World's worst telco

I haven't tried every telco in the world, but I would be very, very surprised if there is anyone out there worse than Australia's Telstra. Even AT&T aren't this bad and they are the template for "totally customer un-friendly former monopoly telco". I'm trying to use a Telstra pre-paid mobile phone while I'm in Australia - unfortunately Telstra is the only carrier with coverage at my Mum's house - and at every single step the processes and technology have failed to work as they should. Whatever is the opposite of the Midas Touch, Telstra has it; everything it touches turns to crap.

iCloud without a silver lining

I upgraded my iPhone and iPad this week to the latest version of iOS. Given that iOS 5 has some neat features I can overlook the fact that Apple seriously messed up the logistics of this release. If you're going offer upgrades to everything in the Apple universe all on the same day, you better be prepared for some unbelievable peak demand on your servers. Which Apple clearly wasn't, leading to all sorts of problems.

What I don't get is why everyone is so excited about iCloud. I'm absolutely excited about the vision but underwhelmed by the execution.

For me iCloud will be a winner when I can uninstall iTunes from my PC. I don't know if the Mac version is as bad, but iTunes for Windows looks to me like some sort of passive-aggressive Steve Jobs revenge on Bill Gates.

Right now the emphasis on iCloud seems to be on syncing mail and contacts and calendars. I've already got all that stuff in the cloud on my work mail server and Gmail instantly available to all my Apple devices. What I want to do is sync all the stuff I have to manage with iTunes like photos and videos and music.

The one step in this direction that Apple have made in this release - Photostream - is incredibly badly implemented. Sure it would be nice to have any photo I take on my iPhone instantly available on my iPad, but what idiot decided to release this without the ability to even delete a photo from the stream or an individual device?

Goodbye Netflix

I've been a Netflix customer since November 2005, but just in case you're wondering what I think about the recent changes in Netflix pricing and services, I'm a Netflix customer no longer.

When the separate pricing for DVDs by mail and streaming were announced back in July I decided to drop streaming, since I can get pretty much the same catalog from Amazon for free as a Prime member, and dropped my DVD service back to one at a time, so that I could still order the occasional obscure movie on DVD. I hoped that a some time in the near future Netflix would negotiate some new deals with the studios and lure me back to their streaming service with a better price-value proposition.

That was until the worst apology ever from Reed Hastings their CEO, in which he dropped the bombshell that the DVD and streaming businesses would henceforth be run completely separately; different branding, separate websites and no unified queue or recommendations.

So today I hit the "Cancel My Subscription" button on the Netflix website. I admire Netflix's desire to move aggressively into streaming and to cannabalise their own DVD rental business before someone else does, something that far too few businesses confronted by technological change are willing to do, but that doesn't mean they ought to alienate and lose all their existing customers in the meantime.

Just one thing to get right

All a check in agent needs to do these days is get one thing right. When you print your own boarding pass and check in at a kiosk, all the agent needs to do is put the correct tag on your bag. Our check in agent today couldn't even manage that. It wasn't until our bags didn't arrive in DC and we looked at our baggage receipts that we realised that she'd put someone else's tags on our bag. Someone else who was going to Tampa Bay.

I've hated United so much for so long that I would have thought it impossible for me to hate them more. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Update 2.55pm, August 9
They give you a website to check the status of your bags (http://www.united.com/bagcheck) but all it tells you is that your bag has been found and is in transit to you. But you still have to call and talk to an agent to find out the specific flight it was put on and when you can realistically expect it. It's one thing not to have information on the website that they don't have, but what's the sense in having the website if it doesn't tell you the information they have and you want?

If you are going to charge $5 for a cappuccino...

...you ought to learn how to make a decent one. This means you, Hyatt Regency Reston. For your information a cappuccino is one third espresso, one third milk and one third foam. It's not a cup of insipid, watery brown liquid with a little foam on top!

I officially do not understand airlines

Today we're flying from Ottawa to Washington DC (this post is brought to you courtesy of Ottawa airport's free wifi!)

We arrived quite early for our United flight so we asked about getting on an earlier United flight (same airline) only to be told that it would cost us $120 each.

We were also told that it was too early to check in for our original flight. So we had lunch and a cup of coffee and came back. At which time we were told (by a different agent) that we could get on an earlier Air Canada flight (yes a different airline) for no charge. In fact, because Air Canada does not charge for checked bags, we're saving fifty bucks.

I actually do understand what's going on here. It's all about the check-in agent. One decided to be helpful and the other one didn't. Simple as that.

