I’ve used Macs for many years, and I’ve been lucky: never had a hard drive crash, or a problem installing a software update.

Until yesterday

I purchased the $29 Snow Leopard update, and tried installing it yesterday.

Midway through the installation, the installer choked & said it “could not change the contents of my hard drive.”

Then my mac would not reboot.

I packed everything up and went to the Bay St Apple Store (Emeryville, CA). They said it was most likely a pre-existing problem with my hard drive, and the OS update pushed it into failure. (this is plausible, my machine would often suddenly start thrashing, one reason why I wanted to do this update).

My mac was under warranty, so they replaced my HD for free. I renewed my ProCare subscription to make it happen that day. The Apple store also installed Snow Leopard on the brand new drive. They noted that they were unable to install the iLife suite on Snow Leopard, but said I should be able to install those programs from my original install discs.

I took home my brainwashed mac. I booted it up, it was like a brand new machine. After I established am admin acct, I was able to run a restore from my latest Time Machine backup.

The restore took 3 hrs, and appeared to go well. I watched the files copying onto the new drive.

When it was done, I was amazed to see that I could not access my restored data and apps. It was like the restore never happened.

I was stunned. Tom Vilot was available to help me troubleshoot. He shared my screen over iChat and investigated further, but we both ended up stumped.

Here’s his assessment:

“Attempting to do a Time Machine restore last night succeeded, but confusingly there are two entries in /Volumes:
- Macintosh HD
- Macintosh HD 1

“Everything restored to “Macintosh HD,” but it appears the system is running off of “Macintosh HD 1″ and I can see no way to reconfigure it to run off of “Macintosh HD.” There is only one entry in the System Preferences -> Startup Disk panel.

“Why are there two entires in /Volumes like this? How do we tell the machine to use “Macintosh HD” instead of “Macintosh HD 1″ and how do we get rid of “Macintosh HD 1″

….I really need help here I depend on this computer. If you have ideas or can help, please comment below. Thanks.

Recently I wrote about how a Los Angeles Police Dept. geocoding data glitch yielded inaccurate crime maps at LAPDcrimemaps.org and the database-powered network of hyperlocal sites, Everyblock.

On Apr. 8, Everyblock founder Adrian Holovaty blogged about the two ways his company is addressing the problem of inaccurate geodata.

1. Latitude/longitude crosschecking. “From now on, rather than relying blindly on our data sources’ longitude/latitude points, we cross-check those points with our own geocoding of the address provided. If the LAPD’s geocoding for a particular crime is significantly off from our own geocoder’s results, then we won’t geocode that crime at all, and we publish a note on the crime page that explains why a map isn’t available. (If you’re curious, we’re using 375 meters as our threshold. That is, if our own geocoder comes up with a point more than 375 meters away from the point that LAPD provides, then we won’t place the crime on a map, or on block/neighborhood pages.)
2. Surfacing ungeocoded data. “Starting today, wherever we have aggregate charts by neighborhood, ZIP or other boundary, we include the number, and percentage, of records that couldn’t be geocoded. Each location chart has a new “Unknown” row that provides these figures. Note that technically this figure includes more than nongeocodable records — it also includes any records that were successfully geocoded but don’t lie in any neighborhood. For example, in our Philadelphia crime section, you can see that one percent of crime reports in the last 30 days are in an ‘unknown’ neighborhood; this means those 35 records either couldn’t be geocoded or lie outside any of the Philadelphia neighborhood boundaries that we’ve compiled.”

These strategies could — and probably should — be employed by any organization publishing online maps that rely on government or third-party geodata.

Holovaty’s post also includes a great plain-language explanation of what geodata really is and how it works in practical terms. This is the kind of information that constitutes journalism 101 in the online age.

(NOTE: I originally published this post in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

lacrime

LAPDcrimemaps.org has some recently revealed geodata flaws.

Crime maps are one of the most popular and (in urban areas) ubiquitous types of geo-enabled local news — and they’re a staple of the Knight News Challenge-funded project Everyblock. This data comes from local police departments — but how reliable is it?

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported a problem with the Los Angeles Police Department’s online crime map, launched three years ago…

“LAPDcrimemaps.org is offered to the public as a way to track crimes near specific addresses in the city of Los Angeles. Most of the time that process worked fine. But when it failed, crimes were often shown miles from where they actually occurred.

“Unable to parse the intersection of Paloma Street and Adams Boulevard, for instance, the computer used a default point for Los Angeles, roughly 1st and Spring streets. Mistakes could have the effect of masking real crime spikes as well as creating false ones.”

