KPAO by Dave Cortright

Solicitors at retail exits

I was at Target yesterday, and someone had a table set up asking for donations for some random cause (children's cancer? hopefully they were against it.).

Now I consider myself a generous guy; I give at least 3% of my income away every December. But I really don't appreciate having to walk a gauntlet after making my purchases. It's stressful. Even girl scouts selling cookies bother me. I can't buy them because they're not vegan, but I don't want to get into a big discussion with them. So I have to just say no, and that makes me look and feel like a jerk.

Retailers take note: By giving permission to these people, you are stressing out your customers. And I will take that into account the next time I'm deciding where to shop.

Omnibus: 3 bad interactions, 1 great game

First, the game: Hanna in a Choppa. I love the visual design. Simple. monochrome. Great use of typography throughout. And the gameplay is really good too. Simple controls, but each level is unique. I really like the planetoid and the lost at sea ones.

The bad interactions:

1. NorthWest's web site disables the paste command in the credit card number field when checking out. I store my credit cards in a document on my computer. I've always copy and paste them into checkout forms. This is the first time I've ever run into a problem. I ended up working around it by pasting it into the name field, and dragging it into the credit card number field. But seriously, why would you want to do anything in the checkout UI that might prevent a customer from buying your product?
2. Technorati doesn't place focus in the search field. Isn't this the #1 reason why someone goes to the site? To perform a search? Google gets it right. So does Yahoo. Even Live, Ask, and more obscure sites like IceRocket get it right. Why don't more web sites thoughtfully set the focus into form fields?
3. The Marriott Courtyard's TV interface always made me laugh. Why bother asking the user for a piece of information (like your room number) if the system already knows it?

The games I've played

I got sucked into a few games over the weekend. The Good Experience Games page is dangerous that way. Here's what I played:

• Fishing Girl - this one is really simple, yet quite fun and compelling. I went through it 3 times: once on easy and twice on hard. Highly recommended.
• Grow Tower and other games in the grow series. These are fun to start, and then they can become maddeningly frustrating. I still haven't figured out Grow Island. (grumble)
• Auditorium - I like this one. The organic visual flow coupled with the audio mixing is a great combo.
• Theseus Lite - A shout out to my friend Jason Fieldman who just released a free version of his iPhone game. Of course if you like it, you should buy the full version. :-)

Have fun!

President Obama: support innovative policy & legislation

I am hopeful. I am hopeful that the new administration will make policy decisions based not on the intent of the policy, but on the results that it causes. From President Obama's inauguration speech:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

It is my belief that the way to solve the problems plaguing our nation is through innovative policy and legislation. In fact, I think many of the problems in the country today are directly caused by poor policies that--while intentions may have been good--result in many unintended and undesired consequences.

Here are the sorts of ideas we should be investing in.

• Berkeley, CA allows residents to borrow money for solar panels against their property taxes. Read more...
• All vehicles should have real-time mileage feedback to help drivers maximize fuel economy. Read more...
• Build airports on a plateau so that gravity is used to aid airplanes during both takeoff and landing, which significantly reduces fuel consumed. Read more...

Count the Disciples

Is it just me?

Laid off in CA? Apply for unemployment

This is one helluva tough economic climate. It looks worse to me than the 2000 bubble (but if course I was insulated at a large company then). Not a week goes by where I don't learn of another friend getting laid off.

My one piece of advice for you if you get laid off: apply for California unemployment benefits. As long as you didn't leave your job voluntarily and you are earning less than $600/week, you are eligible. And $450/week of income is better than nothing.

Shed a Little Light this MLK Day

I always associate MLK Day with Shed a Little Light by James Taylor. It's a great song in its own right, and particularly apt today.

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King,
And recognize that there are ties between us,
All men and women living on the Earth,
Ties of hope and love, of sister and brotherhood.

That we are bound together,
In our desire to see the world become,
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong.

We are bound together,
By the task that stands before us,
And the road that lies ahead,
We are bound and we are bound.

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist.
There is a hunger in the center of the chest.
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist.
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest.

Shed a little light, oh Lord
So that we can see
Just a little light, oh Lord
Wanna stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh Lord
Wanna walk it on down
Shed a little light, oh Lord

Can't get no light from the dollar bill
Don't give me no light from a TV screen
When I open my eyes
I wanna drink my fill
From the well on the hill
(Do you know what I mean?)
...

Change.gov: Obama's Digg-like site for political issues

You've got to give Obama credit for truly embracing the power of the internet. The Citizen's Briefing Book on Change.gov lets anyone submit an idea for improving the government, and then a Digg-like voting system filters floats the most popular ideas to the top.

Of course it's open for abuse. I wonder how well this new site can withstand the attacks that a site like Digg has already seen and now defends against? I also note that you don't need a SSN or any sort of proof of citizenship to create an account. So people all over the world can (and will) create ideas and vote on them.

Still, it's a good first step in more direct contact with citizens on important issues. If you end up over there, I'd appreciate a vote up on my idea: Make the health care problem our politicians' problem.

I pwn my iPhone

Thanks to the invaluable help of my co-blogger David Creemer, 3 different Macs, 2 hours, the interwebs and a glass of 17-year-old scotch, I now pwn my iPhone and am happily using it on the T-mobile network.

Unfortunately it's not as good of a deal as one could previously get. T-Mobile wised up to the fact that their $6/month T-Zones option was leaving too much money on the table. It's now $25/month for unlimited data. But when coupled with their cheapest calling plan ($30/month), it's still $20/month cheaper than an equivalent plan from AT&T. I'll take it.

Sadly, the T-mobile coverage map lied. I was sure I'd get a stronger signal in my house than with AT&T, but it turns out to be worse: 1 bar if I'm lucky. I may end up back at AT&T for this reason alone. Or maybe I'll try to get something like this cell phone signal booster. Of course I could pay for 15 months of AT&T before I'd break even on this $300 gadget.

OmniGraffle Pro 5.1.1 beta fixed the crashes

As I was finishing up a design spec on Monday, I was getting a bunch of error messages like the ones shown here. And then things went south in a hurry. The app started crashing about every minute, and would always crash when trying to view the last page in the document. Thankfully I didn't need to edit that page in order to finish the design and PDF it (it was an appendix of older design alternatives).

The next day I tried again. Same problem. It got so bad, I actually started submitting the crash reports :-) Then I contacted technical support. They pointed me to a beta version of the app. I installed and have been running it ever since. Works like a charm.

So if you are an OmniGraffle user, I'd recommend you get the beta, especially if you're experiencing any crashes.

As for the overall experience, it was pretty good. Ideally, the app would alert me to beta builds as well as official updates, especially if it noticed the multiple crashes. And also ideally, the crash report system would alert me to the beta as well. But at least I did get the info eventually, and quickly.