I have just paid my electricity bill to Origin.
Quite apart from the sense of piercing pain that this always promotes, I noticed a few things about the automated phone system.
First of all, it doesn't make you talk to it and it's quite quick and efficient. So kudos there, then.
However...
You dial, it is answered almost immediately, and it says "To continue, press 1."
You what? Dial, wait two seconds, have to do something else just to do something else?
All right, moving on...
Enter biller code, reference number, amount to pay, credit card details (all of them) and then... It reads it all back to you, so that you can check, and it does two things:
Number one, is it picks up a bad asian accent and says "three hundred dollar and sixty cents". Not "dollars", but "dollar".
Which amused me, mildly.
Number two is that when it reads you back your reference number, it messes it up.
The number is printed in the form "012 857 ..." and so on. In triples, which is a fairly standard way of doing things because triples are easy for the human mind to chunk numbers into to make memory easier. It is read back, however, as "01 28 57 .." - doubles. Which throws you a loop and leaves you momentarily unsure about what you're reading, therefore making it quite difficult to check that you got it right the first time.
Which isn't helpful.
But, having said that, it is just about the best telephone billing service I've ever used.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Sensible medical reporting from surprising sources.
I am quite surprised to find myself mildly impressed by the Courier Mail.
Not an improved standard of journalism or decreased tabloidship - we're not that lucky.
They do, however, throw themselves behind awareness-raising and fund-raising for young carers, and now we have measles.
Over the past few years, the anti-vaccination madness which has seen the UK spiralling into an epidemic, and the USA lose its near-eradicated status as US-resident adults and children are hospitalised, has reached Australia. There have always been conscientious objectors, of course, but they haven't really been a problem because with so few of them, there's a herd-immunity effect - they're not likely to meet someone with measles, or rubella, or what have you, so they're not likely to become infected. So they won't get sick.
So they won't realise just what they're missing.
They're learning, however.
There have been recent outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough and measles in small pockets around Australia, frequently in traditionally "alternative" (read: hippy) communities in otherwise attractive places like the hinterlands of both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, on either side of Brisbane.
So they're learning what these diseases can do.
Some people, however, already know exactly what having measles means. Laine Bradley contracted measles before the immunisations started, at age 10 months, and was blind and unable to walk until she died at the age of 12.
Her mother, a nurse, spoke to the Courier Mail, who printed the story and who spoke to the Australian Medical Association and who ran a neat, reasonably tightly written piece with decidedly below-par levels of sensationlism.
This is more than I usually expect from that outlet, and I congratulate them.
Link to the Courier Mail article "Laine Bradley's mum joins measles outbreak debate"
Not an improved standard of journalism or decreased tabloidship - we're not that lucky.
They do, however, throw themselves behind awareness-raising and fund-raising for young carers, and now we have measles.
Over the past few years, the anti-vaccination madness which has seen the UK spiralling into an epidemic, and the USA lose its near-eradicated status as US-resident adults and children are hospitalised, has reached Australia. There have always been conscientious objectors, of course, but they haven't really been a problem because with so few of them, there's a herd-immunity effect - they're not likely to meet someone with measles, or rubella, or what have you, so they're not likely to become infected. So they won't get sick.
So they won't realise just what they're missing.
They're learning, however.
There have been recent outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough and measles in small pockets around Australia, frequently in traditionally "alternative" (read: hippy) communities in otherwise attractive places like the hinterlands of both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, on either side of Brisbane.
So they're learning what these diseases can do.
Some people, however, already know exactly what having measles means. Laine Bradley contracted measles before the immunisations started, at age 10 months, and was blind and unable to walk until she died at the age of 12.
Her mother, a nurse, spoke to the Courier Mail, who printed the story and who spoke to the Australian Medical Association and who ran a neat, reasonably tightly written piece with decidedly below-par levels of sensationlism.
This is more than I usually expect from that outlet, and I congratulate them.
Link to the Courier Mail article "Laine Bradley's mum joins measles outbreak debate"
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Shock: Personalities affect lifestyle choices
Vaughan over at the always good value Mind Hacks has found a study which claims that People who buy dog breeds recognised as being "vicious", tend to be arseholes themselves.
I paraphrase, of course.
Basically, a psychologist has used an anonymous online questionnaire (hmmm...) of uni students, assessing criminality and various personality traits associated with being a not-nice person, and correlating that data with reported breed of dog owned.