Apparently the LAPD wast not aware of the error until alerted by the Times…

LAPD spokeswoman Mary Grady told the Times that “the department will work with its contractor to make the map as accurate as current technology allows.”

Also, the Times reported: “Alerted to the findings, Lightray Productions, the contractor that designed the LAPD site at a cost of at least $362,000, has promised to fix the problems. …One reason the errors were not caught earlier may be that the LAPD site retains crimes for only six months and allows viewers to see only a seven-day period at a time. The presentation makes some trends, such as the large accumulation of crimes mapped at Civic Center, more difficult to spot.”

Distorted or erroneous geodata, especially from official sources like police departments, can have ripple effects. In this case the LAPD crime data was automatically pulled into, and displayed by, Everyblock — an experimental project funded by the Knight News Challenge. (UPDATE: Everyblock has since implemented some corrective measures to spot and fix source geodata problems in its crime maps.)

In the All Points Blog from Directions Magazine, Adena Schutzberg noted:

“While the Times article highlights some key points about the process of geocoding and why the error was not found sooner (the app only shows data back a week, making such spikes less obvious) it missed out on some other points including:

• Different applications use different geocoding algorithms.
• Different applications use different data against which to geocode.
• Sharing raw data (vs. maps) can help identify such errors.

Schutzberg concluded: “My main question is this: Everyblock took the same data feed for its L.A. maps, and it seems, ended up with same inaccuracies. Is that because they use the same geocoding and data against which to geocode? That’s not clear from the Times article.”

If your news organization is using geodata to create interactive online features, you might want to consider ways to double-check for possible accuracy issues, perhaps by checking the results yielded by a different tool set to see if and how it handled the data differently.

(NOTE: I originally published a slightly different version of this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

1Password seems pretty powerful. But it’s not for me.

Reason: 1Password only integrates with Web browsers, not with 3rd party applications. For 3rd-party applications, you can generate stronger passwords using 1Password — but then you have to store them in the OSX keychain or elsewhere. If you rely on such applications regularly, this vastly reduces the potential security benefit of 1Password.

This became a dealbreaker for me. Here’s why…

On my laptop I use the Twitter applications Twhirl and Tweetdeck daily. Which means that to use the complex passwords generated by this program, I’d need to either check 1Password and copy and paste each time I wanted to log in — which is a hassle. I’d quickly tire of that hassle and then either store the passwords in the applications, or in a separate file, or in the Mac OSX keychain — all of which would defeat the purpose of using a password-management program.

1Password actively touts the advantages of its keychain over the OSX keychain. Which is why I found it ironic that today a 1Password rep recommended to me that for 3rd party apps I could still use the Mac OSX keychain for password storage. That’s kind of like saying, “Well, you can’t order the chicken, but this rat tastes like chicken.”

1PASSWORD ON IPHONE: WHAT’S THE POINT?

1Password prominently touts its iPhone application, which syncs with your Mac. This lack of integration is an even bigger problem on the iPhone, which has no copy and paste. On the iPhone I primarily use applications other than the browser to access services I use daily — including e-mail. Since 1Password doesn’t integrate with any of those applications, I’d have to manually type in those complex passwords for access, and then store them in the apps.

The only purpose of the 1Password iPhone application apparently is to securely store on your phone sensitive data, like your Social Security number. It won’t let you, say, use the complex password for your BrightKite account, which you set up via 1Password on your laptop, to log in to the BrightKite app on your iPhone. You’d have to type it in manually, or store the password in the app — which again undermines the intended security benefit.

So although 1Password appears to be useful in some ways, for me it’s got too many dealbreakers. I’ve requested a refund.

MASTER KEYWORD WOES? HOW TO START FROM SCRATCH

Oh, and: When I first installed 1Password, I had a problem with the Master Password for the 1Password keychain (something you need to enter in order to be able to use your other passwords — supposedly the only password you’ll need to remember). 1Password was not recognizing the master keyword I’d set. This may have been due to something I did wrong; I’m not blaming 1Password for this.

I ended up having to ditch my original 1Password keychain and make a clean start. In case you need to do the same thing, here are the full instructions (which I couldn’t find on the 1Password site, but 1Password rep Jamie Phelps sent them to me:

First, let’s make sure we’re starting over with a clean slate of 1Password. Make sure that 1Password is installed in your Applications folder rather than running from the disk image or the Desktop or some other location. Second, drag the following files to your desktop if you find them:

• Home > Library > Keychains > 1Password.keychain
• Home > Library > Application Support > 1Password > 1Password.agilekeychain
• Home > Library > Preferences > com.1passwd.plist

Now, try launching 1Password and you should be presented with the blue setup screen again. Go through the initial setup and see if you continue to have trouble. If your master password does not work for you after this, please let us know and we’ll investigate further.

