Frightening news story. If you’ve installed Comet Cursor (which is sort of automatically downloaded if you visit certain sites (yeah, you have to agree, but for most users, that’s still not an active choice)) you’ve created a back door for advertising.

In fact, context-sensitive advertising. It knows where you browse and will send you ads to draw you away from where you are, and over to a competitor. Yikes!

This is a pretty great page with signs and photos from Japan. Kind of what you’d expect, but really well done.

Yeesh. My brand new sharp camcorder and I’ve got a battery stuck in there. Looks like I’m off to Cupertino or Campbell or something to try to get it removed.

Yeesh.

Well, I took the leap today and ordered a DVD player. Yep, I’m Mr. Early-Adopter, eh?

I chose the Panasonic DVD-CV51. It is a 5-disc changer, which means it will replace my CD player in the stack of black boxes currently taking over my living room.

It has all my usual 5 disc CD functions, plus a DVD function. And it’ll play my CD-Rs (of which I have many – but I guess many DVD players won’t play ‘em) and it will also play MP3 CDRs – not sure how that will work, but it’s worth a shot.

800.com had a very good deal which I found through MySimon. I learned from doing just a little reading that there are a lot of places that are playing bait and switch with availability, shipping costs, etc. Lots of horrific customer experiences on the web. And I guess a phone call 2 days later to sell you more accessories is standard for the lowest priced places. Although with free shipping and a special discount they were offering, I did better than the “unapproved” places.

I paid less, and I have peace of mind. Isn’t life grand? I can’t wait til it arrives!

Tags: adoption, DVD, product, purchase

So my latest customer service nightmare (or was it dream-come-true) was with Fidelity. My Former Employer (now defunct) transferred everyone to Fidelity 401(k) the same day they let a huge chunk of the staff go. Previously, we were with someone else. It’s hard for me to say who, because you’ve got all those players – you’ve got the local office of a national company and you’ve got the actual adminstration firm who handles the 401(k) and despite the fact that I traveled to Kansas and did a full day of research following the document flow inside that administration firm, I still don’t understand as a consumer how they related to the other company, etc.

Anyway, the company is gone. The 401(k) is closed. Time to get the money out of there. Fidelity would like you to roll it over with them, but I decided to take it to the company I had been dealing with for my other investments, who I met when they handled some aspect of the initial 401(k) at my Former Employer. Confused yet?

So I had them take care of all the forms – they know exactly what to do. But then I get a call from them, they can’t close out my 401(k) (despite my signing all the forms), I have to do it online with fidelity, or on the phone. Here’s the URL, or phone number. Okay. Fine. I’m not sure what I’m going to do transaction-wise, but I go in to see. Website – no luck – you can’t make that kind of transaction, they really want you to go see your plan adminstration (that’s the person in the company that handles this stuff, but there is NO COMPANY any more). So, I call. Really, all the telephone number is for is to tell you to go to the website (or see your plan administrator). No way to speak to someone, no way to do anything.

Back to my rep, I go. She gets on the phone (conferencing me in) and it was a thing of beauty – they gave her SUCH a runaround, and she handled it so well. It turned into this incredible who’s on first routine. They escalated us to the 401(k) response team (or something equally inaccurate) who were unwilling to say or do anything unless the person they were speaking to was an owner of the Former Employer. First of all, I was calling as a participant, not to change the plan, but to get my money out. Second of all, as my rep insisted, the company does NOT exist. Time and time again, the Fidelity person gave the same names of people and their phone numbers, and my rep reminded them that they no longer work at that company, that those phone numbers or email addresses are not valid, and that the company is bankrupt. There is no plan administrator. We started over like 3 times, each time, the Fidelity rep asked WHO the person with me on the line was and what their title was, and what their role was. Over and over again. It seemed as if Fidelity had no record anywhere in their system that Former Employer had gone bankrupt. Despite letters being sent to all members of the 401(k) from the Former Employer with instructions on how to proceed with Fidelity. But I didn’t have to handle it, I just listened, and my rep did an awesome job of being persistent, getting annoyed just enough, trying multiple options in order to find a way to have the Fidelity person get something done.

So, soon I shall no longer be a customer of Fidelity, and I shall be thrilled.

