I’m having a pretty good week so far if I can be so bold. Nice and busy, but not crazy busy. Just about perfect. Perfect except for 1 thing. It may seem minor to some of you, but it is making me absolutely batshit crazy.
Everyone one of my customers this week have had printer problems. Every one of the printers was an HP. And every one of them took me no less than 2 hours to complete if it would even complete at all.
Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?
Let’s start with the size of the basic driver download for a PC (Windows, all versions, all bits). For most of these downloads the file size was a compressed 205MB or larger. I had 2 of these drivers, uncompressed, that weighed in at 1.5GB. Gigabytes people. For basic drivers.
Next up was the installation. On a brand new and fairly buff Windows 7 machine, one of those drivers took almost 8 minutes to install and required a reboot. The longest of the printer driver installs was 45 minutes. Yes, you read that correctly. Almost 1 hour to install a printer. Sure it was XP. Sure it was a Celeron processor. Sure it only had 1GB of shared RAM. Is that an excuse? When I can install video drivers on that same machine in less than 5 minutes? No, it’s not.
Maybe I’m too old school in my thinking. I remember when a driver was nothing more than a few .inf files, maybe a .dll or two. Fit on a floppy disk and installed in just a few minutes. I guess that is no longer the case. Or, probably more like it, HP is getting lazy and/or Microsoft is making them include a but of crap that isn’t even needed but they think it is.
If you are looking for what the problem with Windows is gang, just look at the printer division of HP. Bloated software that performs poorly and clogs the system with files and features that aren’t needed or required.
I know I am repeating myself, but printers are nothing but a waste of time, energy and money. I went paperless a few years ago on everything that doesn’t require my signature, perhaps you should encourage your users to start doing the same thing.
My Gmail account was recently compromised. Yes, mine. Someone was able to figure out my password and log in using, as far as I can, a mobile device in France. It was an old version of my password and it had been the same since I started my gmail account forever ago. I guess I was due.
Anymore, your life is filled with passwords. Passwords for email, for Facebook, for Twitter, for your bank and even for your car. Hell, even Windows 7 now practically forces you to have a password (about time) and Mac OSX has since forever.
If you work for a medium to large sized company that is doing it right, you are already familiar with the pain-in-the-ass that is known as password management. Every 30 – 90 days you are prompted to create a password that might have to meet some of the following criteria.
There are even some websites that have gotten to the point where you need to do that. It’s crazy making!
I’m not really the right one to ask when it comes to password management. I don’t use an app. I don’t have a system. I do have 2 or 3 or 4 different passwords that I cycle through, depending on what it is for and how secure I need it to be.
I do it this way because it’s easy. Easy to remember, easy to use, easy to implement. Is it the right way? I’ve read not, but it’s a way that works for me. I know that you among us that are part of the tin-foil hat wearing crowd are probably developing a bit of twitch right now since you only use randomly generated passwords that are never less than 14 characters long (and usually closer to 64) and carry them around in a text file on a USB thumb-drive every where you go. Personally, I think that’s overkill.
Nobody knows my 4th password. 1 person besides me knows #3 and #2. 2 people know my 4 digit pin. Google all you want and you will never figure out any of them based on anything you find about me. They aren’t written down anywhere either. So, I think I’m in pretty good shape.
The only thing that I could do better is change the passwords on a regular basis, which I’m about to change. I have set a reminder to change all passwords where they are the most important (bank, Gmail, FB and Twitter) every 30 days. The last thing I want is anyone hacking into any of my accounts so they can send spam to my address book or to any of my followers.
If you haven’t changed your passwords in more than 6 months, now would be a good time to do just that. Make them easy to remember, don’t write them down, don’t tell anyone. If you need help, a quick google search will sort you out.
This one is dedicated to every HR person, every over thinker, every person that fancied themselves, at one time or another, a designer.
Or to the web developers that have never heard of a Mac, a browser other than Internet Explorer and still think Front page is a cool thing to use.
Or to the architects. Wherever you are.
Please take a minute the next time you create something that one of your customers, potential employees or anyone in the general public could possibly interact with and let someone else look at it before you pull the trigger making it live.
Please.
You HR people. I understand there are rules and that you need a ton of information when an applicant applies for a job. I do. How about making the process make sense? How about paying a designer with some idea of user experience planning to design the forms for you? How about a little beta testing to make sure that the forms work?
