My experience with Qik has been hit-or-miss, but generally it’s been a positive one, which is why I continued to use the service in the first place.  However, the events of the past hour or so have made me reconsider that position, especially now that I have a netbook I could use instead with my Justin.tv account.  Let me additionally point out the fact that the previous version of the Qik client I had on my phone worked perfectly.  It was familiar, it functioned as advertised, and I didn’t have any complaints with the way it worked on my phone.

Anyway, I generally consider it a polite gesture when a service decides to let me know that there’s something on my end I need to do to continue my use of the service.  I think that makes things feel a little more personal when you let the customer know that the latest and greatest is out and that there’s a tangible benefit to upgrading.  Qik, on the other hand, sent me this rather sparse e-mail this evening with the air of making it sound like something was broken.  Alright, stuff breaks, and I can understand that, but the unclear meaning of this e-mail was my first clue that I shouldn’t have bothered.

Given that it’s Labor Day, I’m taking a break from some of my schoolwork for the moment, and updating Qik shouldn’t take more than a few seconds, I decided to oblige the e-mail’s request and update.  That was my mistake.  Oops.

In contrast to my previous experiences with Qik, this “update” seems more like a leap backward than it does a step forward.  If you’ll take a look at the picture I’ve included, there are two things I would like you to notice.  First, if you’ll examine the screen on my phone for a moment, you’ll notice that my Treo Pro appears to be capturing the episode of House I was watching as well as it possibly can…but that it’s doing so with the user interface rotated clockwise.  Unfortunately, something between the client and the website isn’t properly functioning, because, while I should be seeing Hugh Laurie’s face on my 22” LCD, instead I’m seeing severe artifacting and the vague suggestion that it might be the fifth season of Fox’s hit show I’m watching.  I’ve tested this multiple times (on both a cellular 3G connection and Wi-Fi), and I get the same results all the way around each time.  And, while I’m not going to point fingers, I think I know where the problem is because there are plenty of people still broadcasting as you read this.

There’s a huge difference between releasing a test version of your software with the expectation that these bugs are present and that they will be reported and sending e-mails trumpeting end-user updates to your legion of users, updates that should be devoid of functionality quirks like this.  What am I supposed to do with Qik now that I can’t actually use it for the one function it’s designed to perform?  I’m currently slogging back trying to find the CAB for the previous version of the client, the one that actually works, in hopes of moving forward and fixing this mess, but I’m not entirely concerned given that it’s not something I use on a daily basis anyway.

All the same, let this be a lesson to the rest of you, one that you can probably apply regardless of the industry you’re in and regardless of whether you’re technically inclined or not.  If you’re going to ask that your users (or customers, or whatever term you use for the people you deal with in your line of work) should take action in some form or another, make sure that they don’t get screwed for obliging you.  Do your homework, run your test cases, follow through on your research and quality assurance; in other words, make sure that you’re not asking people to make the jump from a Ferrari to a station wagon.

Edit (9/9/2009): Apparently Qik is now aware of the issue and suggests that users experiencing issues like this backpedal to an alternate version of the software that wasn’t designed for the phone.  Great job, guys!

I paid $350 or so for my first useful* laptop (I say that with quotes for a reason, see below) during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, with my first MP3 player just a short while before that.  I’ve only had possession of a personal cellular telephone for a year.  I’ve had an account with AOL since the second grade (which, although I personally refuse to use the AOL client anymore, I still have).  And I’ve been really only establishing my online presence (with forums, websites, and the like) since the end of middle school.

Why do I tell you this, seemingly randomly?  I was perusing through the New York Times website today, and came across an article discussing the recommended ages children should be introduced to the very same technologies I just mentioned.  And obviously there’s some disagreement between what the article suggests and what I believe to be more appropriate, or I wouldn’t be bothered enough to write about it.

