I used to be able to ask Siri for actual information, and get real answers. I could ask it to reserve a table for two at Beausejour at 8 o’clock, and it would place the reservation. I could ask it what good movies were playing nearby, and it would show a list of movies ranked high (on rotten tomatoes) that were playing near me with a list of theaters. I could even tap to buy tickets.

But no more. Siri’s become stupid. Like tragic car crash stupid. The kids in school make fun of it (literally). And that’s all it’s good for. If I ask it to make a reservation at a restaurant at 8pm, it’ll respond with “there’s a restaurant named Beausejour near you”. Great, I already knew that. Ask it for movies and it’ll just display a list of theaters. Ask it almost anything else and it’ll say “I don’t understand”. It’s not good at scheduling, texting, or calling; not better than just tapping and typing at least.

Why does it take hackers to try to revive what used to be a great app?

I miss Siri.

In a move I can only assume was inspired by Netflix, they sent me a nice email. The whole letter’s below, but here’s the bullet points:

Free drink on our birthday! Sent as a postcard that you have to bring in (inconvenient, but what they’ve always done). The new part: You have a week to redeem it. Like I even check my snail mail that frequently.

Free drink every 15 “stars” (visits) if you’re a Gold Card holder (see below for the complex rules that make that happen). Again, sent as an inconvenient postcard instead of just being automatic like every other loyalty program. Now you have 30 days to use that card, or it becomes trash. Hopefully you don’t go into a Starbucks with it and get the “Sorry, this expired, look at the date. Feel stupid? No drink for you!” treatment.

Coffee Bean has better drinks anyway. Think it’s time to start going there more.

I’m waiting for the next email, in which they’ll say they’re splitting their drinks and food into two separate stores, and renaming themselves “drinkster”.

Here’s their email (including the paragraph on how to keep your status, which rivals some airlines):

My Starbucks Rewards fans,

We’re fine-tuning a few program benefits and wanted to make sure you knew what was coming. There’s a bit more information here than usual, but when it comes to understanding your rewards, we figure more is more.

Starting November 1, 2011:

FREE DRINK ON YOUR BIRTHDAY
Birthdays are special. And we’re still celebrating yours with a free drink on your birthday. Hooray! As long as you’re an active member (meaning you’ve used your Starbucks Card within the last 12 months), you’ll get a postcard for a free birthday drink. And about a week to use it, in case you need it to be a day-after-your-birthday drink. (Wink.) Check the “valid through” date and come on in for a treat.

FREE DRINK EVERY 15 STARS IN GOLD
The “Sweet 15″ free drink is alive and well. The only change here is that you’ll now have 30 days to bring in that postcard and enjoy a drink on the house.

KEEP YOUR STARS, KEEP YOUR STATUS
If you’re a Green or Gold member, the date you achieved that level is your anniversary date. To keep your Stars and your status, you just need to earn 5 Stars for Green or 30 Stars for Gold over the next 12 months (by your anniversary date next year). If you don’t make it, your Stars will expire and you’ll drop down a level. But we’ll help-we’ll send you email reminders of your anniversary date and encouragement to earn those additional Stars to keep the benefits you love. (Be sure to opt in to email.)

TUNE UP!
Now might be a good time to visit your Account Profile, note your anniversary date, track your Stars, reload a card and opt in to receive emails for special offers and announcements.

Thanks for reading. See the full details here.

Wishing you a year full of Stars,
My Starbucks Rewards

Dear Grant,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $11.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs (including Blu-ray access) will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs (including Blu-ray), 1 out at-a-time (no streaming)
for $9.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $17.98 a month ($7.99 + $9.99). You don’t need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

Translated, that means “we’re hiking up your rates by 50%”. Now that’s enough to drive customers away in itself, but Netflix decided instead to give us the option of cancelling part or all of our service. Evidently that’ll increase their profits.

Evidently Netflix doesn’t realize a couple things that their customers know:

1. Netflix has competitors, especially for their streaming service.
2. Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” selection is really crappy.

I’m not sure $9.99/mo for just the delivery service is enough, but it might be. I’m sure not paying $7.99/month for the steaming pile of streaming they offer. I replied suggesting they try this again after adding some real content for streaming.