I post that in case anyone else is having the same problem, since I could only find the first step in that process on the 1Password site.

In summary — 1Password may be a great solution if you don’t rely regularly on applications other than your browser to access online services. As I said, several people I respect have recommended it. But if 3rd party applications are crucial to your online experience (on your computer or iPhone), then think twice before buying this software.

Earlier this week I wrote about the internal and external obstacles journalism schools face when trying to achieve collaboration with other academic departments (such as computer science). That spurred a pretty interesting discussion in the comments.

This discussion got me thinking: Right now, it’s becoming obvious to many journalists that our field sorely needs lots of top-notch, creative technologists. Developers for whom software is a medium, and an art form. Developers with a deep passion for information, credibility, fairness, usefulness, and free speech.

However, my impression is that, so far, it’s not nearly so obvious to most “geeks” (and I use that term with the utmost affection and respect, as do many geeks themselves) how they might benefit from collaborating with journalists, j-schools, and news organizations.

So if journalists need geeks, but right now they don’t need (or even necessarily want) us as much, the question becomes: What’s in this for the geeks? Why might they want to work with us? Where’s their incentive?…

There is a bright spot of opportunity: Many hardcore geeks (especially those who create free software, where the mantra is “free as in speech, not free as in beer“) share core goals with journalists — especially regarding public service and free speech. That’s a solid launching point.

One of the people whose views on bridging the journo/geek culture gap I respect most is my Tidbits colleague Rich Gordon, from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He runs a pioneering program that offers scholarships to Medill’s graduate journalism program to people with education and/or expertise in computer programming. (This effort is funded by a Knight News Challenge grant — and they’re seeking a followup grant.)

In his comment to my earlier post on J-schools, Gordon wrote, in part:

“Journalism and computer science partnerships will work only if the two academic departments see these collaborations as equally valuable. In my experience, there are cultural and communication gaps that need to be closed.”

And in this MediaLab post, Gordon elaborated:

“Journalists and technology professionals do have two things in common. First, the best people in both fields really do want to change the world and make it a better place. Second, both believe that people want and deserve access to the best possible information. But there also is a substantial gap between journalism and computer science.

“Too many journalists don’t respect technology development as a creative activity — they think developers should just build stuff they want. Too many technologists don’t respect journalism as an intellectual activity — they think journalists just pump out content for their algorithms to process.

“Too many journalists really don’t like technology change; they blame it for hurting media businesses, threatening their livelihoods and diminishing the quality of news available in local communities. Too many technologists think it’s not their job to worry about the negative impact of technology innovation on media companies and journalism — and when they do think about the consequences, think only about information at the national and global level (which is broader, deeper and more accessible than ever) and not at the local level (where online news ventures rarely do the kind of original reporting that newspapers do).”

…I think that pretty much nails the key mindset differences that define this culture gap. But there’s also the organizational angle. I was discussing this recently with Brian Boyer (a programmer currently in Gordon’s graduate journalism program, and part of Medill’s Crunchberry Project team). He observed that generally news organizations don’t see themselves as tech companies. Yet, he said, geeks “want to work at a place where tech is at the core of the ideas. News orgs need to realize that they’re tech organizations now — they live and die by the Web.”

Given that context, I ask again: What’s in this for the geeks? How can we foster more mutual understanding and respect? What compelling reasons can journalists offer that honor geek values, culture, and goals? How can journalists demonstrate that we can and will respect talented, passionate geeks as full partners (or even potential leaders) in collaborative efforts — not pigeonhole them as IT lackeys?

I’m asking journalists to start from this point: “Journalism: So what?” I’m also asking geeks to speak up about how they view journalists: our efforts, our culture, our goals, and what might make us more appealing as collaborators.