For ages 0-2, I can generally agree with the author.  I don’t see a reason your kid should be messing with anything electronic with more complication than making noise or blinking lights.  They’re way too young to understand cause-effect scenarios, and I certainly don’t foresee anybody’s newborn being able to “Press Enter to Continue…”

Sure, maybe all the fake toddler-toys are probably 1/4 as mind-stimulating as they’re advertised to be, but are they really ready to play online games?  No offense, but it seems to me like they want to train the next generation of WoW addicts from an early age; they’ll be more tolerant to the obsessive clicking and typing and random key-pressing it takes, and their vision will already be so screwed over from staring at the screen that they’ll have a 6000-strength glasses prescription by the time they’re eight.  Pardon me, but how about giving them their Playskool MP3 boombox thingy and sending them out to the sandbox?  And suggesting a Wii as a console for kids still trying to figure out why the cat doesn’t go in the washing machine, and that Hot Wheels are more collectible when the wheels aren’t on the other side of the room?  I really don’t need any more bologna-in-the-CD-tray service calls, thank you very much, so I’ll just say “That’s stupid” and continue on my merry way.

Moving towards the second half of the article, I really disagree more with their thinking.  For starters, explain to me why six-year-olds are eligible to be playing games that require interaction with people you don’t know but are connected to instantly?  I fail to see one instance where they won’t be talking to strangers at some point.  (And even if the parents are paying attention, can you really be certain that crazyboy2834 isn’t this guy (potentially NSFW)?  Your son/daughter claiming that it’s the friend from down the street doesn’t count.)  I have a brother that fits this age bracket, and I’ve watched him play similar games.  If someone sends him a friend request, his instant reaction is to accept it…no questions asked.  “But wait, that’s not Kyle?”  Stranger danger, indeed.  What happened to responsible parenting?

I can see maybe a shimmer of reasoning behind giving a twelve-year-old a cell phone…but only a shimmer.  Why, even my high-school-age siblings failed to understand why text messaging wasn’t included in their plan (it is now) and managed to rack up a rather exorbitant bill.  The point is, if you give them something that has the ability to do more than you pay for, it’s going to come back to bite you.  If you really need to give them the phone, get the blasted unlimited messaging plan…$30 per month is a lot more reasonable than $600 (trust me).  Perhaps towards high school would make better sense here.

High school would also be a prime time for these kids to get laptops and other “considered-essential” devices, not as they’re herded off like cattle to college.  Not only does this free the family computer from constant use by the IM- and MySpace-crazed teen, but it gives parents (as if they needed it) yet another thing to take away for groundings.  And has the benefit of teaching them about how to take care of more expensive equipment earlier on.

And I scoff at this comment:

In fact, cellphones are now more or less mandatory for children at this age. Besides providing a social advantage, phones can reduce parental stress in a crowded mall, get children in touch for homework help, serve as a call to dinner — and be withheld as punishment that really works.

Parenting skills for this age include reading phone bills. Lori McCoughey of Mahwah, N.J., a mother of two, saved $200 a month by switching to Verizon’s friends and family plan. There are also pay-as-you-go plans like those from Tracfone (www.tracfone.com). For $50, you get a working LG 225 camera phone, preloaded with 100 minutes. A meter counts down the remaining time.

If parenting skills require reading bills, why must you suggest a pay-as-you go plan on a cell phone, which defeats the entire purpose of reading bills?  It might reinforce and encourage the idea of having your child budget their usage (especially if you add a specific amount per month, and refuse to add any more until the next) in preparation for giving them access to your “big-person”, post-pay plan, but really I can’t see a prepaid phone as being anything more than a cash-cow and waste of time otherwise.  But “serving as a call to dinner?”  Although I’m pretty sure I can see through the poor language there, how is ringing your offspring anywhere near a reinforcement of the “personal nature” of dinner?  (Yes, I realize this is America, where ‘dinner’is another word for vegging out in front of a television with McDonald’s, but cut me some slack.)