Setting aside the various problems with anonymous online surveys, the study found that people who buy Dobermans, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Wolf-mixes (not wolfhounds), or Chow-Chows (what?) are more likely to show more, more violent and more varied criminal behaviour, and are more likely to exhibit psychopathic and impulsive personality traits.
At first, and indeed second and third, glances, this looks like another study which has clarified an issue, probably needed to be done, but didn't really add anything new, did it? I mean, really.
The sort of person who owns a Doberman chose to own that Doberman. A person who thinks that an ugly, potentially risky brute like a Pit Bull will make a good pet is unlikely to be the sort of person who volunteers at the local soup kitchen, are they?
I'm not suggesting for one second that everyone puts as much careful thought and consideration into breed selection as my partner did when she settled on Irish Wolfhounds, but, I mean, really.
Ownership of the sort of dog which is banned by local councils or perilously close to being banned by entire countries, is unlikely to be an entirely innocent choice.
Either people want a violent guard dog, which may indicate that they have enemies, a severe dose of paranoia, or just generally don't like people, or; they want a symbol of toughness because tattoos, obsessive gym physiques and a badly modified Commodore are no longer enough, or; they want a dog which will frighten people, or; well, add your own.
The problem here, the big problem here, is that dogs tend to become dangerous to humans only when threatened (including entering their territory), provoked (which basically means: threatened) or trained. Even Irish Wolfhounds, a breed regarded as being good with children because their temperament is so goofy, can become truly frightening if trained for pig hunting. Any large breed will automatically do more damage if they do attack people than a chihuaha will, and if a dog has been bred for characteristics which are good for hunting or fighting, such as tenacity or jaw strength, they will of course cause untold more damage.
Size and breed will make the difference between a badly trained dog being an annoying little shit, or a killer.
Sadly for many of these breeds, which can be highly intelligent, loyal and devoted, their reputation has made them preferred dogs for arseholes, which reinforces their reputation.
Which at least gives us a nice, obvious visual warning sign to go with the car, the bumper stickers and the T-shirt.
Link to Mind Hacks article Psychological characteristics of vicious dog owners
P.S.: Might I suggest that the title would be less entertainingly ambiguous if it were "Psychological characteristics of the owners of vicious dogs".
I paraphrase, of course.
Basically, a psychologist has used an anonymous online questionnaire (hmmm...) of uni students, assessing criminality and various personality traits associated with being a not-nice person, and correlating that data with reported breed of dog owned.
Setting aside the various problems with anonymous online surveys, the study found that people who buy Dobermans, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Wolf-mixes (not wolfhounds), or Chow-Chows (what?) are more likely to show more, more violent and more varied criminal behaviour, and are more likely to exhibit psychopathic and impulsive personality traits.
At first, and indeed second and third, glances, this looks like another study which has clarified an issue, probably needed to be done, but didn't really add anything new, did it? I mean, really.
The sort of person who owns a Doberman chose to own that Doberman. A person who thinks that an ugly, potentially risky brute like a Pit Bull will make a good pet is unlikely to be the sort of person who volunteers at the local soup kitchen, are they?
I'm not suggesting for one second that everyone puts as much careful thought and consideration into breed selection as my partner did when she settled on Irish Wolfhounds, but, I mean, really.
Ownership of the sort of dog which is banned by local councils or perilously close to being banned by entire countries, is unlikely to be an entirely innocent choice.
Either people want a violent guard dog, which may indicate that they have enemies, a severe dose of paranoia, or just generally don't like people, or; they want a symbol of toughness because tattoos, obsessive gym physiques and a badly modified Commodore are no longer enough, or; they want a dog which will frighten people, or; well, add your own.
The problem here, the big problem here, is that dogs tend to become dangerous to humans only when threatened (including entering their territory), provoked (which basically means: threatened) or trained. Even Irish Wolfhounds, a breed regarded as being good with children because their temperament is so goofy, can become truly frightening if trained for pig hunting. Any large breed will automatically do more damage if they do attack people than a chihuaha will, and if a dog has been bred for characteristics which are good for hunting or fighting, such as tenacity or jaw strength, they will of course cause untold more damage.
Size and breed will make the difference between a badly trained dog being an annoying little shit, or a killer.
Sadly for many of these breeds, which can be highly intelligent, loyal and devoted, their reputation has made them preferred dogs for arseholes, which reinforces their reputation.
Which at least gives us a nice, obvious visual warning sign to go with the car, the bumper stickers and the T-shirt.
Link to Mind Hacks article Psychological characteristics of vicious dog owners
P.S.: Might I suggest that the title would be less entertainingly ambiguous if it were "Psychological characteristics of the owners of vicious dogs".
