Ah, pledge season...

... that time of year when I listen to lots of CDs.

I mean, I really have to wonder at the wisdom of Public Radio Pledge Season. For two weeks, a couple of times a year, NPR insists on interrupting my radio broadcasts for about ten minutes (or more) of begging for money every half hour. It's remarkably irritating, and clearly a waste of my time, since they basically just say the same thing over and over again: "Pledge now, and win Cool Prizes!", in various permutations. Which is a potentially useful reminder for the first five seconds, and just annoying after that.

I believe that the theory here is that they need to give it ten minutes so that you will have time to go to your phone and make your pledge of support. But of course, I don't do anything of the sort: instead, I turn off the radio and listen to something else. This year I'll probably go back to listening to NPR afterwards (I've almost made it to the end of Pledge Season and I keep reflexively looking for the news), but often in the past I've simply been dehabituated from it, and stopped listening to the radio for *months* afterwards. (Usually because I find myself in the middle of a really good Teaching Company course instead. This time, I find myself in the middle of a remarkably weird disc of "music" from Matt Howarth, which is no threat to the news -- more on that anon.)

And y'know -- if pledging some money would make the damned advertisements *go away*, the blackmail might even work. But of course, it doesn't: instead, it simply validates their theory that these pledge breaks work. So as a matter of principle, I *don't* ever donate during Pledge Season. I'm fond of WBUR, and I'll give them some money sometime this year, but pointedly as far from Pledge Season as possible. And the result of this is that I probably give them *less* money than I otherwise would, since I actively put off donating any time around this thing.

I do find myself wondering if anyone's ever done a proper experiment on the subject. Spend a year doing something completely different: replace the two weeks of hell with more frequent but less intrusive one-minute spots, so that the listener is less inspired to turn away. (But not quite so constant as to make the listener simply stop noticing it.) Certainly it would get more money from *me*. I don't know overall, but I'd like to believe that there has to be some approach better than this counter-productive nonsense that simply makes some of us turn away from public radio entirely...

Ah, pledge season...

... that time of year when I listen to lots of CDs.

I mean, I really have to wonder at the wisdom of Public Radio Pledge Season. For two weeks, a couple of times a year, NPR insists on interrupting my radio broadcasts for about ten minutes (or more) of begging for money every half hour. It's remarkably irritating, and clearly a waste of my time, since they basically just say the same thing over and over again: "Pledge now, and win Cool Prizes!", in various permutations. Which is a potentially useful reminder for the first five seconds, and just annoying after that.

I believe that the theory here is that they need to give it ten minutes so that you will have time to go to your phone and make your pledge of support. But of course, I don't do anything of the sort: instead, I turn off the radio and listen to something else. This year I'll probably go back to listening to NPR afterwards (I've almost made it to the end of Pledge Season and I keep reflexively looking for the news), but often in the past I've simply been dehabituated from it, and stopped listening to the radio for *months* afterwards. (Usually because I find myself in the middle of a really good Teaching Company course instead. This time, I find myself in the middle of a remarkably weird disc of "music" from Matt Howarth, which is no threat to the news -- more on that anon.)

And y'know -- if pledging some money would make the damned advertisements *go away*, the blackmail might even work. But of course, it doesn't: instead, it simply validates their theory that these pledge breaks work. So as a matter of principle, I *don't* ever donate during Pledge Season. I'm fond of WBUR, and I'll give them some money sometime this year, but pointedly as far from Pledge Season as possible. And the result of this is that I probably give them *less* money than I otherwise would, since I actively put off donating any time around this thing.

I do find myself wondering if anyone's ever done a proper experiment on the subject. Spend a year doing something completely different: replace the two weeks of hell with more frequent but less intrusive one-minute spots, so that the listener is less inspired to turn away. (But not quite so constant as to make the listener simply stop noticing it.) Certainly it would get more money from *me*. I don't know overall, but I'd like to believe that there has to be some approach better than this counter-productive nonsense that simply makes some of us turn away from public radio entirely...

Not exactly a great advertisement

I just signed up for the Adobe Max conference in a couple of weeks -- we're doing serious Flex development at work, so it's time to build up more expertise.

The signup process is *hell*. It's among the slowest sites I've ever seen, taking typically 15-30 seconds per page after you hit "submit". It's bug-ridden: three separate times, I got essentially "unknown server error" pages after submitting, and had to go re-submit. It's wretchedly designed: you have to go through something like seven separate pages in order to register for the conference, including stupidities like having to explicitly say, "No, I don't want to pay $500 extra to have a guest accompany me to the reception" (yes, seriously -- $500!), or you get an error page telling you that you need to fill this field in. It doesn't give you any apparent way to sign up for the pre-conference tutorial day. And as the cherry on top, the receipt includes your site password in the clear.

And what is the main focus of this conference? Teaching you how to build good websites, and showing how to use ColdFusion -- the technology used to build this mess -- to construct your website. Uhhh -- no, thanks...

Not exactly a great advertisement

I just signed up for the Adobe Max conference in a couple of weeks -- we're doing serious Flex development at work, so it's time to build up more expertise.

The signup process is *hell*. It's among the slowest sites I've ever seen, taking typically 15-30 seconds per page after you hit "submit". It's bug-ridden: three separate times, I got essentially "unknown server error" pages after submitting, and had to go re-submit. It's wretchedly designed: you have to go through something like seven separate pages in order to register for the conference, including stupidities like having to explicitly say, "No, I don't want to pay $500 extra to have a guest accompany me to the reception" (yes, seriously -- $500!), or you get an error page telling you that you need to fill this field in. It doesn't give you any apparent way to sign up for the pre-conference tutorial day. And as the cherry on top, the receipt includes your site password in the clear.

And what is the main focus of this conference? Teaching you how to build good websites, and showing how to use ColdFusion -- the technology used to build this mess -- to construct your website. Uhhh -- no, thanks...

Continuing on the subject of Stupid Design Tricks...

Okay, so I finally got signed up for the bloody conference. Now I'm using the glitzy Flash "schedule design" tool to set up my plan.

Image two panels, top and bottom. The top one lists all of the panels; the bottom one is details. When you mouse over a panel, the details show up in the bottom pane. Which is great, except that the details run off the *bottom* of the pane. And of course, if you move the mouse to go to the scrollbar for the bottom pane, it loses the panel selection. Very special.

Eventually, I twigged that you could click on the panel, which "locks" it into place so that you get get to the scrollbar. At least, it makes it the default -- if you move the mouse over any *other* panel, it switches to that. But it's at least possible to read the details, once you figure the UI out. However, any design that involves "figure the UI out" is a bad design, pretty much by definition.

I have to say, my faith in these people who are supposed to be teaching me is not very high right now...

Continuing on the subject of Stupid Design Tricks...

Okay, so I finally got signed up for the bloody conference. Now I'm using the glitzy Flash "schedule design" tool to set up my plan.

Image two panels, top and bottom. The top one lists all of the panels; the bottom one is details. When you mouse over a panel, the details show up in the bottom pane. Which is great, except that the details run off the *bottom* of the pane. And of course, if you move the mouse to go to the scrollbar for the bottom pane, it loses the panel selection. Very special.

Eventually, I twigged that you could click on the panel, which "locks" it into place so that you get get to the scrollbar. At least, it makes it the default -- if you move the mouse over any *other* panel, it switches to that. But it's at least possible to read the details, once you figure the UI out. However, any design that involves "figure the UI out" is a bad design, pretty much by definition.

I have to say, my faith in these people who are supposed to be teaching me is not very high right now...