The people marketing the content. You did read my post before responding, yes?
Yes. That's why I countered, "Features are supposed to be for consumers, not vendors." I understand the financial motivations of the companies packaging and marketing the crap, I just think it's wrong, and calling them features is wrong, too.
When I say "crap" I'm not calling the technology crap. As I keep saying, the technology is amazing. It's the final product as provided to the consumer that is crap, for several reasons: it's low quality, it's unreliable, it's buggy, and it doesn't do what they claim it can do. That doesn't mean that no amazing technology reaches the consumer, like your "Remind me when I get to Ralph's" example, but for the most part it doesn't fulfill promise or instilled expectations in terms of capabilities, quality and reliability.
No matter much iTunes can provide music to you, it cannot give you music that is not in its catalog and if the Beatles don't want to give their music to Apple to put on iTunes, then no amount of fixing the putrescence that is iTunes is going to make them change their minds.
It been cool to dump on iTunes almost since it's inception, but I find it very useful and don't understand the strong dislike held by so many.
quote:How could this happen?
Did you read the article to find out? There appeared to be a very clear distinction in technologies that affected how it appeared. You could watch the game a minute behind reality which resulted in a cleaner picture due to a more reliable stream, or you could try to watch it as it was happening and get poor quality.
This makes sense given how the Internet works.
"That's how it works," is not an acceptable excuse, or any excuse at all. Yes, those with a Roku, Apple TV, iPad or iPhone got a better picture, but the TV studio evidently had none of those. I don't either, except for an iPad, but I never watch anything of any length on the iPad. And watching a football game on an iPhone, even a big one, doesn't seem like it would be very visually satisfying. It *is* amazing that you can watch the football game while taking a stroll in Central Park, but you're probably getting more information from the audio than the video.
And it's something that Yahoo can't solve because they aren't an ISP. They can do lots of things to make sure there is good signal on their end, but if your Internet connection is crappy, they can't solve that.
I watch a great deal of content over the Internet on my TV, none of it is ever low res, until that Yahoo game summary. I don't have a crappy Internet connection, and I don't believe the CBS affiliate in Boston (the station that piped it onto the big TV screens in their radio studio and reported that the entire game was low res) has a crappy Internet connection, either.
Why are you so determined to make excuses for Yahoo?
And if you don't want to watch the football game on Yahoo because you don't like the quality, then don't.
They'll get the message and either abandon the project or work to make it better.
That's the way it is with everything.
Well, yes, precisely. That's what I've been saying, that if people would do that then we'd get better products. But we don't, so we get crap.
quote:If they're not *way* exaggerating how well their voice interactive feature works, then I'm stunned. Anyone out there have a Buick with this feature?
I have OnStar.
Yes, it works like that.
Now, the quickness has been exaggerated, yes. But it does work like that. Notice, however, that he's using a limited set of commands: "Reroute." When he says, "Call Papa Bear," that's because his phone has an entry for "Papa Bear." The "Hut Hut" doesn't mean anything. "Tune XM 60" is telling it to go to the stereo, bring up the XM band, and go to channel 60. You can't tell it anything, but you can tell it a fair amount.
One of the great things about OnStar is the ability to figure out where you're going before you get in the car. Unless you're going to talk to a human and have them send the directions to the car (which OnStar can do), all you need to do is look up the place on your phone, which has a better interface than the front panel of the car stereo, and then punch the button to send the address to OnStar. You can do this while you're still inside. When you get to the car, the GPS has already been programmed.
quote: Sticking with the car example, the deepest period of driver inattention is probably right after you've given a command and are trying to figure out what your car is actually doing.
But the car doesn't drive itself (yet). That's Tesla and Google. Tesla still tells you to put your hands on the wheel and Google's "millions of miles" were mostly done in a parking lot and can't handle most hazards in the road such as potholes or traffic cones.
I just got a new notebook and it has Windows Hello. That's the ability to log you by looking at your face. It is blazingly fast. As soon as the login screen appears, you're being logged in.
One of the big things that will help a lot of this is just figuring out meaning. To go back to the example given, what is meant by a "list." It seems so simple, but for a computer, it's actually quite complicated. I remember in my programming class in high school where the teacher asked us the simple question: How do you brush your teeth. There are an amazing number of steps because you can't make any assumptions about what anything means. Are you in the bathroom? If not, how do you get there? Are you facing the correct direction? Before you can even put toothpaste on the brush, you have to figure out where it is, describe how to pick it up, locate where the cap is, determine if it's a twist or flip, define that "twist off" means counter clockwise, determine how much turning is enough, and on and on.
