CNN.com posted a story today chronicling the difficulties that United States Census workers are having with new handheld computers that they are to use to conduct the upcoming 2010 census. Apparently the computer interface was poorly designed, thanks to a shoddy job on the part of the Census Bureau in writing out software specifications:

Census officials are being blamed for a poor job spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.

While the government may be to blame in this case, especially by failing to provide adequate use cases to the manufacturer and proper, thorough training to census takers, the contractor isn’t much less culpable:

Harris Corp. spokesman Marc Raimondi said … the computers actually are easy to use, with a failure rate of less than 1 percent when tested in the field. “After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it’s as easy to use as a modern cell phone,” Raimondi said.

As easy to use as a modern cell phone?!  Well, that’s a relief, considering how simple to use most of the cell phones on the market are.  (Please note my sarcasm, especially in light of the fact that the Apple iPhone, which actually is easy to use because of a little thing called good interface design, doesn’t require you to spend 30 minutes to learn how to use it.)  This is laziness, pure and simple–either that or a blatant ignorance of how people actually interact with computer interfaces–and Harris Corp., which I’ve never even heard of, should be ashamed of itself for making a strong effort to make these critically important devices as easy to use as possible.

I’m in the process of finishing up my thesis and won’t be posting links today; instead, I’d like to share this excerpt from the conclusion of my thesis containing my prognostications on the on-demand future of media. Keep in mind that the thesis is a cultural history of cooking/food shows, which should explain certain references that will likely make a little more sense in the overall context of the paper. I’ll post a link to the entire thesis when it’s completed, but in the meantime, your thoughts are welcome.

Over the next three to five years, as the USA completes the transition to digital broadcast signals, it’s likely that the volume of food-oriented programs will continue to increase. At the same time, it’s likely that more broadcasters will follow the lead of forward-thinking companies like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, News Corporation and NBC Universal by offering full-length, on-demand streaming versions of programs on websites like Hulu.com and MarthaStewart.com. Special made-for-the-web segments are likely to increase in volume as well; some of these kinds of videos are already cropping up on BravoTV.com, where visitors to the Top Chef website can view bonus clips called “Choice Cuts” that are either specifically made for the Internet or that were cut from the broadcast episodes. Wisely, the networks are learning to monetize these clips by pairing them with short unskippable advertisements that play before each segment.

In ten to fifteen years, though, it is conceivable that Americans will begin to see a massive shift in the way that we all watch television. It is unlikely that the actual term “television” will vanish from our lexicon (witness, for example, referring to content on websites as “channels,” which is a direct reference to television), and it is equally unlikely that our computer screens will replace our living room television screens, but the method of delivery for the shows that we watch will change drastically. Three recent inventions are specific harbingers of this paradigm shift—the CableCARD, TiVo and the newly released Apple TV.

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Hi all–to make up for my lack of post yesterday, I’ve decided to add an extra two links to the mix today. And yes, that may have something to do with the fact that I collected quite a pile of interesting information between this week and last.

