The pain of customer engagement with wrist notifications

Not a massively interesting article this, other than the suggestion from one research firm "Gartner" that 1.2 billion traditional watches are sold each year. Each year? If every human brought one for each arm that's less than 12 years before saturation of a market that must already be saturated. This must be yet another example of crazy consumerism with people tricked into buying more watches than is strictly necessary (a number I consider to be ~0, having now been watch-less for well over a decade.)
The reason to post this is the highlighted paragraph which brought to mind a recent Hello Internet podcast which discussed the Apple Watch shortly after they went on sale (but before delivery). While this article brings up the more obviously anticipated suggestion that those with more notification will find it most useful, I rather fall in the the Grey camp in that notifications are bad and that filtering them is a must to maintain sanity. I can't imagine having a wrist vibrating almost continuously every time Facebroke or LinkedOut feel the uncontrollable urge to notify you of the "One People" who have looked at your profile or the 17 posts which have been "liked" by people you once met drunk in a pub at university. It's just going to be maddening.
>Can we please stop it with modern companies painful drive for "engagement".

link to the actual Guardian article this morning
2015-05-29

Connecting Skype and Facebook - all or nothing.

Somehow it's impossible to link Facebook to Skype without allowing it full access to post to your Facebook. There are two option buttons: "OK" and "Not Now", so I clicked not now as I don't really want Skype to post, but perhaps in the future I might, just not now. Of course this is not an option. Clicking not spits you out and returns you back to the Skype front page. Why is this? Why should it not be possible to link two services but in a limited way? 

Fuck you @Skype.

Here's my #Windows10 Windows Feedback Feedback (c/o @Windows and @WindowsSupport)

After a brief conversation on Twitter with @Windows and @WindowsSupport regarding my generally positive feedback of Windows 10 Preview - which I really like and you can download today for free - we got on to talking about the Windows Feedback, which I do not so much. I'm familiar with the Apple Feedback Assistant which, while not perfect, is generally better. This Microsoft version seems like it's playing at mixing the ideas of Facebook and Feedback and come up with Feedbook (or perhaps Faceback).
I was pointed at the following link to "assist me with using Windows Feedback after I mentioned it was confusing. preview-updates-feedback-pc. Sadly I think they missed my point. It's not confusing to use in terms of hitting buttons until you submit something, it's confusing from the point of view of someone with a brain wanting to assist intelligently and intelligibly*.

please let me know if I can make anything here clearer
So rather than trying to converse on Twitter, which is pretty crap for trying to express anything longer than a brain fart, I turned to my trusty PowerPoint and made this Windows Feedback Screenshot Feedback Screenshot.
* at least I hope I'm intelligible.
2015-02-27

Doge Review - The New Gmail App for Android

It was all going so well, I was really liking the gmail app. It was functional, usable, almost pretty, I even liked the grey - and that's something I usually complain about, but it made the small coloured labels really stand out and yet still somewhat subtle.
Now there is a mass of colour at the top of the screen which bleaches out my color receptors making the colour that I put there less visible. Those labels now obscure the email content preview for no reason leaving massive white space between emails. That space between the emails is delineated by such a thin pale line as to be almost invisible. All this means there are fewer emails visible on screen at any time.

Doge Gmail App Review - make my feeling fresh

Amusingly none of the issues I had with the old design have been addressed. There are no new features other than the round "new email" button. The side menu is still less than useful and the settings are non existent. I thought technology was supposed to adapt to us (or at least enable us to adapt it). Not any more.
Contrast? Anyone? Anyone? Google? Anyone?

2014-11-07

Addendum:
I've also reviewed the settings page in a similar manner:

Operation Flashpoint Win

Here's a total win on Operation Flashpoint (now called Arma Cold War Assault).

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PS3 LoveFilm - Utterly Useless

Stupidity on the PS3
Anyone who's updated their PS3 recently will have noticed, perhaps with excitement, their film menu now has a 'Love Film' application. "Sweet!" you might exclaim, but that will be short lived as their application is utterly pathetic.

First fail: there is no option to have an account that only allows streaming through your PS3 so you have to pay for a DVD by post even though that is frankly pointless when you have a PS3 capable of streaming the very film you wait two days to receive and might be scratched when you get it. Sure you get the extras on a DVD, but really is that worth the hassle?

Second fail: the cheapest account (£5.99) gives you 2 hours of streaming time. At the 120th minute Love Film tell me your streaming JUST STOPS. Seeing as most films these days seem to be over 2 hours this must be as frustrating as hell. And considering how poorly the application seems to be put together I doubt you will be alerted beforehand that the film you've chosen will not be watchable. Why would they not make it so that you can get only one film streamed in it's entirety and no more - clearly this 2 hour is ment to represent this.

Third fail: the application itself advertises the £8.16 account as the cheapest account and makes no mention of the £5.99 option. It's only if you're willing to pay £9.99 can you get unlimited viewing.

Forth fail (and this is just not acceptable): you can't quit the application. Seriously, you can't. Pressing the PS3 button - the method used for quitting ALL playstation applications does nothing. Actually, no, it does something - it shows a red warning saying "that operation is not allowed"! WTF? I wrote straight to LoveFilm to ask what has gone wrong and they confirmed that you can't quit the application. The only way to quit is to hold down the PS3 button for five seconds which essentially brings up the PS3 equivalent to Ctrl-Alt-Delete to force quit the application. What utter stupidity, I just can't believe the shocking lack of any though put into this program.

Utter idiocracy.