Author Archives: Maria Langer

Melon Investor Services Online

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A poorly designed Web site.

You think that with the money they obviously have to spend, the folks at Mellon Investor Services would have used some real talent to build their Web site. They obviously didn’t.

Sure, it looks pretty, but it’s nearly impossible to navigate without clicking a bunch of wrong navigation buttons. And half the buttons you press spawn a new little window that displays a stop-light graphic and the message that the information is being accessed. The thing that bugged me the most was when I was required to change my pin to a 6-15 character number. It took me four tries to enter a number the system liked, and when I did, the dialog that appeared gave me the impression that I’d screwed up so bad that they were offering to do it for me. I later discovered that the PIN Manager wasn’t a person but a feature of the site that had been unlabeled as such.

Jakob Nielsen of Web usability fame would have a field day with the Mellon site.

I called for help when a feature I was trying to use kept displaying an error message. After various discussion and hold sessions with two different people on two different calls, I was asked to confirm that I was using Internet Explorer. I told her that I wasn’t, that I was using Firefox on a Mac and wouldn’t waste space on my hard disk with a Web browser that hadn’t been updated for four years. She obviously didn’t understand my sarcasm because she told me to “exit” Firefox and “start” Explorer. I repeated that I was on a Mac and if their site didn’t work on a Mac they were alienating a lot of users.

After another hold, I was told that her supervisor could duplicate the error message and that there was probably something wrong with the site.

Duh.

She then suggested that I try another time. By this time (30 minutes after my initial attempt to use the system), I was fed up and ready to hang up. But she had to get one last dig in: “Have I helped you with all your concerns today?”

“No,” I said. And I hung up.

The Ditty Bops

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I hear a new sound that I like on an NPR podcast.

I have a problem. I don’t seem to like much of the new music that’s coming out. I’m becoming my parents, who didn’t like the music I listened to in the 70s and 80s. Now it’s the 00s and I’m stuck in a sound that’s 20 to 30 years old.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve tried listening to the new stuff. Really. I like the rhythms of hip-hop and rap, but I cannot tolerate the lyrics and instrumentals. Half the new “rock” groups sound to me as if they’re singing off key, or just making a lot of noise. None of the new stuff sounds very good to me at all.

But when a new Steely Dan or Pink Floyd or Eric Clapton album comes out, I buy it immediately. It’s what I like. And my iPod is full of the same stuff, along with some “smooth jazz” and a touch of Mozart. And podcasts, of course.

It’s the podcasts that often introduce me to new things. I listen to NPR’s Story of the Day podcast. I enjoy about half the stories. But the ones that I enjoy I really enjoy. Like a recent All Things Considered piece about the Ditty Bops.

The story was kind of weird. It appears that this female duo is touring the country by bicycle, from California to New York. They should be in New York as I write this. But what hooked me was their music. The podcast included bits and pieces from some of their songs. The music was folksy, with good rhythms, interesting instrumentals, and wonderful harmonies. Something new for my iPod, I realized. Something other than more classic rock.

If you’re in the over 30 crowd and are interested in listening to something new, give this podcast a listen. Then go out and get some of The Ditty Bops’ music. You’ll find it in the iTunes music store and on Amazon.com, as well as in the NPR shop.

And if you’re already a Ditty Bops fan, use the Comments link to share your thoughts. I’d like to think that I’m not the only one who likes this kind of music.

Mac Cowboys

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Maria Speaks Episode 30: Mac Cowboys.

Join me and a bunch of other Mac geeks for a dude ranch mini-vacation.

Transcript:

Welcome to WickenburgA few months ago, I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a computer conference here in Wickenburg, at my favorite guest ranch: Rancho de los Caballeros. Los Caballeros is not only the nicest dude ranch in this Dude Ranch Capital of Arizona, but it has the most interesting activities and the absolute best restaurant.

The idea was to invite a bunch of authors and let each of them do three or four sessions over a five-day period. The sessions would be in the morning and there would be all kinds of activities in the afternoon, like horseback riding, golf, shopping trips into town, Jeep tours, and, of course, helicopter rides. The people who came would have a lot of fun, learn a lot, and have a great opportunity to network with other Mac users. For some people, it could even be considered a business trip. Best of all, I could introduce people to Wickenburg, the little town I live in and often blog about.

The event would be called Mac Cowboys because of the western dude ranch theme.

Now in case you don’t know, I’m a busy person. It took me nearly forever to talk to the ranch people and crunch the numbers to see what the trip would cost. It looked feasible, so I set a date in early December, before the busy Christmas holidays. Then I got a list of possible author/speakers from one of my editors at Peachpit and invited them to attend.

I guess everyone is just as busy as I am. None of them could attend. I hope that it’s nothing I should be taking personally.

Desert SceneSo rather than give up the whole thing, I decided to restructure the event. I shortened it from five days to four. I cut the speakers from five to one. I cut the sessions from 12 to just two and made them more discussion based, giving all the participants a chance to share what they knew and ask everyone questions. I arranged the activities so all participants could go together, giving everyone an opportunity to network like crazy outside the meeting rooms. Then, with greatly reduced costs, I recalculated the per-person cost. The numbers I came up with were certainly within reason for a 4-day, all inclusive weekend at a luxury dude ranch.

Now I’m taking it public, offering it to the readers of my blog, podcast listeners, and the folks who buy Mac books from Peachpit Press.

Please understand that this isn’t a typical computer conference.

