I Get Voicemail, Unfortunately

Since the announcement of Google Voice last week, I've been thinking a lot about telephone etiquette, particularly when it comes to cellular phones, and extra-particularly when it comes to voicemail and Internet-enabled smartphones.

I've never really been comfortable talking on the phone. I find it to be awkward, inefficient, impersonal and intrusive.

Voicemail and answering machines have mitigated the intrusiveness of it to some extent - if my phone rings and I'm not able or inclined to answer it, the caller can leave a message for me to respond to later. But given more recent advances in real-time communication, namely the Internet-enabled handheld device, voicemail has become more of a cumbersome annoyance than a useful tool.

For example, if I happen to be in a meeting (which unfortunately happens with increasing frequency these days) I'll probably be unable to answer an incoming call. Which means I'll have to wait until after the meeting before I can check my messages, write down phone numbers and things on a scrap of paper (which I don't possess - I don't use paper) and call the person back to have an inefficient voice-only conversation that will almost certainly have to be followed-up with an email afterwards anyway. Or, more likely, I will have to leave a message on their voicemail system, and wait for them to call me back again.

A colossal waste of time.

If, instead, the original caller had simply sent me an email, it would have been delivered discreetly to my mobile device in real time. During the meeting I could take a glance at it (since I use my device for taking notes in meetings anyway), and, if it's urgent, fire off a quick response then and there. Plus I would have on record the caller's email address, thus allowing me to see who it came from, and therefore be able to contact them with ease again in the future. Easy, quick, efficient, and no trees needed to die.

This is why I need a service like Google Voice - it transcribes voicemail messages to an email and captures the caller's contact details too. Since I live in the 3rd World, and can't get Google Voice, I've had to resort to changing my outgoing voicemail message to instruct callers to send me an email instead of leaving a voice message. They still leave me voice messages anyway, but that's another story.

How do you feel about voicemail? Essential business tool , or antiquated white elephant?

In Which I Get Link-love from TV.com

Imagine my surprise when Heidi noticed that I had suddenly shot up on the Afrigator stats this afternoon. The traffic here increased by about 500% in the last two days! Holy crap!

After a little looking around, I found out that the good folks over at TV.com had picked up my post on the "Klingon Kriminal" yesterday, and sent hordes of faithful readers headed my way.

So, to you new guys... uh... welcome! 

Unified Feed

I had an idea for a new (for me) use for the otherwise very useful RSS tool, Yahoo! Pipes.

Up till now I've been using it to help filter some of the feeds I have coming into my Google Reader, to try and remove some of the clutter. But it occurred to me that I could use it for my outgoing feeds too.

So that's what I've done. I've created a pipe that aggregates the feeds from my various publishing sources into a single feed.

So for those of you who have previously subscribed to my blog, Google Shared Items or Facebook items, you can now subscribe to one feed and get all of those, along with my Twitter updates, Picasa Web Gallery, and even my few and far between YouTube videos.

It's one-stop Owen Swart shopping! Woohoo!

So yeah, there's a little badge on the sidebar to your right. Or else you can visit the pipe itself and subscribe from there. I can't decide if it's awesome or just unbelievably arrogant, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case any of you guys wanted it.

If you like it, or dislike it, or have something similar set up for yourself, please drop a comment!

Okay, so I'm on Twitter. When does the party start?

For months and months I've been hearing about how awesome Twitter is. While I can understand it's usefulness under certain circumstances, I can't imagine ever being in such circumstances.

But, because I hate being left out, I've finally decided to sign up and get a Twitter account.

So here I am! Now what?

I guess you can look me up and "follow" me. My username is owenswart. 

Right. So, that's good then, I suppose. Whee!

I Endorse Things!

Wow! It's been a pretty momentous week over here at Universe HQ. In the space of a week I received two requests for endorsements! I've never been asked to endorse anything before, so who am I to refuse?

Firstly, in response to the recent spate of xenophobic violence that has plagued informal settlements here in South Africa, I've been asked to endorse immigrant amnesty.

This is a tough one. On the surface I like the idea, but it does raise all sorts of questions when it comes to enforceability, border control, administration and that sort of thing.

So while I'm thinking about whether or not I think it's a good idea to endorse it wholly, I suggest you guys hop over to Constant Flux and see what Gustav has to say about it. Let me know what you decide!

The second thing I've been asked to endorse is consumer producty! Awesome!