• Hulu now open to the public
  Hulu.com, the joint venture between News Corporation and NBC Universal, is out of beta–the public is now welcome to explore the site’s offerings, which are substantial (if a bit scattershot). While there are plenty of TV shows and movies that you can watch online for free with only minimally annoying commercial interruptions (certainly less annoying than YouTube’s new “lower-third”-style advertising on many of its videos), some newer shows are kept online only for a limited time to allegedly “protect DVD and Web download sales,” though I dare say that it’s unlikely that Hulu will impact either of those things given that Nielsen has determined that web video watching makes a negligible impact on TV viewing.
• Commercializing (and sexualizing) the ER
  Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that relies on provocative and oftentimes homoerotic imagery of nude (or practically nude) college-aged boys in its advertising and in-store displays is under fire for donating $10 million to a Columbus, Ohio area hospital in exchange for naming rights to the hospital’s ER and trauma center. Critics say that the company’s overtly sexual ads somehow contradict the concept of healing. Ironically, as Jossip points out, no one said a thing when toymakers Hasbro and Mattel bought the naming rights to other hospitals. What we have here is a double-standard–there are no two ways about it. People are flustered because toys are inoffensive and cuddly but racy ads are somehow “dirty” or shameful. I have no problem with the contribution, especially since $10 million will certainly help the hospital; besides, no one is going to refer to it as the “Abercrombie & Fitch Emergency Room and Trauma Center” in real life. It’ll just be “I ate some bad shrimp, I think I need to go to the hospital” like it always has.
• Fonts from The Price is Right
  I love this–someone with too much free time on his (or her) hands has grabbed stills from various episodes of The Price is Right and identified the fonts used on many of the games. It gets better–the fonts are all available as free downloads. Fun!
• Baring all on camera… and then some
  It’s no secret that the MPAA, which assigns ratings to motion pictures in the United States, has incredibly uneven standards (that’s what the film This Film Is Not Yet Rated was all about); much violence is given a pass, women aren’t allowed to “enjoy” sex, and male nudity is frowned upon. And yet The Guardian notes that in a number of new films (most of which will likely not seek a rating in the USA when they are eventually released here), filmmakers are pushing the envelope and including not only male nudity but (to put it delicately) a very obvious indication of male sexual excitement. I have to wonder if this is truly “progressive” filmmaking, mainly because I’m unable to come up with a viable reason why arousal would ever play a critical on-screen role in a film. Perhaps I’m wrong (and I’m no Puritan by any stretch), but it just seems like a “look what I can get away with” mindset.
• Dreamweaver + CSS = Eric Meyer
  Adobe Dreamweaver is more or less the standard tool of choice when designing web pages, but even with the newest version of the software, its CSS controls are woefully lacking, especially for those of us whose knowledge of CSS is limited. That’s a problem in our post-Web 2.0 world, so CSS expert Eric Meyer partnered with WebAssist to offer the awkwardly-named Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor, an extension for Dreamweaver. It appears to be a fairly useful tool for designers who are CSS-challenged, like myself, though from what I can discern I’m going to guess that advanced CSS users will likely want to make manual tweaks to the code themselves. I also wonder if WebAssist will offer upgrades once CSS 3.0 is released–if that ever actually happens.
• Do you have any purple fives?
  The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has just unveiled the newly redesigned $5 bill, which some are decrying as ugly primarily because of the gigantic purple Helvetica “5″ printed on the reverse (though to be fair that’s there primarily because the ADA requires it for the visually impaired).  By and large, though, the design isn’t bad; the purple hues are nice, and the engraving of Lincoln is very distinguished.

Now that I’ve got the blog resettled on a brand new hosting platform and things are starting to settle down around here, it’s about time to get back in the habit of posting these links on Fridays.  So here we go!

• Filtering the news
  BuzzFeed recently posted about the beta of a news “filtering” service called Persai.  The system pushes content to you based on topics that you specify (for example, you could set up a Persai feed on something like “smoked salmon,” though why anyone would want to do this is beyond me), and whenever the service comes across an article or piece of text that it thinks is relevant, it will push it out to you.  By giving the system feedback (“accepting” or “rejecting” articles), the system will in theory learn over time what is relevant to your interests and what isn’t–kind of like a baby AI-bot.  I like the concept, though I wonder, where does the content come from?  I would assume that there is a search engine involved somewhere under the hood, but then again maybe the content comes from a selection of “curated” links.
• Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle
  This is one of those “only on the Internet” memes that is truly viral–a guy whose wife is passionate about cycling recently got involved heavily in the Obama campaign. He would tease her by saying that “Barack Obama is your new bicycle,” and randomly decided to turn the joke into a fortune cookie-like website that displays one of sixty-some odd phrases following the presidential candidate’s name.  And, of course, copycat “x Is Your New Bicycle” sites have sprung up for Steve Jobs, Ron Paul and others.
• Post-strike television production calendar
  The New York Times has posted a detailed list of when favorite television shows on all of the major networks are supposed to be coming back on the air, now that the Writer’s Guild strike has been over for a couple of weeks.  All I’ll say is that the sooner that Ugly Betty is back on the air, the better.
• NBC abandons traditional TV seasons
  In other strike-related news, NBC has decided to shake things up by largely discarding the standard television season and roll out new shows year-round.  This is much more in line with the British model (though not quite), which makes far more sense to me–rather than having “seasons,” the BBC, for example, will order a “series” of 8+ episodes, which can then air just about anytime.  If the show is a success, it orders more; if it’s a failure, there’s no great loss because they’ve only paid for 8 episodes, and the show can still be put on DVD to recoup its costs somewhere out towards the end of the Long Tail.