes for good reasons – the auto recall approach.  I guess a benign sort of Big Brother was watching – I think coincidence is unlikely, given how long at wasn’t working.  All the same, cool, and maybe I won’t need to convert everything to another system.

Update 2 (7/26/11) – Indeed, reminders are still coming through, but today I noticed that there are still ones slipping through the cracks.  The one I noticed was one scheduled to recur and remind every 3 months, just in case anyone at Google might be listening.

My Google Calendar reminders simply quit working recently.  Ironically, I searched Google to investigate this, as Google isn’t in the habit of writing about their mistakes anywhere that you can easily find.  I learned that indeed, this problem has existed for well over a year.  It’s not a large percentage of users, but those particular users are pretty angry.  On the Google forums where these unfortunate users are experiencing this, and once in awhile a Google staff member will actually respond.  Several fixes were supposedly applied.  But possible remedies and changes have worked spottily at best.  Most of the time all these users can do is blow off steam.

Offer free stuff, so that if it doesn’t work, you’re not accountable

This aspect of the Google business model is an interesting modern phenomenon that we’re seeing everywhere, and the bonus of this approach is that you need less tech support!  Great for the bottom line!  Disgruntled people may actually disagree, but when you start to think about it, what are you going to do, sue them?  For free services not rendered?  You’d be laughed out of court.  And for many people, it works fine.  So this type of software phenomenon is here to stay.

Google has scads of smart people, and they can fix pretty much any problem, but until an enormous number of users have a particular issue, it will be treated as low priority.  So it’s great to be Google.  And I’m starting the process of moving all my calendar stuff and reminders to another system.

Newsweek Trending Downwards

Wow, how far this once distinguished magazine has fallen.  It was my favorite source for finding out what was going on in the world.  I would enthusiastically pick up each week’s issue and read it cover-to-cover.  The process began subtly, with the display format changing, maybe a year ago or so.  I thought, well, not too bad, maybe a few modernized graphic touches would be OK.  Then the slide went further with some of my favorite contributors bailing out, most notably Fareed Zakaria and Jonathan Alter.  Jon Meacham took over as editor, seemingly doing a good job, but then he left after a short tenure.

Enter Tina Brown as editor.  With some fanfare and spin, the look of the magazine changed yet again, this time more drastically, and the contents radically shrunk.  With each significant change, one expects to get an explanation.  Brown’s article described how they agonized over the changes, but felt they had to do them, mostly for business reasons.  It all sounded very sincere.

So what are we left with?  One or two-page articles.  Maybe two in-depth articles per week of the type that I used to look forward to.  A miniature magazine, whose status has shrunk to the point that it’s now merely a companion piece to the Daily Beast website.  Tinier. Smaller. Infinitesimal. Sad.  My subscription will run out shortly, and will not be renewed.

Of course, I read news online regularly.  But the pimping of products there is irritating, and I also just enjoy reading without spending even more time on the computer.  Online news also seems to be staffed by interns writing with their thumbs on “smart” phones – misspelled headlines and mistakes all over.  Fact-checking and editing seem a quaint memory.  Fortunately, my favorite monthly magazine, the Atlantic, is going strong – if that one had foundered, that would have been even worse.

So I went into research mode, and found an answer – The Economist!  This seemed counterintuitive, as I am no expert in economics, nor do I read academic economics theory.  (The closest I get to that is reading the very enjoyable Freakonomics books)  But looking through their material, I realized that their focus is very much what I’m looking for – they have a global perspective, not just one country.  They cover many other topics besides economics, including politics, the arts, science, and more.  I’ve been enjoying the website, and now have my first print copy, so I get the best of both worlds.  Excellent writing all around, plenty of depth, and enough fascinating material to keep me happily engaged for days, unlike the current Newsweak, which can be polished off and discarded in maybe a half-hour.

So though the headline of this article is not literally true, it probably should be.  I was delighted to find a solution.  Best of all, I revisited some other magazines, and it’s been so much fun doing that.  I wonder how long Newsweek will survive after being vivisected.

Our first surprise was the glorious Inwood Park.  You’re greeted by huge gently rolling carefully tended grass fields, plenty of well-kept pathways,  and an impressive Hudson river view.

Our first park stroll had an athletic theme.  [Maybe I should have put this article in my training blog]  A very buff, shirtless young man was doing some pull-ups.  The personal trainer in me could not resist making some snotty sotto voce comments to my wife about his form.  Lonnie laughed, and added that I should go and show him how it’s done.  I said, no, I’m not like that, and normally that’s true.  The chest-beating one-upmanship crap is so juvenile.  This may be why people always underestimate my fitness level.  She cajoled me, and finally, I said OK.  He was so young and athletic, why not give him the benefit of having an elder show him how to do it right?  I went over, and out of the corner of my eye, made sure that he was watching.  In street clothes and with no warm-up, I snapped off 6 perfect pullups, well over the bar.  I could have probably done two or three more with a struggle and/or a warm-up, but hey, that wouldn’t have looked as cool, and after all, I was on vacation; why work?  So I smoked him, and it was hard to wipe the smiles off of our faces.  As we walked away with bemused expressions, I could see him getting back up there for more pullups – he had to save face, and wasn’t going to let that old bastard show him up.

