Archive for August, 2008
DHL failure in usability
A couple of weeks ago I ordered the latest third-generation of the DAS Keyboard – my second generation packed away back in Guernsey and the Alps-switched one from DSI incapable of reliably registering more than 2 keys on USB.
Being that I’m fixed on the European keyboard layout (our enter key is double height with the backslash moved down next to Z) I had to order from Germany, specifically the guys over at getDigital.de
When the keyboard hadn’t arrived a couple of weeks later I headed off to the tracking link at DHL Germany.
As a customer all I’m interested in is:
- Where is the package now?
- When will I have it?
A good developer would understand and deliver this. Instead DHL present:
| Piece-number | 9507xxxxxxx7 |
| Addressee: | Item destined for abroad |
| Status: | Arrival at inward Office of Exchange in the Country of Destination |
| Status from: | 19.08.08 17:07 |
| Process: | Arrival at inward Office of Exchange in the Country of Destination |
Everything here screams bad systems, poor understanding and disregard for the customer. They aren’t giving the customer what they want, they’re giving the customer a little of what they have and are not even reinterpreting the data from the customers perspective.
This isn’t untypical but neither of my questions have been answered and the item is over the delivery times so I need to go further. Hitting the contact button next to the “piece-number” takes us to:
| For further information, please call us on 0 18 05-345 22 55 * (14 cent per minute within german fixed network) Business hours: Monday – Saturday between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Sundays and public holidays between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. * only within Germany or per contact form (except for investigation inquiries) If your shipment has not arrived at the recipient within 6 days, you have the opportunity to fill out an investigation inquiry dircectly via your PC. |
Wow, so the primary point of contact for an international delivery is a number that can only be called from Germany. Useless.
So we can now choose a per-contact form or an investigation form. Okay, let’s go to the investigation form. Let’s try that.
The web page you would like to access cannot be viewed at this time.We apologize for any inconvenience. Perhaps it is due to a connection problem, perhaps the link is no longer valid or you have directly selected a page that no longer exists in the specified directory |
Wow, DHL Germany really don’t have things under control here. Let’s flip over to DHL’s main site and take it from there.
First of all we need to chose our country, currently Canada… Now let’s enter the reference number we’ve been using on DHL Germany’s web site and “Shipment/Waybill not found”.
Okay, I’m a persistent fellow, let’s give DHL Canada a call and find out what’s going on… I give the reference number to the woman at the other end and “that’s too long”. Hmm, tell her it works on DHL Germany web site, she goes to the web site and tries it out and confirms it does but that it doesn’t work on their system. She tries a few searches on my name, from Germany to Vancouver, nothing, nada, zip and suggests I try contacting DHL Germany or the sender to get a “proper” reference number.
The real icing on the cake of course is the “About DHL” page states:
DHL Express offers seamless service worldwide.
I can see a very big seam here between Germany and Canada.
Expertise around the globe.
Not much use when the people with that expertise are sat behind a number you can’t call from outside their country.
One world. One express and logistics company.
But not one system or tracking mechanism.
[)amien
The Xerox Alto mono-spaced font rises again
Computing history tells us of a mythical place where many of the innovations we take for granted today were either invented or refined to a working level at a single location known as the Xerox’s Palo-Alto Research Center (PARC).
These discoveries form the basis of much of the technology we use today and include the desktop metaphor, the graphical user interface, laser printers, object orientation and Ethernet.
Xerox manufactured a number of high-end machines including the 1973 Xerox Alto which, being GUI based, shipped with a number of proportional bitmapped fonts.
What is interesting to me however is the mono-spaced font used by the SWAT debugger (but not by the command prompts, they were proportional – ahead of their time!) and so, based on a screen-shot of SWAT, I thought it needed to live again!
I’ve had to make up a few of the symbols and letters that weren’t shown and filled out the symbols for the Windows 1252 Latin-1/ISO-8990-1 code-page and with the absence of any solid information online give it a name so here is Alto Mono!
Download Alto Mono (TrueType, Windows FON, BDF) (30 KB)
When using the TrueType version choose 6 point on Windows and 8 point on Mac OS X.
