The User Advocate

In an NYT Op-Ed, Mr. Timothy B. Lee argues that historical regulation of monopolies have turned against consumers, and that Congress ought to just let new technology fight it out since consumers can ‘rebel’.

Except they can’t.

Users are held hostage to one or two providers right now, and if my experience is any indication, both will be as horrible as they can get away with.  If neither one is restricted, they both will “protect” users from those horrible bandwidth hogs who won’t write checks… and the users will have no real choice in the end.

Lee has a good point – regulatory capture is a real danger, but his hope for ’several promising new technologies’ is just pie in the sky right now.  So let’s focus on the real danger and improve the legislation to handle an automatic sunset… perhaps after a certain period of time, or a certain amount of new market penetration, or by allowing the ‘promising new technologies’ unregulated reign, so even the existing carriers might try to build new networks.

Technorati Tags: network+neutrality, regulatory+capture, user+advocacy, att

An interesting article about studies that show buildings can increase health, intelligence and productivity.  Light and views always seem to make people happier — look at how hard people fight for the window office or cube — so it doesn’t seem earthshaking that it actually would affect a person working.  The next step is to figure out how to press builders to create wonderful buildings for all, and to advocate businesses to factor that extra productivity into the rent.  I know it would improve my workplace!

Technorati Tags: green+building, productivity, user+advocacy

A great article on a network with gatekeepers: the cell phone internet.

The repercussions of not implementing Network Neutrality are terrifying to contemplate, coming soon to restrict computers near you unless you contact your senators to kill the current Telco bill.  Save the internet, save the users, save yourselves!

Technorati Tags: net+neutrality, cell+phone, SMS, user+advocacy

A malware-loaded ad was published through a 3rd-party advertising network and exploited MySpace users’ bad patching practices (or choice of vulnerable software, depending on your perspective) and was described in the Washington Post about a week ago.  So, from a user’s perspective, where does the responsibility lie?

I would argue that this failure is on the advertising network.  Some have written about the seeming ‘impossibility’ of monitoring all the different ads that they publish, but is that ever the argument given on television or in a newspaper if a racist, demeaning, or otherwise offensive advertisement is shown? 

Never.

Why should the web be any different?  If you are outsourcing editorial control (by using a 3rd party ad network) then the responsibility should be in that contract, and they should be held responsible.  The real issue is the user-unfriendly ads that are being published these days — javascript, cookies, flash, all kinds of uncontrolled coding that can be used for attacks like these.

If you can’t control or scan for the vulnerabilities, the ad network needs to dial it back to only serving images and links.  If you can’t validate the advanced advertisements, go back to the old style and don’t let the advertisers push you beyond the point of control.

Technorati Tags: malware, banner+ads, user+advocacy

Security as an afterthought is bad for users:

“The problem here is that a commercial organisation is being given the
task of collecting data on behalf of a foreign government, for which it
gets no financial reward, and which offers no business benefit in
return,” says Laurie. “Naturally, in such a case, they will seek to
minimise their costs, which they do by handing the problem off to the
passengers themselves. This has the neat side-effect of also handing
off liability for data errors.

Check out the full Identity-Theft-Ready horror story of a simple airline passenger. Users are being told data is for one thing and it is used for another, with no incentive for protection. We’re back to unintended consequences…

Technorati Tags: identity+theft, airline, security

News today from the SF Chronicle that the suit against AT&T for exposing customers’ records is going forward.  The judge denied the motion from the company and the government to prevent any discussion of the program, which allegedly exposes all customers to government oversight in the name of finding terrorism.  Good for the EFF for exposing this malarkey, and may you have great success in protecting all of us.

Schneier notes a funny but inherently scary blog entry about how software vendors could try to avoid product liability, were they ever held accountable for bugs in their software. As a software guy, I can’t possibly fathom how evil I would feel implementing any of these schemes, but I certainly can see the allure from a business-dodge-liability.

This would be a hopelessly horrible user experience but goes back to the danger of unintended consequences.

Technorati Tags: software, programming, liability, user+advocacy

After the travesty of the House selling out the American public, it is refreshing for the Senate to not pillage us immediately.  The Senate Commerce Committee yesterday delayed their vote on the Telco bill and the Net Neutrality amendment.

Tim Berners-Lee summarized Net Neutrality best:

If I pay to connect to the Net with
a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that
or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

That’s all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that
that happens.

Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.

It’s critical that businesses are not allowed to prioritize packets based on payola. Robert X. Cringley shows the unexpected degradation of traffic shaping in his article today, even when applied by a smart person.  This is not good user experience!

I’m sorry, I just don’t understand how the consumer is supposed to be served by a company that guarantees no privacy and requires accepting this privacy violation as a condition of service.  I have no other phone wires to my house.  Senators, is this not the behavior of a monopolist?

It’s time to call or fax your Senator(s) if you have not done so already.

Technorati Tags: network+neutrality, att, payola, senate, traffic+shaping, user+advocacy

An article highlighting the challenges of creating a safe user interface for robots interacting with people, with interesting interface insights from the roomba:

“Making sure robots are safe will be critical,” says Colin Angle of
iRobot, which has sold over 2m “Roomba” household-vacuuming robots. But
he argues that his firm’s robots are, in fact, much safer than some
popular toys. “A radio-controlled car controlled by a six-year old is
far more dangerous than a Roomba,” he says. If you tread on a Roomba,
it will not cause you to slip over; instead, a rubber pad on its base
grips the floor and prevents it from moving.

to the sex-toy theorists:

“People are willing to have sex with inflatable dolls, so initially
anything that moves will be an improvement.” To some this may all seem
like harmless fun, but without any kind of regulation it seems only a
matter of time before someone starts selling robotic sex dolls
resembling children, says Dr Christensen.

to the implications for the military:

Is “system malfunction” a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter
plane that contravenes the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on
innocent civilians?

Important to think about, and good to see the media publicising the discussion.

Technorati Tags: robots, sex, user+interface

Yesterday and this morning the BART system had a failure, one far more severe than the other.  The different comments from the users (the commuters stranded on the platform) showed the different perceptions of the two outages.  Yesterday the delay was over an hour and a half, and the grumbling from the commuters was significant.  Many people were upset and not afraid of sharing that.  Today, few people mentioned it.  Why?

Communication and recovery time.

Yesterday, there was only sporadic mention of how soon the trains would be running again.  Today, there was an announcement every few minutes with precise data on the next train’s arrival time.  Yesterday a sign showed a train due in 23 minutes – and that was when the system finally admitted there was going to be another train – and trains came 8-10 minutes apart.  The signs only showed one train in the queue… you never knew when the train after the next would arrive.  Today, the signs were showing the normal couple of trains and how fast they were coming.

How to fix it?  At least do damage control.  When you have a bunch of commuters stuck in the system, make a token gesture to say ‘thanks for waiting.’  If they suffer through the delay, make their trip free at the exit turnstile.  If they need to call home to tell their spouse they will be late or if they want to take alternate transportation, let them out of the underground station and reset their card without charging them the exorbitant round-trip fee.

Show that you understand you destroyed an hour of their lives and feel sorry.  Don’t behave as an aloof monopoly, or you’ll drive people back into their cars.

Technorati Tags: BART, public+relations, user+advocacy