Roger Binns — Thu 14 March 2013

Google caused a DDOS attack against pretty much every other RSS #Reader out there. All the various sites are not responding, timing out, incompletely rendering etc. Like everyone else I'm concerned about how to replace one of the tools I spend most time in, especially from Google. (The first tab of my first window has been Reader for many years.)

Although RSS readers are conceptually simple, the UI is incredibly hard to get right and Reader managed to hit the right balance of simplicity and density without gratuitous slickness.

I'm actually quite happy not to #SaveGoogleReader - this is a sign and reminder not to be so dependent on Google.

Category: gplus – Tags: google reader

Roger Binns — Sun 03 March 2013

The first rule of the American healthcare industry is that under no circumstances do they say what anything costs, and especially not in advance. Generally they will flat out refuse to tell you beforehand or immediately afterwards, and any bills you get later will have a bewildering variety of numbers just to make sure you still don't know.

My health insurance is atypical in that it closely resembles actual insurance - I pay for everything unless something calamitous happens and after a several thousand dollar deductible, so I do care how much things cost. I needed some lab tests done and wanted to find out how much they would cost when I pay cash directly. It took talking to 5 different people on the phone at the lab service used by my doctor to finally get some numbers and they were outrageous. For example a hemoglobin/A1C test is $66 plus a $21 fee for the blood draw - you can get a kit at Walmart for $9 for the same thing. It also looks like they would have refused to do the tests unless my doctor faxed them an order, and the total would be huge.

Eventually I managed to discover Health One Labs. In an astonishing violation of the first rule they put the prices right up there on the website. The value packages are well priced, most being under $100 with individual tests around 20% of the price the normal lab the doctor uses.

I tried it out. Four minutes after entering my credit card information, I received a PDF with a lab order on it (and no need to get the doctor involved). The actual blood draw is done at a company named Lab Corp - they have 13 locations within 25 miles of me - no extra fees or charges, or appointments and was seen immediately. 24 hours later (almost to the minute) I received my results.

This should be the normal experience, but is so remarkable in the US healthcare system that I had to write about it.

Category: gplus

Roger Binns — Wed 20 February 2013

I've always been curious why there are so many +Android backup applications. Technically the backups are trivial - apks are at a known place and each app's data is at a known place, so just grab that stuff for backups and put back for restores. Android 4 has adb backup/restore commands which do pretty much that. Simple, effective, what could go wrong? Short answer: it is quicker to just delete your data. Those backup apps exist for a reason.

Yesterday I decided to wipe my phone and tablet back to factory images. In particular I wanted to encrypt them, and I did want root, but didn't need +ClockworkMod recoveries which rooting usually require you install first. +Chainfire has a CF-AutoRoot that does that for you.

Backing up the phone gave me a ~400MB archive (I didn't include apks since they can be easily redownloaded). I did the wipe/factory/root/encrypt dance and then did my restore. It had no effect as far as I can tell. And I had to manually select every app I wanted again in the Play Store. Doing another restore after that still had no effect.

Having learned my lesson, I did a backup of the tablet including all apks. It was ~12GB. Did the wipe/factory/root/encrypt dance and then did the restore. It restores one apk and then the Android gui crashes, restarting itself a few seconds later. This is completely repeatable. Gui crashes don't have a crash reporter so Google won't even know this happening. And I'd love to hear the explanation as to why a restore would crash the whole gui environment.

I could of course manually dig things out of the backups, but that would be far too time consuming. There is no unique data on the devices so I didn't actually lose anything. But the reinstall of every app, having to supply usernames and passwords to so many of them, changing settings, and placing them in the right places in the launcher is really tedious.

Category: gplus – Tags: android

Roger Binns — Sat 16 February 2013

Interesting speculation about a potential cause/correlator with the 787 battery issues - hundreds of breathing perspiring passengers create very different environmental conditions, and especially different than during certification.

Nicotine would get everywhere and had the advantage of being visible back in the days when smoking was allowed. (See also China Airlines flight 611.)

Category: gplus – Tags: aviation

Roger Binns — Mon 14 January 2013

I highly recommend this video showing how blind users use screen readers. You'll be surprised at just how fast they run, as well as ways they distinguish case.

Category: gplus – Tags: recommendation

Roger Binns — Tue 08 January 2013

Fun things to do to the human brain. His "ad" for a cruise ship is also excellent (NSFW) F***IN' CRUISE SHIP!

(Via Reddit)

Category: gplus – Tags: humour

Roger Binns — Sat 05 January 2013

+Andy Glew speculates about Google news favouring stories about driverless cars. All it takes is watching one of the car crash compilations on youtube to make you wonder why we even let people drive cars.

One interesting aspect to me is that there are situations where the laws of physics mean an accident is definitely going to happen - the kinetic energy has to go somewhere when you are less than the stopping distance away from other vehicles. What should the driverless cars do in that situation? For example it could try to keep the minimum number of vehicles involved, or the minimum number of people. Is it better to have fewer people hurt worse than more people hurt lighter? Full width of the vehicle collisions are better than partial width because there is more in the way to absorb the energy. Given the choice between hitting two vehicles should the one with better safety features/rating be the target?

Will cars start having something like TCAS as they do in aviation? When multiple cars have to move out the way to prevent an accident it provides a negotiation model. Will cars with drivers also have it?

It will become in everyone's interest to have cameras as black boxes (pretty much standard in Russia due to insurance fraud which is why so many videos come from there). In any crash where a driverless car is involved that car will need them to prove it wasn't at fault. And of course the 90% of drivers who think they are above average will want them to prove the driverless cars or other drivers were at fault.

Category: gplus – Tags: driverless cars

Roger Binns — Mon 31 December 2012

I've used the Google Chrome To Phone extension for two years now. In theory it is very simple - while on a page (or selected text) in desktop Chrome, press the button and the page/text show up instantly on your Android device. Behind the scenes it is using c2dm gcm and serves as a useful demo including source code.

In practise it isn't as good. The "instant" is sometimes instant, and sometimes never, and sometimes a random time period inbetween. Rebooting a device can result in over a month's worth of content all showing up at once. I also have more than one Android device (perils of being a developer) and in theory the url should be sent to all of them. Again it is very unreliable.

Today I finally got rid of the extension from Chrome and the app from my devices, switching to Pocket based on the recommendation of +Stephane Verdy . Looking good so far ...

Category: gplus – Tags: android

Roger Binns — Fri 09 November 2012

An excellent article on something many of us probably don't realise. When you present a list of items (eg good things about your company or products) you believe the audience adds them up to get a final tally. In reality they average them. Keep those lists short and sweet.

Category: gplus – Tags: information

Roger Binns — Wed 07 November 2012

A month ago Nielsen sent me a card explaining how they would call me on my landline in order to talk about TV ratings. Since I don't have any phone plugged in, I thought that would be the last I'd hear from them.

Much to my surprise a thick envelope came in the mail today. The next surprise was seeing 5 one dollar bills inside. Since mass marketers pull stunts with fake cheques all the time I expected them to be fake too, but they are real.

There is a diary they expect me to fill out for one week. It soon becomes clear that it isn't aimed at anyone who cut the cord and watches TV on DVD and the Internet. And really drilling down it finally dawned on me that they don't actually care what TV shows you watch - they are really trying to find out which TV adverts you watch. The answer to that is none, but there is no way to communicate that to them. At least I get 5 bucks. And sadly I won't be spending that week watching Firefly and Futurama.

Category: gplus – Tags: nielsen, tv