You that build large corporate websites used for support and to serve customers other important information (verizon.net, I’m looking directly at you). Why not follow the links you create to make sure they go somewhere? Again, beta test that cool new feature of the site to make sure it works before rolling it out to the general public. And, hey? Why not take a few minutes to add a little consistency to your entire web presence?
Finally, you architects. I realize that you don’t always get to see your projects to completion. Still, why not visit a property you designed to make sure ‘it works’ correctly and things are easy to get to and find. Essentially, test the navigation. See how fucked up it is and take that back to your drawing table to make things better. Make sure to account for trees and parking structures if they aren’t already in place.
Through the course of each and every one of my days I’m constantly coming across things that could have be fantastically awesome if only someone would have taken a little bit of extra time and planning to make sure it worked correctly. To make sure the navigation was consistent. To ensure that it looked cool, no matter how it was viewed.
I’m less than a genius. I’m also the first person to admit that I’m not always the smartest person in the room. But I do know how stuff should work. Sometimes I can even do something about the stuff that you made to make it work the way it should.
Anyway, I would really appreciate it and owe you a solid if you could do something to help me out here. Just stop making things that suck.
You rule, as always!
xoxo
db
Because of what I do, and the online ‘circles’ I run in and people I follow, this is a topic that comes up quite a bit. Even on the other side of the screen, in real life, this is something that has been coming up more and more. And, honestly, I think everyone is doing it wrong. It, in this context, refers to Social Media.
I’m not saying that I’m doing it right however. Far from it. I will say I’m doing it well. I will also say that when it does come to social media, there is no such thing as a one size fits all approach. Many ‘social media experts’ would argue that with me, but I still think I’m right and they are not. You can get an idea of where this started here.
Recently, I came across another list of things that you need to do to be successful at social media. I wasted an entire hour going through this list, thinking that I might gain some knowledge or insight and improve the way I do things now.
I did not.
All I did was waste the hour reading a list of things that are, basically, common sense. Leave a comment on a blog. Keep things organized and up-to-date. Blah, blah, blah. It is all things that, if you fancy yourself a ‘social media expert’, you should be doing already.
But that’s not what is bothering me.
You see, it’s these crazy lists posts that tell you what you should be doing, or who you should be following, or, or, or. Honestly, they drive me to distraction.
If you are going to use social media for anything, the key is to actually USE IT! Not spend hour after hour reading lists posts or watching how-to videos or reading ebooks. You have to do it.
That’s my problem with these ‘social media experts’. Saying that you are a social media expert when all you do is say you are a social media expert means nothing except that there is a really good chance that you were selling real estate 12 months ago and couldn’t make a sale.
Social media isn’t about building sales, but it is. Social media isn’t about promotion, but it is. Social media is something different to everyone, depending on the end game and how much work you want to put into it. But, if all you want to do is search google and facebook for ‘social media tips’ and not actually do something, you are doing it wrong.
If, however, you really want to to find out what you can do with social media in the time you are willing to spend on it, by all means, let me know. I’ll get you sorted out in short order and save you a big pile of money at the same time.
Seems like I’ve been ignoring you for the past 2 months, doesn’t it? I mean, with all the MINI stuff I’ve been doing lately plus regular work stuff, I’ve been busy.
To recap, in the last 30 days I’ve driven from San Diego to Denver. I flew to Philly to attend a MINI dealer grand opening and helped Todd install graphics. I might have had a little too much gin too, but you’ll never get me to admit that. I did get a few minutes to help Mr. Paulsen out with a post about backing up your mobile device.
Otherwise I’ve been playing catch-up. I let some things lapse that I shouldn’t have. I ignored a few things. I even didn’t do a few things because, and I quote, “I didn’t wanna”.
I’m at the tail end of being all caught up right now, and then the issues of the Stig and the BBC came up. Like I had time for that. I mean, can’t a guy just go out on a nice Sunday afternoon and drive a car around a track without everyone getting all up in my face about it? Honestly.
I do have some notes about Froyo on the Dinc I might share with you. I also have a few things I wanted to talk to you about social media too, but that will keep for another day as well.
I just wanted to drive. Is that so bad?
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