I’ve been blogged on www.boingboing.net - it’s a really great site with all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. Anyway, today they’ve got my suggested story, about a Chinese restaurant in the UK successfully fending off McDonald’s who sued to stop them from using McChina. And yesterday they cited my Foreign Grocery Products museum - which I’m now going to have to go and update.

Ahhh, good ole Monster.com and their customer service.

Below is my response from “mayday”, and my original complaint about M.L. Stern using Monster to telephone-spam people.

I’ve included the entire email message, but the point is that their robot is amusingly and annoyingly inappropriate here. If not always.

————begin email—————————–
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:22:19 -0500
From: mayday@monster.com
Subject: Re: complaint about “employer” [#2725309]
To: steve@portigal.com
X-RCPT-TO:

Thank you for your interest in Monster.com, the leading online global career site.

Searching for job opportunities on Monster.com is very easy. We’ve outlined several suggestions and examples below to help you use our search functions the most effectively.

There are different ways to search for jobs on Monster.com: Full Search, and Browse Jobs.

Instructions included below:
Full Search
Browse Jobs
More information
Keyword Search Tips

FULL SEARCH (by location, category, keyword)

To get to the Job Search page, select ‘Job Search’ from the menu at the top of the page. From this page, you can search for jobs by location, category, or keyword(s).

Location: If you’re not sure which location to choose, pick all of the locations which may be applicable. To select multiple locations, hold down the Control key (PC) or the Command/Apple key (Mac) while clicking the desired locations. This method also works to deselect locations. If you do not choose a location, your job search will default to the entire United States.

Job Category: If you are not sure which Job Categories to choose, select all of the job categories in that may be applicable. To select multiple categories, hold down the Control key (PC) or the Command/Apple key (Mac) while clicking the desired categories. This method also works to deselect categories. If you do not choose a category, your job search will search all categories.

Keyword: Keywords are not required. Use the ‘Keyword’ function in addition to ‘Location’ and ‘Category’ to return more targeted results. Keywords are words or phrases describing your job preference. Keywords can be a job title or skill, the name of an industry or company, or a location. Examples include: programmer, SAP, telecommunications, North Dakota, human resources, America online, marketing, Cincinnati, etc.

Now click ‘Search Jobs’. You can continue to narrow your search on the next screen by typing another keyword in the blank field and then clicking ‘Subsearch’.

BROWSE JOBS

Go to the Job Search page by clicking ‘Search Jobs’ on the menu at the top of the page. You can browse job listings by clicking one of the following categories under the heading ‘Browse Jobs by’ in the right-hand shaded column:

US City/State: If you know the city, state, or region where you’d like to work, begin your search here. Click on a specific state on the map (or state abbreviation below the map) or one of the regional listings to the right. When your results appear, you can continue to refine your search by entering a keyword and clicking ‘Subsearch’.

International: If you are interested in working abroad, begin your search here. Click on the map or country/region listing to begin your search. When your results appear, you can continue to refine your search by entering a keyword and clicking ‘Subsearch’.

Company: To search for jobs at a particular company, select the appropriate letter of the alphabet. Scroll down the list until you see the company in which you are interested. Click on the name to see valuable information about the company as well as its available job listings. Not all companies with job postings are listed here. This is an optional service for employers.

MORE INFORMATION

Search Results Page — The Search Results page will tell you how many jobs match your search criteria. Jobs are then listed by date posted, location, job title, and company name. All jobs appear in reverse chronological order, i.e. the most recent job posted to Monster.com’s database will appear at the top of your Search Results page.

Some of the jobs that are posted come from clients that post jobs in newspapers. If a company in Boston, MA places an ad in an Austin, TX newspaper (for a Boston, MA job), that company expects us to post their job in the same fashion–i.e. post the Boston job in an Austin location in order to recruit talent from Austin. So the job postings that you’re seeing are from companies that want to attract people from the location(s) that you’re searching in. The jobs may not necessarily be physically located in that location.

If your search matches more than 50 jobs, click ‘Next’ at the bottom of the screen to access more jobs.

Subsearches — At the top of every Search Results page, a ‘Subsearch’ box will appear. Subsearching allows you to further refine your search from your current screen without having to start from the beginning. For example, if you performed a search using the keyword “publishing” which retrieved 1,500 listings, you could then do a Subsearch for “editor” to narrow your search within those same 1,500 listings. You can conduct additional Subsearches until you get the results you want. Names of states and cities can also be used in your Subsearch.

