Touch Screens are trendy, I get it – but that doesn’t make them the right choice in all of the latest gadgets.
When I had to pick up my parents from the airport today, I borrowed their new Minivan to do the job. I refuse to drive my Mazda on these winter potholes, and there’s no way there were going to fit in my Jeep. Aside from not being able to find the washer fluid button, the touch screen in the center console really annoyed me. I realized that I had to constantly take my eyes off the road as I tried to change radio stations on the freeway. It’s the same problem I have when trying to dial my iPhone while driving: There’s no tactile feedback.
I’m about as old school as a 27 year old can get. I can touch type in both regular and Dvorak. I can use the number pad and special symbols on a keyboard without looking, and I can even crunch numbers on a calculator without looking – that goes for regular and Polish layouts.
Before my iPhone I had a nextel i730. It didn’t have internet, and it didn’t have a touch screen. What it did have though was buttons. Buttons that had a raised dot on some of them so that I could feel my way around the keyboard. This meant I could effectively dial a number without looking. If I knew the order of somebody’s name in my contact list I could even hit “contact list”, down down down down, talk and select the right person. Thanks to the speakerphone, I didn’t even need to take the phone out of the cup holder.
I can’t do any of that now, and thanks to the trendiness of touch screens, I can’t even change a radio station anymore without looking at the screen. Now I’m seeing touch screen phones, mp3 players, laptops, cars, everything – and it’s making me sick. In most cases a touch screen isn’t the right answer. It may seem cool, but it’s also counter productive.
In my college days I worked at Wendys as a manager. When we switched to touch screens, order taking became a much longer process. Before the touch screens I could take an order without having to look at the screen. That meant I could have one hand out the window making change with a car while the other one pressed the corresponding buttons on the keypad. In fact, that method alone had my store setting multiple drive through speed records.
When the touch screens came in, there was no way to tell what you were pressing on the screen. The smarter employees quickly learned to just remember an order and type it all in after they made change for the car at the window, but the customer accuracy screen prevented that. People simply stopped ordering until they saw the last thing they said show up. Order taking went from averaging 6 seconds per car to averaging over 20 seconds per car. In addition, the screens quickly became all fingerprinted up and blurred on the most pressed areas. The average life of a screen became about 2 years.
Clearly, the touch screen didn’t work as good as the old fashioned typewriter style computers.
So before you start putting touch screens into places where they don’t make sense – think about it. Are you using a touch screen because it’s cool and trendy, or does it really make your product more usable?
Just a quick note to say that I’ve officially launched the Translate British iPhone App. The App is similar to the NoSlang App only instead of being an internet slang dictionary, it’s a British to American dictionary. Go check them out, both apps are $0.99 in the App Store. If you do choose to buy a copy, please give it a review.
Having extra free time I’ve started to actually code again, so I want to recap some of the new sites I’ve launched in the last few months.
There’s Fail Pictures, which lets people browse, rate, and upload their own fail pictures. If you’re not familiar with that meme, it’s quickly sweeping the internet.
I also added WoW Slang to my family of slang sites. That means I now have internet slang, drug slang, World of Warcraft slang, British slang, and swear words. All of the sites are linked at AllSlang.com.
I also just launched a new text message site called TextSendr. It’s been over a year since I sold my previous text message site, and I’m taking a turn at re-writing the code from scratch. It’s amazing how many things you can learn when you undertake a project for the 2nd time and totally start over. The site’s pretty basic right now, but I’ve got some cool things planned for it.
I’ve got a few more ideas brooding, but I’m not ready to release anything on those yet, so stay tuned.
If you haven’t noticed, the American economy is going to shit. The bailout isn’t working and things are just getting worse.
When I talked last year about fixing America’s problems I had no idea we were headed into the giant recession that we’re now facing. The bailout, designed to put more money in the hands of consumers, has just resulted in the banks tightening up loans and using the money for ill-conceived expenditures. AIG spent it on bonuses and vacations. BAC spent 10 million on a circus at the Super Bowl.
Instead of spreading the money, giving mortgages and creating jobs, the rich are simply hording money away. It’s having the opposite effect and things are just getting worse.
