Month: October 2007

Companies That Want Feedback Rock

I spent nearly 90 minutes on the phone today with the folks at ACD Systems, the makers of the awesome ACDSee. I’ve been using ACDSee since 1998 or so, and always upgrade to every new version (though to be fair the upgrade process has been free lately because I’m a member of “the media”). Why would I spent 90 minutes on the phone with them? I’ve been giving them direct feedback here and there about their product via email for a little over a year now, and they suggested a phone call to talk about my ideas and suggestions for their product so I obliged.

There was a product planner, a developer, and a marketing person in the room, and they let me open up my brain and dump all the ideas, fixes, improvements, and concepts I had for how I thought ACDSee could be made even better. I feel very passionate about computer hardware and software that I use, and am always looking for opportunities to improve it. That’s partially out of a desire to have a better tool for my own needs, but it’s also because when I pick a product I tend to stick with it – I have a very strong sense of loyalty, like a sports fan to his home team, so I want to see the product I’ve picked “win” in the market.

The folks at ACDSee are great – they listened intently, engaged me on many levels to drill down into my ideas, and were genuinely enthused to listen to me talk about how I’d like to see the product improved. The next version won’t have everything I asked for of course, but I bet I’ll see quite a few of the little things addressed.

Any company that’s willing to engage deeply with their customers is a winner in my books – more companies should do it, but most are afraid of their customers and try to keep them at arm’s length.

Now I just need to find a way to make money doing this… 😉

Why Is WiFi Less Stable Year by Year?

I swear that WiFi overall as a technology is less and less stable every year. Back when it was only 802.11b, I don’t remember having nearly as many problems as I have lately. I’ve owned D-Link, Belkin, Netgear and Linksys routers – all have been replaced in my hunt for a fast, stable router that works with all of my equipment. The past month or so has been particularly hair-pulling; I’ve been in wireless router hell.

A couple of weeks ago my still-quite-new D-Link 802.11n router (a DIR-655) flaked out on me. I spent an hour thinking it was my cable modem, eventually narrowed it down to the router, then wasted an hour on the phone jumping through D-Link tech support hoops just so I could get an RMA and get the router exchanged. It took talking to three techs before they’d admit there was a hardware problem with the router. From the beginning the router had compatibility problems with my wife’s iPAQ 1950, even with the latest firmware on both devices. It’s embarrassing in a geeky way when my wife has to Exchange sync over WiFi at work because the home network is never functioning. I bought the iPAQ 1950 to replace the previous iPAQ that had trouble connecting over WiFi, hoping that the newer model would be more compatible with modern WiFi. It’s not. I don’t believe the compatibility problems are due to a hardware failure – I think the DIR-655 just has poor compatibility with WiFi devices, which is a common issue I’ve seen with routers over the past two years.

I then switched to my backup router, also a D-Link (DI-624). It kept dropping my connections, both wired and wireless, so I swore I’d never buy another D-Link router. I went out and bought a Belkin 802.11n router, another brand I’ve had trouble with in the past and never wanted to buy again – but there are only so many choices on the market. The Belkin router worked perfectly when I swapped it into place, but now my Fujitsu P7020 laptop running Windows XP refuses to connect to it regardless of which mode I put it in (WPA, WEP, no security, 802.11n/g, or 802.11g). The HTC Touch won’t connect to it either – it can’t even see the network. The AT&T Tilt locked up the Wireless Manager trying to connect to it, so I reset it. Trying to even remove the wireless network setting locks up the wireless manager on the Tilt. When I did manage to get it to connect to the Belkin router and prompt me for the WPA password, it would try to connect for a few seconds, then come back and show me a list of networks again. My Dell XPS M1330 can connect to the Belkin router if it’s in 802.11g/n mode, but not if it’s in 802.11g only mode. I’m in wireless hell.

The ultimate frustration here is that whenever I can’t get wireless working properly and I’m in desperate need of a connection, I always connect to a neighbour’s unsecured network called “default” – and almost every device can connect to it (the Tilt can’t however). I’m tempted to go knocking on some local doors to see who’s router it is, and ask if I can buy it – because clearly whatever old, unsecured hardware they’re using is superior to all the modern, expensive routers that I keep buying.

Make Marketing Surveys Worth My Time

I received a phone call yesterday where the caller said he was from the Royal Bank of Canada (the bank I use) and they had a customer survey for me. I had a million things to do, but I asked how long it would take – I could spare a couple of minutes. He said the survey would take 10 to 13 minutes on average. I asked if there was some sort of incentive for doing the survey (maybe a month of no-fee banking?) and he sheepishly said no. I politely said that my time was worth something and declined to answer the survey. He seemed stunned that I wasn’t willing to give up 15 minutes of  my time (I tend to be rather…expressive when asked for my opinion) for nothing. I suspect that the majority of the people they get to answer these surveys are the kind of people who feel special when asked for their opinion – which would typically be the kind of person who’s not in any sort of leadership position at work or home life. I’d say even your average frazzled home-based mom with kids wouldn’t want to give up 15 minutes for no good reason. So who are the people who the Royal Bank is going to get their results from? Not a good cross-section of their customer base, that’s for sure.

