Paper App: why half of users hate it

Posted by & filed under Reviews, Technology.

I had a short Twitter conversation with one of my co-workers and brilliant designer, Elyse Holladay and she mentioned, how odd it seemed that so many people complain about the Paper app — free sketch application that takes “freemium” model to the extreme, so I thought I’d try to crystallize my thoughts on why would people hate it.

First, why people wouldn’t hate it — it’s gorgeous. Well styled, elegant and quite pretty. Album sets of pages are great, and I’ve figured out the navigation in a few seconds without even reading the introduction. You have your pen tool and a set of colors and that’s it.

And that’s probably where complains start to roll in. Limitations and “premium” part. People are used to the idea of having a full set of tools. For graphical editors you generally always have color fill, brush, pencil, eraser. Here each step takes another two bucks to do. Want a wider brush? Two dollars. Color wider area with “water color”? Also two dollars. Medium marker kind of thing? Yup, two dollars. And all tools are always “present” but grayed out. Color palette also, while well designed, is fixed and you simply can’t change it. Want a blue highlight? Nope. Crave red instead of lighter orange shade? Out of luck. I don’t understand why they’ve added this restriction, as it simply doesn’t make any sense.

Elyse was arguing that tool buying in Paper is the same model as in “freemium” games, as you simply can buy “expanded” items, while being able to use one included tool absolutely free. Technically — yes. Practically it’s cutting a bit too deep. I’d say this is an equivalent of free game not allowing you to run to the right or jump until you buy an expansion pack for real dollars. You can walk around things by only turning left, but that’s it.

Paper even hints you that you will probably need all the tools. They’re right there in the toolbar. So if they simply offered the free app as a “demo” and also had regular $8 sketch app there wouldn’t be any complains (well, maybe some people would say it’s expensive but that’s true for most apps, there’s always “not worth it” comment somewhere). Or if “additional” tools were not shown at all, and were added as you buy them.

But for better or worse, Fifty Three decided to annoy the customers. Their choice. Some, who do sketching often, probably will simply buy all the tools in one pack. For everyone else there’s Sketchbook Express, that while not looking so pretty gives you a great variety of tools for free (and yes, you can buy additional brushes and stuff if you want to, but both brush and pencil are available for free, along with a full color wheel). Now, off to delete the app to avoid reminding myself that my sketching looks like a chicken scratch. Done by a very drunk and disoriented chicken… :)

Games and escapism — not so much escaping lately

Posted by & filed under Misc, Technology.

I have to admit, I play games to forget about my day. Heck, about regular reality at all. It’s a perfect way, really, or at least it used to be. Aside from being able to restore previously saved game state and try again (admit it, you wanted to do that with presidency — save the game, vote one of the crazier guys in, and restore it later when things predictably go horribly wrong) games, just like true Hollywood Movies, give you an idea of a great ending.

Yes, your main character might have been shot over 20 times, hanged by a thread, picked the wrong castle, but in the end the princess is yours. Maybe not from the first try, but there is a way, be it from countless tries or reading spoiler-riddled walk-through. Heck, some games can be just watched as a multi-hour long movie (Bulletstorm, for example). However, lately games seem to be headed in that whole “drama” direction by the way of screwing up their ending.

Sometimes it’s a desire to have a giant gaping hole for a sequel, sometimes it’s not. But it worries me. Whole Mass Effect 3 debacle is silly, but it hints at a simple truth — if you want drama, go and do some Oscar-worthy lightly attended independent movie. The more main characters you kill off, the bleaker the picture is at the end (a tiny note of hope that, maybe, in a few hundred generations things will be “back to normal” doesn’t count), the better odds of that small audience loving it, and you being showered with praise and awards. When you do it in the game, you’d better have a sequel locked up, or else your customers will be pissed.

Let’s see:

God of War III — unsatisfying ending (though at the end there is a small ray of hope, more of a stain of hope) along with a promise not to do another game.
Enslaved — one big WTF moment (should have guessed where this was going)
Bulletstorm — groan-inducing ending that screams Bulletstorm 2, which won’t come, like ever (not enough sales, too much complaining about bad language)
ME3 — a giant s*tstorm of epic proportions because writers went all Shakespeare on us
Castlevania: Lords of the Shadows — kind of “what?!” but they do have an excuse of another game coming out this year, so they get a pass.

What is going on? Just give people what they want, and relax, after a few years of hard work of building a great game.

Though I guess like in Hollywood even my rant has a somewhat happy ending. Bioware is thinking and waiting for the right time to address complaints. I guess the pro-drama-ending guys still pout about not being kissed in all body parts after making things “hard and dramatic”. So, keep up the good work, gamers. Complain, if you don’t like it. And hope that there will be a DLC fix after all…

Turkey and cheese sandwich not good enough, girl forced to buy nuggets at cafeteria

Posted by & filed under Oddities, Politics.

Whoa. American schools have really weird rules. These, no doubt, came from some admirable desire to provide all kids with equally nutritious lunch, which resulted in this strange role of lunch box inspector. If someone told me that all lunches were to be inspected, I wouldn’t believe. Until now.

Yep, in North Carolina there are special inspectors that check kids lunches. And one overzealous one decided that cafeteria cooked chicken nuggets were better than a turkey sandwich. Because even homemade stuff has to comply with USDA standard (or else… what? the article doesn’t say).

Aside from informing the kid that her mom gave her “bad” lunch (thus none of that whole wheat sandwich got eaten), the bonus insult, added to this injury, was a $1.25 bill for forced cafeteria lunch. Ugh. I certainly hope that unnamed inspector will not be inspecting anything any more. Unless he/she grows brains.

p.s. Update: Congressmen wrote a WTF letter to US Agriculture secretary. You know you’ve screwed up pretty bad when both democrats and republicans are outraged. Hopefully this will prevent another unfortunate pre-schooler from being forced to eat a school lunch.