There’s a way to fix all of that though, and here’s how:
Eliminate the payroll tax for American Citizens
If you’re like me, the first thing you said when you got a job was “who’s this FICA guy, and why is he taking so much of my money?” Instead of throwing billions to the banks, that money would be better spent on subsidizing or eliminating the payroll tax. That would not only put extra money in the pockets of all hard working americans, but it would also give tax incentives to companies who hired citizens – as hiring a foreigner or off sourcing a $50,000 job would cost the company an extra $2-$3000/year in taxes. This would create spending a lot more than just giving money to banks would.
Let Companies Fail
I’m from the Detroit area, and the last thing I want to see is the auto companies fail – trust me. Sometimes though, you have to let companies go under so that better, more efficient ones can take their place. If Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, and all the others closed their doors right now there would still be an auto industry – eventually. There will always be a market for cars, and where there’s a market there’s a way to make money. It’s as simple as supply and demand.
The unions are working and the current companies are spending way more than they can afford to. Instead of propping up them, the government needs to let them fail. As much as it would hurt people and I don’t want to see it, it needs to happen. We live in a capitalist society with a free market, and we need to let that free market run it’s course. It’s not the government’s job to prop up failing businesses. It’s not the government’s job to get involved at all.
If the car companies do fail, new ones will take their place. These new ones won’t have workers making $30/hour to unpack parts from a box, and they won’t be spending 10 million per year on Viagra for retirees. The same holds true for the airline industry.
Change the Incentive Programs
The entire financial industry needs to change the way it rewards employees. Portfolio managers need to be paid over the term of the fund they manage – not just short term results. Mortgage brokers need to be paid their commission in installments over the term of the mortgage, not all at once at closing. This stops people from selling $500,000 homes to people making $40,000/year. That’s what got us into this mess.
Switch to a Flat or Fair Tax Program
I’m a big fan of the FairTax, and I think now is the best time to implement it. Here’s how it works: Eliminate the state and federal income taxes and start charging a higher flat sales tax. Something like 10-12%, but only on non essential goods. This means no tax on things like water, electricity, groceries, gas, and toilet paper. The system taxes those who spend while putting more money in the pockets of those who scrape to get by from paycheck to paycheck. You might be asking yourself, what are the tax implications of earning over £100k? As soon as you start earning over £100,000, you gradually lose your £12,570 tax-free Personal Allowance, pound by pound.
Fix The Roads
2 things got us out of the first depression: The Assembly line and Highways. Unfortunately, nobody wants to do that type of job anymore. As more and more people struggle to find work though, that should change. We spent all of the 1920’s building roads and highways everywhere – and now they’re not only falling apart but they’re inefficient. Detroit is the “Motor City” yet we don’t even have carpool lanes. We have redundant streets and freeways with exits every 1/4 mile that only lead to unnecessary backups. Instead of paying for SuperBowl circuses, let’s spend that money on fixing our infrastructure. We need better, more efficient roads, and public transportation that works. In some places (like my home town) we need start filling in the millions of potholes that have cost me 2 rims on my Mazda so far this winter. Fixing the roads will not only save money in the long run and reduce carbon emissions, but it will create tons of new jobs that put money back in flow.
There’s lots of blogs out there talking about the best and funniest Super Bowl ads from the other day. There were some pretty entertaining ads, but one of them still sticks out in my head as being the most effective.
I’m talking about the Miller High Life ad. All 0:01 of it.
A few days before the Super Bowl, Miller put out a commercial talking about 1 second ads and told us to keep an eye out for theirs during the super bowl. Throughout the entire first half it’s all my friends and I could talk about. 10-12 of us sat there through every commercial break looking to see the ad. A few times we’d ask if somebody else saw it, or if we missed it. When it eventually came on, a few of us did miss it. Thankfully, it’s preserved forever online. Here it is if you haven’t seen it:
So why was this ad so great? The ad itself wasn’t great, but the hype was. Selling a product on TV has very little to do with the ad itself, and lots to do with getting people to talk about your product. I’ll probably never buy a Miller High Life (I’m more of a whiskey/bourbon man) but somehow I managed to spend an entire evening talking about it with 10 other people and then still sit down to write this post. If you ask me, that’s one hell of an effective ad.
