Last week I got my very first iPod Touch. I had a surge of traffic to my sites from iOS devices, and wanted to test to make sure my websites worked well on them (i.e., I wanted to make sure there were plenty of ads and that they showed up correctly).

My current phone is an Android. It works okay. Most, if not all, of its problems come from me being cheap and buying the least expensive Android phone I could. I don’t fault Android for this. I got what I paid for. However, I frequently hear that iOS is sooo much better and more intuitive and it just works and things like that, and that iPhone/iPod Touch is sooo much faster, etc. Well now that I have one I can finally compare the two side by side.

Note: For a more coherent review of iOS that states many of the points I list below, try this article. I especially liked this statement: “But I disagree that the Apple App Store is substantially better organized than the Android Market. Both are disasters.”

The first thing I noticed is that the physical buttons suck. The power button is meant to be pushed at an angle, so pushing down from the top or forward from the back doesn’t work well. If you aren’t used to this, it requires sort of an awkward whole-hand-gripping-the-iPod sort of thing. Even worse are the volume up/down buttons. I can’t find any angle of pushing on them that makes them easy to push. Surely I’m not the only one that finds the buttons hard to press.

The syncing process is, for the most part, pretty nice. I wasn’t thrilled about installing iTunes (last time I did, iTunes decided that installing Safari was an “update” that didn’t require my permission), but I really like that it will sync over WiFi without me having to plug in the device. What I don’t like is that if I install an app on my iPod, then delete it from my iPod, it somehow magically gets reinstalled the next time I sync. This is probably some configuration issue, but it is super annoying and doesn’t seem like a good default setting.

My real phone, a Samsung Intercept, has a physical qwerty keyboard. Sometimes I use the on-screen keyboard, and it isn’t too awful. The keyboard on the iPod Touch is pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with. Aside from there being apparently 3 or 4 different keyboard layouts depending on what app you are in and what type of field you are typing into, it doesn’t have any modern input options that don’t require you to peck each and every letter. Maybe there are replacements out there that make it better, but my Android just works… I didn’t have to find/install a new keyboard app.

The ability to integrate pretty much any email/calendar service with the iPod is pretty awesome. I got my Gmail and Google Calendar set up in about 2 minutes without any issues.

The App Store, like Google’s Android Market, sucks. It is virtually unusable on the iPod unless you know exactly what you want. For example, lets say you are browsing the top 25 free apps. You get to the end of 25 so you click the “show 25 more” button. You then click one of those to read the description, then click the back “Search” button. Bam. You are back at #1. You have to scroll all the way down, click “show 25 more” again, then find where you were at. But only sometimes. Sometimes it works like I feel it should where it remembers where you are at. I’m pretty sure inconsistent button behavior is against the rules of good UX.

The LDS apps on the iPod Touch are awesome. Overall I like them much better than the Android equivalents. I especially like how the Gospel Library app, like Safari, can have multiple windows open so you can flip back and forth. Very very cool.

However, I often find myself missing the context button that Android has. In most Android apps, you can press the context button to bring up an expanded menu that shows icons with text. Apple, and many app developers, seems to think that everyone can decipher what their little text-free icons mean. For example, the Kindle app has a button that looks like “Refresh” but is actually “Sync”. Never would have known if I didn’t click it. It also means that sometimes you have to do weird round-about things to do simple tasks. For example, to delete bookmarks in Safari you have to either swipe the bookmark then click delete, or you have to click edit then select the items you want to delete. Why can’t I just long-hold on them to get a list of options? Maybe if I started on iOS I’d see the long-hold as being the awkward way of doing it, but I don’t think so.

The iPod Touch is super fast. Except when it isn’t. Like my Android, it is sometimes blazing fast and sometimes molasses slow. I haven’t found any way of closing apps on the iPod Touch, and I’ve already had to do a reboot to fix an issue with a core app (the Music app wouldn’t acknowledge me touching the screen, but every other app would). I’ve also had several brand name apps crash on me already. I can’t remember the last time an app on my cheapo Android crashed. I think app crashes and slow downs are just a fact of life. Apple doesn’t have it any more figured out than any of the other device manufacturers.

