#Amazonfail

Posted by & filed under Blogosphere, Brands, Events, LGBT, Memes, Usability.

A few weeks ago, I bought a new Kensington Expert Mouse to use at home. A friend helped me out, by having it shipped to her address in Washington to take advantage of a really good deal Amazon.com was offering to US-based customers. I ended up saving something like $60. Sweet. Deal.

So, my first Amazon sale completed, I was feeling pretty positive about them. Until yesterday.


Sunday morning, I was alerted to news of a somewhat poorly-planned decision at Amazon: to better cater to America’s “moral majority”, Amazon decided to excise the popularity rankings of LGBT books, delisting them from search results. Some authors’ books can only be found by searching for an unrelated title and clicking on the author’s name. Other authors’ entire selections have been delisted.

According to a thread on Livejournal’s Meta Writer community, Amazon has de-ranked such titles as Brokeback Mountain, Tipping the Velvet and Stone Butch Blues. This  begs the question: what on earth are these sheltered, bigoted Amazon customers searching for that is going to make them get all red-faced and choke down vomit upon discovering those books in their search results?

“Well, I never!” they’ll exclaim, spittle flying forth, “I wanted to read about the non-gay history of Brokeback Mountain! How was I to know it was fictional?”

In his blog post on the subject, Raul (Hummingbird604) compares the move by Amazon to last year’s “Motrin Moms” debacle. He also raises the question, is Easter Sunday a good time to be organizing a protest? Absolutely. Is Easter Sunday an okay time for Amazon PR to take the day off? Obviously not.

Worse, Amazon’s responses have ranged from “yes, we de-rank adult content” to “uh, it’s a glitch?” They haven’t demonstrated any cohesive strategy to managing their response, and continue to look worse and worse, the longer this goes on.


Since breaking Sunday morning, the #amazonfail and #glitchmyass hashtags on Twitter continue to trend highly a day later, inviting responses from Amazon’s competitors.

Amidst a flurry of suggestions that they hold a sale on LGBT books, Powells Books’ Twittter account notes that they will definitely not censor the presence of LGBT material on their site.

@cinemaestro That certainly is disturbing. Fortunately, Powell’s will never censor this material #amazonfail http://bit.ly/3Me5Un

about 7 hours ago in reply to cinemaestro

@zentinal A GLBT sale sounds like a great idea to me. I will check to see if this is something we can get going #amazonfail

about 6 hours ago in reply to zentinal

By Monday morning, the mainstream media was already reporting on the issue:


Oh, and per Smart Bitches, Trashy Books’ advice: Amazon Rank

Update, April 13, 2:50pm:
An email from an Amazon.com spokesman, reproduced by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, describes #Amazonfail as “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.”

The email goes on to say that a total of 57,310 books outside of the Gay & Lesbian categories were deranked and that they’re in the process of reinstating them.

So what happened? Did some mid-level manager enact some crazy new policy? Can Amazon’s ranking and reporting mechanisms be gamed?

Trackballs: A part of our heritage

Posted by & filed under Apple, Canada, Catherine, Gadgets, News, Usability.

In the summer of 2007, I learned I had a bit of an RSI problem when a can of Coke I was holding suddenly slipped from my grasp and plummeted to the ground. I couldn’t apply enough pressure with my thumb and fingers to hold it in my hand.

One short diagnosis of tennis and golfer’s elbow later, (“Catherine, you use the mouse a lot, don’t you?”) my doctor ordered me to find a less damaging pointing device. Since then, I’ve mostly relied on my laptop’s trackpad.

That’s all well and good while using my laptop, but for desktops, I needed a better solution. It’s really just Cirque that still makes USB trackpads, and those aren’t super either.

The Apple iTunes store provides a dozen or so “trackpad” apps, most of which use VNC to function as an input device alone. These let you use your wifi network to get your iPhone going as a trackpad. Surprisingly, this works fairly well, but it really does take gadget overkill to a whole new level.

So that leaves trackballs. Which is good, because I like them! [1]


kensington-expert-mouse-starburst

So beautiful. So majestic.

Consequently, for the past 18 months, I’ve been using a Kensington Expert Mouse 7.0, the latest version of the classic ADB trackball. Kensington trackballs are so good, in fact, that sometimes I print out trackball-advocacy literature and go door-to-door, inviting people to hear the good news.

The latest version of the Kensington Expert Mouse boasts the same four buttons in a butterfly layout, as well as a one-dimensional “scroll ring” around the ball. The ring’s movement could be a little smoother, but it moves easily and is difficult to nudge by mistake.

