pointing out the obvious

I solved this problem by using a reusable travel mug, but for those who insist in using disposable cups, the little green plug will deal with those annoying coffee spill problems.  Great idea - a simple solution for an extremely common problem.
See it in action on youtube.

This time, I didn’t see a great usability decision made in a coffee shop. Instead, it was at the Queen St subway station.

If I am like most people, when you exit a subway train and climb the stairs to the main level of the station, you have no idea what direction you are facing. Without a sense of direction, you are faced with choosing from at least 2 different exits - each exit then branching into at least 2 (often 3) different staircases leading to street level. The signage in the station that describes these exits is usually hard to find or read, and requires a few seconds to process. A few more seconds than you have. If you ride the subway during rush hour, stopping to process the sign is like stopping to tie your shoes during the running of the bulls. So you blindly pick an exit, and hope for the best. After 5 trips to work, I figure it out, but non-regulars don’t have that kind of time.
So, what did I see this morning? Directly in front of where the turnstiles let thousands of people out of the station, in the centre of the station, on the floor - where most people are looking - is a large white arrow, in a black circle, with an N at the top. It looks just like one of those things on a map, that point north, so you know which way to hold it. Gosh Beav’, maybe it is one of those things.

Instantly, I knew exactly which direction I was facing, thus which exit to take, then which branching exit to follow. Brilliant. It probably cost all of $20, and might actually help someone.

I hope to see more where that came from.

My ZipCar application (single driver) was approved on May 16th at 4:02pm, having applied on May 8th at 1:15pm according to the confirmation emails sent. This is about 7 business days… or 6 business days, 4 hours and 47 minutes to be exact (who’s counting). I was a little worried that I was going to be rejected given the website suggested an approval generally takes 2-3 business days, but the approval came through.

A day or two after applying, I dropped by the ZipCar office at Spadina and Richmond during my lunch break, picked up my card and information package from a friendly, young woman. The office was nice, bright and open. After returning to my desk I proceeded to simulate a denial of service attack on the application status page until I was approved - every 5 minutes or so for a week.

The very next day, a co-worker in the office told me that he applied to AutoShare and was approved within 48hrs. Hmm.. I figure I got lucky with the ZipCar promotion and owe the system some money so I filled out a joint application (which included my partner), using the “Smart Living St. Lawrence” promotion at 11:45am this morning. To my surprise I received a confirmation email at 5:25pm, TODAY. This is about 5 hours and 40 minutes according to my watch. Wow. That was fast.

So, I check the website for office hours and I have time to pickup my welcome package, keys and related information on my way home. Perfect. I get there about 15 minutes later, am greeted at the door by a nice young lady who confirms that I am in fact a fast walker - she just sent me the email! Awesome, they do the processing right in this office and know exactly who I am. I take my time looking around the office because it’s an old one on Mercer St, just across the street from the old Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women - which is now Rain (fire your web designer) and Schmooze. If I ever start a company, I’m getting an office like this - it’s nice and cozy. Anyways, she explains the welcome package, asks if I have a gold card (which I do) and asks me to fill out the $0 deductible form. I am out of there in 10 minutes.

The fact that AutoShare uses BullFrog Power does not go unnoticed. For those who are choosing car sharing for green reasons, it seems AutoShare is serious about it. AutoShare +1.

Points not mentioned so far: ZipCar +1 for the free application and credit on my account. AutoShare +1 for being so damn fast and organized.

Oh, and when I got home, the nice woman at AutoShare who processed my welcome package informed me that they overcharged my card by $27, but promptly reversed the transaction so I shouldn’t be alarmed if I see it on my statement. -2 for incorrectly charging my card, but +2 for identifying, correcting the situation and informing me immediately, so it’s even.

While we’re talking about incorrect charges, ZipCar forgot to credit my account with the full promotional amount. I emailed them and they corrected it right away. -2 for missing it, +1 for correcting it as soon as I pointed it out - sorry, only 1 point because I had to ask about it.

I had some trouble logging into the AutoShare website - it wasn’t clear for what my username or password was. Through some bumbling around, I figured out the username is my autoshare member number, and forced a reset of my password by attempting to login incorrectly. Either I missed something in the information package, or it was just missing. -1 for Autoshare.. the ZipCar site was far more usable.

So, if did the math right, it’s fairly even out of the gate: ZipCar 1, AutoShare 2.

Don’t worry, ZipCar will catch up in the ‘coolness’ factor with their fancy technology. I’ll keep you posted.

Amazon has recommendations, LibraryThing has the LibrarySuggester and other sites have other variations of this, but they are never quite right. Why is that? Do we not find the recommendations credible?

Amazon makes recommendations based on the book you are viewing, so if you like Harry Potter, you might also like what others who bought Harry Potter purchased. However, just because I purchased something doesn’t necessarily mean I liked it. LibraryThing makes recommendations based on a single book, which has the same limitation as Amazon. For members, LibraryThing also makes recommendations on all the books in your profile, matching them up against others with similar libraries - I assume your book ratings are taken into consideration. Surely this is as good as it gets?