We continued our walk into the forest area of the park.  At that point, it was hard to believe that we were in New York, period.  We passed the spot that was purportedly where the initial sale of Manhattan to the Dutch took place for around 60 guilders.  Does this look like New York City?

There are some trails that go far into the lush forest.  Now and then, the bucolic atmosphere may be interrupted by one of the struggling joggers that are so common in New York.  We walked up a long hill, heard birds softly singing, looked up through the branches of very tall trees, and saw… a gigantic suspension bridge.

The athletic tinge of our walk returned when we emerged from the forest and found the gorgeous baseball fields.  Batting practice was underway, completely in Spanish.  Earlier that week I had been kicking myself for missing Stephen Strasburg’s storied triple-A minor league debut in Syracuse, my hometown.  Though I still have a chance of seeing him before he’s kicked up to the majors, he may be gone before we return.  But somehow this scene in the park was poignant in a way that the super-hyped pitcher was not.  The players, who I assumed were most likely Dominican, were set up for batting practice, with a cleverly-designed protective screen in front of the pitcher, who was coaching the younger guys.  Though young, the players were all business, with no joking or horsing around.  The first batter was very skilled, loudly smacking most of the pitches with impressive authority, spraying hard line drives and flyballs all over the field.  The fielders were catching the hits with an easy grace.  The temperature was 90 degrees, but didn’t seem to deter them much, if at all, and I wondered if this scorching heat were similar to that experienced while playing ball in the República Dominicana.

After many hits by the hotshot, the coach called up the next hitter.  This was a younger, somewhat gangly boy, who swung as hard as he could, but was a bit of a flailer.  Instead of throwing regular pitches this time, the coach stood only about 10 feet to the kid’s right, and tossed underhand to the youth, who tried to hit them into the field.  He offered a lot of advice to the batter as he threw, and I kept wondering if the kid would smack a foul ball into the coach’s face.  Then the coach walked up to the batter, stood in front of the kid, held out his open hand like a target, and told the kid to swing at it.  This looked scary, despite the coach’s evident skill.  The boy swung, and pulled back just enough to stop right at the coach’s hand, and did that several more times.  Maybe this was the lesson in accuracy and control.

Then the coach had the batter get into a batting stance.  Slowly and patiently, the coach moved the boy’s hands very slightly to change the bat angle, adjusted his shoulders an inch or two, tipped his head just a fraction left and up, and had him change his leg posture ever so slightly, gesturing to illustrate each point, and all the while giving verbal instructions to the boy, who nodded as he absorbed the coach’s instructions.  Every kid should have a wise, patient, and skilled mentor like this coach in their life, I thought.

As the heat mounted further, we decided to move on.  While we walked away from the batting area, I happened to glance to my left, and suddenly realized a foul ball was heading right for us.  I jumped to catch the ball, managing to deflect it before it hit Lonnie.  Feeling lucky, we reflected on the beauty we had found in this park, natural and otherwise, as we left the park and headed into the city heat.

Why can't WordPress do everything I want, AND read my mind?

WordPress is such a nice system that its popularity has skyrocketed.  It’s easy to use, and has a phenomenal feature set. As its fame increases, many newbies are now coming into the fold, and while many are happy, some of them are having a lot of trouble.

WordPress has been the premier open source tool for blogging for quite some time now, and people are also discovering that it can be used for other types of sites.  The developers (and plugin authors) have done a superb job adding features and making the system easy to use.  While this has allowed people with moderate computer skills to use it, an inevitable byproduct of such popularity is emerging: a lot of people cannot figure out various parts of the system, and they are having trouble getting technical support, even though there is a nice free support forum where people can join for free and ask questions.

You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that I like WordPress.  The number of sites I’ve made with it is well into the dozens.  Because I like WP (WordPress) so much, when I have time, I go to the forum and answer people’s questions to give a little bit back.  But it seems that the number of people needing help may be outstripping the number of volunteers who can answer them.  Because I’m not being paid to do it, frankly, I am selective in what type of question I will answer.  If someone doesn’t make an effort to clearly describe their problem, pass.  If they have a rude or annoying tone, same thing.  If the problem doesn’t sound fun to work on, or at least interesting, no go.  And of course, there are many questions that I can’t answer, even with quite a bit of experience.  It’s a big, complex system, and there are many, many plugins that are not part of the core software.  In spite of all that, the hardcore gurus on the WP forum do a superb job.

I ran into one funny type of grievance last week.  The person had an interesting question, and said that they had been able to do fancy tag styling with another system, and how could they do that with WP?  I answered with a suggestion that did not produce the identical result, but gave them some of what the other system did, and with a bit of extra CSS work, could end up with the same visual appearance as the other system.   Her response was along the lines of “well, thanks, but I just can’t believe that WP can’t automatically do the same thing as System X…”, and went on to describe how angry she was about it, and how bad WP must be.  I just shrugged and wanted to say, “then why not go back to System X”, but instead, I voted with my feet.  I’m offering free support – why spend any more time with someone who is ungrateful, angry, and won’t ever be satisfied anyway?