So what would be really nice is if we could get the speech recognition to understand the inflections we use to define series when speaking. That little pause that happens between items, the keeping of the tone slightly elevated that indicates that there's still more items to come followed by the dropping tone at the last one that indicates it's over. While English is hardly a tonal language, we communicate a lot through the way in which things are said as well as the words themselves.
It's going to take a lot of work for computers to figure it out. But, to get back to OnStar, it does get that. When you tell it to dial a number as a number, you have to speak the digits in sets of three or four the way you do with a phone number "123...456...7890." Doing the numbers one at a time will confuse it.
Another "wow" thing: Google Translate is now interactive. There's an app you can run on the phone and when you run it, it looks through the camera. Hold it up to some text such as what you might find on a sign or a menu and it will translate the context on the fly on the screen, even doing its best to recognize the font and make it look right. No need to type it in...it reads the text and translates it immediately.
There's still a lot of work to do. Computer translation still isn't that good, accents throw speech recognition off, homophones and regional dialects throw wrenches in the works. It takes humans years to figure out how to communicate well and we've got brains that evolved to do it well. We're still at the point that for a computer program to do something well, it needs to do one thing in a specific way. Someday.
Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
It been cool to dump on iTunes almost since it's inception, but I find it very useful and don't understand the strong dislike held by so many.
All I can say is that it is extremely frustrating to use. And I am speaking as a computer professional, a software engineer since 1982.
The first versions I used weren't too bad, though it was counter-intuitive where you had to drill down to do anything useful. But then the updates started taking away the useful features, depriving me of the detailed view and leaving me with nothing but the big album icons that were unsorted and which you couldn't do anything with. It has been at least two years since I've done anything with it, maybe three or four. I have no use for the new stuff they try to sell me and my favorite swing band hasn't released a new album yet.
Even though I've been retired from the service (reserves) for four years now, I still maintain a shorter-than-normal Navy haircut. Because trying to use iTunes is so frustrating, I would have torn my hair out long ago if it weren't too short to grab. That is literally how horrible the experience of trying to use iTunes is. That and an incident where a Mac refused to recognize the existence of AVI files have given me a very definite attitude about Apple software.
But just what did this Felger guy say to begin with? I tried to read the opening message, but couldn't get past the first few lines. He just started talking about sports and that put me to sleep every time.
quote:If they're not *way* exaggerating how well their voice interactive feature works, then I'm stunned. Anyone out there have a Buick with this feature?
I have OnStar.
Yes, it works like that.
OnStar sounds neat, useful, and not overhyped, but I'm still skeptical. To pay all the money for Peyton Manning and the production crew and the air time and then tell the exact truth, too? Well, that's a lot to absorb all at one time. From what you say the commercial *does* seem to be mostly accurate, but...
Now, the quickness has been exaggerated, yes. But it does work like that. Notice, however, that he's using a limited set of commands: "Reroute." When he says, "Call Papa Bear," that's because his phone has an entry for "Papa Bear." The "Hut Hut" doesn't mean anything. "Tune XM 60" is telling it to go to the stereo, bring up the XM band, and go to channel 60. You can't tell it anything, but you can tell it a fair amount.
So when Manning says, "Large barrel. Reroute," the "large barrel" portion is ignored. The car is not rerouting around barrels. And the command "reroute" all by itself is insufficient. There has to be more to the conversation. This is an example of misleading the consumer about what the product can do.
And what about that button he hit. Does every command have to be preceded by hitting that button? What if the passenger wants to give a command? What if the passenger is talking at the same time. What if the passenger becomes the driver - will it understand her? And can it really reroute while the car is moving? My wife's car requires it be stationary when programming the GPS, I assume as a safety feature. Its unable to detect whether the driver or the passenger is using the touchpad, so it simply disallows it.
When he says, "Call Papa Bear," that's because his phone has an entry...
Would that be a Bluetooth phone? That he must have with him in the car or the phone features of the car won't work?
quote: Sticking with the car example, the deepest period of driver inattention is probably right after you've given a command and are trying to figure out what your car is actually doing.
But the car doesn't drive itself (yet).
I didn't mean where the car is driving. I meant what it is doing. Is it dialing Frank Piazza or Frank's Pizza? Is it playing XM 60 or Extra Great Hits from the 60's. Is it turning on the air conditioning or the air defroster?
So, sure the technology isn't perfect, but it is already amazing and will continue to improve and get even more amazing.
But also...