Any ideas? Please comment below.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/10/31/working-with-journalists-whats-in-it-for-geeks/feed/ 2 http://www.contentious.com/2008/09/16/being-a-citizen-shouldnt-be-so-hard-part-2-beyond-government/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/09/16/being-a-citizen-shouldnt-be-so-hard-part-2-beyond-government/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:28:48 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/?p=1852 NOTE: This is part 2 of a multipart series. See the series intro. More to come over the next few days.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/09/16/being-a-citizen-shouldnt-be-so-hard-part-2-beyond-government/feed/ 7 http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/06/press-it-%c2%ab-wordpress-codex/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/06/press-it-%c2%ab-wordpress-codex/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:05:12 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/06/press-it-%c2%ab-wordpress-codex/ Press It « WordPress Codex: Glad to see that this feature for quick posts was added back to WP 2.6. Trying it out here, to see how well it works.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/06/press-it-%c2%ab-wordpress-codex/feed/ 0 http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/01/is-this-thing-on/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/01/is-this-thing-on/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:27:57 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/?p=1722 For the last couple of days I’ve been struggling with WordPress. The old version I was on (2.3) for some mysterious reason started slamming my web server to the point it would bring the site down whenever I’d try to write or edit a post. (Tech support at my web host, Bluehost.com, was spectacularly UNhelpful in troubleshooting this problem, BTW. Tom Vilot and I figured it out independently. Bluehost support utterly wasted nearly two hours of my time yesterday in four separate calls….   Grrrrr……)

So now that Tom helped me get WP manually updated to 2.6 (Bluehost only offered automated update options to 2.5.1 — another grrrrrrr……) WP now seems ready to cooperate. (Well, except that my secure login stopped working.) I’m trying it out with this post. We’ll see what happens.

Moment of truth: Is this thing on? If you’re reading this, it worked.

UPDATE: OK, now that I know I can use the site again, here’s a gripe I have that maybe WordPress developers can do something about:

Why is the WordPress update process so F*CKING OBTUSE???

Here’s what I mean…

Having to manually delete and upload files to the web server is totally intimidating to people like me who aren’t server savvy. And I’m definitely no technophobe. But right now this is a huge hurdle to many people who’d want to use WordPress’s functionality and flexibility.

Some web hosts offer “1-click updates” — but those often aren’t to the latest version of WordPress (which is currently true of Bluehost). And those 1-click update processes often fail inexplicably. In my case, every time I tried to update WordPress via Bluehost, the process failed and the error message said to call tech support. Which, as I mentioned, was useless.

In my case, my only option was a manual update.

WordPress developers: Rather than add more bells and whistles, can we focus on a simple update process please???? Obviously WordPress users who aren’t total geeks cannot rely on web hosts to provide a simple update path that works. Why should we have to rely on web hosts for this? Can’t the update process be made more automated, so we don’t have to manually mess with deleting and replacing files via ftp?

UPDATE: Lisa B reminded me that there’s a WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. I did try that about a year ago. I recall it didn’t work for me, but I don’t remember how or why. But I did uninstall it. I’ve just downloaded the latest version and installed and activated it, to try it again.

BUT… That said, regardless of whether this plugin works, I think the fact that it is a plugin could itself be a surprisingly significant barrier to plenty of WordPress users. Implementing this plugin involves downloading a zip archive, extracting the plugin folder from it, and FTPing in into your plugins directory on your web server. I’ve known several people who, while not technophobes, are even less server-savvy than me — and they’ve installed WordPress (often because their web hosts offer 1-click installation), but don’t use any plugins because they find that installation process intimidating.

Can’t we just integrate an automatic upgrade feature into the base installation of WordPress? Why does this have to be a plugin? Seems to me like it should be a basic and simple function built into any blogging tool.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/08/01/is-this-thing-on/feed/ 1 http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/16/nokia-talks-more-much-more-about-us-service-problems/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/16/nokia-talks-more-much-more-about-us-service-problems/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 19:34:00 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/?p=1642 Nokia Conversations Blog Nokia’s Conversation Blog has launched an extended discussion on its myriad US service problems.

I’m happy to report that there has been some progress (small, but real) from Nokia in terms of addressing it US service problems, which I’ve written about extensively.

First, here’s their most concrete step forward so far: Today, Nokia announced that the long-awaited firmware update for the US N95-3 should be available by early June.

Note that this does not mean Nokia has improved its firmware update process — which (as Beth Kanter, Robert Day, and I noted) is PC-only and very cumbersome, confusing, and annoying. And, in my experience, Nokia’s firmware update process is also risky — it’s what bricked my N95 in April.

…But still, a lot of US N95-3 users have been waiting (and waiting) for this firmware update. News that it’s coming soon appears quite welcome in that community, judging by the initial comments to the announcement.

