Friday morning’s interview with Sonia Sly on Kiwi Summer was the most fun I have ever had on radio.
Radio New Zealand National was the most fair and balanced medium I dealt with when running for Mayor of Wellington in 2010, and I was glad that Sonia thought of me for its summer programming this year.
I joked to friends prior to the interview that 2011 was much like 2010: go on to National Radio to dis the Wellywood sign in the first half of the year, and have a fun interview in the second half.
This was a casual, fun interview thanks to Sonia putting me at such ease. It goes on for a healthy 17 minutes, covering my involvement in Lucire, judging the Miss Universe New Zealand pageant, my branding work, including the Medinge Group, and my typeface design career. The feedback I have had is that people enjoyed it, and I’d like to share it with you all here.
Here’s the link, and you can always find it at the Kiwi Summer page for the day, where other formats are listed.
And if you’re wondering where the opening reading comes from, it’s taken from this review of the Aston Martin V8 Vantage I penned many years ago.
Archive for December 2011
Using Super Start on Firefox, after I got pop-ups while using Speed Dial
20.12.2011PS.: I got two pop-ups today (December 21) of the same nature, this time while using Facebook. I think we can rule out Speed Dial as the reason.âJY
For the Firefox boffins out there, I began using Super Start, after having trialled Speed Dial and Fast Dial over the past year or so.
These replicate what Opera users are used to with their Speed Dial, and what Google Toolbar users have with their menus. Your most accessed websites are shown to you in thumbnail format when you open a new tab.
Super Start is probably the best of them all so far. It’s compact, doesn’t seem to drain the resources, and you can program more than the eight that it comes with (I presently have 12).
I only began seeking an alternative to Speed Dial because OpenX ad pop-ups began appearing. I don’t know what was causing them, but since I work with only a small handful of sites, it seemed odd that these were appearing each time I opened a new tab, usually to begin searching with Duck Duck Go. I was reasonably sure they were not coming with the search engine, Facebook or our own company sites. They were quite hard to get rid of, with a script that had a new window open up if you closed the first.
I have no proof that these were connected to Speed Dial, and they could have come from any website that I visited. Maybe there was a delay from another website (not uncommon). However, it’s equally odd that they have ceased to appear after I deleted Speed Dial and replaced it with Super Start. To my knowledge, Speed Dial sent me no notification of a recent update that might have brought with it these pop-ups. At best, Speed Dial was the victim of unfortunate timing.
Again, I’m blogging this in case other computer users have had the same issue creep up recently. Maybe we can narrow down the cause of these sudden pop-ups.
Tags: advertising, Firefox, internet, online advertising, OpenX
Posted in internet, marketing | No Comments »
Endgame: Saab ďŹles for bankruptcy
19.12.2011If you’re a car nut, then you won’t be mourning, too much, the passing of former Czech president Vaclev HĂĄvel. Or, for that matter, Kim Jong Il. It’s Saab that has finally died as it files for bankruptcy after GM, which still licenses key technologies to the Swedish firm, vetoed its sale to Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile.
GM has a JV with SAIC, the Shanghai automaker, and believes that if those technologies were to find their way into the hands of a small upstart Chinese rival, it wouldn’t be to its advantage. Saab, which had been teetering on collapse since March, when it first stopped production, decided to call in the receivers today.
GM had issued a statement at the weekend, saying, ‘Saabâs various new alternative proposals are not meaningfully different from what was originally proposed to General Motors and rejected ⌠Each proposal results either directly or indirectly in the transfer of control and/or ownership of the company in a manner that would be detrimental to GM and it shareholders. As such, GM cannot support any of these proposed alternatives.’
Swedish Automobile, the parent company of Saab, responded, ‘After having received the recent position of GM on the contemplated transaction with Saab Automobile, Youngman informed Saab Automobile that the funding to continue and complete the reorganization of Saab Automobile could not be concluded.
âThe Board of Saab Automobile subsequently decided that the company without further funding will be insolvent and that filing bankruptcy is in the best interests of its creditors.’
GM, in the two decades in which it owned Saab, failed to turn a profit with the brand. However, its parting gift, the new 9-5 saloon, was heralded by some fans as a return to form for the company. Hopes were high for it, and the 9-4X crossover, helping Saab back into a position of strength.