It’s kind of sad now – as newcomers flock to WP, I see some forum questions that are so basic that they sound forlorn: “My site just crashed.  What do I do now?”

While making the rounds trying out a variety of content management systems, I keep running into a particular personality type:  someone for whom a particular system has essentially become their mother, so System X has become the paradigm that everything is judged against, and as such, any other system will automatically be found lacking.  Kind of like the iPhone fanboys.  Just typical group dynamics.  There are so many systems available, paid or free, and there’s probably something out there for almost anybody who wants to build a site.  WordPress does tick a lot of boxes for me, yet it isn’t the only system I use.  Different jobs may require different tools.

For a newbie, WordPress will work very well for someone of this description:

• They like WP’s bloggish format, structure, and flow.
• They have good basic computer skills.  They want to write articles, and can do basic word-processor-style editing, know how to save files, how to use menus, how to install things, etc.  They don’t mind sticking to the basics when editing something:  headings, paragraphs, some formatting (such as bolding), and maybe adding some photos.
• They can find a WP theme design that looks good to them.

A newbie to WP will probably not enjoy it if:

• They like to do a lot of customizing, and want to make significant changes to WP’s typical structure, but lack the skills or desire to write at least some code and possibly deal with things like functions and the API.  I actually have a friend who is extremely adept at web development, yet even he finds that the prospect of editing PHP code keeps him away from using WP.  Many newbies find this out way too late.
• They want to produce complex multimedia content. A simple WYSIWYG editor is no good for this. Some plugins may make this easier, but the forums are littered with questions from beginner users baffled by trying to handle video, fancy photo galleries, audio, etc., often not even able to handle simple installation of plugins or things like file uploading.  Also, the web is not Microsoft Word, nor is it Adobe Acrobat.  People get upset when they find that their content online doesn’t look exactly like their document, and also are puzzled why people wouldn’t want to download their 4 megabyte PDF that contains all their sales literature.  I would argue that no Content Management application will ameliorate a lack of basic knowledge in web technologies.
• They’re not self-sufficient.  Thought there is sometimes good help out there, using open-source software generally requires a user to be resourceful.
• The commonality in the items above is that they all require advanced skills, and though newbies often want to accomplish these things themselves, they will really need to hire a professional to pull it off.  I suppose the main factor here is cheapness – it costs money to get professional help.

Bottom line:  WordPress is great out-of-the-box for the user with regular needs, yet it will reward the very advanced user with endless customization possibilities.

Written communication isn’t for everyone.  Some people do better speaking in person or on the phone.  Given some of the poor communication that takes place, I wonder if some would be better off using Morse Code, signal flags, passenger pigeons, smoke signals, the Pony Express, or other modalities.

And let’s not even dwell on the general lack of writing skills stemming from the fact that many people never crack a book.

Unlike some, I am not annoyed by spelling mistakes in emails.  For me, as long as the meaning gets across, who cares?  In fact, I enjoy spelling mistakes.  The best one I’ve seen recently was a restaurant menu whose front cover proudly proclaimed that they offered “Fine Dinning” in nicely printed huge type.  Despite a very good grasp of spelling, I do make mistakes in emails when moving quickly.  To me, this is not a big concern, because spelling problems are very minor compared to other email communication snafus.

A special annoyance for me is trying to email tech support with more than one question.  Those people are paid so little, and must go so fast, that often only one question is answered per email.  Having had some experience in tech support myself, I have seen tech support systems wherein the screens they have are poorly designed, so that only a couple lines of the message are readily visible.  As soon as they read the first question, they fire off an answer, not realizing that there were four more questions.  With this in mind, I tried using bullet points for the questions.  This generally made no difference – still one answer (or none) per email.  So I would keep emailing until they’d address each question.  If there were five questions, there would be at least five emails.  Not exactly the efficiency that tech support managers had hoped for.

I think the smartphone problem is related to this.  With the teeny tiny screens they have, the user might not even notice that a message might extend beyond the first screen.  (Of course, cell phones are even worse) So I end up emailing back 3 more times to get the question answered.  Couple that with their tiny keyboards, and it’s no wonder communication is degraded.  Many people are also multitasking when answering emails on their phone, not to mention using it in poorly lit environments, so it’s actually amazing that any communication takes place beyond “LOL” or “WTF”.

The smartphone has the ability to make even the articulate person sound illiterate.  I have one client who is intelligent, but his emails are case studies in missed information and inefficiency.  He also gets bonus points for this cringe-inducing email sig:  “Sent from my iPhone, because I’m cool that way”  Right.  Well, maybe Steve Jobs would think so.

With this in mind, when I have an email of any consequence or length, I will give a one-sentence summary right up at the top, just like I’ve done with this post.  That way, if someone is reading on their iPhone or Crackberry, they have at least a chance at getting the meaning.  If they want to find out more, or get details, they might read further.  The old-school method of exposition, where your conclusion comes at the end after several supporting arguments, no longer works in the world of email.

It reminds me of that old school essay trick where near the end of a long paper, the student would write “if you’ve read this far, please place a checkmark here”.