The iPod Touch is super skinny. It looks really nice and fits well in my pocket. I’d prefer a plastic back though. The metal looks gross most of the time because of finger prints.

Hey Apple, 2007 is calling, they want their proprietary ports back. Put a micro USB port on this thing!

And oh my gosh, if it makes me type in my password one more time I swear I’m going to shoot somebody. Why in the world should I need to type my password to “buy” a free app? No money is changing hands. I have plenty of storage space. Just install the dang thing and let me use it already. I ended up having to change my password to something shorter and easier just so I could actually use my iPod.

Overall, I’m not super impressed with iOS or the iPod Touch. It has pros and cons just like any other device. Its core apps and OS has bugs and slow downs just like Android (or any other mobile platform). The UI has weird inconsistencies here and there, and generally requires me to click more buttons to get things done. I can’t get rid of or hide core apps that I don’t want. The only thing it really has going for it is that it is pretty and probably works well with its expensive cousins (like the iPad and MacBook).

I probably ought to throw this in the “rant” category, too…

JCPenney.com recently had an amazing deal on Melissa & Doug block sets. These sets are regularly around $50, but with this deal you could get 2 sets for around $24. I immediately placed an order. One set for my baby, and one set as a gift.

Sadly, my order arrived yesterday with just one set in it. I waited for an email letting me know where the other set was, but none ever came. Today I got an email saying that my order was complete. Odd, considering I ordered 2 sets but got only 1.

Knowing that mistakes occasionally happen, I go to JCPenney.com, hit up their contact page, and see that they advertise 30 second response times on their CS toll-free number. Great!

I call them up, wait on hold for 10 minutes (hmm.. seems a little longer than 30 seconds..) and eventually get a guy that decides to blatantly lie to me. Instead of telling me the truth (that it was a pricing mistake and they were only honoring one set per person), he decided to tell me that it was UPS / “the factory’s” fault that I only got one set, and that they were no longer available (despite showing “in stock” at a higher price on the website). I was given a 50% refund on my order. Keep in mind I wouldn’t have gotten refunded for the unshipped item if I didn’t waste 25 minutes on the phone calling them. They would have happily and knowingly stolen my money.

So I started out thrilled that JCP had a great deal that would help with my Christmas shopping, and now I’m so upset with them that I’m not likely to ever shop there again (with the exception of amazingly good deals that probably lose them money anyway).

So what went wrong? How did they go from a simple and common pricing mistake to losing a customer for life?

1. First, they had a pricing mistake. It happens. Some companies choose to honor pricing mistakes (yay!), and some choose to cancel orders before they ship (oh well). Shipping half an order really isn’t acceptable. You either ship it all or you cancel it all.
2. Then they didn’t notify customers that their orders weren’t going to be fulfilled.
3. To make it even worse, they didn’t refund customers for the parts of their orders that weren’t shipped without requiring a lengthy phone call. They knew they only shipped me part of my order, but they were going to keep my money and pretend that they shipped the full order.
4. They told some customers the truth — that they weren’t going to honor the price even though the item was in stock — and those customers posted about their experiences on the internet. Telling customers the truth is a good thing. The problem is…
5.  They told some customers a lie — that the item was no longer available and that their system claims both sets were shipped — after wasting 25 minutes of their time on the phone.

So what should they have done? In my opinion they should have honored the pricing mistake and shipped the units at the agreed upon price. They could have put the loss in the advertising budget, because you know JCP got a lot of positive exposure from this.

Alternatively, they could have cancelled all the orders before they shipped, and reversed any credit card charges that had already gone through. This would have been disappointing, but wouldn’t have hurt their reputation in any way (people anticipate great deals getting cancelled before they ship).

I watch a lot of TV and movies. According to FeedFliks, I watch about 75 titles per week on Netflix, and I probably watch another 5-10 titles on Hulu every week.