As you all know, I'm a sucker for an amusing and sarcastic T-shirt. And if that T-shirt also happens to portray a message that coincides to some extent with my world-view, so much the better! Well to my delight I learned that the guys over at Agnostees.com have produced a line of T-shirts (and other goodies) that do just that! Hooray!

So go check it out, and please feel free to buy and send me T-shirts. It's my birthday soon, guys!

Number Portability

Today I am fearlessly embarking on a journey: I will attempt to port my number from one cellular operator to another.

I know it's possible, but I don't know anyone who has actually done it. I've heard tales of brave adventurers who have tried and failed. But I will succeed where they have not! And you, my beloved readers, will witness it second-hand! Lucky you!

I have been with my current cellular provider for six years now. I originally went with them because they were the only provider at the time who would offer me the handset I wanted (the Nokia 6310) on the package I wanted without having to pay extra.

For most of that time, they've been pretty good to me. But in the last year or so their service levels have gone into a steep decline. I wasn't the least bit surprised to learn that they had rescinded their early upgrade policy that would, under normal circumstances, have allowed me to replace my Nokia 6680 with the Nokia N95 six months ago. Now that my upgrade time has come at last, they are still unable to offer me the Nokia N95 8GB at a reasonable price, so I am left with little option but to take my business elsewhere.

So, I am moving on.

But the fact that I have had the same number for the last six years has made me reluctant to change it now. Those folks who change their numbers every few years annoy me no end. I refuse to be one of those people!

No, I will be brave. I will go where angels fear to tread. I will slay the dragon of number portability!

Update Time

Right, so, now that I'm back in the land of the living, it's time to bring you guys up to speed on what's been going on.

As I mentioned, I've been working like crazy on my lecture for the Star Trek convention. First I was working on creating it, then on transcribing it. That's all done now. So, if you're interested in reading it, take a look here.

Hide recorded a video of the lecture, but there were sound issues (read: I am too tall, and the microphone wasn't close enough to my mouth to provide any magnification at all to my voice, but was just the right height for me to keep bashing it with my remote control). So I don't know if it will be salvageable enough to post. But if Hide is able to work her magic on it, you will be the first to know.

Next, there have been tremendous happenings aboard the USS Dauntless. We lost our old domain, so I was forced to come up with another plan in a hurry. Fortunately I think about these sorts of things, and within a couple of days, we had a fully operational new website at our new domain and hosted by my dear, dear friends over at Google. You can find it here!

I highly recommend the Google Apps backbone if you're looking for a one-stop web solution for your organisation. It's basically a web-based substitute for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Office, all in one. Awesome. Plus, it's free for non-profit organisations, and very reasonably priced for companies. Check it out!

Other than our new website, it's been a very busy few weeks for the Dauntless. We've welcomed several new members aboard, including our first Israeli, we've had a number of Away Missions, we've had our photo published in the newspaper, and our friends over at Skepchick took notice of our SciOps Homeopathic Suicide Attempt, which sent our numbers soaring.

Well, that's about all I can think of right now. I'm sure there'll be more to come. I'm going to try my hardest to resume a more regular blogging schedule, but, as usual, no promises.

Swart out

An army of robot ninjas?

With a view to the fact that we’ll be moving into our own home soon, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about home maintenance and stuff.

Since Hide and I both have pretty hectic jobs and relatively long working days, it’s pretty difficult for us to perform home maintenance tasks and still retain some semblance of sanity.

One option is that we can hire people to perform basic, time-consuming functions so as to minimise our workload: a maid to clean the house and do the ironing, a gardener to mow the lawn and weed the garden.

This option is somewhat problematic. From a security point of view, it’s unwise to allow strangers access to your property. Although I’m sure there are many trustworthy service providers around, it’s virtually impossible to know which are the good ones. And even the good ones are sometimes prone to temptation when required to work in the homes of people who make a lot more money than they do.

It’s also problematic for the dogs. Our dogs don’t get along well with strangers, which is usually a good thing. However when we have to provide access for a stranger, we have to manage the dogs accordingly which will require limiting their movements. That’s undesirable both for the mental health of the dogs, and the reduced security of confining them to the back yard.

The third problem is competence, or the lack thereof. We currently have a domestic who comes in once a week and does a really dodgy job: she routinely ruins our clothes by ironing them incorrectly and she spends the rest of her time moving things around so as to give the illusion that she cleaned them. We also have a garden service employed by our landlord: they only operate within working hours, which means one of us has to stay at home late in the morning to manage the dogs while they mow our lawn; and even then they seldom arrive.