The Xerox manuals are also fun to browse though with such section headings as “Things the user doesn’t really need to know…” and “How to get out of trouble” and the comments about SWAT’s odd syntax and interface.
Don’t forget to check out my reproduction of the PalmOS system font. Not monospaced but very clear at small sizes – great for the Visual Studio output window ;-)
[)amien
Fun entertainment online
I’m missing my DVD collection terribly and might just give in and get it shipped over now I have a Pioneer DVD player that can play region 2 titles here albeit with a poor interlace PAL > NTSC conversion.
In the mean time I’ve been entertaining myself with the following comedy gems until I can at least find a proxy server in the UK to let me back into iPlayer (BBC) and Catch-Up (Channel 4) so I can watch QI, Top Gear and Grand Designs.
Podcasts
Adam & Joe – highlights from their BBC Radio 6 show has me laughing out loud in the office sometimes to the bemusement of colleagues.
Jonathan Ross – more highlights this time from Jonathan’s Saturday morning show that is always worth a giggle.
Comics
Weebl & Bob – two egg-shaped friends make sense of a purple world that never has enough pie but an abundance of silly voices, ninja pirates and tiny bovines.
Joy of Tech – geek cartoons from some Apple loving talent.
Pictures
ICanHasCheezBurger – because there’s no such thing as too many pictures of cute cats with crazy captions aka Lolcats. (My own attempt shown at the top of this post)
Videos
Fonejacker – George just needs your bank account details and sort code for your gas refund (3 million Ugandan dollars) and the sales pitch of Internet service providings who offer a better level of Internet service providing.
MineSweeper The Movie – the only computer game left to convert into a movie. (Well, except for Half-Life which is just dying for a good movie). Some of the other strips on this site include Street Fighter: The Later Years.
Zero Punctuation – video game reviews full of more great English humor, quip and amusing animations to take your favorite games down a peg.
[)amien
How did I get started in software development?
Ken Egozi tagged me with the latest meme and this time it’s at least relevant :)
How old were you when you first started in programming?
Some time between 10 and 12 when my father bought home a ZX Spectrum and I ended up delving into the excellent programming manual when I finally ran out of games to play. At the same time my school opened up the computer room at lunchtimes…
What was your first programming language?
BASIC on the Sinclair Spectrum (evenings) and BBC Micro (lunch-times and after school). Multi-platform from the outset ;-)
What was the first real program you wrote?
Probably the MultiFile +3 disk & file management tool for the Spectrum in a mix of assembler and BASIC but I was also creating menu and copy protection for the BBC Micro around the same time.
I also trashed an expensive 3” disk drive at the time with a small bug in my end-of-disk detection code that resulted in the drive trying to step itself beyond the end several times and knocked it out of alignment.
What languages have you used since you started programming?
Well I’ve *used* the following although ones in italics for only brief periods involving one or two small applications.
- BASICs: Sinclair, BBC, Microsoft, QBASIC, Mallard, QuickBasic, ASIC
- Assemblers: Z80, 6502, 8051
- Visual Basic, VBA, VBScript, VB.NET
- C, C++, Objective-C, C#, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript
- Turbo Pascal, Delphi, SQL, PHP
- COBOL, RPG, SmallTalk, Algol, Prolog
I’m not sure if XSLT/XPath or RegEx’s count.
What was your first professional programming gig?
Writing IBM AS/400 (iSeries) banking applications in COBOL age 17 joining a team where the leader was already known as the Kindergarten Cop as everyone in his team was “only 23-25”. I got to delve into the kernel, general ledger and securities systems eventually single-handedly developing intricate multi-base-currency support leaving days before my 19th birthday. (Okay, a little pride there ;-)
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Without a shadow of a doubt.
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Enjoy the journey, new languages are going to come and go so learn them just-in-time ;-)
It’s a shame computers and languages are more complex now but with the Internet and great books available there is no real barrier to entry.
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had programming?
Any application that brings a smile to a users face :)
Some ‘interesting’ moments have been revisiting school-level physics for a pool game and an on-the-fly domain class construction system for an international configurable payroll package.
Who am I calling out?
I’m not sure any of them are reading my blog any more but you never know ;-)
[)amien