It’s easy to do a post mortem now, but the failure could be levelled at GM’s misunderstanding of the Saab brand. It may have been sensible to shift Saab models on to Opel platforms for economies of scale, but, in doing so, the cars lost some of their character. The lowest point was when GM created a rebodied Subaru Impreza and called it the Saab 9-2X, which fooled few buyersâone has to remember that Saab buyers tended to be well educated. Saab never fitted well in a business which targeted the mainstream: its own cars were always bought by people who enjoyed their quirkiness and the fact they did not follow convention.
GM only understood this when it was far too late, as the last two models demonstrated.
When GM itself had to file for bankruptcy protection in the US in the late 2000s, Saab, Pontiac, and Saturn were the victims.
When Saab was sold to Spyker, its boss Victor Muller invested heavily into the business to try to turn it aroundâbut he, and other investors, would have lost tremendously today. Saab fans will likely remember Muller favourablyâafter all, he put his own money into the business and shared his supporters’ passionâbut in a world where break-even points are at hundreds of thousands of units, Saab’s 30,000 in 2010 were never going to be enough. MG Rover Ltd. collapsed with 2004 sales of 115,000 in 2005.
As hindsight is 20-20, Saab and Youngman might be accused of wishful thinking, believing it to be unencumbered by GM’s IP rights. However, the American business held the right of revocation over key licences that make up Saab’s 9-3, 9-4X and 9-5 models.
It’s not the first time intellectual property has got in the way of car businesses. One of the most famous examples was BMW arranging with Rolls-Royce trade mark owner Vickers plc to license the brand for motor cars, as Volkswagen negotiated to buy the Rolls-Royce Motors business. And all Volkswagen really had to do to find this out was visit the Rolls-Royce website home page at the time: right at the bottom, stated clearly, was the message that the Rolls-Royce brand was licensed from Vickers plc.
Tags: automotive industry, bankruptcy, BMW, business, car industry, cars, China, Detroit, finance, GM, history, intellectual property, law, MG Rover, Michigan, patents, receivership, Rolls-Royce, Saab, SAIC, Shanghai, Sweden, trade marks, USA, Volkswagen
Posted in branding, business, cars, China, design, marketing, Sweden, USA | 3 Comments »
The minutiĂŚ of 2011
18.12.2011As some of you know, I have been using Tumblr since 2007, and when Vox died (at least for me) in 2009, I began using Tumblr more. It was good to record brief thoughts of little consequence, but as I hunted through the archive for 2011, I realized it was quite a good way to see what little thoughts crept up during the year.
I had blogged less on Tumblr in the last few weeks, just out of sheer busy-ness, and because Facebookâs Timeline has been quite a compelling way to get instant gratification from posts from people I know. But Tumblr has its uses.
In the spirit of my âHistory of the Decade’ series, here are the unimportantâand some very importantâthings that piqued my interest during 2011.
January: The Hustle crew is back in Brum, but without the ‘created by Tony Jordan’ credit on some episodes.
January
Why is Tony Jordanâs name missing from these episodes of Hustle?
We put JY&A Consulting on to the jya.co domain.
Zen is awesome, even if the male cast largely speaks with English accents and the female cast speaks with Italian and French ones.
John Barry dies. My favourite composer. RIP.
February
The Christchurch earthquake and stories of tragedy and heroism.
The fall and fall of Charlie Sheen, and if recasting Two and a Half Men, put Martin Sheen in it and set it in 2040.
Mad Dogs begins.
February: Mad Dogs: great British telly. Philip Glenister adopts a Gene Hunt pose, but with Marc Warren instead of John Simm.
March
Firefox 3 crashes a lot.
Kelly Adams is off the market, boys.
Mad Dogs finishes.
The Americans make William & Kate with Los Angeles and Hollywood standing in for Buckingham Palace, London, Klosters, St Andrewâs and other locations.
April
I go on telly to dis the copyright amendments in a new bill, which has been spurred on by Hollywood lobbyists. Farewell the presumption of innocence and due process.
Elisabeth Sladen dies.
Everyone talking about Pippa Middletonâs rear end.
April: This seems to be the enduring image of the UK Royal Wedding.
May
Cheryl Cole goes to America for X Factor USA. Then she comes back.
Karen Gillan films Weâll Take Manhattan with the first on-set photo released.
More post office closures.
June: Australians unite against homophobes who pressure a billboard company to take down a safe-sex ad.
June
Australians unite against a billboard company that takes down an ad featuring a gay couple. The CEO responds within the day, which is a contrast to how Wellington Airport conducted itself over public outcry over âWelly-woodâ Part II.