I won’t do HULU+ until they stop showing ads during my paid subscription (which doesn’t sound likely anytime soon), so I guess it’s time to look into other services again, or just watch less TV… Any recommendations?

FlightPrep is posting on their site logical-sounding claims regarding a patent they filed and how they’ve tried to contact the maintainer of runwayfinder.com, grant him a free license during negotiation, etc.

1. Lawyers are expensive and time-consuming. This is 1 person with a full-time job against a company with 4 full-time employees, and evidently enough capital to pay lawyers.
2. Sure, it’s good business practice to sue/buy the competition. Microsoft is famous for it. Microsoft is also hated for it. I won’t tolerate that tactic from FlightPrep. Delete.
3. FlightPrep claims that RunwayFinder is infringing on their patent and wants RunwayFinder to pay them to keep running. I run a couple of web sites – it’s not worth my time to deal with legal issues. I’m sure Dave doesn’t have time either (as he says). The mere claim of infringement overruns his resources.

I’m a software developer by profession, and software patent law needs some serious change. The problem is that people can patent simple ideas that anyone can come up with. Take Amazon’s “one click” for example. Store address and credit card information so that the user can use it later – patent! Evidently pointing out airports on a chart and letting you route (an existing process taught to every pilot) is patentable if you write a program to do it (by any means).

Fire the person who thought that going after one of the most-used pilot tools on the web would be beneficial to anyone (including FlightPrep) and, after enough time to regain your reputation, I’ll consider using your software. If you’re still around.

(By the way, I prefer ForeFlight’s software to FlightPrep’s. I assume they’ll be sued next).

So, Dear Los Angeles Public Transportation providers, here’s why spewing advertising billboards about saving gas all over the city isn’t getting people on your busses and trains:

• Make paying simple
  Seriously, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve driven to work instead of figuring out if I have exactly $1.50 for the trip there and $1.85 for the trip back (and calculating that cost in the first place). Heaven forbid I get on the wrong version of the bus I need to get back (see a lower point) and need to pay an extra amount. Take a hint from Hong Kong and London:
  • Make it easy to load cash on the TAP card (hint: online, in EVERY Metro station, and on EVERY bus)
  • Make the fares simple! Seriously, it’s one rate if you’re staying local, another if you’re going into a different “zone”, another if you’re a student, another if you’re a senior, another if you’re taking more than one bus. GEEZ! It’s easier to buy a car than take the damn bus once! Remember the old KISS rule – Keep It Simple, Stupid
• Make the busses and trains run more frequently
  Some are fine, some aren’t. If a line runs less frequently than every 20 minutes, it’s basically useless. 5-10 minutes, and you’re talking about replacing my car. 10-20 minutes, and I’ll consider it if I don’t want to drive. 20 minutes, and I’m just gonna be spending my life at bus stops – no longer worth it.
• Make the busses run reliably
  This one’s huge. I was all set to bus to work and cancel my parking until the day I got left on the street for over 40 minutes one cold night because a bus (scheduled every 20 minutes…) just didn’t show. The busses sole purpose is to get me somewhere – if it fails that purpose, I have to find something else to get me there. LA Metro repeatedly fails that purpose.
• Make all transit lines use the TAP card
  “Can’t we all just get along?” Really, everyone’s got to use the same payment system to make the system usable. LA’s too big to have to guess at the three systems you might need to use to get somewhere more than a couple miles away (or even less than a couple miles away). The EZ transit pass is ok, but is only affordable if you’re going to only use public transportation; it loses the occasional rider.
• Make the bus/train lines simple
  Sure, it’s a big city, and the system’s going to be a bit complicated. But at least try for simplicity: Let’s take the 108 Metro bus for example. One out of every three trips, the route extends into Marina Del Rey. Same bus number, different destination. Really? Who thought that would be a good idea? So if you’re waiting for the 108 and need to go to Marina Del Rey, and don’t notice that the head sign says “Fox Hills Mall” instead of “Marina Del Rey”, you just got stuck at the mall, and have to hope you have the extra buck fifty or whatever it is to get the rest of the way (whenever the right version of the 108 comes). Again, the bus just failed to get me where I need to go – time for another solution.