Of course, even my recommendations are just that, recommendations.  In reality, the parents should be capable enough to judge whether their kid actually has a need for the technologies of tomorrow, a need that outstretches the desire to “fit in” – because there’s always going to be someone else without it, and a lesson in not getting everything you want is perfect fare.  Nevertheless, any parents who take tips from that article and apply them probably could use a little help as a parent themselves.

Parenting is about guidance and helping a child to prepare themselves for an adult/parental role, not stepping in and going “Here’s a shiny new electronic toy that I bought; go have fun.”

*Useful in this sense refers to the sense that it could be used for more than running Windows 95 or browsers with the rendering support of an 1800s cash register.  My real first laptop was a 486 obtained long ago from one of my father’s co-workers, with a failed battery and a garbage-picker’s heaven of data left on it.  As most people know, I particularly enjoy older/restored computing equipment and so I keep this machine around for occasional use.

However, GrandCentral has one inherent flaw that I’m consistently running into when I hand the number out to people I know:  It only handles phone communication.  For a number that you’re supposed to hand out instead of your cell phone number (or any other number), it’s rather difficult to use that number for anything that isn’t strictly voice-based communications.  In other words…you can’t send or receive text messages with it.  In this day and age of people text-messaging and e-mailing each other from mobile devices left and right, it really kills the whole point of a forwarding number if it doesn’t forward everything with it – therefore leaving people like myself having to hand out the numbers we are “wrapping” with the GrandCentral number out to the people who need to get in touch with other ways.

GrandCentral has also been stagnant over the past few months following their acquisition by Google.  There are no invitations, so the only way to get an account is to reserve a number and pray that they admit you at some point.  Again, this is a bit of a deal-killer; for someone attempting to promote an open and free service, it’s really difficult for me to believe that without seeing any form of action taken.

I hate to be so negative, because from the inside, the service has been great (other than that “completeness” thing).  But if they really hope to get users, they need to start moving, open up to new users, and bring something new to the table.  Otherwise, they’ll get swallowed up in the vast sea of web services waiting to help people keep in touch.

A pair of students conducting video interviews stopped me today to ask my opinion on Facebook’s recent decision to open up profiles to search engines. (Which if you couldn’t tell already was the inspiration for me delving a little deeper into the issue here and now.)

In a way, I see social networking as not only a necessity, but a beneficial one. Picture your favorite social networking site as a gigantic phone book, only filled with the information people have volunteered. Picture the friends list on that site as a personal address book; those listings out of the “white pages” of the site that you know personally, and have a lot of contact with, but the difference between this address book and a standard paper or personally-kept one is that instead of you updating your information, your friends do it all for you.

Like I said, the interviewers were asking opinions about Facebook opening up profiles to search engines. Having recently acquired an account myself (yes, I know what you’re thinking), I’ve been able to poke around with the site and see exactly what information people have a habit of posting or not posting.

I see the decision as double-sided, really; on one hand, it makes it even easier for the people you want to find you to, well, find you. Perhaps a long-lost elementary school friend will finally catch up with you and get back in touch.

On the other hand, this same information is available and potentially being presented to potential employers, your mother, and anyone else who punches your name into a search engine. And with the ever-increasing rate at which the “background check” for a job includes a Google search to see how much and how well-standing a presence on the Internet you have, it becomes essential that you not only be creative and show your personality, but maintain your dignity and uphold the idea that you actually have a maturity level beyond that of a giggly fifteen-year-old girl.

For most people who have common sense, the content of their profiles is benign, but I would like to point out that I have seen plenty of profiles that could use a bit of a sanity check to more appropriately represent their owners, and in some cases to protect their identities. Let’s be mature and smart about what we do, people.

For example, setting your cell phone number and home address to be visible to the world are probably not the most intelligent things one could do. So to help you stay safe, I’ve compiled a short list of recommendations to help you avoid being the biggest target for miles.