Ticketing idiocy

No, not airline ticketing idiocy (although there's no shortage of that) but football ticketing idiocy.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a Brisbane Lions home game on Saturday night and doubly fortunate to see them have their first win for the season (after seven losses to start the season). But I was rather unimpressed that I was unable to buy a ticket for a decent seat, knowing that with the Lions in a "rebuilding phase" the ground would not be even close to sold out. As it turned out it was less than half full (19,000 in a ground that holds over 40,000 people).

So I bought the cheapest ticket I could ($25.50). Where do you think I sat; in my cheap and not very good seat, or in one of the thousands of empty seats in the area where I wanted to sit (where I was more than willing to pay $61 for a ticket)?

I don't know who manages ticketing for Lions games at the Gabba, but they are idiots who are leaving money on the table.

Seriously Amazon.com. Seriously?

I'm all for free services sponsored by advertising - the entire Googleverse for example. But receiving "sponsored screensavers" aka ads on my Kindle to save $24? You have got to be joking Amazon.com. This must be an April Fools joke that's ten days late.

This is doubly disappointing given the rumours on the tech sites that Amazon would soon offer the Kindle for $99 or even free to Prime members like me!

Another hard drive fail

Yesterday my network attached drive failed. Unlike last time, I had all the data backed up.

It was easy enough to run down to Staples and get a new one. I couldn't get the same brand/model, and whilst all network drives do much the same things, they all do it slightly differently, so I had to spend a couple of hours getting it configured and all of the computers mapped to the right virtual drives so all my backup routines would continue to work correctly. It should have only taken 15 minutes, but the user guide was next to useless. The people who wrote it obviously have no concept of stepping the user through key concepts or common tasks.

The trickiest part was installing the client software on Marie's netbook which doesn't have a CD drive. The instructions included the following "if your computer does not have a CD drive, go to http://www.seagate.com/goflexhomesupport/" which I did, expecting to be able to download the software. No sign of it, or anything else that would help me solve the problem. So I had to copy the CD to a USB drive and install it that way.

Not a big deal really, but this is supposed to be consumer grade technology. There's no way the average consumer (i.e. someone who doesn't like to play with computers) could install this correctly.

Customer service in real time

This morning I left some slightly negative feedback about a purchase on the Amazon website (the packaging overkill issue I blogged recently).

Within a minute (literally) of clicking submit the company that fulfilled the order called me to address the issue.

One of the most critical parts of delivering good customer service is to actually listen to your customers; that's the only way to learn about problems so you can fix them, and it has the added benefit of making your customers feel valued.

You'd be amazed how many companies don't get that (like the hotel I blogged about yesterday, who haven't bothered to respond to the email I sent them).

Onecall.com clearly get it. I'll happily order from them again knowing that if there's a problem they'll be on it faster than Usain Bolt.

What does guaranteed mean?

In the thousands of nights I've stayed in hotels I've never needed or wanted a room with two beds.Well once, about 15 years ago when I shared a room on a business trip with my good friend Raj, and he hasn't stopped talking about how restless I am (stillness is not my karma).

Hotel rooms are small enough without half the space being taken up by a bed that you are not going to use. So one of my pet hates is booking a room with a king bed and finding at check in that they only have rooms with two queen beds available.

This is annoying enough at hotels that primarily serve business travelers, but it is inexcusable at hotels that attract couples wanting a romantic get away, like the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa which seems to have a constant stream of unhappy couples (yes, including us when we stayed there) checking in only to find that for 300 plus dollars a night (room only) they'd be sharing an old fashioned double bed instead of the king bed they'd requested.

One of the reasons I prefer Marriott hotels is that they track rooms with king beds and rooms with two queen beds as separate inventory, so that if they have a king bed room available when you make your reservation, they guarantee it.

Or so I thought. I received an email today from a Marriott that I was planning to stay at tonight saying "We wanted to let you know in advance that based on our occupancy, your bed preference might not be available today during your stay."

I'm sorry, but which part of guaranteed do I not understand correctly?

Coffee as a teaching tool

Regular readers will know that I like things coffee and things geek. So I really liked this article I stumbled across today which analyses the production of coffee at Starbucks using standard information system design patterns; Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit.

Illustrating abstract architectural concepts using real world processes is actually a very powerful teaching tool; for example, illustrating the concept of a correlation identifier by reference to Starbucks' practice of writing your name on the cup when you order.

It's a simple and effective solution, but I did have a little trouble with it when I was working regularly in the Philippines a few years ago. Filipinos are mostly accustomed to American accents; when I gave my name as Dan almost anything would end up on the cup. So I experimented for a bit until I found a name that the staff would always get right despite my Australian accent; at Starbucks Philippines I am therefore known as "Freddie".

It also reminded me of the Order Cappuccino Use Case that I used to teach how to write Use Cases; that was in South Africa where the "cappuccino with foam or cream" heresy originates.