MSG is evil.
A redhead wins Miss USA.
July
People go on to Google Plus to talk about Google Plus.
The Murdoch Press phone-hacking scandal.
UN: internet is a human right.
August
I think the movie The Avengers is about John Steed and Emma Peel.
September
The Unscripted exhibition and I get photographed with Jekyll himself, James Nesbitt. Oh, and the Mayor.
Nigerian con-men send me a 419 scamâin hard copy.
Facebook Timeline.
Old School, New School exhibition has Joe Churchward and Mark Geardâs typeface designs.
October: The Russian Sam Tyler.
October
Rugby.
Russians remake Life on Mars.
More ânek minnitâ.
Gaddafi owned a Toyota (just like bin Laden).
November
Mongrels is back.
Ricky Gervais will be back for the Golden Globes.
The Sweeney will be back.
December: Britney Spears gets engaged again. A few years ago, The Times of India talked about her first marriage to Jason Alexanderâand finds the wrong photo.
December
My roses are blooming.
Facebook Timeline gets rolled out to the public, so they make it worse.
Occupy continues.
Britney Spears gets engaged: remember that time she married George Costanza off Seinfeld ?
Tags: 2011, blogosphere, celebrity, culture, Facebook, Google, history, humour, Jack Yan, JY&A Consulting, JY&A Fonts, law, Lucire, media, news, Tumblr, TV, UK, Zeitgeist
Posted in culture, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, TV, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
Facebook Timeline gets rolled out: here come the complaints
16.12.2011
Above: My Facebook Timeline, as it appeared in October.
As more of the planet gets on to Facebook Timeline, it’s been interesting to watch reactions.
When Facebook went to a new layout three years ago, plenty of peopleâmyself includedâwent to an anti-new Facebook group. Most were there because they didn’t like change, threatened to leave, and failed to carry out their threat. It was like those who said they would stop reading tabloids after the Princess of Wales diedâas circulation rose the following year.
I joined not because I disliked the changeâI thought the redesign was quite goodâbut because Facebook never did any testing and we were the guinea pigs. The new design was about as reliable as a Wall Street banker, and given it kept failing, I joined to voice my opposition.
No such issue with Timeline, at least not till regularly. Having been on it for two months, I haven’t come across the concerns the majority haveâat all.
Here are a few I’ve heard, including in the mainstream media.
My privacy is compromised. How? Timeline has exactly the same settings as Facebook had, prior to Timeline’s introduction. I didn’t like these new settings when they were introduced in mid-September, because I was used to shutting my wall off to certain people (e.g. those having a company name on a personal accountâyes, I did want to hear from the company, but no, I don’t know who runs the account), but I could see the merit of having public posts which rendered such a setting irrelevant.
If there was a time to complain, it was three months ago. If you’re complaining now, you’re well late. I doubt Facebook will make any changes since relatively few of us made any complaints when the privacy settings were changed last quarter. Those of us who knew were probably spending more time figuring them out and protecting ourselves.
People can now see what I posted x years ago at an instant. Among the changes was a setting that allowed you to restrict all past posts. That was a new privacy entry that wasn’t there before September. Use it and restrict them to yourself, or yourself and your closest friends. I never had this problem, since Facebook always had different classes of friendsâat least since I joined in April 2007âand my statuses were always customized to different audiences.
People can now go back to a particular year and find out more about me. True, but see above.
Itâs ugly. This is one I have some sympathy with. Design is subjective, and there is some merit to the argument that Timeline introduces extra elements on to the page (see below). The rule of good design, in my book, is the reduction of elements. So in some ways, I can understand this complaint, but, I rather like the idea of a “timeline” going down the middle, and I can see why Facebook used the two columns: to minimize the need to scroll.
I can’t go back to the old Facebook. I always thought it was clear that when you changed, that was it.
As usual, my problems with Timeline seem to be different to those of the general public.
Why two friends’ boxes? When Timeline was introduced in September, it was actually cleaner than it is now. There was one friends’ box: in the header. Last week, when it was rolled out to New Zealand, a second box was introduced that was completely superfluous.
I joked that this was typical of American design. They start out with a clean design, like the original Buick Riviera or Oldsmobile Toronado, or even the Ford Taurus, and then they add unnecessary stuff to it and clutter it up. That’s what’s happened with Facebook.