How many other people do you think sat there like we did waiting to see what the 1 second ad was all about? Many of us saw Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but now fail to remember what product they were selling – others even got to see a few seconds of porno – but I’d be willing to bet that none of us forgot the High Life ad.
Just a quick note to let everybody know that I’ve officially released the NoSlang.com iPhone App. The app is a full internet slang dictionary for the iPhone.
It’s available for $0.99 in the App Store (just search for NoSlang)
I’d love for everybody to check it out and leave me some feedback. Thanks!
Last week, Twitter – the extremely popular in California but never really heard of on the east coast micro blogging platform – announced that it was placing new limits on its API restrictions. White listed (meaning hand approved by Twitter) services will have a new limit of 70,000 accesses per hour, while non white-listed accounts can only hit twitter 70 times per hour.
So what does this mean?
It means what I’ve been saying all along: Using somebody else’s API to improve the look and feel of their service is not a good business model. Eventually, they’re going to implement your features on their own and cut you off.
Many 3rd party Twitter applications are going to be realizing this, especially now that Twitter has just got a new capital infusion. It seems like every day I hear Scoble talking about a new iPhone app, website, or desktop app that’s nothing more than a prettier version of Twitter, so you can bet that Twitter will be using some of this money to take some of the ideas that other people have come up with. (seriously, I wonder how many twitter apps Scoble actually uses on a daily basis?) If they want to monetize to their full potential, they’re going to have to get those users back to using the main service and not all these Twitter API spinoffs.
It will be interesting to see what comes next out of Twitter and how they eventually monetize, but until then one thing is for sure: A business model that consists of just adding flare to somebody else’s API is doomed for failure – especially if the company you’re building on can’t even monetize their own product.
A new scientific theory suggests that the universe could, in fact, be nothing more than a hologram. It’s a pretty cool theory, and you probably need a very good understanding of physics just to read the article.
If the world is really a hologram though, it’s going to have a lot of interesting consequences. It will make it possible for things to be true one day and false the next, and it will certainly get rid of the whole idea of free will.
It’s soft of neat to think about, and scary at the same time.
The coolest part though is that it may just share other properties of holograms. For example, if you were to take a holographic image and cut it in half you wouldn’t get half an image. You’d get the whole image at 1/2 size. You can keep cutting it any way you like, but you wouldn’t lose anything other than size.
Holograms are cool like that, every tiny piece contains all of the information of the whole hologram. To put that in “our universe” terms, that means an atom actually contains all of the information in the universe. That’s pretty cool, and it’s consistent with some old physics conundrums that I remember back in college.
If you ever took intro to physics, you probably remember that calculating the potential energy between 2 electrons would result in an infinite number. With the holographic theory, that makes sense.
This post probably doesn’t make sense to many people, and I’m still reading about the theory but it sounds really cool. I’ll be sure to re-read my copy of “the holographic universe” by michael talbot now that there’s some research to his theory.
I know what you’re thinking: “Offline SEO, that doesn’t make sense. SEO is all about getting visitors to my website.”
There’s more to SEO than just getting visitors, but when it comes to getting visitors why should they have to come from another web page?
According to some SEO agencies, offline SEO is often one of the most effective ways of getting new visitors to your website, and there’s lots of ways to do it.
Here’s some examples:
1. TV Ads
Ok, while TV ads probably aren’t an option for many of you due to cost, they’re still one of the best ways to advertise a website. Just think about all of the infomercials you see out there with URLs in them. They’re there for a reason.
2. Billboards, Bus Stops & Benches
Every time I drive by a bus stop or city bench I notice the ad on it, but what I don’t notice is a URL. Every ad I see has a phone number though. What’s easier to remember while you’re driving? 1-866-555-6789 or www.RentaDumpster.com?
Based upon the product or service that you want to advertise, transit advertising can be a very beneficial method of your marketing plan. To learn more about transit advertising, you can visit https://ongo.ph/transit-advertising-philippines/
3. Google Radio
If you haven’t played with Google radio ads yet, you should. For a very small investment you can get your ad heard by thousands of people as they drive to and from work. You only get 30 seconds, so you should try to get your website mentioned at least 3 times in the ad. You’ll be surprised at the results you get.