The truth is, it’s not a flaw at all, but a life-saving feature. The media seems to have forgotten the research stating that cell phone radiation causes cancer. The iPhone 4 features a new sensor that detects how tightly you’re gripping the phone/antenna. If your hand is covering a sufficient enough portion of the phone/antenna, or most noticeably bridging the break between the two antennas, the phone automatically decreases the signal strength to protect you. If you release your gorilla-grip on the phone and hold it with safe, minimal contact, or add a buffer between you and the antennas, the phone can continue at standard strength.

Obviously Apple cannot advertise this feature to the public, as tag lines such as “kills you slower than the Droid” and “Now with less cancer!” perform poorly in focus groups. As a result, Apple must deal with unfair bad publicity. But, in the end, it’s a strategic business move, because the iPhone 4 customers will live longer than Apple’s competitors’ customers, allowing them to buy more phones in the future.

I’d like to get his basic principle out there. Please repeat it, remember it, email it to your bank (through their “secure” messaging feature…), etc:
Less Convenient Does Not Equal More Secure!

In fact, the best security is transparent to the person who is allowed to do something, and completely impossible for the person who isn’t.

Faux security is dangerous. Because it’s so complicated for you to, say, log in, you feel that it must be difficult for anyone to log in. However, the complexity frequently opens up gaping security holes.

Some examples I’ve seen:

1. A “secure” apartment building in which I used to live.
   Ooh, it was so secure. Call box, elevator key, cameras, alarms in the units, the works. Big deal. Even if there wasn’t someone to follow in, there was an easy-to-climb fence into a hallway about 20 feet to the right of the main door. My friend used to make it a point to get to my door without me letting him in every time he’d come over. The alarm in the unit was only triggered by the front door, and even then I don’t think anyone actually responded. It was all designed to look secure. All it did was add inconvenience. If you were going in the “right way”, you had to use your garage opener, then your key in the garage door, then your key again in the elevator, then again in your door, then turn off your alarm. The wrong way: jump the fence or follow someone in, go up the staircase to the roof (unlocked for fire safety), jump down onto the balcony (made easy by the stepped/sloping roof), and slide open the balcony door (probably not locked due to the false sense of security).
2. Your bank
   This one frequently pisses me off – bank’s “secure” login requirements. I generate extremely secure passwords. But when a bank requires me to follow stupid, random password requirements (or use a simple pin but have to click it on my screen, verify a picture, remember my customer ID, etc), it creates a scenario in which I can’t remember how to log in. That means I need an alternate way of remembering this information. Therefore, somewhere outside of my well-secured (and convenient) method of storing login info, I have to store my bank’s stupid login requirements. Less convenient, probably less secure. Because really, if you store your logins in your browser and lock your computer, what are you going to do with login information that you can’t store in your browser? It’s probably going to end up on a post-it note… (note: products like LastPass and 1Password provide alternate ways of securely storing this information, but you frequently still need manual interaction with them, causing you to display your login information on your screen for everyone in Starbucks to see…)
3. The airport
   This is my biggest pet peeve. I understand that they need to react to events to make people feel secure, but the real thing stopping something like 9/11 from happening again is the passengers, not the TSA. (i.e. someone rushes the cockpit these days, they get tackled by passengers). Securing the cockpit is a good idea, and the security screening is partly secure, but mostly faux-secure. Think about it for two seconds and I bet you can find a menacing instrument you can bring on a plane with which to threaten passengers. That’s all the 9/11 terrorists reportedly did. And none of the TSA’s current inconvenient restrictions prevent that. In fact, since “terrorism”‘s purpose is to cause governments to change things (i.e. cripple the airline industry), one could argue that it worked. And that pisses me off. I just hope that behind the scenes, they actually know what they’re doing and just aren’t telling us (which would be secure…).