Watching so much Netflix has given me the opportunity to experience all the pros and cons of a Netflix membership. Overall I’d say my $7.99 per month is well spent: I get access to thousands of titles and I don’t have to watch commercials. However, there are a few things that drive me crazy.

First, Netflix doesn’t work on Linux. Some may say this is because of platform that Netflix uses to serve its videos, but in reality it is a anti-consumer choice meant to prevent Linux “hackers” from cracking their DRM. If they can get videos playing on:

1. Windows
2. Mac
3. PlayStation 3
4. Wii
5. Xbox 360
6. Apple TV
7. Google TV
8. Roku
9. Seagate FreeAgent Theater
10. Sony Dash
11. WD TV
12. A pile of Blu-ray players
13. A pile of TVs (with no special attached hardware)
14. TiVo
15. iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad

…then they could get it working on desktop Linux without much trouble. They choose not to, and I’d appreciate it if they’d stop pretending it is an insurmountable software limitation.

So instead of running it natively, I have to run Linux, which runs VirtualBox, which runs Windows XP, which plays my Netflix videos. Frustrating.

Second, Netflix frequently crashes. On my desktop (Linux) and laptop (Windows 7), Netflix dies part way through shows all the time. It happens even more frequently when I pause a show. To make it worse, when the page is refreshed to bring it back to life, it often forgets where I was at in my show.

So I complained. It didn’t solve any of the problems, but it felt good to vent to the company and maybe hopefully raise a tiny bit of awareness that Linux people are frustrated at the lack of support, and that I’m annoyed that my videos crash all the time.

A few days later, I got an email apologizing for my troubles watching instantly. The interesting part of the email was a link that provided a 3% statement credit on my next bill. While I appreciate the gesture, I can’t help but thinking to myself: Really? 3%? As I said, I watch a lot of TV, so I suppose it makes sense that my patronage is only worth 25 cents to them, but a credit of 25 cents just seems.. well.. tacky? rude? pointless? a backhanded apology?

Anyways, if you have a problem with Netflix, maybe it is worth 10 minutes of your time to call and complain. Who knows, you might get a 3% credit, too!

I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I’ve already come to realize that Connecticut (at least New Haven) is a weird place.

It isn’t just that they have tag sales instead of yard sales, or that recycling is required by law and failure to do so is punishable by death a fine, or the sparsity of their Redboxes, or the number of jerks that think their noisy motorcycles make them the shiznits of New Haven, or their abundance of normal Walmarts and shortage of Super Walmarts.

It might be the driving. People always joke and say that California has the worst drivers, or Virginia has the worst drivers, or <wherever you live> has the worst drivers, but I swear, Connecticut truly has the absolute worst drivers. For example, let us say that you want to make a left turn, so you pull up to a red light in the left lane. Before your car stops moving, someone drives around you on the right, and turns left in front of you. At a red light. This isn’t a fluke event, I’ve seen similar things happen several times in the few weeks I’ve been here. The road signs in general appear to be less than suggestions for what the driver should be doing. Going slower than 65 MPH in a 55 MPH zone will get you honked at, even if you are in the far right lane. It wouldn’t be appropriate to post on my blog the things they do if you drive that slow in the left lane.

But before you think I’m super negative and hate Connecticut, I’d like to mention a few of its perks. It has a wide variety of grocery stories that carry a wide variety of fruits, veggies, and other yummy food, including our beloved Koala cookies that we weren’t able to find in Williamsburg. Everything (including several other states) are within a few hours drive. The Manhattan temple is only a 2 hour train ride away. I got to hear the Blind Boys of Alabama in concert for free on the Green just 2 miles from my apartment. Fireworks are legal, and the big city firework display is visible from my apartment window. Our ward is awesomely weird with a mix of college students and locals, and we go to church in some sort of converted four story building that has neat architecture and fancy molding. Most of the classrooms (even the nursery) have ornate fireplaces. The city has one of those fun R2D2 mailboxes (actual photo). We found an Indian restaurant that we absolutely love. The LDS Institute of Religion has a good amount of people, and has an air hockey table, pool table, foosball, and a decent library.

