Whose Faulty Vision

Powerpoint File Sizes

You know you’ve sold out when: You’re blogging about features that you wish were available in Microsoft Office. Sadly, this isn’t even the first time I’ve done it.

Anyway, I’m putting together “collages” in Powerpoint, copying and pasting images from other places. Some of the images are pretty high-resolution, and so it makes for really unnecessarily huge file sizes. I wish Powerpoint had a “Lock image sizes” command, or some such, which would lower the resolution of images in the deck to match the current physical size of the image. This would throw away a lot of data, but it’s data I don’t need and it would hugely reduce the file size.

Link: Year of the Potato

2008 will be the International Year of the Potato! I’m looking forward to celebrating it.

Facial Recognition

In these focus groups that we did last week, we did several image-picking exercises, where we give each respondent a big stack of pictures and ask them which ones express their feelings about some question or other. It’s a way to get at things that they aren’t necessarily able to express in words–people often don’t know why they feel a particular way, and images can be revelatory.

Anyway, this time we were talking about brand personalities, so our image set included a fair number of celebrities, especially celebrities who are basically known for one thing. Since the set wasn’t just celebrities–it also included random people who looked like they stood for a particular idea, for instance a hippie–they could use an image of a celebrity to express something without necessarily knowing who the person was.

I wasn’t particularly surprised that nobody recognized Jim Henson, even though Kermit was right there in the shot with him. I don’t think I would have recognized him either.

I was slightly surprised that nobody recognized Richard Branson, especially since he was standing right in front of a huge Virgin logo, but maybe I pay more attention to business news than most people.

I was dismayed that not one person, not even the older folks, seemed to recognize Winston Churchill. A number of people picked his picture for one exercise or another, but they all used the picture as emblematic of “grumpy” (he was frowning in the picture) or something like “staid”. Not one person referred to him by name or referenced the notion that the image was anything other than “generic grumpy old white guy”.

iPhone news

The good news is, Apple has finally recognized that they need to allow 3rd-party software support on the iPhone! The bad news is, they’re going to use some kind of “digital signature system” to make sure only approved applications are allowed on, which is likely to keep out a lot of the little one-person freeware apps that are so great on the Palm, as well as any app that they might see as “dodgy” (would they allow an SNES emulator, for instance?). But it’s still a good step.

Typing Without Looking

Has this ever happened to you: You’re typing without looking at your computer screen, say, because you’re transcribing something, or because you’re taking notes on what someone’s saying. You make a typo, realize that you’ve made it, backspace and correct the typo, all without actually looking at the screen.

I did that at least once while taking notes on last week’s focus groups. Looking back at it, I kind of wonder how I managed it.

Stupid Interface of the Whenever

Another stupid interface that’s surprisingly not from Microsoft. I’m sitting in the airport yesterday, at my gate, nowhere near the security line, and the PA system is delivering a steady stream of instructions on how to get through security: make sure you remove your laptop from its bag, liquids have to be 3 ounces or less, and so on. Um, hello? I’m already through security. I seem to have figured all of that stuff out.

If their PA system is incapable of having separate broadcasts for pre-security and post-security, then they should stop broadcasting those messages over the general PA and set up a separate sound system just around the security area. I had to wait about an hour for my plane, and I really didn’t need a steady stream of security theater in my ear that whole time.

“Bet you can’t eat just one”

Remember those old Lay’s potato chip ads, “Bet you can’t eat just one?” Back when I was a kid, I did once eat “just one” at a party, just to prove that those ads were wrong.

I also used to bite into Chips Ahoy cookies without biting a chip, because the ads said you couldn’t. It had to be only the tiniest little nibble, but I managed it. Okay, I was a contrary little kid.