For a moment, think of the last computer conference you attended. You know, the one in the big conference hall with thousands of attendees shuffling around a show floor with shopping bags. The one with overcrowded dark classrooms with bad sound systems and speakers telling you more about whatever it is they’re trying to sell than something you really want to learn about. The one where you paid to get into the conference hall, you paid to sit through seminars, you paid to stay in a hotel, and you paid to eat disappointing meals. The one with uncomfortable free shuttles or long walks from your hotel to the conference hall. The one where your only entertainment were demos on the show floor or sad vendor parties with bad food and expensive alcohol.

Now wipe those ugly thoughts right from your mind.

Wickenburg SunsetMac Cowboys is a mini-vacation first: a four-day, three-night stay with luxury accommodations at a ranch that can only accommodate about a hundred and fifty people at once. You get yourself to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport or Wickenburg and just about everything else is paid for — ground transportation to and from the ranch, hotel room, three meals a day, horseback riding, golf, Jeep tour, helicopter tour, swimming, tennis, nature hikes — all kinds of activities. There’s even free wi-fi access in certain hotspots throughout the ranch. All you pay for is alcoholic beverages and extras like skeet shooting or golf cart or club rental.

I’ve set aside three short hours a day on the two middle days for official business stuff: a pair of conference sessions where you can learn more about using your Mac. One session covers Mac OS X topics. The other covers Web publishing topics. And there will be plenty of informal sessions among participants to pick brains and get burning questions answered.

And if you’re wondering what December is like in Wickenburg, AZ, imagine 60° to 70° F sunny days — often without a cloud in the sky. Weather won’t keep you inside during the day. Sure, at night it gets cold, but it also gets dark. And you have to rest sometime.

Sound good? I think so — and I do this stuff all the time.

This first Mac Cowboys event, which is scheduled for December 7th through 10th, 2006, is a test of my idea. If it works out on this small scale, it should work out on a larger scale with more speakers and more guests. If it ever outgrows Los Cab or I feel like trying someplace new, I can take it on the road to another ranch. I’d like to do it once or twice a year, just to keep life interesting.

So consider this your formal invitation. Come on out to Wickenburg and be a Mac Cowboy for a few days.

Want more information? Check out the Mac Cowboys Web site at maccowboys.com.

The Miracle of Google

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How did we live without it?

We have the power to find virtually anything on the Internet. And that power is called Google Search.

Moments ago, I found a question in my FAQ system (horray!) from a reader of one of my long out-of-print books (darn!). He asked a question about an error message he’d seen (that I’d never encountered) while he was attempting to build additional administrative pages for a FileMaker Pro CDML-published database.

The book he’d bought is called Database Publishing with FileMaker Pro on the Web and it dates back to April 1998. It’s long out of print. If I recall correctly — I’m not at my office so I can’t consult my copy of the book — the book covered FileMaker Pro 3, which was the first version of FileMaker to support Web publishing. FileMaker Pro is now in version 8.5 and no longer supports CDML for Web publishing. CDML was the language and technology that FileMaker, Inc. bought from the Lasso folks to make FileMaker Pro Web publishing work.

So it should come as no surprise that I was unable to answer his question. And unable to replicate it, of course.

But Google has all the answers and it proved it again yesterday. I did a Google search for CDML Error 102 and Google came up with a list of Web pages that discussed the problem. I suggested this as a way for the person with the question to find his answer. (It would be silly for me to repeat what was on those pages when he could just as easily find the same pages himself.)

Google is like this. Have a question? Google it. If you enter the right search phrase, Google will come up with a Web site that answers the question. I think I can report a 90% results rate. And considering some of the questions I come up with sometimes, that’s pretty darn good.

The trick, of course, is to come up with the right search phrase. Googling a single word won’t usually get the results you seek. You need to come up a string of words that succinctly describes what you are searching for. In the example above, if I’d entered FileMaker Error, a much more general search phrase, I seriously doubt whether I’d see any results about the specific CDML error code the reader was getting. If a search phrase doesn’t get desired results, rethink it and try another phrase. In my example, I got the results I was seeking right away, so a second try wasn’t necessary.

With the amount of junk out there on the Web — including, some people might say, sites like this one — we’re very fortunate to have search technology like Google’s available to us. It helps cut through the chaff to get to the important stuff we want (or need) to read.

Oat Muesli

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A recipe from the Westin Bay Shore, Vancouver, BC.

I like cereal for breakfast. But I don’t like heavily processed cereals with a lot of mystery ingredients and sugar.

So when I was staying at the Westin in Vancouver last week, I decided to give the muesli item on their breakfast menu a try. One taste and I was hooked. I had it every morning of my stay. And on the last morning, the waitress offered the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked oatmeal (not instant)
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup raisins (they used golden raisins)
1/4 cup canned peaches, drained and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup (or more) half and half or milk
2 cups fresh fruit like bananas, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries

Instructions:
Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, right around breakfast time, the oats should have absorbed all of the half and half or milk. In fact, if the resulting mixture is too dry, you can moisten it up a bit by adding more half and half or milk. The raisins will be plump, too. Dish out the mixture and top with the fresh fruit. Enjoy!

One note here: The recipe I got called for a mixture of cream and whole milk. That’s half and half, isn’t it? The waitress also said you can cut calories and fat by using just milk. If you do this, use whole milk — I don’t think lowfat milk would make the result as creamy and rich.