So sure, company heads are sleazebags who will continue to rush products of low quality and reliability to market. And sure, marketing types are sleazebags, and no matter how amazing the technology is, they will continue to make claims that are untrue.
But then the updates started taking away the useful features, depriving me of the detailed view and leaving me with nothing but the big album icons that were unsorted and which you couldn't do anything with.
Yeah, I remember that change. But in case you ever use iTunes again, be aware that you can get back to the old view.
First, you probably want your menu bar back. There's a tiny icon in the upper left. Click on it and select "Show Menu Bar."
Second, you probably want your song list back. On the right hand side maybe an inch down from the top you'll see a drop down menu that says "Albums" (it must say "Albums", because you said you're looking at "big album icons'). Click on that and select "Songs".
But just what did this Felger guy say to begin with? I tried to read the opening message, but couldn't get past the first few lines. He just started talking about sports and that put me to sleep every time.
He was expressing his frustration that the NFL was broadcasting the London game only on the Internet, making it impossible for him to watch at home.
quote:So when Manning says, "Large barrel. Reroute," the "large barrel" portion is ignored. The car is not rerouting around barrels. And the command "reroute" all by itself is insufficient. There has to be more to the conversation. This is an example of misleading the consumer about what the product can do.
No, it works just like that. Yes, "orange barrels" means nothing, but "reroute" does: Get me off the road that I am on and find me an alternative destination. Though, since you are seemingly determined to find some sort of lie in the commercial, it's the word "reroute" that I'm questioning. It should be "update route."
The way it works is that if you deviate from the planned route, you can tell OnStar that this is not you making a mistake (such as you missed a turn) but rather that you meant it and you need it to calculate a new route to the destination. This can be for any reason: Construction has created a detour, traffic is at a standstill and you want to get off the freeway, etc. In fact, if you deviate from the planned route without saying that you need an update, the system will prompt you to indicate if you are just making a temporary detour (such as you stopping to get gas) or if you need the system to recalculate the route.
The button that I really wish GPS devices had is what I call the "California" button. All it would do is get you to the freeway. I'll take the full directions to get to my destination but to get home, all I need the GPS to tell me is how to get to the freeway. Once I'm on the freeway, I can take it from there. But instead, you have to tell it to go home and then once you get on the freeway, you have to cancel the trip to get the thing to shut up.
quote:And what about that button he hit. Does every command have to be preceded by hitting that button?
Yes. It's how the system knows that you're about to give it a command. That way, it doesn't interpret something said on the radio or conversation in the car as a command.
quote:What if the passenger wants to give a command?
The microphone is tuned to have best reception from the driver's seat.
quote:What if the passenger is talking at the same time.
While reception is best from the driver's seat, you are advised to not have other people talk and to roll up the windows so that it can hear you clearly.
quote:What if the passenger becomes the driver - will it understand her?
It is based upon standard voice recognition. There is no training for individual voices.
quote:And can it really reroute while the car is moving?
Yes. All GPS can do this. After all, you can miss a turn and you get the ubiquitous "recalculating" message that I'm sure you've heard made fun of sometime. OnStar lets you pre-empt it when you know you're going to need to deviate from the planned route.
quote:My wife's car requires it be stationary when programming the GPS, I assume as a safety feature.
Yes, to program the GPS using the screen (though if you talk to your stereo installer, that can be turned off....) But this is programming it using your voice. If you have a stored location, you can call that out or you can just connect to the OnStar representative, tell them where you want to go, and they'll send the directions to your car.
That is, programming your destination by touching the screen requires the car to be stationary. Once you get going, you can use voice commands to make alterations.
I haven't tried using my cell phone to look up directions and send them to the car while the car is in motion because, you know, I'm driving at the time. That's why you can just have the OnStar rep do it.
quote:Would that be a Bluetooth phone? That he must have with him in the car or the phone features of the car won't work?
Because OnStar is satellite based, you can make phone calls without the need for a phone, but they do charge for the service (starting at $5 for 30 minutes a month). They do recommend that you keep some minutes on the account in case you are in need of assistance and are in an area where you don't have cellular service. If you have your phone, though, it will route the call through the phone first.
All of this was discoverable on their web site. Is there a reason why you didn't look it up yourself?
quote:Is it dialing Frank Piazza or Frank's Pizza?
It displays on the screen. I don't use it to make phone calls, though, so I don't rightly know if it repeats the name before it connects to let you know.
quote:Is it playing XM 60 or Extra Great Hits from the 60's.