Or do we need to go one step further and ‘decode’ a book the way that Pandora decodes music? Unfortunately, we all know how hit or miss Pandora recommendations can be. Along with Last.fm, Pandora’s recommendations are probably the best I’ve seen, but they still aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s easier to decode a book than it is to decode music?

I feel as though we can do better.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet - NAU.com is open for business. For those who don’t know, NAU is a clothing retailer that uses sustainable fabrics, is eco friendly and 5% of each purchase goes to a charity of your choice.

I saw some of their fabrics in the early stages of development - they were extremely interesting. NAU has definitely done their homework in terms of developing and using new renewable fabrics that perform as well as, or better, than conventional fabrics.

They also took a great step in terms of making outdoor clothing stylish. NAU’s lead designer, Mark Galbraith, did a fantastic job with the design.

The site, developed completely in flash, is pretty impressive. The imagery and transitions are nice, you get a great feeling for the people behind the clothing.

Clearly I have a soft spot for these guys.

With technology companies creating all kinds of useless gadgets, I think it’s about time they create a smart phone. When I say smart, I mean smart enough to not require diapers anymore. Here’s the idea..

Most cellular and mobile phones have bluetooth. Most offices are migrating towards IP phones. IP phones should be bluetooth enabled so that my cellular phone will detect it’s presence, and automatically forward all my calls to it. When I walk away from my desk, my cell figures out that I’m no longer sitting next to my landline and will turn call forwarding off.

You can extend this idea to allow everyone’s cell to forward to the nearest phone. If someone is sitting at my desk, maybe all of their cell calls are directed to that phone? Wouldn’t it be great if your cell calls were directed to the nearest phone in the airport lounge while you wait for your flight?

I guess the idea here is to have a single number for everyone. Whether you are at work, at home or on the move, people only have to call a single number to reach you. This also avoids insane cellular bills by forwarding calls to landlines, as well as increasing the quality of the call (I get terrible cell coverage at the Maple Leaf lounge in Pearson’s Terminal 1).

You might think cellular carriers would hate this idea - it reduces the number of minutes consumed, but if you think about it, it would INCREASE the number of calls throughout their networks. Your mobile number is now your main number - which is almost the case now, but in this case there are no other numbers. This is a cellular carriers dream.

Of course you can extend this idea and apply it to a range of other concepts, but I think the cellular application is the most relevant.

It looks like someone patented a similar idea, but it’s convoluted and impossible to understand.

Interesting results.  When searching for “atg documentation” in google, this site shows up in the #3 (mirror) and #5 spots.  ATG shows up as #1, but you have to register and login to view the docs, so a search engine won’t actually index the meat of the documentation.

awesome.

I’ll have to agree with Stephen Landau when he suggests using the lending information libraries have to get a better feeling for the book, and get further book recommendations. Bookmooch and LibraryThing aim to accomplish this in some way or another, as do most online book retailers such as Indigo. I guess the difference is credibility? What exactly makes a recommendation credible?

Is it having a name behind the recommendation? Knowing that you can (but won’t) reach out and contact the recommender? Maybe it’s the illusion of seeing a regular person’s impressions of a book, as opposed to the Amazon style semi-professional book reviewer. hmm…

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I’m going to sleep on this.

This is old news by now, I had host issues last week and gave up posting.. but this was a draft, and I’m going to post it anyways.

Yahoo Pipes was released last week. It’s an interesting tool that allows you to create your own stream of relevant data - using a pretty sweet interface. So, if I wanted to see all news articles about burritos near my office, I can build a little flow chart that takes info from yahoo search, google base, flickr and any other supported input, pass in my information (which they make pretty slick!) and blamo - custom feed.

This is where things start getting interesting. Google applies for a Kiosk patent, with diagrams showing a ‘Google Kiosk’ application that will search for products within a shopping mall. The results indicate which stores sell said product, and any relevant coupons you might use to purchase said product.

This is when the rules of brick and mortar shopping start to change. You will no longer have to walk to a store, only to find the product not in stock. If you don’t have to walk down to visit a store, you won’t be tempted to pickup a dozen other unrelated items while you window shop your way down the mall. If you don’t buy things you don’t need, the mall loses revenue, and stores close.

Or, this brings more people into the mall, knowing they can find things more easily. Lets not forget Google will be advertising related products from related stores based on your search. This might be the most interesting part - it could be a completely sealed system - only mall stores and merchandise would be listed and used in the Google ads. You search for a reebok hockey bag, which is available at sportchek but Google Ads note a hockey blowout sale is happening at The Bay, where bags start from $39.

Another interesting twist would be to expose that interface to the net, so I can figure out if that $79 reebok hockey bag is carried at, and instock at sportchek before even visiting the Eaton Center. Who wants to go to the mall if you can’t get what you want?

Checkout the review of the Google Kiosk patent details, or the actual application for yourself.