Order Cappuccino Use Case

Basic Flow

1. The Customer asks for a cappuccino; the Waiter prompts for Foam or Cream
2. The Customer requests foam; the Waiter submits the order
3. The Barista makes the cappuccino
4. The Waiter collects the order from the Barista and delivers it to the customer
5. The Customer drinks the cappuccino
6. The Customer requests the bill; the Waiter delivers the bill
7. The Customer pays; the Waiter collects the payment
8. The Waiter returns with the change
9. The Customer collects the change and the Use Case ends

Alternate Flow (branch at Basic Flow Step 2)

1. A South African Customer requests Cream; the Use Case ends because that’s not a Cappuccino!

What's Steve Jobs got against left handers?

I often say that left handers are the last group in America that it isn't illegal to discriminate against. And it seems that Steve Jobs is taking advantage of that fact. Here's an image from Apple's latest attempt to obfuscate on the iPhone 4 antenna problems showing how not to hold your iPhone.


As a left hander I'm wondering how else I could hold an iPhone with my left hand. I'm also wondering how the signal on an iPhone would be affected if I shoved it down Steve Jobs' throat.

Leave home without it

If you have a US-issued American Express card and you're planning to attend the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in June, I strongly recommend that you bring another credit card with you.

South Africa is following Europe's lead in requiring a PIN rather than a signature for over the counter credit card transactions. Credit cards issued by US banks don't have PINs. The South African banks are supposed to cater for that by programming their point of sale terminals to recognise a US-issued card (you can readily tell which country a card is issued in from the card number) and not ask for a PIN for a card that doesn't have one. Based on my experience in the last week they've done so for Visa cards but not for American Express (I don't know about Mastercard since I don't have one to test).

Given that Visa is a Soccer World Cup sponsor it all seems a little too coincidental to me. I wouldn't be happy if I was American Express.

Will I be attending a game if I'm here in June? I'm torn between the fact that Australia and USA (I'm a dual citizen after all) have qualified and the fact that I hate soccer!

Thank you Comcast

Those are words I never thought I'd speak. Comcast have been my cable TV provider since 2002 and my high speed internet provider since 2004 and in that time have managed on many, many occasions to annoy the hell out of me.

But last night they redeemed themselves. I was able to watch the Australian Football League ("Aussie Rules") Grand Final live on ESPN360.com which I only discovered earlier this week is available free to Comcast subscribers.

I have a computer connected to my big screen TV that I used to watch it, so apart from the occasional jitter it was as good as watching it on TV back in Australia (apart from being the middle of Friday night instead of Saturday afternoon, but hey you can't have everything).

To obtain this level of performance ESPN must mirror the feed from Australia to the US and then serve it to end users from here, because I've tried streaming football video from Australia before and it's been unwatchable (bandwidth across the Pacific is lousy).

So once again for the record, just in case there is any confusion; Thank you Comcast.

United still sucks

I've blogged before on how hopeless United Airlines are.

I've just returned from a one night/one day trip to Washington DC. I managed to use some miles to upgrade to what US carriers insist on calling "First Class", but the experience still managed to remind me how bad these guys are.

In United's defence let me begin by at least admitting that the attitude of their staff has generally improved over the past couple of years. I think they've finally woken up to the fact that their jobs are on the line. I should also add that this is the first trip I've taken in ages when every flight was on time, no connections were missed and no bags were lost (the latter helped by only having carry-ons)!

But the cabin environment and especially the food continue to put United at the bottom of the heap (right at the bottom now that Northwest have been absorbed by Delta). On the way out dinner consisted of a salmon salad which was basically some very sad looking lettuce leaves and what looked like the lowest possible quality tinned salmon. On the way back "dinner" consisted of a ham sandwich on the driest most unappetising bread roll I've ever seen.

Airline customer service

I recently had an interesting (positive) experience with one airline's customer service which contrasts with some similar experiences that were handled poorly by other airlines.

Back in February I was on a flight from Johannesburg to London with British Airways (on my way back home to Steamboat) when the in flight entertainment system failed completely. Those of us in business class received in flight shopping vouchers to the value of £75 (roughly $US108) whilst the economy passengers received £25. The interesting thing is it was an overnight flight and I went straight to sleep, so I wasn't going to watch the movies anyway!

As good as that was, I had an even better experience in 2003 with Singapore Airlines when they sent me a voucher for $US100 when I had trouble with the movies on a flight from Singapore to Seoul - the difference was that I was flying economy and the total value of my ticket wouldn't have been more than $US400.