Anyways, Connecticut is weird, or at least, Connecticut is very different from the other places I’ve lived. But I love it!

I watch a lot of Hulu, and generally I don’t really mind an ad or two. However, I hate untargeted ads. For example, ads for Monostat or birth control pills. I’m a guy. Hulu knows I’m a guy (I checked, its in my Hulu profile). Why in the world are they showing me commercials for these things? Have I watched too many chick flicks or something? Does anyone else have this problem?

I’ve had some bad luck with books lately.

First, I finished What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson. Aside from the horrible writing style (oh wo is us! the after life for bad people is soooo horrible you just can’t even imagine. like seriously. its really really awful!), the doctrine it tries to teach is so far from the truth and so detrimental to the development of any good society or individual that it was literally painful to hear.

For example, the doctrine of reincarnation, mixed with karma, is taught in the hopes of making people be good in this life. In reality, I think most people would use karma like their credit cards: charge up a huge debt now (sin) and file bankruptcy later (be born in a new life with no recollection of the previous one).

The next book I tried, Faithless by Karin Slaughter, had some serious adult content issues so had to be given up pretty early.

So I tried again with The God of War by Marisa Silver, and ran into the same issue.

Anyways, I’d greatly appreciate some recommendations if anyone has any!

I’m a huge fan of BookMooch, an free book trading website. The website lets you put your old books up for trade. If someone requests a book, you send it to them at your own expense and receive a credit to get a book from another user. When you request a book from someone else, they send it to you at their expense. The system works great.

Unfortunately, I ran out of items to “mooch” on BookMooch, so I looked for a similar site and found Swaptree. Swaptree is a little different. Instead of accumulating and spending points, your trade is done real time. For example, maybe you have a copy of Ender’s Game that you want to get rid of, and you really want The DaVinci Code. Bill wants Ender’s Game but only has Where the Red Fern Grows. Susan wants Where the Red Fern Grows and has a copy of The DaVinci Code. Swaptree magically figures out that a trade can occur between these 3 users and sets it up.

Sounds great, huh? It is, until a book gets lost in the mail. Although the USPS is generally pretty awesome at getting mail to its destination, it occasionally loses packages, especially those shipped Media Mail (the cheapest way of sending books). Users of BookMooch recognize this and, unless it becomes habitual for a user, don’t get too upset when their books don’t arrive.

Swaptree, however, sends threatening letters. Back in May I sent a book that didn’t make it to its intended recipient. As mentioned before, that happens occasionally. But instead of chalking it up to bad luck, Swaptree decided to send me an email letting me know that they intended to file an official mail fraud report with the United States Post Office. That’s bad. The USPS is known to stop delivery of your mail in response to mail fraud reports.

Upon reviewing the form they were planning on sending in, I noticed several problems:

• Swaptree claimed that they were defrauded by one of their members not receiving a book. This is ridiculous as I never agreed to send Swaptree a book, and their terms of service clearly state that they are not involved in the transfer of goods between their users.
• Swaptree claimed that my beat up copy of Robots of Dawn was somehow worth $20 to the recipient.
• Mail fraud requires intent to defraud. They have no evidence whatsoever that I ever intended to defraud anyone. I even explicitly posted on their site several times that the book was already sent.
• The form claimed that they contacted me twice about the missing item when in fact they had only contacted me once (minor, but still a discrepancy).

I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty confident that threatening to file a mail fraud complaint against someone in this manner is blackmail. I sent a reply to Swaptree letting them know that I’m prepared to take any legal actions necessary to protect myself against libel and fraudulent claims against my character. I included the above list (in greater detail) letting them know exactly why I thought they were being ridiculous. And then I waited.

One week later (4 days after the deadline given in their threat), I received a reply:

Dear zulugrid,

Thank you for your prompt response regarding the Item Not Received complaint.

In an effort to better serve our expanding userbase, we have automated many of our processes, and the email you received was a result of one of these processes. We recently sent emails to a set of Swaptree users with outstanding trades, what we refer to as Items Not Received. These emails were sent indiscriminately, regardless whether the user had 1 or 10 Items Not Received. We do clearly understand that items can get lost in the mail, as well as the unfortunate circumstance when a recipient claims they have not received an item when in fact they have.

