Philip Greenspun's Weblog

Five years ago I wrote http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-for-software-engineers.  At the time I was unhappy that most programmers did not seem to have an investment in the user experience.  How have things changed?  I was chatting with three distinguished software engineers from Silicon Valley.  We were talking about phones.  I mentioned that my Windows XP Mobile phone (Motorola MPx220) exhibits an annoying behavior:

• you are talking on the phone
  
• a call waiting beep interrupts the call
  
• you press the soft key to reject the incoming call
  
• almost invariably the rejected caller leaves a voicemail
  
• you continue talking
  
• the phone vibrates to let you know that a new voicemail is available
  
• the vibration of the phone, amplified through the microphone, makes the person you’re talking to think that you were just crushed in an earthquake

I cited this as an example of programmers who needed to do better by their users.  Silicon Valley’s finest disagreed.  The specs were drafted by a marketing person, they argued.  The specs said “vibrate when a new voicemail is available” not “unless the consumer is on a call.”  The programmer was responsible for doing what he was told by management, no more and no less.

I’ve been talking to various folks in California for a week about http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer .  The reaction is almost entirely predictable based on the listener’s level of technical expertise.  “Nobody will ever want that,” says the typical 50-year-old Silicon Valley veteran.  “I would buy that right now.  My Microsoft PocketPC Phone already does everything that I want and need.  I just want a bigger screen and keyboard,” says a corporate lawyer (he charges about $600 per hour and presumably can buy whatever he wants).  The teenage girls in the hotel hot tub, one of whom was actually talking on a cell phone while in the tub, were enthusiastic about the idea.  Setting up and maintaining a home PC was for the losers and geeks.

Some interesting things that I learned about at the Hacker’s Conference that either are or have Web sites:

• http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html and http://www.googleguide.com/help/calculator.html
  
• http://www.nw.com/nw/projects/cubatron/
  
• http://www.dataplace.org/
  
• http://www.ergodex.com/ (arbitrarily configurable keyboard; intended for gamers but lots of other creative uses; Windows-only)
  
• http://www.ageia.com/ (physics accelerator for video games; Windows/PC only)
  
• http://mappoint.msn.com/directionsfind.aspx (select the “LineDrive” format and watch in awe as Microsoft draws you a schematic map to your destination, with the uninteresting long freeway sections compressed and the complex local neighborhood sections in detail, all black and white for easy printing, proof that not everything interesting is happening at Google)

Enjoy!

My cousin Douglas is blessed with two young daughters, a wonderfully warm wife, and a 21-year-old au pair from Brazil named Sabrina (photo).  Sabrina spent three years at university in Brazil before coming to the U.S., but she studied business rather than English.  The result has been some rather surprising conversations.

“Doggie, I need a ride to [English language] school,” Sabrina said one morning.

Once Doug and Sabrina were alone in the car, Sabrina mentioned that she wanted to talk about her thesis.

“Doggie, I need to fok.”

“Excuse me,” my cousin replied.  “Could you say that again?”

“I need to fok.”

They went back and forth for awhile until Doug remembered that Sabrina had a habit of dropping the last syllable of a word.

“Do you mean to say ‘I need to focus’?” Doug asked.

“Yes!  Exactly.  I need to focus.”