Also, I’m encouraged to see that Nokia’s Conversations Blog yesterday launched a series of posts on its myriad US service problems. So far, there’s been:

• May 15: Introductory post, in which Nokia promises to specifically respond to my six suggestions for their US operations.
• May 15: A post on US repair turnaround time.
• May 16: A post about the forthcoming N95-3 firmware update.

I think the fact that Nokia has made this discussion so public, and is respecting and addressing concerns raised by users, is a very positive step. Frankly, this is far more than most major companies are willing to do. Nokia is willing to publicly acknowledge its significant problems, and doesn’t seem to consider this inherently risky or bad for business. Many, many companies and organizations could take a lesson from Nokia on this front.

That said, Nokia’s blog does try (understandably) to put as positive a spin as possible on its US service problems. As far as I can tell, they’re not painting a specifically inaccurate rosy picture — but so far they haven’t directly tackled the hardest issues.

Therefore, it’s still up to current and would-be US users of Nokia N-Series phones to keep pushing for clear answers to our most pressing questions and concerns. This is going to take time, folks.

Here’s what I mean…

US SERVICE TURNAROUND TIME:

Short-term fix: Earlier I suggested that one measure Nokia could implement immediately that would help restore US consumers’ confidence would be to guarantee a 7-day US repair/replacement turnaround time. On May 15, James at Nokia wrote:

“Whilst there is a stated 30 day turnaround in the warranty policy, this is designed to capture all Nokia products and typically applies to older products where spares may not be readily available. Nokia USA assures us devices are typically returned within 7-10 days and that 85 per cent of those returns happen within seven days. This is much closer to the time frame Amy (and we) feel is acceptable. To be special, we reckon a five day turnaround for Nseries devices would help boost confidence somewhat.”

To put this in context, this is not new information, and it doesn’t address the issues I raised, which focus on certainty:

• Certain about maximum wait time. The 30 days that Nokia’s warranty currently allows for turnaround time is far too long for such a must-have device. Overnight replacement or loaners (similar to what AT&T offers, according to Ricky Cadden) would be ideal — but for now I’d be willing to settle for just being certain that I’d have a working unit back in my hands in a week. Nokia’s 30-day wiggle room, plus numerous user reports of longer waits, is a worry I’m not willing to tolerate for a $600 must-have device. The point here is not average speed, but a guarantee.
• Certainty that the problem will be fixed. User James Roblimos commented, “What about the numerous reports of people who get their phones back with the same issues they’ve sent them in for? I’ve read numerous horror stories of owners sending in their phones …with hardware problems, only to get them back several weeks later and the only thing the warranty techs did was flash the firmware (sometimes not even that).” [Examples here.]

In this comment I asked Nokia to please respond directly to these core concerns. We’ll see what they have to say next.

US SERVICE LOCATIONS:

In the post about US repair turnaround time, James of Nokia also wrote:

“If you live in NYC or Chicago, you can roll your phone into the local Nokia Flagship store where it’ll be repaired within three days. This is on a par with other device manufacturers in the US, but as Amy rightly points out in another part of her post, there simply isn’t the breadth of Nokia service centres in the US to make this feasible for the masses. That though, could be about to change.”

This is good news for Nokia users in those two cities — which doesn’t include, well, the vast majority of the US. And I’m also curious what user actual experiences with Nokia’s in-store service have been in those cities.

If you’re in NYC or Chicago, I’d love it if you could drop by the Nokia store there and see what the in-store staff have to say about how they handle service, replacements, and loaners. And if you’ve had service done in those stores, how did it go? As we’ve seen with Nokia’s phone customer service, sometimes the reps say very different things from Nokia corporate. It’s worth an on-site reality check.

CLUNKY, RISKY FIRMWARE UPDATE PROCESS

Again, Nokia’s notoriously clunky, PC-only firmware update process is what bricked my N95. Today, James at Nokia contended that Nokia’s update proces really isn’t very risky:

“The NSU [Nokia Software Update] team tells us that over 8 million devices have successfully been through the update process and the failure rate is ‘very low’.”

…If that’s true, then why did the Nokia customer service rep who Beth Kanter spoke to on April 17 tell her that Nokia discourages users from doing the firmware update except as a last resort to combat severe functionality loss? That doesn’t sound very “safe” to me.

Also, Nokia support has claimed that the firmware update bricking problem happens when you try to install a US firmware update on a non-US phone. Since I bought a US N95-3 from Amazon, that creates further concern — are N95 retailers selling non-US phones as US phones?

Who needs all these layers of fear, uncertainty, and doubt? It may be that Nokia needs to train its customer service reps better on this issue, they’re sowing considerable concern in the US market.

