Please fix phone spam Google!

95% of my incoming calls are now spam. Most of them are some strange pre-recorded Chinese voice with music playing in the background but I occasionally get a free hotel stay as well.

So far Google has rolled out Call Screen. This means I can waste my time watching Google Assistant talk to the spammer. It's way faster not to bother, hang up all calls and delete the voicemails later.

It seems like instead of Call Screen there could be a better way to deal with this.

Firstly, send any call not from someone in my contacts directly to voice mail. This would actually solve a lot of the problem.

Next, for extra credit, run spam detection on the voice mail before sending it to me. If it's two seconds long and blank then just bin it. If it's Chinese with music bin it. Only if it passes the smell test should it appear in my actual voice mail. Google is very good at this for Gmail.

Please!

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Please fix phone spam Google! #marketing #google #spam #phone Why can't Google manage to fix phone spam when Gmail does such a good job? )

Facebook Interoperability

Updated on Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Facebook Interoperability

In TechCrunch today Josh Constine gets friend portability for Facebook almost right:

"In other words, the government should pass regulations forcing Facebook to let you export your friend list to other social networks in a privacy-safe way. This would allow you to connect with or follow those people elsewhere so you could leave Facebook without losing touch with your friends. The increased threat of people ditching Facebook for competitors would create a much stronger incentive to protect users and society."

The problem is having a list of friends does me no good at all when none of them are on Google Plus, Diaspora or whatever.

What we need is legislation that forces interoperability. I can share with my friends via an open protocol, and Facebook is forced to both send and receive posts from other networks. This would actually create an opportunity for plausible competition in a way that a friend export could never do. Social networking should work like email, not CompuServe.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Facebook Interoperability #marketing #software #facebook Social networking should work like email, not CompuServe. We need legislation to mandate interoperability between platforms. )

Material Design 3

Updated on Friday, May 22, 2020

Material Design 3

Material Design brought bland consistency to the Android ecosystem. Every app had some sort of bold header and a floating action button. There is some value in consistency and at least some personality was retained. It's red, it's probably Gmail. Yellow, I must be in Keep. Boring but tolerable.

Material Design 2 solves mainly for the problem of knowing which app you're looking at. Colors have gone. Every Google app is now an oppressive black list with some oppressive black icons. To add to the misery the icons have a shade of stock-library amateurism and are just a little too heavy. Unless I look really closely or the what-icon-did-I-just-click region of my brain is on top form there is no longer any way to tell the difference between Google apps.

I'm pretty sure Material Design 3 is just going to be a command prompt. What Android customers really want is telnet or wget and some raw JSON.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Material Design 3 #marketing #google #design The slow death of personality via bland consistency that is Material Design. )

Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review

Alexa Echo Wall Clock

It has one job and it's not great at it.

I've been itching to replace my kitchen clock. I stupidly bought a self-setting atomic clock and the instructions said (this was a few years ago so I'm paraphrasing) 'Install as high up as possible on a southern facing exterior wall - ignoring these instructions may interfere with reception of the time signal.' Of course when used in my kitchen it has no idea what the time is. Due to the fancy mechanism it's extremely painful to set the time manually - you push a tiny button and try to stay awake while the hands move round and ultimately overshoot. Repeat.

It really should be illegal to sell things that tell you the time without some self-setting mechanism that works. Would it be hard to encode this in the electricity mains supply for instance? Or acquire via wifi or bluetooth? Every time I get in my car it connects to my phone but the car clock is clearly some cheap crystal that drifts daily and has no idea about daylight savings.

So the Echo Wall Clock is appealing because it should keep the right time without effort in addition to it's main role - visualizing Alexa timers. It's a stripped down implementation of the smart Glance clock but $170 cheaper at $30. It looks like most of those savings went to finding the cheapest possible plastic body. The Echo Clock also skips a face plate, which is a risk as if you touch the hands it will die.

Pairing is easy (via bluetooth) and it does manage to keep the right time. It's a decent if unattractive clock.

The timer function has taken the easy way out. If you set a five minute timer it lights up the minute marks from 12 up and then counts down. On a clock that knows what the current time is. This means that if you want to figure out when something is ready you're going to have to think. You need to look at the lit segments to see how long is left on the timer, and then add this on to the current position of the minute hand. I don't think anyone is buying a $30 timer visualizer to do minute-math. It would be a much better device if it just added the timer onto the current location of the minute hand, which is so obvious that this is what I expected to happen the first time I used it.

Overall it's cheap, cheap looking and flawed. But still a huge improvement on my kitchen's atomic age.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review #marketing #amazon #alexa #clock It's cheap and cheap looking. It has one job, and it's not that great at it. Still a huge improvement on my old kitchen clock. Read the full review... )

I just want to get rid of Windows 10 Notifications with one click

Updated on Tuesday, August 24, 2021

I just want to get rid of Windows 10 Notifications with one click

910 days ago I vented my frustration at Windows 10 notifications.

Well someone in Redmond must be listening. They 'fixed' it.

The problem was that dismissing a notification did not actually get rid of it. Clicking the little x in the corner just sent it to the Action Center where you could enjoy reading it and dismissing it again.

Like some kind of cargo cult Toyota, Microsoft asked the one why, and changed the little x to an arrow. Now it's more obvious that you're just shuffling the notification around the desktop. Ticket closed. But I still have to handle every fucking notification twice.

Which makes the announcement of the April 2018 Update especially ironic:

"With this update, available as a free download today, you get new experiences that help minimize distractions and make the most of every moment by saving you time. Our hope is that you’ll have more time to do what matters most to you whether that’s to create, play, work, or simply do what you love."

I'm guessing they're all on Macs?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: I just want to get rid of Windows 10 Notifications with one click #marketing #microsoft #windows Like a cargo cult Toyota, Microsoft asks the one why and changes the notification dismiss icon to an arrow. )

I'm not afraid of Google

Updated on Monday, August 16, 2021

A Project Fi display ad on an article about Google's insane targeting prowess

At BGR Chris Smith writes about Google's prodigious data collection:

"But that doesn’t change the fact that Google collects an incredible amount of data about you, especially from that device you use most, your Android phone"

And so I was amused as a Google Fi subscriber on a Pixel XL running Google Chrome and signed into my Google Account that the ad in the middle of the article was for Project Fi. If Google can't help paying BGR under these set of circumstances then we're some way off from the adtech singularity.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: I'm not afraid of Google #marketing #google Google advertises Project Fi to a Project Fi subscriber signed into Chrome on a Pixel XL )

News: Facebook defends its simple 2 question survey on the trustworthiness of news publishers

Updated on Friday, May 22, 2020

Banner Chat

Chat Notifications and Chat Banner Notifications in Skype

I'm hoping that a chat banner notification is for really great chats only and not some subtle distinction between chat notification types that I can't figure out even after some moderate to heavy googling. If anyone knows seriously please tell me.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Banner Chat #marketing #skype What is the difference between chat notifications and chat banner notifications in Skype? )

Nonfiction

Kindle New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers including Stephen King and Margaret Atword

The Kindle nonfiction list has become a bit alarming recently.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Nonfiction #marketing #amazon #kindle According to the New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers list on Kindle Stephen King and Margaret Atwood are no longer fiction... )

Important to you

Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022