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
I'd like to think that the Church had a limited life expectancy, instead.
Now, this makes me really angry.
Church contests age expectancy of brain injured Myles Hill (Courier Mail)
That's not a very helpful headline, so let me give you the synopsis:
Myles Hill, now 17, suffered a serious brain injury while boogie-boarding at the Southport School in 2003. The Anglican Church, who I can only assume are responsible for the school, are denying culpability, pointing the finger of blame at so many other parties that one wonders if they're trying to snowball the court into submission.
I mean it, it really is ridiculous.
But, and here is the point that makes me see red, they are trying to limit the amount of damages claims by claiming that he won't live for very much longer.
To remind you: I have worked with brain injury. I dealt, day in and day out, with families who are facing inadequate care because they can't afford it, because the compensation funds ran out early. I have been at large meetings where services from different branches of public and private, health and disability and law and insurance, all agreed that a major problem with compensation payouts is that people with brain injury live longer than courts expect.
In fact, Disability Services Queensland have identified this issue, and the resultant need for publicly funded services, as a crucial one that needs to be addressed. Papers discussing PhD research on this issue are available from the Articles section of Gitana Consulting's website.
So, the fact that a Church, a pack of hypocritical bastards who have the gall to go on records as saying:
""While we respect the legal mechanism and the process, the church's focus is one of compassion and pastoral care," he said. "Our prayers and thoughts remain with Myles and his family.""
The fact that this church is pointing the finger of blame at everyone else and accusing the family of not being able to care for Myles, is saying "Oh, he's not going to live for very long, so the enormous emotional trauma you've already suffered and the added trauma of us telling you this is irrelevant, really, because someone with really high medical care needs isn't going to live long enough to need help", that is a candidate for a Scumbag Of The Year award.
It must be so easy to be religious, and claim that merely thinking happy thoughts instead of actually doing anything discharges all responsibilities, duties of care, and expectations of compassion. Useless pricks, the lot of them, living like a bloated appendix on the rest of society.
Church contests age expectancy of brain injured Myles Hill (Courier Mail)
That's not a very helpful headline, so let me give you the synopsis:
Myles Hill, now 17, suffered a serious brain injury while boogie-boarding at the Southport School in 2003. The Anglican Church, who I can only assume are responsible for the school, are denying culpability, pointing the finger of blame at so many other parties that one wonders if they're trying to snowball the court into submission.
I mean it, it really is ridiculous.
But, and here is the point that makes me see red, they are trying to limit the amount of damages claims by claiming that he won't live for very much longer.
To remind you: I have worked with brain injury. I dealt, day in and day out, with families who are facing inadequate care because they can't afford it, because the compensation funds ran out early. I have been at large meetings where services from different branches of public and private, health and disability and law and insurance, all agreed that a major problem with compensation payouts is that people with brain injury live longer than courts expect.
In fact, Disability Services Queensland have identified this issue, and the resultant need for publicly funded services, as a crucial one that needs to be addressed. Papers discussing PhD research on this issue are available from the Articles section of Gitana Consulting's website.
So, the fact that a Church, a pack of hypocritical bastards who have the gall to go on records as saying:
""While we respect the legal mechanism and the process, the church's focus is one of compassion and pastoral care," he said. "Our prayers and thoughts remain with Myles and his family.""
The fact that this church is pointing the finger of blame at everyone else and accusing the family of not being able to care for Myles, is saying "Oh, he's not going to live for very long, so the enormous emotional trauma you've already suffered and the added trauma of us telling you this is irrelevant, really, because someone with really high medical care needs isn't going to live long enough to need help", that is a candidate for a Scumbag Of The Year award.
It must be so easy to be religious, and claim that merely thinking happy thoughts instead of actually doing anything discharges all responsibilities, duties of care, and expectations of compassion. Useless pricks, the lot of them, living like a bloated appendix on the rest of society.
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Community needs to understand mental health, before commenting on it
I direct you to the ABC Online article Community urged to weigh in on forced mental illness treatment.
The gist is that a parliamentary committee in Tasmania has heard that the community needs to debate when it is okay to force treatment on someone who has a mental illness.
Michelle Swallow from the Mental Health Council, which is an advocacy group, so therefore Michelle is someone who is paid to represent people with a mental illness and, in more basic language, be a shit-stirrer, thinks that the individual should be able to decide unless they are considered a threat to themselves or others.
Umm... Excuse me, but I thought that was what the law currently is anyway?