This second box is probably not helping people understand what Timeline is about, and it does contribute to its clumsy look. Amazing how one thing can ruin it, but that’s how design sometimes works.
The location settings. When Facebook allowed friends to tag you at a location, it also gave us the option to approve each tag. Problem: this has never worked properly if using Mobile Facebook. Even when you change the settings to allow automatic tagging, they don’t tend to stick and the tags plain disappear regardless.
Timeline doesn’t work on the 1st of each month. If you’re in New Zealand, tough luck. Your Timeline will stay frozen on the last day of the previous month for most of the day, because the new month doesn’t start until the Americans say it starts. Prior to that, the new month wouldn’t start till the Californians said it starts. Presumably, this is why the New Zealand roll-out didn’t happen on December 1. The error has been there for three months now.
You can no longer use the lists properly. This was a huge surprise, when Facebook stopped me from selecting ‘Limited Profile’ in any privacy setting, be it a status update or a photo album. This has still not been fixed. I traced the bug to Facebook’s new inability to add fan pages to your lists. It still allows you, but beware: adding a fan page to any list will render it inaccessible for your privacy settings.
Not many people seem to care about this one, though there are complaints about Facebook’s ‘Smart Lists’ on its fan page. The majority doesn’t use them, or was unaware they even existed till this year, calling Facebook copycats for taking a Google Plus feature. As mentioned above, it’s certainly been there since the mid-2000s, so I’m unsure how Facebook in 2007 managed to copy Google in 2011.
I’ve got to scroll down a long way. At the time of writing, I have to scroll down six days before I can see my December summary. Before the roll-out, Facebook had this fixed at a number of posts. I preferred it beforeâagain, this lengthy scrolling is contributing to the public’s concerns about Timeline’s concept and their privacy.
The Friendfeed and Tumblr plug-ins no longer work the same way. Facebook will gather up a series of posts before it puts a summary into a Timeline “box”. The Tumblr ones have totally disappeared. (Tumblr has been notified.)
Despite my many misgivings about Facebook, especially about its privacy changes over the years and the imposed defaults that it got a lot of flak about, I have increased my usage at the expense of Tumblr and other services. I now make public posts for the subscribersâthose I choose to have outside my friends’ list. When Facebook killed my Limited Profile last week, I spent some time doing a cullâI’ve cut my list down by about 80 people, including those I was on a business club with but who never shared a single Facebook post with me in two or three years. (âI must have killed more men than Cecil B. de Mille.â) In my mind, these have all been healthy moves.
Popping by others’ pages is a bit more enjoyable, seeing what graphics they have chosen for their headers, although I have spent very little time visiting. I have spent some time âfilling in the gapsâ over November with pre-2007 statuses and photographs for me, and adding locations to other statuses.
In most of these cases, only my real friends know them: that’s the beauty of having availed myself of the privacy settings since day oneâand keeping an eye on them on a very regular basis.
Facebook never took a step back, so I’m afraid no matter what our complaints are, they’ll fall on deaf ears. Even after posting the solution to their newly introduced lists’ bug on to Facebook’s Lists’ Team page, they haven’t lifted a finger to fix the faultâbut, then, since it doesn’t affect the boss, it might never get fixed.
As long as their member numbers keep growing, Facebook might think itself impregnable, even if I like Timeline. Altavista once thought it would remain the number-one website in the world, too.
Tags: 2011, bugs, design, errors, Facebook, internet, New Zealand, privacy, redesign, Tumblr, USA, web design, website
Posted in business, design, internet, New Zealand, technology, USA | 5 Comments »
RIP Facebook lists: you can no longer select them in privacy settings
10.12.2011P.P.PS.: As of December 21, 9.29 GMT, Facebook has fixed the bug.âJY
P.PS.: Scroll down, as I traced the source of the bug two days after the original post. At the time of this post-postscript (December 21, 2.46 GMT), Facebook still had not fixed things.âJY
Facebook privacy is broken.
After discovering last week that Facebook will no longer let me select Limited Profile in any privacy setting, I created a new list today, putting in people who weren’t in the old Limited Profile listâtotalling around 690. It was (slightly) easier than finding 1,871 parties to re-create the Limited Profile list, and since Facebook’s “merge lists” feature does not exist (but allegedly still available, according to the French Q&A), I had no choice.
For a few hours today, at least I could have some semblance of privacy on Facebook close to what I enjoyed.
Until Facebook decided to render my new list inaccessible as well.