By contrast, the last three long haul flights I've done with Qantas I've failed to watch a complete movie due to problems with the in flight entertainment. What do they offer by way of compensation? Nothing, nada, zip. I have the highest tier status with Qantas which means that they treat me a lot better than the average passenger, but I don't even bother complaining. My experience is that Qantas customer service have a form letter that they use to respond to every complaint, which translated from airlinese into English basically says "the dog ate our homework".

Apart from venting (which is cathartic but otherwise unconstructive) I've actually been thinking about why the Qantas system is so unreliable. As best I can tell, their system is supplied by Panasonic. Enough said. Japanese consumer electronics firms are abysmal (on a good day) at software and user interfaces.

I also flew business class with South African Airways from Perth to Johannesburg back in February, and whilst I didn't have any technical problems, it's the only time I've not been able to find anything worth watching on a system with 50 or more channels on demand.

Lowering the bar

We live in a world where companies in most industries must try relentlessly to improve their products, services and price competitiveness simply in order to keep up with the competition.

Airlines and airports seem to exist in some bizarre parallel universe where the opposite applies.

First there's the high farce know as "airport security". One set of rules apply when you board your plane in the US and a different set apply when you board your plane in the UK to return home. Even worse, the rules applying today at Heathrow are different from the rules that applied at Heathrow last week when I flew to Dublin!

Then there's crap like this that BMI have the hide to sell as "Business Class."


Yes you do get a hot meal and the flight attendant does hang your coat for you, but come on, this is standard sardine style economy seating (it doesn't look too bad in the photo only because that's the first row in the plane). Even United, which has become a miserable excuse for an airline, doesn't have the chutzpah to market its Economy Plus product as business class and it's at least got an extra five inches of legroom!

Talking about United, I can't believe how bad their long-haul international business class is. Yes they have supposedly started rolling out a new flat seat (at last, only a decade behind their competitors) but I've yet to actually see it in the wild, and in the meantime it seems that they've decided to do zero maintenance on the old seats (or their scarily old flight attendants).

Then there's the new Star Alliance lounge at Heathrow Terminal 1. It's in a different class to United's pathetic "Red Carpet" lounges, meaning that it provides the services that everywhere else in the world are standard in an international business class lounge. With one exception. It's supposed to have free wireless internet but the signal hovers between "very low" and "no signal".

It turns out that they don't actually have a transmitter in there and are relying on picking up the signal from the First Class lounge! When you spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on fitting out a lounge, I suppose it makes sense not to spend an extra fifty bucks on a wireless hub, because then you might, shock horror, actually provide a decent service to your customers.

The constant incompetence and stupidity of this entire industry just gives me a headache!

Streaming television

After my very positive experience with the Roku Netflix Player I've been checking out some of the other streaming television options available on the Internet.

I was particularly interested in Hulu since the rumour is that the Netflix Player will soon also be able to stream their content as well.

Hulu is joint venture between NBC and News Corporation established after a falling out with Apple (seems they couldn't agree on pricing and revenue sharing for media sold via iTunes). Technically it's pretty slick; certainly better than the usual effort from large incumbent organisations. The biggest deficiency is that they only keep the last five or six episodes online. Too bad if you want to try out a show you missed from the first episode.

Unlike the Netflix service which runs on a subscription model, Hulu is based on the traditional advertising supported model of television. But I can't help thinking that they're failing woefully to exploit the potential of this new paradigm. As far as I can tell the ads are not based on the profile of the user, unless they somehow think I'm the target demographic for fabric softener and shampoo!

Nevertheless the potential is there and I'm convinced that this is going to kill television as we know it. The concept of watching a program at a set time has already been struck a major blow by DVRs but you're ultimately still limited to watching what you've already recorded. I'm looking forward to the approaching television model where you can watch any episode of any show any time!

Credit card fraud

The Justice Department announced today that they had broken a major credit card fraud ring.

It seems that the card numbers were obtained by hacking retailers' wireless networks. Amongst the list of affected retailers is Sports Authority which explains how my wife's credit card was fraudulently used back in April this year.

At the time we couldn't figure out how the number had been skimmed since she still had the card in her possession, never uses that card online and had only used it twice in the previous month, one of those times being at Sports Authority, and in both cases the card never left her sight.

We were incredibly impressed by how quickly our bank (Wells Fargo) detected the fraud - they called her the same day after only two fraudulent transactions which they advised us occurred using a fake card encoded with the stolen number. Reversing the fraudulent charges was reasonably straightforward so we didn't think any more about it until I heard the report today.

I'm a whole lot less impressed with Sports Authority's network security. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt but as an IT professional I know that it's far more likely that the criminals exploited holes in a poorly implemented wireless network than that they were master hackers who defeated a state of the art system.