Most states have a two-tiered system for "forced" (which is called "involuntary") treatment of someone with a mental illness: An Involuntary Assessment Order, which is usually 48 hours during which the individual can be collected by police, taken to a secure facility and detained while a psychiatric assessment can be conducted upon them, and; An Involuntary Treatment Order, during the course of which they may either be in a secure facility or in the community, but have to take prescribed medication until such time as the order is revoked or not renewed.
It's a little bit more complicated than a GP deciding that someone with a case of depression needs to be locked up if they don't want to take their medications.
Michelle continues, to say that there is a gap in the law which does not require a GP to specify why they have ordered involuntary treatment.
Really? Now that would be interesting.
Let's have a look at the law in Tasmania, available from Austlii, here.
Section 15 states that a police officer or authorised person may, using their judgement, take someone into protective custody. Well, just about everything to do with the police involves judgement, so if there's a problem here, it's one of training and supervision of police officers.
Section 16 states that the person taken into custody must be taken ASAP to an authorised assessment centre, the assessment centre must be notified within 2 hours and the person must be assessed and either released or have an involuntary treatment order written up within 4 hours. Now, honestly, 4 hours? Try getting seen within 4 hours if you turn up to emergency with any condition less serious than haemorrhaging blood or developing cyanosis.
So how about treatment, then?
Sections 24 through 30 deal with involuntary admission to hospital.
Section 24 covers admission, and I'm going to copy it verbatim. Are you ready? Here we go:
"A person may be detained as an involuntary patient in an approved hospital if –
The people who may make this order are given in Section 25, and basically amount to an authorised officer, which means someone appointed by the Minister (and more detail than that I am, unfortunately, unable to give), or the ill person's guardian.
Interestingly, Section 26 states that a medical officer at the approved care facility has to approve the application for admission. An initial order has to specify all the whos and wheres, and, crucially, a statement against all the points covered in Section 24. You may like, at this point, to go back up and read those four points. An initial order for admission has to specify the who, the why there's a risk of harm, the why the detention is necessary, and that the nominated hospital can actually do so.
Well, that all makes sense, doesn't it? Would you care to clarify, Michelle?
I'm thinking, and this is only a guess, mind you, that there are two separate issues here:
One, this paperwork is often not explained to the patient, who rings the Mental Health Council with a complaint, or; two, this is just an excuse to get a debate happening because either liberties are being taken, or because that's the MHC's job.
In my experience, working in both Tasmania and Queensland, there are a lot of often quite worrying or even scary people wandering about who should be on an involuntary treatment order, preferrably in a lock-up, and that most people with a serious mental illness who come to the attention of services such as drop-in centres or the MHC, deny their illness and believe that they are being persecuted, or are part of a government experiment, or are being made worse, or.... Well, fill in the blank, really.
No system is perfect. Particularly with mental health, where all assessments are judgement calls and there is no testable pathology and all criteria are behavioural and either observed (massively open to interpretation) or reported (massively suspect, in far too many cases), no system ever can be perfect
Yes, sure, the community needs to have a say in law and policy. But leave medicine the hell alone, and let the doctors do their job until the law itself is changed. The community interfering in medical decisions is a road to nightmare. Measles epidemics, say, or the suicide of someone with schizophrenia who was denied treatment on religious grounds.
Link to the Mental Health Council of Tasmania
Link to the Mental Health Act (1996) for Tasmania, on Austlii.
The gist is that a parliamentary committee in Tasmania has heard that the community needs to debate when it is okay to force treatment on someone who has a mental illness.
Michelle Swallow from the Mental Health Council, which is an advocacy group, so therefore Michelle is someone who is paid to represent people with a mental illness and, in more basic language, be a shit-stirrer, thinks that the individual should be able to decide unless they are considered a threat to themselves or others.
Umm... Excuse me, but I thought that was what the law currently is anyway?
Most states have a two-tiered system for "forced" (which is called "involuntary") treatment of someone with a mental illness: An Involuntary Assessment Order, which is usually 48 hours during which the individual can be collected by police, taken to a secure facility and detained while a psychiatric assessment can be conducted upon them, and; An Involuntary Treatment Order, during the course of which they may either be in a secure facility or in the community, but have to take prescribed medication until such time as the order is revoked or not renewed.
It's a little bit more complicated than a GP deciding that someone with a case of depression needs to be locked up if they don't want to take their medications.
Michelle continues, to say that there is a gap in the law which does not require a GP to specify why they have ordered involuntary treatment.
Really? Now that would be interesting.
Let's have a look at the law in Tasmania, available from Austlii, here.
