Monday, May 21, 2007

Cancelling Elevators: Part II

I am still formulating an efficient solution to the elevator issue from the previous draft, but I will share my thought process, and the solution I am exploring.

Summary of Problem:
People call-up / request each Elevator Car to their lobby. When the first car arrives, the person enters. But the other cars eventually arrive, often with passengers who are delayed for the unnecessary stop. We are seeking a way to Cancel the Call to Cars when request is already filled; no need for the other cars to arrive.

Line of Thought:

1. Passengers will not go out of their way to cancel without being rewarded.
2. If a cancel button or toggle off switch existed on each request button, then customers would have to go out their way to cancel, because 'their way' is towards the first arriving car.
3. Our system is not set up to provide rewards to passengers.
4. If system will not give rewards, and passengers will not go out of way, then cancel mechanism must not require an action of the passenger that takes him of his way.
5. Cancel button/toggler cannot be on the wall, next to door, as the request buttons are.
6. If a cancel button/toggler need not be on the wall, then neither do the request buttons need to be on the wall.
So, the solution to the Cancel mechanism could be a solution that also provides for requests. We can reword our need to incorporate that.... : "Call and Cancel Mechanism."
7* One solution is to provide a 'remote' clicker to each building member. The clicker would be used to request and cancel the cars.
- The clicker :
A. Requires extra equipment to be maintained by users.
B. Does not provide for non-members.

8. The clicker is not a good solution.

9. One of the reasons the clicker is a bad idea, is because the passengers must do actions that are not related to the core activity of traveling up or down the building.
10. The remote would have buttons, and the remote adds extra activity; the wall buttons are buttons, so it could be that all buttons are unnecessary.
11. An ideal solution would require minimal action of passenger. The status should be a byproduct of their single, true desire (up or down) rather than require any further input than the statement of the single, true desire.

**** At this point, I am studying the feasibility of a Floor Mat, with alternate colors for "Down" and "Up." A car moving in the direction X will arrive at a floor if at least one Foot is atop a floor section for X....

*******

I am heading to Ireland for a week. I will resume this exercise later...

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Cancelling Elevator Call Requests

I work on floor 22 of a 25 story building serviced by 3 'cars.'

Often during high traffic elevator periods, such as 5:30pm, when descending to the lobby, the elevator stops at a floor and opens its doors to an empty lobby.

It occurred to me that the people waiting on those floors received a better offer. Having pressed each car's call button, they boarded the first arrival--and departed. It was wise of them to hedge their bets... but it needlessly delayed my car and its population.

I envisioned a 'cancel' button placed next to each down and up button in the lobby. Today a "cancel button elevators" Google informed me that a Mike Golding at 'whynot.com' had the same idea. The comments on that page reveals that some elevators, inside the car, have a deselect function for any button. Pressing it once 'selects;' twice, deselects. Practical idea.

If the lobby 'call' buttons had that same feature, they wouldn't need an extra button--just the same double-click deselect ability. But I do not think a Cancel function would solve the problem of 'deserters' aka 'phantom callers', because it requires humans doing something without self-incentive. What would the caller gain by cancelling his request? Indeed, he may even endanger his acceptance into the 'white night' elevator, by taking time to cancel the other calls. [ Picture how callers center themselves before the row of elevators, again 'hedging their bet.' When the far-left lift arrives, would they time or inclination to shuffle over to cancel the far right call? Unlikely.]

I have some ideas how to solve this issue, and will share such fruits in a future post. Please chime in with your own.

Monday, May 14, 2007

If you can call your profile 'Al', I want to Label you a 'Fraud'

I've been writing a lot recently about 'Labels' aka 'Tags.' In the previous post, I noted that Google's Gmail does not allow you to Label your Contacts. That is unfortunate, but not uncommon--most other big services disallow the labeling of friends and colleagues. The new darling "LinkedIn" gives you an Alphabetical list of Contacts, and allows you Filter based on Industries/Professions that each Contact has assigned himself to. But no labels. Similarly, Myspace, owing either to a unimaginative project team or an old Christian disinclination to tag people, offers no method to sort your Friends. Indeed, the term Friends is generic and often inappropriate. (I use the term "profile" synonmous with 'friend' because just as you have your own personal profile, the other inhabitants of Myspace have Profiles. It's a good term to mean an online representation/page pertaining to a person or persons who are you or not you.)