So yes, I strongly recommend the Kensington Expert Mouse to anyone, if only because I rely on other people’s continued interest in trackballs to ensure companies keep producing them. Aside from that, trackballs are generally fairly good, egonomically speaking, and also make it more difficult for mouse-only friends to use your computer, providing you with ample opportunity to look smug. If you’re into that sort of thing, I mean.

For my keyboard, I’ve been alternating between my MacBook Pro and a 2005-series white/clear Apple keyboard. I own a Microsoft Natural Pro ergonomic keyboard, but I never liked the “mushy” feeling of the keys. The last-generation Apple keyboard’s keys aren’t buckling-spring. so it’s no Model M, but they definitely have sufficient give and are nicely clicky — within the limits of dome-switch keyboards.

Aside from feel, many Microsoft keyboards have a bit of an issue that’s always bugged me: they tend not to detect the left shift key being depressed when character entry keys have already been hit. This makes my hastily-typed smiley emoticons look terrible: ;0

I am pleased to say that Apple’s keyboards have never exhibited this problem.


datar_trackball

Trackballs: A part of our heritage.

[1] Little-known Canadian trivia: the Royal Canadian Navy developed the first trackball back in the 1950s.

However, astute Canadians will note that this photo from Wikipedia shows the DATAR trackball assembly using flat-head screws, rather than superior, patriotic Robertson screws. For shame!

Catherine Omega Teaches You DVORAK

Posted by & filed under Brands, Talking to Catherine.

Catherine: Some person on Craigslist keeps trying to sell “Guildwars: Fractions”.
Catherine: I was thinking that was totally a good idea.
Catherine: You could have “Warcraft: Algebra Adventure!”
D: Heh.
Catherine: Ooh, _I_ should license MY likeness!
Catherine: I could be an edutainment LEGEND.
D: :)
Catherine: “Catherine Omega Yells at You Until You Use Commas Correctly, You Illiterate Morons”
D: “Catherine Omega’s What’s up with that Algebra!”
Catherine: Exactly!
Catherine: “Catherine Omega Teaches You DVORAK”

How to write a US Political Thriller: Start with the Secret Service codenames.

Posted by & filed under Brands, Events, News, Politics.

So the most pressing question of the post US-election period, beyond “did adults seriously come up with the name ‘labradoodle’?” and “will Team Obama need to buy their own keyboards?” is clearly, “what is Sasha Obama’s Secret Service codename?”

Apparently, it’s Rosebud. I find that a little weird on its own, but particularly so in light of the others assigned to the Obamas, Bidens and Bushes. According to the Chicago Tribune:

President-elect Barack Obama: Renegade
Michelle Obama: Renaissance
Malia Obama: Radiance
Sasha Obama: Rosebud
Vice President-elect Joe Biden: Celtic
Jill Biden: Capri
President George W. Bush: Tumbler
First Lady Laura Bush: Tempo

Aside from Bush’s codename, which I assume means that someone has a sense of humour, these all sound like cars. Crappy, marketer-named cars.

“This fall, test-drive the 2009 Chrysler Capri and discover an automotive experience that demonstrates why no one wants to buy Chrysler. Act now before the recall!”

Also, as an aside, I love the names-that-start-with-the-same-letter bit and all, but seriously, you guys are positive everyone can hear the difference between “Radiance” and “Renaissance” over an earpiece, right? I ask because the sitcom viewer in me thinks this is going to end with someone getting fired by an enraged President Obama.

Adventures in self-checkout UI

Posted by & filed under Complaint Department, Usability, Vancouver.

Part of being me is that basically every possible task I decide to undertake in my day-to-day life is completely unaccounted for by city planners, architects, designers, doctors, software engineers, and so on. Sometimes, this is simply due to the fact that I am tall[1], as in the case of the face-level wall sconce mounted in the hall next to my desk at work, or the fact that everything from doorknobs to toilets are generally too low for me to comfortably operate.

Other times, it’s due to my trademark life planning.

Consider the following scenario:

I stand in line for the self-checkout station at the Real Canadian Superstore in Metrotown[2], holding a $4 bag of chips and nothing else. Superstore shoppers will note that this bag is going to end up weighing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1-2kg. In my defense, I’m not allergic to potatoes. So it’s healthy.

Upon actually stepping up to the machine, I am prompted to enter the number of bags desired. Superstore shoppers will recall that part of their no-frills policy, they have a suckass website and charge 3 cents per plastic bag.