Section 15 states that a police officer or authorised person may, using their judgement, take someone into protective custody. Well, just about everything to do with the police involves judgement, so if there's a problem here, it's one of training and supervision of police officers.
Section 16 states that the person taken into custody must be taken ASAP to an authorised assessment centre, the assessment centre must be notified within 2 hours and the person must be assessed and either released or have an involuntary treatment order written up within 4 hours. Now, honestly, 4 hours? Try getting seen within 4 hours if you turn up to emergency with any condition less serious than haemorrhaging blood or developing cyanosis.
So how about treatment, then?
Sections 24 through 30 deal with involuntary admission to hospital.
Section 24 covers admission, and I'm going to copy it verbatim. Are you ready? Here we go:
"A person may be detained as an involuntary patient in an approved hospital if –
(a) the person appears to have a mental illness; andSee? Criteria. Right there. Spelled out.
(b) there is, in consequence, a significant risk of harm to the person or others; and
(c) the detention of the person as an involuntary patient is necessary to protect the person or others; and
(d) the approved hospital is properly equipped and staffed for the care or treatment of the person."
The people who may make this order are given in Section 25, and basically amount to an authorised officer, which means someone appointed by the Minister (and more detail than that I am, unfortunately, unable to give), or the ill person's guardian.
Interestingly, Section 26 states that a medical officer at the approved care facility has to approve the application for admission. An initial order has to specify all the whos and wheres, and, crucially, a statement against all the points covered in Section 24. You may like, at this point, to go back up and read those four points. An initial order for admission has to specify the who, the why there's a risk of harm, the why the detention is necessary, and that the nominated hospital can actually do so.
Well, that all makes sense, doesn't it? Would you care to clarify, Michelle?
I'm thinking, and this is only a guess, mind you, that there are two separate issues here:
One, this paperwork is often not explained to the patient, who rings the Mental Health Council with a complaint, or; two, this is just an excuse to get a debate happening because either liberties are being taken, or because that's the MHC's job.
In my experience, working in both Tasmania and Queensland, there are a lot of often quite worrying or even scary people wandering about who should be on an involuntary treatment order, preferrably in a lock-up, and that most people with a serious mental illness who come to the attention of services such as drop-in centres or the MHC, deny their illness and believe that they are being persecuted, or are part of a government experiment, or are being made worse, or.... Well, fill in the blank, really.
No system is perfect. Particularly with mental health, where all assessments are judgement calls and there is no testable pathology and all criteria are behavioural and either observed (massively open to interpretation) or reported (massively suspect, in far too many cases), no system ever can be perfect
Yes, sure, the community needs to have a say in law and policy. But leave medicine the hell alone, and let the doctors do their job until the law itself is changed. The community interfering in medical decisions is a road to nightmare. Measles epidemics, say, or the suicide of someone with schizophrenia who was denied treatment on religious grounds.
Link to the Mental Health Council of Tasmania
Link to the Mental Health Act (1996) for Tasmania, on Austlii.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
T9Nav versus SkyeQuiKey
In reference to my last post, where I said that I may well try the 1-day trial version of the it's-still-got-a-bloody-stupid-name SkyeQuiKey:
Yes, of course I did, what did you expect?
And I have this to say: The established SkyeQuiKey loses, big time, to T9Nav. I knew this after ten seconds.
How did I come to this seemingly knee-jerk reaction?
This is why SkyeQuiKey loses, and T9Nav is just plain superior:
SkyeQuiKey doesn't search within, only from the beginning.
If I, for example, have a phone number that I don't recognise and want to find out who it belongs to, on the off-chance that I have it attached to an address book entry in my phone, I can start typing "38" and see what comes up.
With T9Nav, every number that contains 38, at the beginning or the end of somewhere in the middle, is identified. As are every file with 38 in the name, or with [DEF][TUV] in the name, and so on. That doesn't matter, for I shall simply continue with the next numbers, let's say 12 (in case you're interested, this is the first half of my optometrist's number), and we shall narrow it down further.
With SkyeQuiKey, there is a serious problem: It will not identify anywhere in the name, and so, and here's the clincher, it will not identify numbers that have been entered with an area code, e.g. 07, at the start.
This is not a major problem. It's annoying in this example, but not a major problem. What it is, is a sign that T9Nav has been thought about a bit harder, and is more powerful, more flexible, and ultimately has that tiny modicum less of nuisance value attached to it.
We have a winner.