Here's how it goes in Myspace:

1. A Request for a Friendship (should be Relationship) comes into your inbox. Sometimes it is noted that the requesting profile is in your 'Extended Network' - meaning you have a common profile, but it does not say who or what that is.
2. You Add or Deny.
3. If Add, the profile is in Your Group of Friends ("External Profiles" ).
4. That's it.

In the Myspace world, there is no distinction between Profiles you don't know but charitably accepted versus Profiles you are almost certain represent your girlfriend. The only method to quickly view the page of often visited pals, is to put them into your Top 8/16/or 24 friends, and then jump to them from your public profile. Bogus!

When logged in, you should be able to sort your Profiles into any number of different groupings, based on attributes each profile assigned to himself as well as those you've assigned to the profile. Sign-ups to Myspace have to assign themselves to a Single master group/genre such as Comedian, Band (funny, eh that they insist on that name rather than musician). That is bogus and suprisingly narrow-minded in this day of multi-tasking. Geez. Myspace offers no suggestions to users who want to do Multiple artistic pursuits...

The big problem is, Myspace demands that users identify (label!) themselves as one and only one Type of User. And then it does not allow members to even sort their Profiles by that User Type!

The FIX:
1. let users label their personal profile(s), and to also label their external profiles.
2. Allow users to Sort their List of Profiles based on the Tags.
3. Allow users to make Lists/Groups, a feature presently available in YouTube.

In such a scenario, I could login, view a list of Best Friends, Bands I Like, view All Musicians I Know, sort by Number of Stars I've given music, show my friends by hair color, age.... It'd be very convenient.

Indeed. Returning to the subject of labeling contacts in general, throughout the many services, I'll say that Google has the best potential for devising an ideal set up of Contacts, if it can merge several of its technologies (there's no word yet whether Google/Gmail Account holders will be able to merge youtube accounts into their Google account).

Here's what I want:
1. A List of Profiles, which contain Contact Information and link to Public Profile Pages.

2. The ability to Sort those contacts based on Labels and Lists that I have created and based on the user's own tags, groups.

3. To see, at a glance, what new Output the contacts have created, or Events they have planned (that I'm not uninvited to...)

4. With a click, see the Conversations we've had, and to Start a new conversation.

Google can make it happen for these reasons:
1. It deploys Labeling through much of its services.
2. It's YouTube allows you to assign contacts to Lists you create.
3. It understands that Each Party in a Relationship can represent him/herself as well as the other. This concept is evident in Gmail's "Add Photo" feature of Contact Editing. You can upload your own photo of that contact, as well as view the Photo that the contact uploaded of herself.
4. In Gmail you can show mail based on labels, or search using a pronoun as keyword.

I hope Google pulls it all together soon. If you've seen their site recently, you've noticed that it has given a 'name' to its personal homepage: "iGoogle." That is a key step. With a name comes definition, which can expand and change... I believe you'll be seeing more streamlining of Google's user profile-based properties (youTube, picassa) so that you can assign one or more of them into your iGoogle. When that happens, you'll see the stock go back up.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Gmail Filters: Disallows Multiple Values per Criteria and Labeling of Contacts :(

Oh, Google: you keep sprinkling killer apps with AJAX and Comet to make the interface really 'fast' , and yet by overlooking how the tools are employed by us humans, you waste so much of our time! Take for instance, Gmail Filters (cited in the previous post for its usefullness). As you may know or can guess, Filters are like MS Outlook Rules-- your instructions to the program to Do things to Incoming Messages. First, you define Criteria by placing a value in any of the following inputs: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn't Have (the words).