I select zero bags, pleased to see that whatever circulatory problem that prevents me from using touchscreen kiosks has temporarily reversed itself. Prompted to scan my item, I do so.

“Please place the item in the bag,” instructs the machine. I do not.

Instead, I toss my chips onto the bag-filling platform, triggering the weight sensor which tells the computer that an item has been added to… nothing, in this case. The machine prompts me to either scan my next item or to complete the sale. I briefly speculate about the number of people who bring their own reusuable bags to Superstore compared to the number of people who don’t want shopping bags because they’re buying the biggest possible bag of potato chips before deciding that it probably isn’t worth attempting to guess whether or not someone is living entirely on carbs and trans fats, just to see if they’re more likely to want to complete the transaction. Besides, I can’t immediately think of a way to make the “I am done and want to pay now” option any clearer.

Fortunately, the “paying” part goes well and only a modicum of grumbling and frowning is required.

[1] (Dude, please stop being offended that I won’t sit in the bus seat next to you. My legs don’t fit in there.)

[2] I am not afraid of Metrotown crowds because I can just push everyone out of my way and they’re usually too bewildered to do anything. Tragedy of the commons, bitches!

It sucks when the little guy falls on hard times.

Posted by & filed under Media, News.

So yeah, it turns out that if you let people buy things with imaginary money that they have no hope of paying back and then those things turn out to only be worth their actual value, rather than their imaginary, crazy-person value, your entire economy turns to crap. Who knew?

One side effect of this is that banks are suddenly forced to cut back on things like mortgages to unemployed people and employees — who are now unable to secure mortgages from their former employers. Bummer.

Case in point: Scarlett McCutcheon, former Bear Stearns employee, featured in this BBC News piece:

“I was very surprised when I was called into the head of the hedge fund group’s office and told that due to restructuring reasons, I was being let go.”

“Wow,” reporter Karen Nye responds.

On voiceover, Nye continues: “For one of the financial industry’s worker bees, living in a big city without an income is NOT easy.”

McCutcheon agrees: “You know, I’m not one of these… uh… storied Wall Street workers who makes millions of dollars in bonuses. You know, I had to pinch my pennies and really tighten my belt.”

Wow, that’s tough. Living in Vancouver without an income is tough enough, let alone a city like New York. Hey, I wonder what job she lost. The video didn’t mention that part. Let’s take a look at her LinkedIn profile:

Scarlett McCutcheon
Greater New York City Area
Past: Vice President at Bear Stearns

Aw, that’s a shame. It always sucks when upper management in the very department that cripples a multi-billion-dollar banking corporation gets let go because they fucked up so badly that it triggers a global economic crisis. How unfair.

BBC News: Life for Wall Street unemployed

Events of September, 1983

Posted by & filed under Memes, News.

From Wikipedia:

  • September 16 — Donna Griffiths of Pershore in England stops sneezing after a continual series of sneezes for 978 days (since January 13, 1981).
  • September 17 — Vanessa Lynn Williams becomes the first African-American to be crowned Miss America, in Atlantic City, New Jersey
  • September 25-September 26 — Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war.
  • September 26 — Australia wins America’s Cup

But you know, whatever.

“Why buy one when you can buy two for twice the price?”

Posted by & filed under Vancouver.

Living in Vancouver, one tends to notice that all the buildings look pretty much the same, be they Vancouver Specials or not-yet-leaky condo towers in Yaletown. However, the 770 Building takes the phenomenon to a whole other level:

In 1940 the Lubavitchers purchased a small collegiate-gothic-style Brooklyn building (once a medical clinic) at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for the sixth Rebbe, Yoseph Yitzchak Schneerson, who had recently immigrated to the United States to escape Nazi persecution.

[…]

Because of the Rebbe’s charisma, energy and the devotion of his followers, the building in Brooklyn has become a kind of holy ground for Lubavitchers. It has been replicated worldwide, with varying degrees of precision, mostly as Chabad centers

Really!

Personally, I like how the further you scroll—ahem, right—on the page, the crazier and more out-of-place the 770 copies get. Curiousity beckoned, and though that side made no mention of it, I looked to see if a 770 Building had shown up in Vancouver yet.

As it turns out, while there’s a Lubavitch Centre in Vancouver, good photos are difficult to find. Also, it’s at Oak and 41st and I really don’t want to go all the way down there right now.

Amusingly, the best photo I could find has a commenter who astutely points out that it’s one of the many “steel crown” buildings around Vancouver, which comes back to my original point: Vancouver has maybe five or six different building styles that are copied and pasted around as needed. It’s like living in SimCity.