To retrieve even more job listings, click on the arrow by ‘All Jobs’ to pull down ‘Last 7 days’, ‘Last 60 days’, etc. The system will search for ‘All Jobs’ unless another choice is selected.

Apply online — You can apply for a job online by clicking ‘Apply Online’ at the bottom of most job description pages. If you have a r�sum� posted on our site, a copy of that r�sum� is automatically submitted to the company via email. If you do not have a r�sum� posted on our site, you will need to submit one before you can use the ‘Apply Online’ function.

Some companies opt not to have the ‘Apply Online’ function, or have it link to an application form on their own website. In these cases, you will not be able to use your Monster.com r�sum�.

KEYWORD SEARCH TIPS

Use keywords to describe your specific skills or areas of interest. Keywords are not case sensitive. Searching by job titles is less effective because titles can vary from company to company. When typing in your keywords, you can either type in just one word or try these suggestions for using multiple words:

To specify words that must all appear in the search results, put ‘and’ between the words (e.g., publishing and editor).

To specify words any of which may appear in the search results, put ‘or’ between the words (e.g., publishing or editor).

To specify a word that must not appear in the search results, put ‘and not’ before the word (e.g. publishing and not editor)

Note: The search will not accept any characters that are not alphanumeric (e.g., “&”). Therefore, you may want to change the keywords in your search accordingly.

Should you need additional information, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions at http://help.monster.com/jobseeker/FAQ/ or Reply to this message (but please DO NOT REMOVE the Ticket Number from the Subject line) and we will gladly answer your questions.

Need more information on your career or profession? Visit our Career Center at

—– Steve Portigal Wrote —–
I’m registered with monster.com as a job seeker. My core skill is user research and product design.

Today I received a call from “Judy” at M.L. Stern who saw my information on monster.com. She left a message for me to call Bill Pinkerton, at 1 800 965 2220. Bill is the office manager, apparently.

I called Bill, and the call was strange – he had no idea who I was, but started on the “what is your ideal position” – at any rate, it turns out that they are looking for commission-based telephone brokerage sales.

(it was starting to remind me of the film “Boiler Room”, actually).

I asked Bill what in my information made them think that I was interested in sales and he said that he didn’t know.

In any job search, there will be appropriate and inappropriate leads, that’s totally part of the gig. But this seems fairly unethical, they are using monster to simply collect data and “spam” people who might get fooled into taking a job. A tool like monster is useful for job seekers and employees because of its ability to target, not to harvest.

As a job seeker in this economy, I’m busy, and I’m worried, I don’t need to be played or have my time wasted by an organization that is looking to hook people into commission sales. I don’t want Amway calling me, I don’t want Fuller Brush, or Mary Kay Cosmetics contacting me. I shouldn’t have to deal with M.L. Stern and their rather sneaky tactics.

Thanks for listening,

Steve

========================================================
FreshMeat #11 from Steve Portigal

               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \\/  Meat

If you aren’t addicted to FreshMeat, well, why not?
=========================================================
Dive deep into the mundane; find fascination and humor
=========================================================

Not too much to say about the following news article,
most every toilet joke imaginable was crammed into it,
so there’s no real need for me to add more (yes, this
takes enormous restraint on my part). I think the point
is that for just about anything that we consume (and
as consumers, take for granted) there is some subset
of a brand manager, a designer, a committee, a
conference, a product manager, and who knows what -
someone who is concerned with some combination of
business success, usage, and meaning.

——

By John O’Callaghan SINGAPORE (Reuters) – It’s something
people use every day but organizers of the World Toilet
Summit in Singapore hope to bring the taboo topic out of
the water closet. Some 200 delegates from Asia, Europe and
North America are swapping ideas on design, public
education and sanitation under the theme “Our toilets the
past, the present and the future.”

The new World Toilet Association wants to spread the word
with its Web site — www.worldtoilet.org — as a nerve
center for researchers, designers, makers and vendors of a
device that is mundane to many but an unknown luxury in
much of the world.

“The proliferation of this movement worldwide will
inevitably lead to improvements in toilet environment
everywhere,” Jack Sim, president of the Restroom
Association of Singapore and organizer of the two-day
summit, said in an opening address on Monday.

Wash your hands and always flush was the message from a
mime troupe that kicked off the event with a graphic but
silent demonstration of the good, the bad and the ugly in
the bathroom.