We have given your trade in question further review and consequently cleared the Item Not Received complaint. We do apologize for any misunderstanding and all apparent threatening language you were made subject to in our automated emails. Please realize that we are simply trying to improve our service, and as small but growing company, we are constantly learning along the way.

Once again, we apologize for the fault on our part and are in no way pursuing or facilitating the pursuit of any fraud reports in your name. We thank you in advance for your patience, diligence, and willingness to work with us as we continue to improve our service.

Best Regards,
The Swaptree Team
If you wish to unsubscribe or modify your email preferences, click on this link: http://www.swaptree.com/WebFrmMyAccountInfo.aspx

ECC1295213610013197635ECC ||zulugrid||

So if you end up getting a threatening letter from Swaptree, my advice is to assert your rights to not be threatened or harassed by “The Swaptree Team” and they will likely back down.

Or just stick with BookMooch.

Let’s start with the US movie rating system. For those of you unfamiliar, there are a few basic ratings:

• G – General Audiences. Suited for people of any age. Normally like mellow historical movies or documentaries. And Disney movies (although most Disney movies nowadays are PG or PG-13).
• PG – Parental Guidance Suggested. Kids should have an adult with them. In practice, this is about the lowest rating a normal movie can get. These are like little kid movies though.
• PG-13 – Parents Strongly Cautioned. This is your average movie. Might have a bit of violence or language, but not much.
• R – Restricted. Anyone under 17 has to have an adult with them. Most theatres only enforce this by keeping minors from purchasing tickets. These movies range from a bit of violence and language, to downright awful movies filled with sex and gore.
• NC-17 – No One 17 And Under Admitted. Porn.

So I don’t like watching movies that are, to me, offensive. This includes movies with gratuitous nudity, language, and gore. I say gore instead of violence because violence is a part of life. If a guy gets shot in a war scene, whatever. If for no reason two main characters decide to have sex, thats kind of dumb. Even if there is a reason, there really isn’t any point in SHOWING them having sex. It doesn’t add to the story line. It’s just there in a pitiful attempt to draw more viewers.

But anyways. My point. So two movies I watched recently: V for Vendetta and Dodgeball.

V for Vendetta: Rated R. Basically the government is horribly oppresive and a crazy masked guy decides to blow stuff up and kill some bad guys in order to fix things. Had a fair amount of violence, but for the most part pretty minor. People getting shot and stuff. Buildings blowing up. Also had a bit of language. I honestly don’t remember very much foul language at all. Perhaps a bit here and there where appropriate, but nothing gratuitous. No nudity. No sex. Overall, a very enjoyable movie.

Dodgeball: Rated PG-13. Basically, the employees of a local gym decide to compete in a dodgeball tournament to win the prize money so they can save their gym. This movie was filled with foul language, sex innuendoes (including blow-up genitals and bisexuals), and violence (although a lot was comical, like a guy throwing wrenches at people). I really didn’t like the movie. Would’ve been funny if they had cut the crap out and just had some clean humour.

So my issue here is why the crap is a movie like V for Vendetta rated R, and a movie like Dodgeball rated PG-13? I don’t have kids, but when I do, I hope the avoid movies like Dodgeball. There isn’t any value in them. Not even much comedy. I’d rather they go see rated R movies like V for Vendetta where at least the movie has a purpose, teaches some morals, and doesn’t have sex interlaced throughout it.

Just another wonderful contribution to society by our beloved MPAA.

Okay quick note: Just finished watching Forest Gump again. Anyone notice that Dorothy Harris, the bus driver, looks the same even after all those years? Dorothy drives the bus for Forest Gump, Sr. and Forest Gump, Jr. Maybe Dorothy #2 is Dorothy Harris, Jr. or something. I don’t know…

So now that I got my bit out about the rating system and how I think it is dumb and shouldn’t govern ones views on movies, but rather the content of the movie should cause a person to decide whether to watch it or not, I’ll talk about Hard Candy.

