This is the second installment in a very infrequently published series here at wheatblog. You can also read the premiere installment.
Three things that don’t suck:
- Bose SoundDock
Some audiophile will no doubt write to tell me that these do, in fact, suck. But having played in rock bands my whole life, my ability to perceive frequencies at the upper ends of the spectrum is, perhaps, somewhat compromised. Be that as it may, I’ve been very impressed with this completely wonderful little gadget which I got as a gift last year. Sure, it would be great if it had an auxiliary audio input. But design minimalists–and I could myself among their number–will love that it does one thing and does it remarkably well. Slap your iPod in its dock, select a playlist, hit play, and bask in the glory of incredible sound and remarkably clear bass. As a bassist, I’m in love with this thing. I wish I had an extra one just for my office. I almost never bother playing music through my stereo anymore. It charges up your iPod while it’s docked and has a handy remote. - Dyson DC14 Animal
I guess you know you’re old when you post to praise a vacuum cleaner. But, if you’re a pet owner (disclaimer: three cats, one very hairy dog), you need to consider this. I’m knocked out by how well it works every time I use it. It’s great on carpet and amazing on hard wood floors. The “telescope reach” feature lets you clean your ceilings, if you like, or anything else that’s hard to reach. It comes with a smart selection of attachments, including the “low reach floor tool” which lets you get up under practically anything. A few of the the extras (notably the “mini turbine head” attachment and the “carpet care kit”) are hit and miss. But the performance of the vacuum itself is incredible. My house feels cleaner than it ever has before. I actually enjoy vacuuming with this thing because I can tell that I’m making a difference. - Tracks
I’m a sucker for a good web application. I use the suite of Google apps daily. But since I joined the Cult of Getting Things Done, I’ve come to rely on Tracks to manage my life and work. It’s an incredibly elegant application that lets me manage all of my tasks easily. I’ve only been using it for a few weeks and now I have a hard time imagining how I got by without it. And that’s surely as good a measure of web application greatness as anything else.
And now, three things that do suck:
- flowers.com
I had used this service on a few occasions in the past, but I never will again and I hope you don’t either. Why? Because they botched Valentine’s Day this year. Isn’t Valentine’s Day the raison d’être for a flower shop? But it wasn’t just that the botched the most important day of the year as far as flower delivery is concerned. It was the way in which they botched it and the incredibly bad customer service that surrounded the botch. Every phone representative I talked to, in order to give their company an opportunity to make this right, gave me a different story and made me different promises which the next one–invariably–refused to honor. They all practically broke their own arms patting themselves on the back for bothering to refund my money after I brought the lack of delivery to their attention. What remedy did they offer for their colossal incompetence? A 20% off coupon on my next order, so I can give them a chance to screw up another holiday. I’ll bet you can guess what I told them they could do with that. I also promised to tell my story to everyone who would listen. So here you go, internet. You’ve been warned. Those hippies were right about the whole “shop local” thing. - WebCT / Blackboard
In the education game, Content Management Systems (CMS) designed for online classes are called Learning Management Systems (LMS) and they, as a category, blow. Educational technology often seems to exist in a strange vacuum unconnected with the larger software development and design trends of the IT industry. Both of those weaknesses are true of WebCT and the new re-branded version of it put out by its new owner, Blackboard. Perhaps Blackboard’s other products are better, I don’t know. But I do know that WebCT, including the new Blackboardified version of it, is one of the clunkiest, ugliest, web applications I’ve ever encountered. Years ago, I had the option of using version 3.x on an education site I was building and chose to roll my own solution out of a mishmash of Perl and PHP rather than use it. In my work, I use both version 4.1 and version 6.x. Even though the 6.x version is quite an improvement over all previous versions, it’s still a horrible application and practically an object lesson in bad user interface design. It’s powerful, I’ll give it that. But that’s no excuse. I’ll have to enumerate its sins in another post, as I don’t have space or patience to do so right now. - Bockbuster
I’m still have a Blockbuster card, but, since I joined Netflix, I haven’t been back. In fact, I’m still a member of their “rewards” program, which means I still get a monthly coupon for a free “non-new-release [sic]” movie. But, you know what? I haven’t even bothered to cash them in. The selection at Blockbuster has always been lacking. But, even worse than that is the time wasted wandering around, not being able to remember what you wanted or, if you can remember, finding it is already checked out. Now they are pushing their online service, with the big perk that you can get movies at the store as well. But going to a video rental store isn’t a perk. It’s something that you’ll never miss once you no longer have to do it, like college Algebra, or BASIC with line numbers. They say online shopping cuts down on human interaction. But, I guess there are certain forms of human interaction I’m content to do without.