It displays on the screen and you'll be able to tell when the music starts playing.
quote:Is it turning on the air conditioning or the air defroster?
It doesn't have access to the environmental controls.
Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
No, it works just like that. Yes, "orange barrels" means nothing, but "reroute" does: Get me off the road that I am on and find me an alternative destination.
You mean an alternate route to the same destination, right? I'm pretty sure you do, because you say it that way in your next paragraph.
But it looks like we were talking about two different things, because I *did* think Manning was talking about a new destination. My wife's car is seven years old, but it finds a new route automatically when you leave the selected route, it doesn't need to be told to find a new route. So when Manning said "reroute" I assumed he was talking about a different destination, because the only GPS I have experience with doesn't need to be told to reroute to the same destination. I see now that Manning was not instructing the car to find another destination, but only to reroute to the same destination.
With my wife's GPS nothing need be done when you leave the highway for a gas station. It just keeps telling you how to get back on the highway, which is very useful since the reentrance sometimes isn't located at the same exchange as the exit. It's an incredibly imbecilic nuisance in other ways (try taking a ferry to witness complete GPS confusion), but that's one thing it does very well.
But anyway, since we're already discussing it, we may as well get it right. Here's the exact spot in the commercial:
In the commercial Manning says to reroute before he actually leaves the selected route. That would require further dialog, right? Because there will frequently be more than one alternate route, right? And I think you actually allude to part of this issue when you say:
In fact, if you deviate from the planned route without saying that you need an update, the system will prompt you to indicate if you are just making a temporary detour (such as you stopping to get gas) or if you need the system to recalculate the route.
So Manning is avoiding being prompted by telling OnStar to reroute before he leaves the planned route, but you mentioned that it likes to know whether the detour is temporary or permanent, so still, isn't there dialog that is missing from the commercial?
About the phone service you say:
Because OnStar is satellite based, you can make phone calls without the need for a phone, but they do charge for the service (starting at $5 for 30 minutes a month). They do recommend that you keep some minutes on the account in case you are in need of assistance and are in an area where you don't have cellular service. If you have your phone, though, it will route the call through the phone first.
All of this was discoverable on their web site. Is there a reason why you didn't look it up yourself?
My history with manufacturer provided information is how poorly it aligns with experience after a purchase. Even when accurate, websites are notoriously bad at covering the fine details that I'm usually interested in. The guys who understand how to build websites are not the same guys who understand the products the website is about. Websites today emphasize sales and marketing far more than information dissemination.
And even when the information I want is on the website, it can be very difficult to find. I'm at the OnStar website now. "LEARN MORE" is not a very informative link, and they liked it so much they used it three times. I'll click on the left one. Oh, boy, they're showing me a video! Okay, let's give up on clicking on links and use the search feature and look for "satellite". Clicking on "Emergency Services," but that's not it. Clicking on "Similar Pages" brings me to a page of links that includes "Plans and Pricing", which brings me to another page that in bullet form describes the Guidance, Security and Protection plans, but there's nothing about one at $5 for 30 minutes a month. The cheapest is the Protection plan at $19.99/month. I'm giving up now. Just out of curiosity, where at the website is the part about $5 for 30 minutes a month.
Ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Anyway, I'm supposedly getting the straight poop from someone who owns an OnStar vehicle and will answer questions.
quote:Is it dialing Frank Piazza or Frank's Pizza?
It displays on the screen. I don't use it to make phone calls, though, so I don't rightly know if it repeats the name before it connects to let you know.
This was actually part of my point about technology making things worse, in this case by contributing to driver inattention. We don't need more contributors to driver inattention. Someone who's lost who has no GPS is at least looking out his windows. Someone whose GPS is confused probably is not.
OnStar sounds like a very nice system, and the Manning commercial seems fairly accurate. I'll find a better example of a misleading commercial about technology next time, it's not like there's any shortage. The Siri example I provided is a good one. There are tons of good examples of misleading commercials about phones and tablets, but I've already provided an example from that genre of technology with the Siri example.
quote:You mean an alternate route to the same destination, right?
Yes. A typo on my part. I need an editor.
quote:But it looks like we were talking about two different things, because I *did* think Manning was talking about a new destination.
OK, you're being a bit creationist about this, Percy. You're doing absolutely everything you can to find something, anything wrong with the idea of it working the way it is displayed to work despite having no evidence to justify such hyperskepticism, certainly no direct experience with the item in question and someone who does have it telling you that it does what it says on the tin.
quote:With my wife's GPS nothing need be done when you leave the highway for a gas station.
