Sometimes it just works
As I’ve pointed out previously: a good benchmark of a technology’s ease-of-use is whether you can use it while holding a conversation.
My normal mode is to complain about all software/hardware, but I thought I’d share a couple of examples where tasks could actually be completed mid-VOIP conversation.
-
“I need a good photo of myself – can you send me all the photos you have of me?”
Initially this sounded like a “sure, when I get an hour or two, I’ll get back to you”-type request, but then I remembered: I ended up importing the last few years of photos into iPhoto so that I could play with the facial recognition feature. For once, geeky software fiddling pays off in real life. Select her face, export all images to a new directory, compress the directory, drag resulting zip on to the chat window and let it upload in the background. No problemo.
It was one of the few times I’ve felt like an actual use case instead of an edge case.
-
“I need to be at St Pancras for 8pm on Sunday, what time do I need to leave to make the connection?”
This one I know. Fire up traintimes.org.uk and plug in the details. So far, big deal right?
The trick here is that traintimes.org.uk gives you the result on a page with a terse but readable, hackable, stateless URL. Which means I don’t have to read out the results, I can just copy-n-paste the address into a text chat window. This ability to easily share and bookmark searches, while it seems bleedin’ obvious to me, is curiously absent from so many big sites.