Link to buy SkyQuiKey online
Link to buy T9 Nav on Nokia's brand-spanking-new Software Market. Register on the Market, and you get a 15% discount on everything for the rest of February, 2009.
Yes, of course I did, what did you expect?
And I have this to say: The established SkyeQuiKey loses, big time, to T9Nav. I knew this after ten seconds.
How did I come to this seemingly knee-jerk reaction?
This is why SkyeQuiKey loses, and T9Nav is just plain superior:
SkyeQuiKey doesn't search within, only from the beginning.
If I, for example, have a phone number that I don't recognise and want to find out who it belongs to, on the off-chance that I have it attached to an address book entry in my phone, I can start typing "38" and see what comes up.
With T9Nav, every number that contains 38, at the beginning or the end of somewhere in the middle, is identified. As are every file with 38 in the name, or with [DEF][TUV] in the name, and so on. That doesn't matter, for I shall simply continue with the next numbers, let's say 12 (in case you're interested, this is the first half of my optometrist's number), and we shall narrow it down further.
With SkyeQuiKey, there is a serious problem: It will not identify anywhere in the name, and so, and here's the clincher, it will not identify numbers that have been entered with an area code, e.g. 07, at the start.
This is not a major problem. It's annoying in this example, but not a major problem. What it is, is a sign that T9Nav has been thought about a bit harder, and is more powerful, more flexible, and ultimately has that tiny modicum less of nuisance value attached to it.
We have a winner.
Link to buy SkyQuiKey online
Link to buy T9 Nav on Nokia's brand-spanking-new Software Market. Register on the Market, and you get a 15% discount on everything for the rest of February, 2009.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Things to avoid when inviting the public to a beta trial
Arguably the most useful, and used, application I have installed on my N95 is T9Nav.
I have written about this brilliant piece of life-make-easy-fying software before, and my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest. It's still brilliant, and it still makes life so much easier on an S60 phone, it's not funny.
But here's the caveat: The beta period ended.
Actually, it ended once before, and was extended, requiring the downloading of a new, time-locked installation file.
And now it's ended for good, and they're going commercial with it.
Actually, the trial ended several days ago, and they're going commercial about a week later.
Which is where the arse-wipery comes in.
In that week, do you think I will
Lesson: Nuance Communications, makers of T9Nav, may very well lose a sale through not having the application ready for seamless purchase at the end of the beta period.
Plus, if you invite people to participate in your beta trials, you take their bug reports, you act upon that... Wouldn't a small discount for people who were around for the first beta be nice? They may yet do so, but I'm not holding my breath.
This is all faintly irrelevant, of course, since I won't be buying anything until the next time I get paid, in a week, and I may not even then - particularly unless I can be guaranteed that I will be able to reinstall it without paying extra if I update my phone to the latest firmware, something I have been putting off.
It's bloody annoying, however.
I have written about this brilliant piece of life-make-easy-fying software before, and my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest. It's still brilliant, and it still makes life so much easier on an S60 phone, it's not funny.
But here's the caveat: The beta period ended.
Actually, it ended once before, and was extended, requiring the downloading of a new, time-locked installation file.
And now it's ended for good, and they're going commercial with it.
Actually, the trial ended several days ago, and they're going commercial about a week later.
Which is where the arse-wipery comes in.
In that week, do you think I will
- a.) put up with it until I can buy it,
- b.) investigate the available right now, even if stupidly named, SkyeQuiKey (pronounced, apparently, either "Sky Key Key" or "Sky quickey"), which has a stupid but better-than-nothing one day trial period, or
- c.) find other ways of simplifying access, like using the short-cuts function of Jbak's excellent and free TaskMan, or the getting-there ApDLauncher, or the extremely early beta of an application I have seen notice of but right now can't bloody find which adds an increased number of application shortcuts to the home screen. Or, the also commercial - and more expensive - Handy Shell from Epocware, which does something similar, and similar to the iPhone's multiple screens, with a T9 search function as well, from a company which has been around since the days of Psion.
Lesson: Nuance Communications, makers of T9Nav, may very well lose a sale through not having the application ready for seamless purchase at the end of the beta period.
Plus, if you invite people to participate in your beta trials, you take their bug reports, you act upon that... Wouldn't a small discount for people who were around for the first beta be nice? They may yet do so, but I'm not holding my breath.
This is all faintly irrelevant, of course, since I won't be buying anything until the next time I get paid, in a week, and I may not even then - particularly unless I can be guaranteed that I will be able to reinstall it without paying extra if I update my phone to the latest firmware, something I have been putting off.
It's bloody annoying, however.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)