And you don't with OnStar, either. You can leave the route all you want...and the GPS will continually bug you to get back onto the route to your destination. Or, you could let it know to stop bugging you for now and you'll get back to it in a moment. But if you know you're going to have to change the current route, why wait for the system to try and tell you what to do? If you decide to get off the freeway here, do you need to turn left or right? It's a short offramp, so you're going to need to know well before you get to the offramp. If you want for the GPS to figure out that you've actually left the route (are you just in the right lane or are you leaving the freeway?) it may not know in time. So better to tell it now.
quote:So Manning is avoiding being prompted by telling OnStar to reroute before he leaves the planned route, but you mentioned that it likes to know whether the detour is temporary or permanent, so still, isn't there dialog that is missing from the commercial?
Huh? If I'm telling you that I need a new route to my destination rather than the one that I'm on, why would it need more information? Do you not know how GPS works? You set up defaults about how the system is going to get you to your destination: Fastest route? Shortest distance? Avoid the freeways? Use toll roads? If you're manually programming the destination, you can often override those defaults but if you don't, then the system uses your default method for getting from here to there.
So if you tell the system to find another route, it's going to use another method. If you told it to use the fastest route, telling it to reroute will have it find the next fastest route given where you are (and presuming that you need to deviate from the route immediately rather than having the deviation be right next to the destination which is likely not to be of any help). If you had set it to use the shortest route, it will find the next shortest route (again, presuming that you need to deviate from the route immediately).
It's why if your GPS has automatic traffic updates, you'll sometimes hear it say something like, "Traffic disruptions on the route. The route has been updated." If you told it to use the fastest method and it knows about traffic, it will take that into account. As more traffic information comes in, it will adjust your route accordingly.
quote:And even when the information I want is on the website, it can be very difficult to find.
Um...Go to onstar.com, click on "Plans and Pricing" right at the very top. It will tell you everything that OnStar can do and what it will cost. Scroll down a bit and you find "Hands-Free Calling Minutes." You seem to have clicked on buttons without actually looking at the site.
Yes, there are three "Learn More" buttons on the front page. Did you bother to look at what they were under? The first one is under the "AtYourService" functionality. What did you think you were going to find when you clicked the "Learn More" button underneath it? Same for the second one (Ignition Recall) and the third one (Pre-Owned Vehicles).
Of course, you could have clicked on the "Services" link and found out about the specific services offered by OnStar. Why didn't you?
Again, Percy, you're acting like a creationist. You're deliberately misunderstanding things that are plainly displayed in front of you, absolutely certain that everyone is lying to you as if it were some sort of Grand Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth (C).
quote:We don't need more contributors to driver inattention.
Then get rid of the radio and don't let anybody else in the car with you. Better not carry anything that you might be concerned with toppling over as you drive. No use of a cell phone at all, let alone hands free. If you're going to complain about distracted driving, let's do it all.
Is there misleading advertising? Of course. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
You seem to have gone off the rails a bit. You somehow interpreted my questions and comments as unreasonable attacks on OnStar, which I guess you like a whole lot, and then you stopped making much sense. Rather than getting into a detailed back and forth, I'll just remake my main points.
Yes, I know how a GPS works, but they don't all work identically. Depending upon the settings, my wife's GPS will stop instructing us to get back on the original route and will automatically reroute after a little bit of travel along a different route. But if you explicitly *tell* it to reroute then it will give you a choice of routes, though you have to stop to do that.
I couldn't exactly follow your explanation about what happens when Manning says, "Reroute." My comment was that there has to be more dialog than that, right? Without more dialog, how does OnStar know whether Manning wants to get right back on the highway (perhaps avoiding construction that happens to be limited to just the overpass), or reroute using back roads (possibly needing to override the "freeways" preference if it was set), or travel to the next exchange and get back on the highway?
About the OnStar website, we're seeing different things. In my browser it looks like this:
There's no "Plans and Pricing" link visible on the page, though I see now it's inside the MENU link. But as I told you, in the end I did find my way to the correct page, and just as I said before, there's no $5/month plan. You must have been referring to the "Plan Add-ons" that include a $5/month *additional* option, a fee added to one of the existing plans that begin at $19.99/month.
Excepting the part about rerouting, for which I don't yet have enough information, the OnStar commercial seems accurate, and entertaining, too. Short of buying my own Buick, I don't see how else I could have found out very much without asking skeptical questions, which seemed to bother you. In any case and as I said before, I think the Siri commercials provide a much better example, and there are many examples in the cell phone and tablet space.