Yellow Pages Opt Out: prime example of marketing BS

Posted by & filed under Misc, Technology.

Ah.. the wonderful world of printed advertising. Even more wonderful world of phonebook based printed advertising. Ten years aro companies were fighting to the death to be on the Yellow Pages cover and payed dearly for a bigger font or for an ugly frame around their “ad”. Because people did use those giant books, and if something unexpected (toilet leaking, cat barfing, lawn needs mowing, whatever) happend they’d just grab the big yellow book, find corresponding section and pick a company.

Except that’s not the case any more. First thing — to google for that service. Then yelp.com. Then whatever else online world will offer (except, probably, for the Angie’s list, because I am not willing to pay for a referral service — it’s just a matter of principle). And while most of the customers moved on from heavy paper-based data sources of questionable value (reviews of providers, anyone?) all those “directory” companies couldn’t follow. Some, of course, even started their own online sites with directories. But traditional Monopolies, like AT&T, continue to churn out these door stoppers.

And when phone customers started to complain about dead tree based product being thrown at their door and immediately moved into recycle bin, it took providers a while to realize, that people might actually care enough to try to opt out from the book delivery. So, there is now a unified opt out site: http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/.

Fantastic, you’d think. Let’s just opt out and be done with waste, right? Well, not so fast. Because the act of opting out reduces printer’s reach their marketing department concocted a wonderful scheme involving “registration”. You see, normally while phone company might know your name (if you have a plain old telephone line) and even publish it in white pages (unless you pay their $5 a month racket to not do it), Yellow Pages were different. Carpet-bombing the territory never involved names or phone numbers or whatever. But now, when user cares enough to try to stop this, companies demand to know your:

- Full name (first and last)
- Email address (which is so important, you have to enter it twice)
- Phone number (what if they decide to call you?!)
- Delivery address (finally)

So the simple question is why. Why is it that you require me to give you my email address and register for a freaking site. You expect me to change my mind every few months, log in and do something? Why do you want my name now, when up until now you never actually bothered to learn it to deliver a few pounds of paper to my door? Phone number? I don’t have a land line phone number. Heck, that’s the reason why I am trying to opt out, yet here you claim that “A valid telephone number is required in order to process and verify all opt-out requests.” What, without phone number address doesn’t exist? The whole scheme is to prevent an unfortunate prank of someone unsubscribing someone else from precious information source? Hello, you leave giant mountains of new Yellow Pages at every single post office. And office building. And there’s a phone number one can call to request out-of-turn delivery. Why is it that you want me to register for opting out?

The only thing the opt-out system needs to do, is to have one field: Address that needs to be opted out. And one button: Please don’t deliver me directory books. That’s it. It doesn’t need to ask you for a separate entry of zip code to “customize opt-out” — what, if I don’t want AT&T book I will want the other one instead?

Let’s have a look at Yellow Pages Opt Out’s privacy policy:

We value your privacy and will not share your personal information that you provide us with any third parties, other than yellow pages publishers to whom your directory delivery preferences will be communicated, unless it is necessary to comply with legal or administrative requirements, or if we believe you are violating the terms of use of the Site.

So if you look suspicious enough to make them believe you’ve somehow violated their terms of use (which, by the way, do not exist as a separate page), they threaten to sell your private information to telemarketers? Cause I’m not sure how else to interpret this. Along with the fact that your information is given to the yellow pages publishers along with your desire to opt out (and there’s nothing here that says they can’t sell your info to someone).

In other words yes, you can theoretically opt out. But doing so requires you to register and have a phone number, and provide all other information to this broker. WTF?

Why Buy with YBuy?

Posted by & filed under Technology.

Every once in a while the enterprising spirits of small businesses invent brand new and strange business models. And sometimes it’s so strange, that they simply stump me.

Today’s example of such “um… what are they thinking?” business models is YBuy.com.
To start, it uses that “traditional” groupon-like model, where you can’t really see what the deals are without giving email address (or requesting an invite in this case). Marketing people love that, because you can hide crappy deals behind this veil and get a valid email address before user has a chance to look at what you offer, potentially making big eyes and never returning again.

But that was a small obstacle, hide a popup and all links work normally. Hooray.
As I understand the business model it’s a “try before you buy club”. For $25 a month, you’re offered one product to try for a month, and, if you like it, that monthly fee gets credited to the total price of the item. Theoretically sounds cool. Practically such service seems to be useless.
And here is why:

- Selection of “products” is limited. The site claims to pick “the best” products but do you really need a concierge to pick you a new coffee maker or an iPad every month?
- Like those “CD Clubs” this club allows you to “skip” a month. Except you still pay, but that amount is stuck in the account for “future purchase”.
- Price is the same as on Amazon (I checked for a few products, the difference is negligible)
- Nowhere does it say who pays for return shipping on “tried” product. Amazon’s return policy is way more clear.
- Aside from a few typos in their Terms and Conditions (which probably means a lawyer hasn’t really touched that text) there is a rather stern warning about chargebacks (that they will try to recover those funds by any means “demed[sic]” necessary) and that their involvement ends as soon as the item is given to their shipping carrier (and no signature on delivery “[b]ecause many instances may occur at your delivery address”) and that there is a chance of loss. Ew. Maybe they don’t really mean it, but sounds rather bad. And if they don’t mean it, they shouldn’t write stuff like that in T&Cs.

In the end this seems to be a proxy between you and Amazon that prods you to buy the most expensive items from some arbitrary categories and charges you in advance $25 every month.
Now, why exactly you can’t buy an item yourself (and return it, if you don’t like it)? Confused…