So, what’s option 2?

One word: Robots.

That’s right, we’re in the 21st century. Why the hell can’t we use robots to perform our chores? The answer is we can!

The most obvious robot to use is the washing machine. No surprises there, it’s probably the most pervasive robot in the world. We already have two of them!

Next is the dishwasher. It’s been around for some time, and reduces the amount of time spent washing dishes substantially. You can buy a nice one these days for under R4 000.00.

Next on the list is the dryer. The tumble dryer is a pretty good one. If used correctly it can eliminate a large portion of the ironing that needs to happen. The down-side is that manual intervention is required at just the right moment so as to derive maximum benefit from it. If left to its own devices you end up having to iron all the stuff anyway. A possible alternative is the “Dribuddi”. Although I have yet to investigate it fully, it seems to have the same benefits of a tumble dryer, but without the need for human supervision.

What about cleaning the house itself? The iRobot Roomba, that’s what. A robot vacuum cleaner can be activated and left alone. It will navigate itself around your house without damaging any furniture and will politely inform you when it needs to be recharged. R 4 000.00 is a good price for an expensive vacuum cleaner... and one that pushes itself, it's a steal.

Okay, and the garden? The Robomow! A robot lawnmower in a variety of models. The top of the line can be configured to mow your lawn according to a predetermined schedule. Just lay down the border wire once, and activate the Robomow. It’ll mow your lawn while you’re at work and recharge itself when it’s done. You come home to a lawn mowed better than any push-mower. And there’s no need to dispose of the cuttings either: the Robomow automatically mulches and redistributes the cuttings as fertiliser for the grass. At R18 000.00, the big fella is not cheap… but can you really put a price on not having to mow the lawn yourself?

Okay, so there are still a few chores outstanding: weeding, tough-garment ironing, dusting and picking up the dogshit… but with all the rest of it out of the way there’s time for all that and some R&R between 3 and 4 in the morning! Science guys: I’m counting in you to hook us up with robots for the rest of that stuff too!

IOL Technology - Apple unveils new iPhone, vows to 'revolutionize' mobile sector

IOL Technology - Apple unveils new iPhone, vows to 'revolutionize' mobile sector

Once again, I'm not impressed. Apple's innovation ended when they came up with the GUI first (and even that is debatable)... since then all they've done is release a string of knock-offs of the real thing... the iPod and now the iPhone are typical examples of that.

"So, wait, you're telling me that they've released a device that you can put MP3s on, and then listen to them wherever you go? Wow!"
The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. If I'm not mistaken, the first commerically available one was the Rio Jazz back in 1998. Granted, the contemporary iPod is far superior to those first generation Rios, but then so are all the other MP3 players that are on the market today, many of which are superior to the iPod at a fraction of the price.

MP3.com, not iTunes, was the first well-known website to sell individual MP3s. And iTunes is still not the best or the cheapest source for online digital content.

And now the iPhone: a device combining a media player, voice cellphone and digital camera with the ability to run downloadable appliactions and surf the Internet. Big fricken whoop! My year-old Nokia 6680 does all those things. In fact, the Nokia 6600 I had for two years before that did all of those things too... it's nothing new.

(Incidentally I have Google Maps with satellite imaging on my 6680 too, and could also look up my stocks, if I had any)

The only remarkable thing about the iPhone in my eyes is the 8gig storage on-board. To my knowledge, only the Nokia N91 has comparable on-board storage with 4gigs, plus a memory card expansion slot that could take it up to 6. But Nokia's next generation will, no doubt, feature 8gigs of memory too.

So what do you want, Steve Jobs? A cookie? Once again you've just copied everyone else... and now we're supposed to praise you for it? Get a real computer, Steve, and a real job.

More Google stuff

If you're not reading this through Google Reader or another feed reader, you will have noticed a shiny new box at the top of this page labelled '01's shared items'.

This is a nifty Google Reader toy that lists the last five items that I've added to my Shared Items list. So now you don't even have to go to my Shared Items page to see what cool stuff I've selected for your reading peasure! I rule!

However, I would still recommend that you get yourself a Google Reader and subscribe to my Shared Items feed... I promise I'll make it totally worth it.

Google rocks!

This is a very quiet week at work, as you may expect. That's precisely why I enjoy working the week between Christmas an New Year... all the peace and quiet.

It's given me quite a lot of time to play around on the web. What I've been playing with this week is a bunch of Google's new products.