Then you Choose an Action to be run on the targeted messages:

The weakness lies within the Defining of Criteria. For starters, the input fields do not use the auto-fill / display of likely matches service which Google deploys in many of its other apps. This oversight is especially unsensible in the 'From' field, because Gmail Contacts are already stored. When I typed in my brother Kevin's address, I had to type it in its entirety, which might have caused a wrong address. A prompt, or list of addresses matching a nickname or first few characters (which Yahoo Mail provides) would be helpful.

The major problem with the Criteria Inputs is they don't allow multiple values. I wanted to create one Family filter. In the 'From' field, I should be able to "kevin OR rowland OR clyde." Why are web services Inputs void of Boolean definitions? Remember those advanced Searches we learned in college to query library databases? They would be very helpful nowadays, too!
Say I have multiple siblings each with the same last name, and also, an unrelated friend with same last name. This would do the trick:

[From: contains] 'hanley BUT NOT cindy';

And in the case where I have four sisters who are married, and have different last names, I would like to do this:

[From: contains] 'clyde' OR 'christine' OR 'kathleen'

Instead, I have to create a NEW FILTER FOR EACH sibling!! Hey, I do want to make multiple filters, but to hanle a myriad of business and personal relationships. One filter should handle the fam.

An indirect, alternative method to accomplish that wish, would be to first: Tag each of your Contacts (assign a label/keyword). Then, when creating a filter, use a Label as a Criteria.
Example:
[From: labled]: 'fam'

However, this method is impossible as well--Gmail does not allow you to Label Contacts, nor does it allow Labels to be a Filter Criteria! But Gmail does offer to Assign Labels as a Filter's Action.
If [From: kevin]: Then : label 'fam'

Gmail Filters are a helpful tool for deleting or forwarding targed communications. But human users want to organize / sort messages based on Types of Contacts. The easiest way to offer that, would be to allow users to Label each contact. Gmail adds a layer of complication by not allowing the labeling of contacts, and then demanding a unique Filter for each Contact.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Email Filters are Helpful Tools

One of the sillier things I've done in the music scene is ask my old guitar instructor to remove one of my addresses from his mailing list (he was that type of entertainer guilty of importing into a blaster every address from which he received a message). My request was unnecessary, and (directed as it was to an egomaniac) insulting. Also, challenging. I was asking him to do something, period. If he was interested in granting the wish, then he would have had to learn how to remove an email address from his blaster. Although that is probably easy, the thought of learning can induce a headache.

All I needed to do was set up a filter or ‘rule’ in my Email Program to siphon off any incoming messages from the blaster—which is what I did two weeks of invites later.



Note the faulty logic which led to my request:
I do not want Ben’s band invites in my gmail inbox. I am going to take action—by asking him to stop. (Because I have no control over what arives in my inbox, I must depend on the senders. )He is sending the invites to both yahoo and gmail accounts. I will ask him to only send it to yahoo account. (Yeah, and contact each and every spammer in your Bulk folder and ask them to stop too).

Here is how I should have thought through the matter:
I do not want to see Ben’s band invites in my Gmail inbox. I must preserve the Gmail inbox as a spam-free family and friend zone. How can I prevent the trespassing? What tool(s) may I access to control my Gmail experience?

The answer: Filters. Filters is the fourth tab in the Settings Panel, which gmail users may access through a link from the top right Header. Remember users: gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail are each Email PROGRAMS. There is more to them than just what Displays upon log in: Inbox and Left Navigation. Programs Do things, and give you a level of control in how things are done. Look into it… Filtering is how these programs keep away spam, or direct it to a Bulk folder (Yahoo). You can do it too!

Another lesson: when dealing with man-machine hybrids such as a distant friend/colleague using an Email Blaster, it is best to mediate issues through a machine of your own. Although I could not (and probably should not have tried to) directly contact Ben, I could adjust my machine to overpower his machine. Not only did my filter nullify his blaster’s action, but it required no work on Ben’s part. Therefore, he has that much more time to book awesome shows in venues such as that rockin’ place in Dover, N.H.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Shall I Label that Tag?