I found Hard Candy on a newsgroup the other day, and watched it. What an amazing movie! Definitely not for little kids as it covers topics that require a more mature understanding of things, but a great view for the average adult IMHO. The story is this:  Hayley is a precocious 14 year old girl who takes it upon herself to punish Jeff, an older man and a photographer, for pedophilic tendencies. She does this by hooking up with him on the internet and then taking him hostage in his own home. Filmed in only 18 days, this movie shows deep insight into the minds of two disturbed individuals, and accomplishes this without showing any nudity whatsoever. Pretty impressive for a film about a pedophile. This movie does have a fair amount of language. However, this is understandable in the circumstances that the characters are placed in. I don’t mind bad language as much when it is used in realistic situations. It seems like some movies only use language to get an R rating.

But seriously. Watch this movie. It is AMAZING. Honestly one of my favorite movies. Again, not good for kids, but good for anyone who likes a movie with a bit deeper meaning, a few good twists, and a minimum amount of offensive content. Unfortunately, looks like it is out of most theatres and not on DVD yet, so unless you download it, you are out of luck. Sorry.

Hurray! A new keyboard! And I almost entirely like it! It has a few quirks that I don’t entirely enjoy, but overall it is pretty good. Again, this is the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

Things I like:

• The black and silver and very sharp looking. Even the “Do Not Remove – Safety Information” tag is designed to blend in.
• Lots of customizable buttons with generic labels.
• No special “Help” button! I’m so glad a keyboard manufacturer has finally realized that a help button isn’t needed.
• There are 4 extra keys above the keypad: “=”, “(“, “)”, and “Backspace”.
• Keyboard remembers that I want F Lock turned on! I HATE how keyboard manufacturers have decided that the function keys should be replaced with stuff like “Undo” and “Close”.
• The hand rest is VERY comfortable. It’s made of some kind of foam material, and the reviews say it is very durable.
• Had the traditional 6-key.. umm.. thing above the arrow keys. None of this weird vertical crap.

Things I don’t like:

• The Zoom button is virtually worthless and not programmable. I’d rather have it set as a, well, pretty much anything else would be nice.
• Space bar is difficult to press in upper corners. Can be very annoying depending on your typing style.
• Programmable buttons are not lit, and the writing on them is to mellow to be easily read in low-light conditions.

In sadder news, my families router died today. Luckily we had a spare.

So I’ve been using Yodlee for YEARS and recently they decided to rollout a new and “improved” version. It sucks. Really really really bad. Its horrible. They took one of the most useful pieces of technology available on the internet and took out everything wonderful about it and threw in a few (many) handfuls of bugs and called it stable.

Its very frustrating. For those of you who didn’t have the opporunity to use the old Yodlee, let me explain. Yodlee is an account aggregation service. From one page I can see my balances and recent transactions for my stock accounts, credit cards, bank accounts, money market funds, PayPal account, MyPoints account, email accounts (REALLY handy for “logging into” old webmail accounts that you don’t use very often so that they won’t expire), umm… And a bunch of other accounts, too. Pretty much every account that has any kind of transaction data. You can even throw in accounts that don’t have online access (like savings bonds and stuff like that) so your net worth comes out accurately.

But the new version is slow, buggy, and hard to read. They group all your transactions into one big huge long flowing list, so you can’t even tell which credit card you were charged on for what. And the new version doesn’t allow you to update an individual account or see when it was last updated. And I STILL can’t find a button to delete an old account, and I’ve been using the new version for a week or two already. It might have to do with the horrible new labeling. For example, the tab labeled “Manage Accounts” doesn’t allow you to manage your accounts. Instead, it is the tab that allows you to add an account. You have to go to “Your Sites” to manage your accounts, and even then you can’t really manage them because there aren’t any buttons that allow you to modify or delete an account. It’s terribly stupid. Reading the message boards at their site it looks like they are losing business like crazy because everyone hates the new layout.

Anyways. I was just upset over the retarded changes they made and wanted to rant for a bit.