You may have noticed that Google Blogger has come out of Beta. I haven't tested all the new functionality yet, but I must say I'm impressed so far. If you haven't upgraded yours yet, I suggest you do so.

I'm typing this post on Google Docs & Spreadsheets... Google's web-based word-processor/spreadsheet application. From here I can publish my documents to my blog, to a seperate, dedicated web page and invite collaborators to work on my documents with me!

I've also fallen in love with Google Reader... a web-based XML feed reader that allows me to keep track of all the updates on all my favourite blogs, webcomics and news sites from one page! It even has a Shared Items page where I can publish my favourite articles to a publicly viewable web-page that you guys can monitor using your Google Reader! (I've added a link to my Shared Items page on the right-hand side of this one).

I've also been playing with Google Books Search, where you can search the full content of thousands (if not millions) of public-domain books. It would be nice if a lot of the newer books were also in the public domain, but it's still a super cool resource for information.

The other one I've been playing with is Google Groups... Google's answer to the long-standing Yahoo Groups mailing list service. Although not yet as feature-rich as it's Yahoo counterpart, Google Groups does integrate nicely with the other Google products and it's far more configurable. I'm contemplating migrating my existing Yahoo groups over to Google, despite the effort that would entail.

At work I've been involved with a couple of internal projects that will facilitate a convergence of all work functions through a single interface: Microsoft SharePoint Portal. I've been very excited about it. These new Google products and the inter-connectedness they have presents an opportunity for me to integrate all my non-work stuff through a single portal as well... also a very exciting proposition.

My one dissapointment with Google's products is the Google Calendar. There's nothing wrong with it as such. It's very feature-rich and boasts all kinds of cool thingies, like SMS reminders and stuff. My problem is that I'm already trying to keep calendars updated in four different places, which currently involves a fair amount of manual work. Without some sort of real-time or regular synchronisation between Google Calendar, my Outlook (at work and at home), my cellphone or my PDA, I'm afraid it's just no use to me.

So what are you waiting for? Go play with all the cool thingies!

I hate phones

That might sound odd considering that I’m surgically attached to my cellphone. But it’s true.

Not so strange if you consider that my phone is a Nokia 6680 Series 60 smartphone with a full suite of PDA functionality including text, email and IM capability; web browsers (plural); media player; two cameras; word processor; spreadsheet; PDF reader and some nifty games. Although I use it often, I seldom use it for actually calling anyone.

When people call me, especially if it’s from a “Private Number” or a number I don’t recognize, I usually won’t answer it. That’s what my voicemail is for. And if they leave a message, I’ll consider calling them back.

I’m seriously considering implementing a policy of not answering it at all unless it’s Heidi.

Even though I have a well-practiced and solid phone manner, when I choose to, I just don’t enjoy speaking to people on the phone. It’s difficult to hear what they’re saying because the sound quality is crap and there are no lips to read. It’s generally uncomfortable.

If the conversation is about details that I am required to remember, it annoys me even more – why should I write down that number or address? Why don’t you write it down, since you already know what it is, and send me the text? I offer multiple channels through which I can receive text-based communication on my mobile device (I have decided to no longer address my 6680 as a “phone” as the term is insulting). It’s not difficult. So why must I mission to find something to write your details down on?

The way I see it, if you have no recorded proof of having given me information, you can assume that I don’t have it. Voice conversations are an inefficient means of communication.

Efficiency isn’t always the sole criteria upon which a communication method is measured. I admit it’s nice to hear Heidi’s voice on the phone sometimes, and I’m looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to video-call her when we’re both stuck in traffic on our respective morning commutes.

But when it comes to transmitting information in a precise, integral and reliable way, or when speed is required, the phone-call is only slightly better than smoke-signals on the scale.

Why… WHY WHY WHY will my project manager pick up a phone and call me to ask me to come to his desk so he can read me an email off the screen of his computer? WHY WHY WHY?

The telephone has its uses, but they are few. Telephone conversations are about as valuable as those “meetings” that stretch on for hours and serve no purpose other than to inhibit the productivity of those involved. In the words of an ex-boss of mine “It’s about as useful as tits on a bull.”

So, consider this a notification: If you want to get hold of me, don't bother calling. IM me, email me or SMS me and you'll get a response.

My new phone

So I'm posting this from my brand, spanking new Nokia 6680 with 3G, video calling, 2 cameras, Symbian Series 60 operating system, 74mb of storage, Bluetooth and full multimedia capability.

All you fools who don't have one: I pity you.