If you’re doing a phone survey without any perks for the person answering the questions, it should be a short, under-two-minutes survey. If you want someone to give up 15 minutes of their time, give them something…ANYTHING…to make it worth their while.

A July Sunset

In mid-July (yes, I’m that behind on processing some of my photos) I spent a little over an hour chasing one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. I shot over 120 photos because I just couldn’t stop – every few minutes the light changed, and a new version of the sunset would appear. I shot from three different locations until the sun went down past the mountains. The beauty of creation was never so brilliant! The whole gallery is found here.

The Quick New York Trip: Day One

[I’m now at home, and didn’t manage to get this published while in New York, but I figured since I’d written it I might as well publish it!]

Preparation: it’s been about a year since I’ve had a flight last over 90 minutes, so right at the last minute I realized I should have loaded up some DVDs or TV shows to watch on the 4.5 hour flight. Managed to get one ripped DVD onto a USB flash drive before I headed out the door, but that’s it. My wonderful wife got my suitcase packed and off to the airport.

Airport Check-In: Air Canada’s slogan should be “Giving you the longest lines since 1959”. They’re the worst when it comes to getting people checked in fast. They’ve added electronic check-in, but guess where the machines are located? About 20 people deep into the line for the human-powered check-in. Why wouldn’t they be outside the main line? And when you use the machine, people pass you, so if the machine doesn’t work for you, you’ve lost your place in line. The process was very slow, but it did manage to get me checked in ok. I took my printed boarding pass and went through security, where my D200 camera in my carry-on bag managed to get flagged for a bag search. “Keep smiling even if they’re looking at your underwear” is my motto at security.

Airport Waiting: I think all airports should offer free WiFi. They charge so many damn taxes, the least they could do is provide something useful like WiFi. The Calgary airport has WiFi powered by Telus, our local overcharging-happy communications company, and it’s pretty expensive so I skipped it. I ate some fast-food lunch because the much healthier Jugo Juice is on the other side of the security glass. It’s lame that once you get past security you have to be “partitioned” off.

Technology On The Plane: I don’t know what kind of Air Canada plane I was flying on (it’s either a B777 or a refurbished Beoing 767), but it looked and felt quite new – and it actually had some very cool technological features. A first for me on a North American flight was having laptop power. And we’re not talking some funky airline-only power plug (which is what they normally are), we’re talking a simple three-prong power jack that any North American laptop power supply can connect to. The only problem is that it’s tucked away below the seat, so I had to practically get down on the floor in order to plug my laptop in. There’s also only one port, so I guess if two people had laptops you’d have to take turns. It was mostly for fun anyway, because my Dell XPS M1330 with the extended battery lasts about five hours (I still miss the 10+ hour battery life of my Fujitsu P7010). Strangely enough they’re still using the old dual-prong audio plugs – you can use regular headphones if you don’t connect the jack all the way and find the stereo connection, but a slight touch will put the headphones back to mono. I have an adaptor but never remember to bring it.

The plane also had a 7 inch wide-ratio LCD screen on the back of every seat. It had a touch-screen interface, so I could access movies, TV shows, music, etc. Screen quality wasn’t that good, but it resisted sunlight wash-out quite well. I watched most of Die Hard 4, but the experience was less impressive than it should have been for two reasons: the movie was in a 4:3 ratio, not a wide-screen ratio, and even though I was watching the English version (I confirmed it twice) there were Chinese sub-titles through the whole movie. It also looked overly compressed and mushy. The last cool tech feature was a USB port to the left of the screen, used for recharging any USB-based device (MP3 player, PDA, phone, etc.). That’s an awesome feature that all planes should have – kudos to Air Canada for having it! The only thing missing was connectivity, although sometimes it’s nice to be disconnected for a while. If all planes I flew on had the technology features that this flight had, flying would be much nicer.

Service On The Plane: As impressive as the technology was, the flight was Air Canada all the way. In-flight drinks were served a couple of times, but even on an almost five-hour flight, they served no food. Not even a 25 cent bag of pretzels! They will sell you food, but I’ve always felt it was a rip-off to pay for an expensive flight and not have any food included. Charge $5 more for the ticket and give everyone some basic food. No one will remember saving $5 on a ticket, but they will remember being hungry on a flight. Buying food on a plane has the psychological barrier of seeming expensive, and it’s a hassle to carry cash (they always ask for exact change). At least the flight attendants were nice.

From Airport to Hotel: Because of the looming taxi strike, I called a town car company named Carmel and booked a car to and from the airport in advance. I had only my carry-on bags, so I was ready for car pick-up pretty much as soon as I got off the plane. They told me where to stand so the car would find me, but after 15 minutes of waiting (they said 5 minutes) I phoned to ask where my car was. While I was on hold with Carmel my town car called and asked where I was. I said right where they told me to be and he said “Oh, ok, I’ll be right there”. A few minutes later the driver arrives, and it’s a blue mini-van. Town car my ass. 40 minutes later I arrived at my hotel. I now remember what a noisy city New York is – you can’t go 10 seconds without hearing someone honking at someone else. It’s sure a city that feels alive though!