Technology writers love to compare standards competitions to the famed Beta / VHS duel. Recently this nostalgiaparison was gucked onto the Blue Ray – Super Duper DVD battle. It could also be applied to the burgeoning divergence between the Widget and Gadget delivery systems. Will Google buy its way out of its unusual position of being the less accepted technology? Will staid platforms like Myspace learn that Javascript modules are the Least of their worries (far less damaging to user experience than the megabytes of ads)?

There is another high-exposure conflict in the tech world. In a limited view, it is a name game: Labels versus Tags. Both words are taken to mean “keywords”: any number of adjectives, nouns, verbs (y’know; the ‘Big Three’ of words) that are descriptive of an object, or symbolize analogous and related objects. At least, that is MY take on the purpose of a Tag aka Label. Although producers and consumers are increasingly encouraged to tag and label objects, most venues do not provide instructions. Indeed, for a prompt, usually a short example is all we get. This is what Google’s Blogger (yes, the very tool I’m using now) gives as a prompt:

“Labels for this post: (e.g. scooters, vacation, fall)”



Not much, eh? On the other extreme is Amazon.com, which gives a thorough education in Tagology. At the bottom of each product detail page is a heading “Tag this product” accompanied by the intuitive ‘What’s this?’ link, opening a pop-up page that includes an introductory paragraph followed by answers to “So how can I use tags?” and other questions. Since Amazon is heavily invested in tagging, it should place tags (and the ‘add a tag’ feature) atop the page, next to the image and product title.



When adding a tag at Amazon, the prompt itself is helpful. It reads: (“Separate multiple tags using commas”). There are 2 things important about that message:
1. It explicitly states how to separate multiple tags, compared to the Blogger prompt, which merely implies via an example.
2. The reality it conveys: commas as separator. Comma Separation of values works great for tags and labels (but not for all records of data—text that includes commas causes Quirks when separating with same. That’s why I’m a pipe delimiter).

Some tagging and label venues do not use the comma separator, but demand a Space between each tag. Ridiculous, isn’t it? The venue gives no explanation for this decision, nor any guidance for what to do with compound words. It is especially harmful, because tags are also used as a Search tool. And when searching, a consumer prefers to use plain English. Is the consumer expected to seek out “fishingRods?” I don’t know what these venues are thinking. Among them is the popular bookmark service “del.icio.us” If Delicious gets swallowed by Google Bookmarks, it will learn that “inferioirTechnology” can outdo a “headStart.”

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Navigate Blogs via Labels

Imagine if your favorite website was only navigable via the Dates that the pages were updated. So, if you were at NY times, you wouldn't see 'Sports', 'Business'... you would see 'April 5, 9:30am', 'April 5, 9:42am'..... Ludicrous, right? And yet most bloggers leave a Year – Month archive as the only way for readers to find content (past posts).

Blogger now allows its bloggers to insert a module that displays "labels", the descriptive keywords that the blogger attaches* to his post. I just added it to this blog, this past week. Labels are more relevant to a reader's aims than just the Numbers which are Dates. Sure, a date can imply content. A December 06 post is a likely spot to find rambling about, oh, Christmas... snow. But there is no need to limit the imagination and interests of our dear readers! Labels aka tags (I'll write a post about those synonyms and various syntax of same Friday) cut right to the subject.

Hopefully, the Tag Module will catch on. Today, a random survey of 15 blogs found just 2 which offered Label Navigation. Blogger should promote it upon Login. Heck, otherwise, the blogger only finds it by clicking on Template and browsing the possible Page Elements. And heck, as long as I'm in 'tell Blogger what to do' mode, add this:

* Let Readers label posts, as well as the author. When readers come to a blog with Label Navigation, they would be able to view, together, both the author and other readers' labels.