• NEVER, EVER list your street address, and depending on the size of your city, it might be wise to even avoid listing your that. Bigger is better, obviously, since there’s more of a “needle-in-the-haystack” problem with each additional person in your town, but you never want to be able to have anyone come right up to your door without you having given the location to them. I really don’t think I can emphasize enough the importance of this one single bullet.
• AVOID using your phone number(s), especially mobile phone numbers, in a profile. These are very easy to harass (prank phone call anyone) and can often be problematic, not to mention in some cases cell phones can be traced. Instead, use e-mail addresses, and perhaps a seldom-used instant messenger account, both of which you can ditch or filter for unwanted attempts at communication, with no further effort required beyond the “Block” button.
• NEVER post anything that might get you (or anyone you know) charged with a crime, be it something that could get you in trouble with a police department, or even simply your school. And I’m talking anything. And with the movement to online mediums such as social networking sites, it makes it even easier for universities to keep an eye on students and their activities. (Remember how I just pointed out the address book image about how people’s information comes to you? Same thing…all they have to do is wait.)  So, as an example, don’t go around posting pictures of yourself or your best friend holding a beer…someone will find it and you’ll be caught.
• DON’T post anything that you might later regret, even to the slightest extent. Remember, this is the Internet, and news travels faster than the light shining out of my laser pointer. The moment you let someone know, you’ve pretty much let the world know, and that can mean a world of pain when it comes to your romantic or professional lives. And now that Google can come in and read portions (if not all) of your profile, it can be archived for future public consumption, even after you’ve removed it from your profile.
• DON’T add everyone who asks to your profile; there’s a reason they ask you to confirm the friendship – it’s to confirm that you actually know and trust the person requesting to be your friend.  By “whoring yourself out” you introduce hundreds, if not thousands, of people you don’t know to a free-for-all access to all the information you have posted.  So think before that random hottie sends you a message asking to be your friend; chances are it’s not even a female but an obese guy with three layers of skin on his stomach and flies buzzing about his head.

I’m not saying that social networking should be bland and boring; it’s at the heart a form of self-expression, albeit one demonstrated to the world. The problem is that most people just don’t know when to quit – and end up committing the virtual equivalent of streaking around.

There have been plenty of ways in which people have been able to filter out their communications. For example, e-mail allows you to read any message you want, whenever you want, without having to read the others first. Voicemail has gotten to the point where you can do the same, a la iPhone (I say “Blech!” at the iPhone, but to be honest this is a very useful feature, one that should have been implemented ages ago).

But while these are useful, you still have to deal with the notifications (in most cases) that someone’s even trying to get in touch with you. Most cell phones beep (by default) when you’ve got voicemail or a new text message (of course, this can be disabled), and you can hide yourself on most instant messaging services by marking yourself as Away and setting your client to not harass you. And let’s not even get into the spam circles of junk mail/e-mail/phone calls…

But while you can do all of that with the “current-generation” of communications, what about some of the older things…things that haven’t changed much in years. Yes, I’m talking about your standard hardwired telephone.

While some people find that simply having a single cell phone and dropping the house phone in favor of giving everyone their cell phone number is a way to reduce bills, the typical household still has at least one landline running to their home. It’s great as a communications device; it’s simple and it works, and you don’t have to worry about recharging it (short of a cordless handset…but since you generally don’t put those in a purse or pocket and forget about them for a week, they still follow my point). But where’s the ability to screen calls, or filter out the obvious junk.

If there’s one thing I believe the typical phone service needs to stay in the game at this point, it’s the ability to allow their users to filter their callers. Sure, there’s a Do Not Call list, but has anyone actually followed that, and how many people can actually be bothered to notify the FCC (or whoever the heck deals with the violations) that someone has indeed violated it.

At this point in the game, I would have envisioned a web-based and phone-based system for setting up call screening. Nothing overly elaborate, but perhaps a list of recent calls with the option to block them always or at a certain time (useful for neighbors with no sense of night and day ), a la this s***ty mock-up. Believe me, people will take advatange of something that they can make as routine as their e-mail, without having to jump through hoops.