That’s right: although the new list exists, just as Limited Profile exists, it cannot be selected in any privacy setting. No more using it for status updates, photo albums or anything else. Lists on Facebook, it seems, only survive for a few hours before they make them unusable.
In other words, if I create a new photo album, and I want certain privacy settings on it, I have to spend a few hours to create a new list again, then restrict or include those people. I can’t use either my new list or Limited Profile to customize the privacy.
True to form, no one at Facebook is answering messages, via any bug reports, the Lists’ Team Facebook page, the Get Satisfaction complaint, the Facebook blog, or anywhere else.
Since my last post on this matter, I have discovered some people with deleted Limited Profile lists on their Facebook. There is even a two-year-old group on Facebook dealing with restoring Limited Profile, so this has been going on for a while. But since my surname is not Zuckerberg, there’s fat chance of anyone rushing to my aid.
I can’t be the only person who uses lists in privacy settings on Facebook.
PS.: I may have found the bug, and it is a legacy issue in Facebook.
For those who can remember back a few years, Facebook used to group privacy settings for pages and friends in the same section. In other words, you could restrict pages in much the same way as you could restrict friends, and add them to a classâsuch as Limited Profile.
I continued to add pages to friends’ classes as I always didâmainly because it was allowed. If you go to any Facebook friends’ list today, you will find that you can select pages to add (below). And that is Facebook’s mistake.
Above: Facebook says you can add fan pages to a friends’ list. Don’t do it: it will render that list unusable in any privacy setting.
The new list functioned fine when no pages were added to it. But when I added my firstâa page run by a friend of mineâit stopped being accessible.
Rule: if you want your friends’ lists to function, do not add any pages to it. If you have old lists with pages in them, don’t touch them. Any that existed before Thursday will still work. Any list modified since Thursday will not work.
How many people work there at Facebook again? Why is it always Joe Schmo who has to find this stuff out?âJY
Tags: bugs, errors, Facebook, law, privacy, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 7 Comments »
Facebook removes my Limited ProďŹle option
08.12.2011Those who know me know that I tend to break most websites.
I’m the guy with a Blogger account where Google has held on to the data of one blog against its terms and conditions, but can’t tell me which blog it is. In fact, Google tells me that it’s one of Errol Saldanha’s blogsâon which I’m not an author. Either they’re BSing me, or they don’t know. After I told them they were wrong, they gave up investigating. They’re not very good at handling criticism.
I’m the guy who doesn’t have a Google Buzz account or a Gmail, but, to this day, has seven followers whom Google won’t identify to me as part of its “transparent” Dashboard.
I’m the guy who (maybe until this weekâI have yet to start a new service ticket, but I have heard back) could not follow up tickets on the Telstra Clear Right Now customer support service because of a corrupted profile.
I’m the guy who had to wait two days for a compose screen to show up on the old Vox.comâand argued with them for weeks till they discovered that, if signed in as me at Six Apart HQ in San Francisco, that they could not get it up, either. It was never fixed, and they eventually found it easier to close Vox.com down than deal with all of its failures.
And now, I’m the guy with no Limited Profile option in Facebook, despite having had it since the day I joined in April 2007.
At first I thought it was a system-wide malfunction brought along by Timeline being opened up to Kiwis, although I’ve had Timeline since September 25.
But after checking at a party tonight, others who use Limited Profile still have it.
Among a group of my friends, it’s just me. Nice one, Facebook.
Limited Profile cannot be selected as a friends’ list from the status update window and it no longer appears in any of the previous posts. I can type it, but the option either never appears, or it appears for a split-second before disappearing.
It cannot be seen on the page of a friend who is on that list.
The list still exists, and the privacy settings are preserved when “viewing as” that person, but I can no longer do anything with it.
Should it show upâsay after a language changeâFacebook will not let me save my new settings. The following window will not go away unless I cancel it:
Odds of it being fixed? Somehow, I doubt Facebook is going to listen to one guy out of 900 millionâeven though I’m sure the problems can be traced to one of its coding problems.
I’m blogging about it in the hope that someone else has this same issue. If you do, add your voice to Get Satisfaction.
But remember, if they can’t keep the boss’s own private photos from being seen and saved by the publicâin a security hole that was there for weeks which they ignored till Mark Zuckerberg was affectedâwhat hope do the rest of us have?
Tags: bugs, California, customer service, errors, Facebook, Google, internet, privacy, Six Apart, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »