Lately I’ve been watching a lot of TV via NetFlix streaming through my PS3 gaming console. I like the interface better than streaming NetFlix through the Mac hooked up to my TV. I actually spend about 10 times more time watching TV than playing games. So, I started thinking of ways to improve the PS3.
- Integration with Flickr or Picassa photo albums. It would be great if we could open the photo app in the P3S, and pull down photos from a Flickr account, rather than manually adding your photos to the P3S.
- Ability to find music on a media server. Again, rather than manually load music onto the PS3, the PS3 should be able to stream music from a media server. It would also be great if it could stream music from a resource like last.fm
- A different web browser. The web browser isn’t bad, but it takes a lot of configuration before it works or presents pages like a computer-based web browser. I saw an article that said Sony was thinking of switching to Firefox as the browser for the PS3, which would be a good thing.
- Apps! It would be great if I could update a Twitter feed, or quickly check Facebook before I started a game or between watching some NetFlix.
Did you know that no one can own example.com, example.net or example.org? It’s true; they’re reserved second level domains. (.com,.org and .net are called top level domains).
Example.com is perfect for documentation. If you need to give an example of an email address, you can write “your.name@example.com”, and if you need and example of a website URL, you can write: “www.example.com”. You’ll never have to worry about people trying to view example.com URLs and finding something embarrassing appear in their browsers.
So now, you know.
I was scanning the web server stats for my cicada site for new and interesting robots and browsers, when I came across this:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; Monsanto; US; STL; GTB6; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2)
My guess is someone working at Monsanto (using a corporate IT provided web browser) is researching cicadas. They looked at 15 pages on the site. Why? Maybe they’re breeding trees that resist cicadas? That would be foolish. I just hope someone working at Monsanto just likes cicadas (and doesn’t want to kill them). 
Several times in the past I’ve tried to buy downloadable games through the PlayStation Network, and failed. I would get an error that my credit card was not acceptable, and out of frustration I would give up — and not buy anything. I tried to pay via their website and through the PS3 — same error. This is the important part: I could not buy anything.
After some searching I discovered what the issue was: I had to put the Unit number for my condo on the same line as the street address. Sony’s UI (webpage or through the PS3) gave no indication that I should enter my information in this fashion, and they even supplied the customary second address field (normally where you would but your apartment or condo number). There was absolutely nothing wrong with my credit card (you wouldn’t know that from Sony’s error message).
Ultimately I spent hours on what should have taken seconds. I’m also certain that I’m not the only customer with this issue — a lot of gamers are young, and so they live in apartments, dorms, condos, or other places that require the second address field that functions properly.
Lessons learned:
- Sales are the lifeblood of any company. If a company cannot facilitate sales through their websites, they’ve got problems.
- Test! It seems like no one tested Sony’s form. Who dropped the ball there? IT? User experience? Marketing? My guess is all three.
- Listen to your customers. It isn’t enough for companies to supply forums, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages for their customers to rant on — companies also need to take the customer complaints and issues, and implement solutions for them. For every customer who blabs about a problem, there’s 100 more who keep their mouth shut and simply shun your business.
For the record, I did resolve my issue, and I enjoy playing Critter Crunch on my PS3.
I was watching the A&E TV show Hoarders, and I starting thinking about how easy it is to become a “cyber hoarder”. A hoarder appears to be a person with an unhealthy addiction to hoarding anything and everything — from sentimental & valuable objects to rotting garbage. In the computer and internet age it’s incredibly easy to become a cyber hoarder. There are so many cyber hoarder enablers: from 1 Terabyte hard drives, to recordable CDs that cost less than a dime, to fathomless online account storage (Gmail for example). Hoarding on the internet or inside your computer hard drive won’t produce rodents or get you evicted from your apartment, but it will cost you time and money, and could impact lives people other than yourself.
Some thoughts:
- Are you still using a Windows 3 for Mac OS 9 computer? No? Then toss the boxes of old software out — then you’ll have more room in your house, less stuff to dust, and less stuff to move around.
- The same goes for old or broken computer equipment. Unless it’s true vintage equipment or you’re a bona fide hobbyist, dispose of it — down to the last screw and scsi cable. Sell it on ebay if it has value or despose of it responsibly.
- Email accounts like Gmail encourage you to archive every email, but should you really? Do you need every “thank you” email or Facebook notification? Absolutely not. Delete that stuff. I can only imagine how much money and energy/natural resources gets wasted on archiving redundant and unnecessary data.
- Then there’s every file you’ve ever collected since the 90s: music files, videos, photos, PDFs, ZIPs, EXEs, etc. I’m sure the average person’s hard drive looks like a hoarder’s apartment: just a mess of file after file. Time to delete that mess, shred the backup CDs, stop buying new storage devices to hold the junk. Get a grip on your hoarding addiction.
I’m not innocent here. I certainly have my own collections of cyber-stuff, but I’m cognizant the negative impacts of this habit, and I’ve (mostly) mended by cyber hoarding ways.
Have you ever used bit.yl to shorted URLs? Flickr has a secret (secret to me at least) short URL for each photo. Here’s how to find it:
Go to an image on Flickr, like http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancentury/4132633288/ and view the source of the page.
Then look for the <link rev="canonical" /> tag. For the photo above the tag looks like <link rev="canonical" type="text/html" href="http://flic.kr/p/7ibPU5" >. The part you want is the http://flic.kr/p/7ibPU5 bit. Put http://flic.kr/p/7ibPU5 in Twitter or and email, and folks will get to the photo.
BTW, the URL in the example will present a photo of Mr. Sprinkles the cat:
The spiders when absolutely nuts over an image gallery on my Cicada site. So much so that it took out my gallery software. DOS attack lite.
29944 29767 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
25816 25813 Yandex/1.01.001 (compatible; Win16; I)
25693 25693 msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
12763 10735 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp/3.0; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
4609 3308 Yandex/1.01.001 (compatible; Win16; P)
4145 4145 msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
I might have to block them from hitting the image gallery.
And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.
– Werner Herzog
Google, Yahoo and Bing are the bears. You are Timothy Treadwell. Never forget that.