Continue reading The Quick New York Trip: Day One

Lethbridge Air Show 2007

Ashley and I went to the Lethbridge Air Show with our friends Kim and Mitch Berreth in August 2007. It was the first air show I’d been to, so it was interesting to see all the planes up close. The Snowbirds performed, and a monster truck showed up as well – a curious addition to an air show, but it was fun taking pictures of a big truck crushing already mostly-crushed cars.

My camera worked overtime – I shot around 1300 photos, trying to capture the best shots possible. Unfortunately many of the aerial acrobatics were a bit outside the range of my zoom lens, so these photos involved a lot of cropping and a lack of sharpness. The biggest challenge though was in post-production: I had shot so many photos that were nearly identical it was a headache to pick the best ones. It took me hours to get through them all and an added bonus was a smudge on my lens that had to be fixed in almost every single photo. At any rate, the photos turned out pretty well for being my first attempt at shooting fast-moving objects from the ground. Here are a few photos from the online album.

The Future of the Music Industry

There’s a very long, but simply awesome article up on the New York Times Web site that’s an absolute must-read if you’re interested in where the music industry is at today, and what the future holds for it. One of the best quotes from the article is from Fredric Dannen:

“My epiphany, if you want to call it that, was simply this: consumers of recorded music will always embrace the format that provides the greatest convenience. No other factor — certainly not high fidelity — will move consumers substantially to change their listening and buying habits. The single exception to this rule was the introduction of two-channel stereo in the late fifties. Let me state this more clearly, by example. When the long-playing record (LP) format was introduced by Columbia Records back in the late 1940s, the industry as a whole resisted it, and many predicted it would never take off because 78s sounded better. Without question, early LPs did not sound nearly as good as 78s. But given the choice of listening to all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on two sides of one record versus sixteen sides of eight records, the consumer opted for convenience and simplicity (not to mention less shelf space).”

I couldn’t agree more with that quote – that’s the reason why HD-DVD and Blu-ray are having such a hard time taking off…DVD’s look “good enough” and the newer high-definition formats don’t offer real value over what’s out there now.

Are We Looking At An Apple Future?

The above image, taken from this blog, is sobering for a long-time Windows guy like myself. The Mac marketshare numbers continue to grow, and if this image is any indication what the average college student is using, I wonder what sorts of shifts we’ll start to see in market share five years from now? As much as I like Vista, it just doesn’t measure up to what I was expecting to see from an operating system that had been worked on for five years. Will Vista be remembered as the tipping point for when Microsoft’s empire started to fall? I sure hope not, but I’ve lost count of the number of people I know that have switched to OS X…

I’m Pondering Bridged Internet Access

Speed. There aren’t many Internet users who wouldn’t want Web sites to load faster, files to download quicker, and email messages with large attachments to get sent faster. Upload speed in particular hasn’t kept pace with download speeds – over the past five years I’ve seen my cable modem downstream speeds double from 5mbps to 10mbps, but the upstream speeds have inched up to only 1mbps. Having 1mbps of upstream bandwidth is more than enough for regular email, even with some hefty attachments, but once you start looking at uploading 500 MB worth of photos or a 100 MB video to YouTube, upstream bandwidth starts to become the bottleneck. There’s also the issue of network stability – it doesn’t matter how fast your connection is if it’s down.

So in light of that, I started to look at hardware that allows you to bond together multiple cable modems or DSL modems, giving you a faster connection. I remember systems similar to this back in the 56K modem days – they called it “shotgunning” back then if memory serves. There’s relatively cheap hardware from D-Link ($179 USD), and there’s a solution from Linksys that’s roughly double the price. In addition to the faster upload speed, which I desperately want, there’s the issue of external network stability and speed. Sometimes I’ll find that the connections that Shaw (my local cable modem provider) peers out to are bogged down, and I often wonder if I had Telus DSL (the “other guys”) I’d be seeing better overall performance.

There are some catches with this approach however: in my research thus far I’ve found that each “connection” can only be attached to one external modem. So if I’m doing an upload to YouTube, it will go out via one of the modems, not giving me a combined upload speed of two modems. If an uploader is multi-threaded (say, a photo uploader) then each thread can run on each of the modems, giving a much faster experience. But quite often the things I’d want more upload speed on are things like big FTP uploads, which if it’s a single file, is only going to use one modem.

So while I started out quite excited about the idea of bridged Internet access over two high-speed modems, it seems the reality of the situation makes it a bit less appealing. Anyone out there doing this have any thoughts?

Are These The World’s Ugliest Bluetooth Headphones?

I’ve never had any dealings with the folks at Etymotic, and while I’m sure their headphones are impressive, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I saw this ad on another Web site:

The ety8 headphones might sound amazing for all I know, but they look too much like big, clunky earrings for me to ever be comfortable wearing them out in public. When I saw them my first thought was of Star Trek, and not in a good way – if I geek like me gets a negative impression from that, then on the street it could only be worse.

It’s kind of ridiculous that the leading MP3 players (iPod, Zune, Sansa) still don’t have Bluetooth built-in – yet with Bluetooth designs like this, maybe it’s not so surprising…