Delegates, including Chinese officials preparing for the
Olympic onslaught in 2008, will also be treated to a tour
of some of Singapore’s most technically advanced commodes.
The latest and greatest loos will be on show at the four-
day Restroom Asia trade fair at Singapore Expo starting on
Tuesday.

The World Health Organization estimates 40 percent of the
world’s population does not have access to adequate
sanitation, leading to the spread of disease, higher
healthcare costs and the death of two million people each
year — most of them children.

“Up to now, it’s an area that has been very much
neglected,” Lim Swee Say, Singapore’s acting minister for
the environment, told reporters on the sidelines of the
summit. “You can’t avoid talking about the kind of
challenges we face.”

Singapore already is at the forefront of enforcing toilet
etiquette with fines for not flushing and automatic devices
that sense when to send the water surging. But the city
state is not taking the future sitting down by spending S$7
billion ($3.8 billion) on a deep-tunnel sewage system and
millions more on upgrading public toilets in hawker
centers, housing estate coffee shops, parks and schools.

“We are adopting an end-to-end approach in looking at our
sanitation requirements,” Lim said in a speech.

Tags: etiquette, freshmeat, singapore, social norms, toilet, world toilet association, world toilet summit

========================================================
FreshMeat #10 from Steve Portigal

               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \\/  Meat

Three out of three doctors subscribe to FreshMeat!
=========================================================
How or when does technology reduce distance? Increase it?
=========================================================

A recent article in the New York Times describes
a new service from Teleportec – live transmission of
holograms. It’s the ultimate in videoconferencing; rather
than watching on a video monitor, you can see a full-size,
3D image of the person, right in your meeting room.

Cool, huh? And you can have a facility in your office for
only $5000/month, or you can rent offsite for $500/hour.

Teleportec is hoping to sell this to executives (is that
because of the value of the tool, or the price of the
tool?) and real estate companies to do property
walkthroughs.

A few years ago there was a company called Teleport
(hmm…) developing a virtual dinner table, a half-circle
against a large video screen, so each party would believe
they were sitting at a round table, with half of the
participants being remote.

Like many other products in that category, Teleport sought
to recreate the informality of a meeting, but I believe the
opportunity is in recreating the formality of television.
Although Teleportec seems gimmicky, self-indulgent, and
inappropriately high-end for this economy, they may have
brushed up against that formality.

The best videoconference experience I’ve had was one where
a colleague and I gave a presentation. We had a camera
operator who would pan and zoom between the two of us. We
had a monitor so we could see how we were framed on screen
and moderate our body language appropriately. We even built
a simple backdrop, and when the camera was on, we
performed. We acted like news anchors crossbred with
motivational speakers. It was a total success. The client
believed it was nearly as good as us being there (we
suspected it might have even been better).

The default assumption seems to be that we want to use
technology to simulate reality – that it’s going to put us
right in their office, and it’ll be just like being there.
In fact, it put us right on their office, onto their
television screen. If you’re going to be on television,
make it look like television, and act like you are on
television. That is the context within which your audience
experiences your content (and thus judges it). The frame
shift is from simulated reality to theater. Obviously,
great for presentations, maybe not so good for meetings.

Another story – at the 1994 Computer-Human Interaction
conference in Boston, they set up a video portal between
remote parts of the facility, and left it to see what would
happen. On its own, not too much. People mostly hustled on
by and ignored it.

After a couple of days, I went and stood in front of one
station, and began calling out to the people on the other
end. (Note: This was after David Letterman started taking
his camera out to the street but before Tom Green developed
a middlebrow art form out of this). “Hey you with the bag!”
I’d yell. Most people did their best to ignore me, but some
would stop. So I’d interview them, faux roving reporter
persona and all. I had enormous leeway to break cultural
norms (i.e., act like a jerk), because I was on TV, after
all. Of course, I drew a bit of a crowd, because there was
live theater (better than TV, supposedly) right there!

It seems like the opportunity for the folks developing
these products (and they are ultimately products, not
just raw technologies) is to understand the context, not
simply improve the fidelity. What do people holding video
conferences need to do differently from simply having a
meeting? How can the product better support that?

It’d be pretty exciting to see some of the results that
might come from a fresh approach.

Tags: chi, communication, face to face, freshmeat, interaction, technology, teleconference, teleport, teleportec, videoconference