Now obviously, with such blocking power, there would have to be a way to get around this. So for that, I figure some of the more important government numbers would not be subjected to such blocking, as would important divisions of corporate agencies, such as a debt collector notifying a resident that they’re a few months…the list is endless, but no doubt it would help.

Of course, what to do with the screened calls? That could be another option; for some, the voicemail would probably be an ideal place, like your nightowl neighbor, but for others, what about playing the phone-disconnected three-tone “whistle” and message? And all the while…no phone ringing at 3 AM, or because of some quirky insurance salesman interrupting your dinner trying to sell you condoms because of a new “per-child insurance tax” your policy is being subject to.

I think it’s about time the tried-and-true methods got a bit of a revamp. Change is good…especially change that doesn’t interfere unless it’s specifically set up to. Come on…this shouldn’t be something that people need to install a phone company’s worth of equipment in their home for some peace of mind…but what do you think?

Well, let me set the record straight first. I’m not a big fan of cheaters. People who need to hack and mod their way through a deathmatch against a bunch of n00bs are just asking for themselves to be kicked around a bit. I don’t care what game it is, it’s just not right. (At least in a multiplayer setting; if you find yourself on a really hard level in a single-player game, and you use the codes sparingly, you end up restoring just a little bit of the lustre you lost when you got frustrated, right?)

But I still don’t see too many reasons why everyone needs to lock these consoles down so tight. In a world where decent home theater PCs still cost more than several of the current-generation consoles together (alright, one and a half if we’re counting in only PS3′s), it makes sense to give everyone something to muck around with. I mean, Sony abused the DVD capabilities of the PS2 to shove one into every home (hey, if it’s the cheapest DVD player at its launch…)

Some companies have played it smart and quickly embraced homebrew, both to draw customers and increase their revenue, and to encourage growth and enhancement of their product.  Rather than shutter everyone out, Cisco/Linksys extended their popular WRT54G line to cater to homebrewers when they made the generic router cheaper to manufacture and run.  TiVo regularly monitors the homebrew community for their products, and sometimes adds popular third-party hacks as features in the default TiVo system.  It seems that in just about every multimedia sector, you can find someone who offers open-source and homebrew aficionados the chance to show off their talent and extend the boundaries of the devices they hack.  Of course, in many of these cases, warranties are voided, but it is worth noting that many people are willing to sacrifice the possible cost of a new unit for the enhancements they gain as a result.

But as much as this happens in other industries, there’s absolutely no movement in the console market.  Partially, I can understand them.  They don’t want cheaters taking the fun out of games, and they certainly don’t want pirates making their games into a laughingstock of bits and bytes.  But they take it too far.

As a matter of example, take any recent cell phone.  Not really a smartphone, just your average, everyday cell phone.  Now, note that the firmware probably includes Java.  That’s right.  The cell phone manufacturer implemented Java, and left a framework which could be used for homebrew development.  To be reasonable, most of the applications you’ll see for a cell phone were probably coded with the idea that there is payment to be made somewhere down the line.  But the point remains that there is a sizable toolkit implemented on the phone itself, no problems required.

With such a toolkit already provided, it makes for little reason for anyone to resort to “exploiting” the device simply to get something that isn’t supposed to be running, well, running.  Third-party games on platforms like the PSP and iPod (aka free development and a reason for people to buy your product) only work when people find exploits that enable them in the first place.  Not only does it add value, the consumers will be able to add more functionality as they see fit.  All in all, an easy way to increase profits, the functionality of your product, and get privileged to see free market research as to what people are looking for and buying because of.

Why haven’t the console manufacturers realized that they’re giving up FREE DEVELOPMENT simply because they want to be a bunch of tightwads?  Wake up people, and realize that there are people willing to improve your products, whether you like it or not.  Maybe it’s in your best interest to embrace it, rather than hinder it.