4. Newspapers and Magazines
Newspapers and Magazines often have vast online archives that are just full of pagerank. The only way to get into them though, is to actually have an article mention you in the newspaper or magazine. The easiest way to do this is to just write the article yourself or submit infographic posts. There’s thousands of small town papers and grocery store magazines that accept submissions, and niche magazines are always looking for new content from authorities on their subjects. Writing an article is also a great way to help build yourself up as an expert in that field. Pick up a writers market, read their post, and start sending your content around.
5. TV and Radio
Once you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field, you should see yourself receiving requests to be interviewed on relevant talk radio or TV news stories. Tons of people listen to talk radio and watch their local news – and you’ll be shocked at how many actually click over to your website. In addition, you may even get a nice juicy link from the station.
6. Coupons
Depending on your business, it may be a wise idea to mail out some coupons. This can be a simple letter, or a fancier postcard. Don’t get trapped in the “coupons only work for repeat customers” line of thinking. Creative “refer a friend” style coupons are a great way to help your customers spread word of mouth.
7. The Phone Book
I personally don’t own one, but lots of people my parents age do. You can’t think of the baby boomers as computer illiterate anymore. They’re starting to get computers and they’re starting to be able to use them really good. They may still look to the phone book instead of Google, but that doesn’t mean they won’t visit your site after they find you in the phone book.
8. Your Car
Think about it. How many people see your car on your drive to and from work? What about vacation? A simple little URL sticker on your rear window can actually drive a lot of people to pull out their iPhone and say “wtf is that… let’s see…” Just don’t put it near your license plate though, that’s illegal.
9. Business Cards
Sure your work business cards already have your URL on them (or they should) but what if you’re like me and run several personal websites too? Head on over to VistaPrint and get some free cards made up for your personal sites. When you meet somebody at the bar, or a friend of a friend, give them this personal one instead.
10. Your Logo
Is your URL part of your logo? Making it part of your logo ensures that it will always be on any merchandise, uniforms, stationary, signs, and anything else you’d normally put your logo on.
11. Sponsor a sports team
Find a local beer league hockey, softball, or bowling team and offer to buy their jerseys for them. They’ll love you, and your logo and website will be worn all throughout the league. Sponsoring a hole at a golf tournament is also another great way to build website awareness.
I didn’t want this to become a censorship blog. I find writing about such things incredibly boring, but people keep doing stupid things. We’ve heard about state senators who want to ban swear words, but the latest to irk me is the Apple app store.
I’ve just submitted my 3rd attempt at an internet slang dictionary for the iPhone to the store. The first 2 were rejected because the definitions of words contained swear words. The second version had some of those swear words ***’d out, but it wasn’t good enough.
Why can’t there be swearing on the iPhone? Some uses (like a freaking dictionary) make sense to have swear words. This policy isn’t protecting anybody.
Think about it. My iPhone has full, unrestricted access to the internet. I can watch the 2 girls 1 cup video but I can’t see the word “ass” on an iPhone app? That doesn’t make sense.
I can swear in text messages, look at porn, cuss on the phone, and listen to music that has bad words in it – but I can’t have them in an application that I paid money for.
What’s the reason here?
At the very least, can’t you just put a note into my app saying that it has bad words and let people decide for themselves? The review process alone is stupid. What happened to the free market? Are you going to do this for Mac software next? You’re already doing it for iPhone accessories thanks to your stupid auth chip or whatever.
It’s going to be interesting to see what road Apple follows. If they start becoming software Nazis I might just have to switch back to Linux.
Freakonomics has an interesting point about the proposed ban on bottled water, noting that it will most likely cause students to switch to sugary sodas instead.
Every time I’ve ever bought a bottle of water, it wasn’t because I wanted water. It’s usually just more for the bottle. When I was in college, I always made sure I had a bottle of water or soda with me. Cans don’t reseal, and they can’t be thrown in a backpack.
Having a college ban bottled water won’t reduce the amount of bottles being thrown in landfills.
A better approach (as much as I hate taxes) would be to impose a new tax on bottled water or take other steps to encourage people to fill their own containers with tap water. Re-usable containers are the way to go here.
