This New York Times article explains how dozens of people in several states contracted salmonella after they mistakenly microwaved raw chicken, instead of throughly cooking it in an oven.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the dishes included breaded or pre-browned chicken breasts, some of them stuffed with vegetables or sold as “chicken Kiev” and “chicken cordon bleu.” The appearance of the food led people to assume that the chicken breasts were thoroughly cooked, even though they were still raw or undercooked inside.
According to the USDA alert (emphasis mine)
Although many of these stuffed chicken entrees were labeled with instructions identifying the product was uncooked and did not include microwave instruction for preparation, individuals who became ill did not follow the cooking instructions and reportedly used a microwave to prepare the product.
This is what I would call a failure of labeling. Showing a fully-cooked chicken cordon bleu is clearly more appetizing then a picture of raw meat; but it is not a totally accurate depiction of what’s in the box. I wouldn’t call it unethical in and of itself, but the embellishment should have been offset with a clear indication that the meat was raw. Especially since it’s impossible to tell if a frozen piece of fully-breaded chicken is raw or cooked. If the USDA alert is taken at face value, then only “many”, not all, of the frozen chicken was labeled as raw. That does not seem right.
Unfortunately, no brands were named in the alert. So I can’t comment on the actual designs.
There are lots of people who strongly suggest that you should do your development in public. It is part of the “release early and often” concept. But I also believe that this concept is not effective in developing great ideas because it is limiting. The minute that you get real customers involved, their needs become much more pedestrian. They will yell loudly about things that may be important to their use of the product, but they will rarely yell about some new game-changing concept. In fact they will resist radical change and rethinking because it messes with their now committed workflow. And now you are comitted to supporting them. So as I see it you should strongly consider whether you have enough meat on your conceptual bone before you decide to release publicly. Because when you get users involved, it is the equivalent of putting the saw and the screwdriver down and grabbing the sand paper. There will likely be few additional big ideas after that point.
-Hank Williams
Money can’t buy you love, but love can bring you money. In software the only sustainable way to earn money is by first creating love, and then hoping that some folks want to demonstrate that love with their dollars.
…. Everything should be shareware to be tried and tested until its value is proven and the love-meter swings open the wallet. If I were to pass on some music or a piece of code I become a vector of word of mouth viral marketing, the best kind, the kind that money can’t buy.
-Daniel James
…joyful playful exploration is critical to learning. Rote learning and memorization is less effective.
…
I believe that a big part of the reason that Apple has been successful is that they figured out long ago that their products had to have the elements of joyful exploration that are the hallmarks of great toys
-Hank Williams
The short article is worth reading.
Scott Stevenson tells it like it is,
Even if Apple recommended cross-platform toolkits for Mac development, the basic premise of Mac software market would not change. Mac users bought the computer they did because they found the experience more appealing. Bringing an application across from Windows with minor tweaks simply won’t resonate with this sort of user.
And gives free advice,
Maybe the most important thing you will ever need to know about Mac development is this:
Mac users will generally favor an app with a better experience over the one with more features.
The full article.
Several times a year, I see some kind of mass-message sent out on Facebook by someone who lost their mobile phone. They want all their friends to reply with their phone numbers, so they can populate their new phone’s address book. This should not be allowed to happen. Your service-provider should automatically backup the address book on your phone for you, so that if you ever lose your phone, your contacts can be put on your new phone before it’s even active.
Blaming the “lusers” who lose their phones really is wrong headed. Even though you can sync your phone’s address book with your computer, it’s too much work for people, especially if they aren’t technophiles. (Hell I don’t do it, and I’ve got my own website.) And I would argue that it’s not even worth the effort! Losing a phone is an infrequent event, and and it’s just too easy to rebuild a social contact list. Even the most technophobic can just ask a few friends for the digits of their common friends. Obviously things like Facebook, email, and google make this process even easier. (And if all else fails, you can start calling the most-common numbers on your phone bill…)
Besides, ever since the dawn of personal computing, it’s been clear that people will not pro-activly take the time to backup their data, even if it’s single most important thing they could do. Engineers need to design around human fallibility, instead of believing they can “educate” people who’ve got better things to do.
What makes this all so bad to me is that the technology to automatically and invisibly safeguard a person’s address book has been here for decades. Whenever a contact is added to an address book, the phone could automatically send an SMS back to the service provider, telling them the name and number of the new contact. The contents of the message would be encrypted for security and privacy. On receipt, the tellco would add this tiny chunk of information to the database they already have on the customer.
And I’m sure the engineers who actually build mobile phones for a living have better ideas for doing this.
For those who might doubt such a high value of cool, consider the self-winding Rolex, which sports 1/10th the accuracy of a Timex at 1000 times the price. With Rolex, the technology is grossly inferior, and still people will pay thousands to own it.
–Bruce Tognazzini
Leaving work late last Friday, I was impressed with the Bosch brand alarm-panel by the door. I botched entering the access-code, trying to arm the system, and the tiny LCD said,
Invalid Code
Let’s try again.
Security systems are designed to keep people out, have Spartan interfaces out of necessity, and consequently are often somewhat hostile to use. It’s a small thing, but that phrasing “let’s try again” made me smile, and that made a difference.
Complexity is the worst enemy of security; as systems become more complex, they get less secure.
–Bruce Schneier
Maria Russo, in the LA Times, totally nails what’s wrong with Microsoft’s first Seinfeld-fueled commercial
Let’s start with the premise of these two famous rich people out discount shoe shopping. Ha, ha! They don’t really have to shop at Payless like the half a million people who lost their jobs this year.
Gates and Seinfeld may both be schlumpy dressers, but their regular-guy qualities stop there. Neither is the Warren Buffett kind of rich, the frugal sort who knows the value of a dollar and doesn’t put himself above the working man (or so we believe about Buffett). Instead the ad seems to be somehow making light of bargain-shopping, as if it’s just a lark for these guys, or some kind of joke that we’re not quite in on.