In this comment today I reiterated to Nokia that their firmware update process (not just the firmware version) is a huge hassle for US consumers — and far inferior to the user experience offered by their main US competitor, Apple.

In my comment I’ve asked Nokia to specifically comment on whether, when, and how they plan to make firmware updates less painful — and also Mac-friendly. We’ll see what they say.

NEW PHONES SHOULD HAVE NEW FIRMWARE

Especially since Nokia’s firmware update process is so awful, it’s especially discouraging that right now brand-new N95-3s are being shipped to US customers with old firmware. ZDnet’s Matthew Miller wrote:

“Nokia’s support for these high end devices will have to get much better before I can recommend people go out and spend US$500+ for a device optimized for U.S. 3G bands. Every other Nokia N95 has received a firmware upgrade, except for the N95-3 North American version that actually came out before some other devices. This apparent lack of support for loyal N95-3 buyers has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and this kind of treatment should not occur in the future if Nokia wants to reach U.S. customers.”

In my comment today, I asked Nokia if they could update their existing inventory of N95-3s so that no device is shipped with outdated software. Again, we’ll see what they have to say.

KEEP TALKING

…So that’s where this conversations stand as of today. I’m grateful to everyone who’s added their voice to this discussion. I’ve notified several Nokia and N95 user forums about this ongoing discussion on the Nokia blog, so hopefully even more folks will be chiming in.

In my opinion, so far Nokia does seem to want to improve its US service — and they can only do that if we’re telling them what we really need from them, to keep them on target and accountable

(Note I also posted a video overview of this situation on Seesmic.)

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/16/nokia-talks-more-much-more-about-us-service-problems/feed/ 1 http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/08/my-weird-icalleopard-problem/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/08/my-weird-icalleopard-problem/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 17:05:27 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/?p=1630 I love iCal, but it’s driving me crazy lately. Help!

As you might have guessed, I’m a pretty busy person. If I didn’t have a good electronic calendar program, with alerts and reliable backup, I’d be totally lost. That’s why I’ve been a devoted user of Apple’s iCal program for about 10 years.

A few months ago, when I upgraded to a Macbook Pro with the Leopard OS (original install, not a Leopard upgrade), iCal started getting weird on me. I’ve been to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store twice about it, and have yet to find a problem. But I’m getting concerned, because I depend so heavily on this program. If it totally flames out on me, moving to a new solution will be a big hassle.

So I’m hoping some of my readers, or someone in the iCal support forums, is smarter or luckier than me and the folks at my local Apple Genius Bar.

Here are the iCal problems I’m experiencing, and what I’ve tried (unsuccessfully, so far) to diagnose and fix it. Your ideas and suggestions for further measures are most welcome…

MY ICAL PROBLEMS

I upgraded to a Macbook (Tiger OS) to a Macbook Pro (Leopard OS) about three months ago. Apple’s migration assistant had a problem copying my iCal data over automatically, so we (Tom Vilot was helping out) transfered that data manually into iCal.

Initially I had a problem with my calendar alerts not working. The first visit to the Genius bar fixed that.

Remaining iCal problems:

• Export not working. This problem is new, just started about a month ago — but it’s the one that concerns me most. Periodically, I had been exporting data from my main iCal calendar and uploading it to Google Calendar as a backup. Now, when I try to export that calendar, iCal just freezes on me and I have to force quit the program. (Yes, I am using Time Machine to back up all my data, but still…)
• Long delay to switch views. When I try to switch from, say, month view to week view, or from one month to the next, it takes iCal about 15 seconds to complete the switch. I also see a long switch when I try to turn my main calendar off and on in the left sidebar. That’s more annoying than worrisome, but I’d like to fix it.

• Can’t delete old events. I’ve tried several time in the iCal advanced preferences to have iCal delete all events older than 30 days. It looks like it accepts that choice, but then never actually deletes the old events.

I’m pretty sure my problem has something to do with some corruption or problem with my main calendar file. I say this because these attempted solutions had no result (the problems remained):

• Creating a new user account with a clean iCal, then sharing my main calendar file over to that user account.
• Reinstalling the entire Leopard OS from the discs supplied with my Macbook. (There’s no separate iCal installer, you have to reinstall Leopard to reinstall iCal.)

So: What can I try next to diagnose or fix this problem? Is anyone else having similar problems? Your suggestions are welcome, please comment below. I’m also posting this to the iCal support forum.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/05/08/my-weird-icalleopard-problem/feed/ 3