Some things implement security well, such as:

1. MacOS X
   Secure keychain coupled with secure login. Easy to use if you’re you, near impossible if you’re not. It’s also simple, which means things don’t fall through the cracks (like the jumpable fence…). Ubuntu Gnome has a similar keychain. You can also generate truly secure passwords (long, with special characters).
2. LastPass and 1Password
   1Password adds a bit of inconvenience, at least in the iPhone app (2 passwords required to get to items), but overall is well designed. LastPass is also simple, and lets you fill in those stupid bank password fields, so you can use real passwords and not write them on a post-it.
3. Office tap cards
   Lots of secure office environments use simple transponder cards. Tap it on a pad, and you’re in. Simple if you have the card. Hard if you don’t. (Better would be a fingerprint scan, but hey, there’s always “better”).

So, start complaining when you see faux security and remind them:
Less Convenient Does Not Equal More Secure.

Buffers.

People aren’t precise. Everything we do has a margin of error. It’s cool and movie-like to drive as fast as your mind, and car, can handle, or run in the door just in the nick of time for something important; but in the real world, chances are that you’ll get pulled over, or hit something, or arrive at the important event just after it started (or 30 minutes late).

There are natural limits in the world: the fastest your car can go, the fastest your mind can process information, the actual time the meeting starts, the actual amount of toothpaste in the tube. If you pass those limits, it’s too late: your car breaks down, you hit something you didn’t expect because you didn’t see it, you’re late for your friend’s performance, or you run out of toothpaste.

There’s an easy way to have those things almost never happen: set a different limit, and treat it as your actual
limit. Drive around the speed limit (you’ll notice other people are doing it too). Stay 2-3 seconds behind the car in front of you. Stop at the yellow light (it’s a buffer, btw). Have an unopened tube of toothpaste in a drawer. (When you need to open it, add “toothpaste” to your shopping list.)

The difference between your limit and the “hard” limit is a “buffer”, or a layer that protects you from the hard limit (just like those yellow barrels on the freeway stop you before you hit the hard cement wall). The buffer means you won’t get a red light ticket (or accident), or a speeding ticket, or run out of stuff.

You can also apply it to car maintenance (avoid breakdowns), your checking account balance (avoid overdrafts), and on and on.

You’ll find that once you’ve relieved the pressures of pushing the limits in mundane areas, you’ll suddenly have time, and mental freedom, to spend on more exciting things. This might take some getting used to, as you’ll have a void of time and thought to fill. Then you can push the important limits: your fears, your comfort zone, and why you’re spending time on this earth.

With 255 levels, 2 player mode (click “insert coin”), and a statement that the game will NOT be archived, offices across the world have seen a dramatic drop in productivity.

When asked about the game’s effect on his department, a manager at a well-known dot com company, who wished to remain anonymous, stated “What? No, wait a minute I just. Dammit! Why did you interrupt me? I was on level 15! Get out of my office!”.

Similar responses have been heard at all levels of management in many corporations around the world.

“Using the IP address of the player and data such as the length of time playing the game, level achieved, etc, we can not only determine the immediate effect on office productivity to our competitors, but also gather information regarding the problem solving skills of their employees. Using the Google cookies already stored on the employee’s computer, we can make intelligent hiring decisions, stealing our competitor’s top talent.” *

So, there you have it. Innocent game? I think not.

* Nobody was interviewed at any company in the writing of this article. Were they too busy playing Pac Man to talk to us? Maybe.

I love Mint (and hopefully Intuit won’t kill it). The automatic view of your finances is great because it’s so easy, the reporting and tracking is decent, the budgeting has “rollover”, and it has a personal financial management tutor built right in.

I like “rollover” because it lets you set up buckets of money for certain things, versus unrealistic hard-set monthly budgets that you’ll never really keep to (because some months you’ll spend more, some less).

By far the best feature is the Fitness tab. Mint makes money by making you money. Good system. The Fitness tab gives you step by step tasks (with points!) to do to make money, complete with a “why do this?” button for each. If things like checking your transactions weekly, spending less than you earn, getting an interest-earning checking account, saving for emergencies, and putting money into a retirement fund aren’t obvious for you (and even if they are), Mint’s Fitness tab will make you money. If you do all of them, no matter what your income is, you will probably become quite wealthy. I’d guarantee it if I were a betting man, but betting men rarely get wealthy.