The main point I've been making in this thread is that the technology industry provides us products of poor design, low quality, and low reliability, and they misrepresent their products in their advertising. And their webpages, though technologically amazing, are often a poorly organized mess. And then we contribute to the problem by buying the products anyway.
One can even question the "technologically amazing" aspect. The reason Onstar.com looks different in my browser window than in yours is because of browser width. My browser width is set to 960 pixels (half of 1920, two portrait browser windows side-by-side), and OnStar.com is using a JavaScript library that automatically assumes you're on a mobil platform if your browser width is less than 1000. Brilliant. In mobil mode the website removes the links at the top of the page and buries them inside the MENU link, which is fine, but browser windows should never be set to mobile mode on a PC.
Just curious. The GPS in my wife's car doesn't need a monthly fee to operate. I assume the same is true of the GPS in the Buick? That it doesn't need an OnStar subscription to operate?
My bank claims you can deposit checks from home using your scanner. I just tried it. You have to walk a mine field to get it to work, and you have to scan and crop the checks yourself manually (front and back). It's supposed to be easier and automatic, but the easier methods didn't work. Another couple hours of my life I'll never get back. I'll spare everyone the details, except to say it doesn't work with Chrome at all because Chrome turned off support for Java plugins that use the NPAPI interface, for security reasons this past September.
This would be wonderful if it worked, saving me either a trip to the bank once or twice a month, or having to pack the checks and a deposit slip into an envelope that I have to address, stamp and mail.
Anyone have a bank where this actually works? I have a vague recollection of cell phone cameras being able to deposit checks using the camera. Is that true?
Why do I have paper checks that I have to deposit? Because most people's banks charge money for electronic transfers, so they use electronic bill pay. The bank cuts a paper check and mails it to me. Bletch to the whole irrational paper-wasting mess.
I think you'll find the whole thing totally effortless if you spelled 'check' correctly as 'cheque'. Obviously the system is is reacting badly to American English. (A contradiction in terms if there ever was one.)
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Anyone have a bank where this actually works? I have a vague recollection of cell phone cameras being able to deposit checks using the camera. Is that true?
Yes, this is true. Maybe one solution is to use your iPad?
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
Yes, this is true. Maybe one solution is to use your iPad?
The bank webpage doesn't say anything about working with cell phones or tablets, despite that there are plenty of places where it would have been appropriate to mention, so while that occurred to me, I decided I'd wasted enough time (if you do a search for "ipad" it will find the information).
But after seeing your note it seemed like a more likely possibility, so this morning I checked if the bank had an iPad app, and they do. The online check deposit process on the iPad is much better designed than on the website, but it did complain many times that the front and back images were different sizes, and it took a number of image capture attempts. You have to be pretty careful, though I suppose you get the hang of it after a while. I didn't go all the way through the deposit process to the end because I don't have a real check to deposit at the moment, but it seems like it works.
Still, I like my workspace, and it does have a scanner. I'd like to be able to open envelopes, pull out checks, set them on the scanner, click buttons on the screen, and have them all deposited, all without getting out of the office chair. I'd prefer not to have to get out of my chair and slog upstairs to fetch the iPad. Come tonight as I tuck myself into bed and reach down for my iPad I'll realize it's downstairs in the study, so right now I'm getting up from my office chair yet again to set the iPad on the stairs so I don't forget it. I have such a rough life!
But my point remains. This stuff should all just work. It shouldn't matter that I took the front image from 8 inches away and the back image from 9 inches away (or whatever it was). I shouldn't have to use a PC *and* an iPad (and I probably won't - I'll probably stick with the PC because though I have to manually run the scanner and save away image files, even simple-minded Microsoft Paint easily crops and scales images, solving the image size problem).
And maybe someday this stuff *will* all just work, but until it does (and basically just repeating what I've said before to other people) I don't agree that the technology, in the form delivered to consumers, is amazing. It mostly sucks.
Oh, geez, my bank's website just auto-logged me out, another of my pet complaints. I appreciate the need for security, but on days when I'm doing financial type stuff I do *not* appreciate having to log in to various bank websites multiple times just because I keep going idle for 10 minutes. I should be able to switch back and forth between various bank websites without having to keep logging in to each one because I was idle too long. It's absurd.
The control panel for this website allows you to set the idle period for auto-logging you out - it's a feature I really like. The bank websites should be like that. They can put an "Are You Sure" on it, and include a warning if they feel the idle period you selected is too long - after that any non-authorized use is on you.
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