Along with the hundreds of new technologies I absolutely adore, there are bound to be a few that would drive me crazy. Here’s a fun rudnown of the four at the top of my list.
Voicemail
Voicemail may be the least efficient form of communication ever devised by man. Chances are, if you call me and I don’t pick up, I’m already going to call you back to see what you needed. I don’t need you to wait for 30 seconds while an automated voice describes the intricacies of leaving a message after the beep. Most of the time that message is comprised of who you are, what time you called, and that you would like me to call you back. My phone already gives me all of this information. Voicemail is a waste of time for everyone.
Bluetooth Headsets
Unless you’re driving and you truly need something hands free, there’s probably no need for you to own one of these. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t make you look cool or important. I don’t want to stand in line beside you while you have a loud conversation with yourself. And yes, the reason I think you’re talking to me is because your staring at me and asking random questions to thin air.
Use your phone like everyone else when you’re in public; you’re not robocop.
Copy Machines
Is it just me, or is the copy machine one of the most complex pieces of machinery ever created? Despite being around for 30 years, it seems like they have yet to shrink in size or complexity. They’re larger than a washing machine, nearly as loud, and seem to break or jam almost every day of the week. No other machine in our office serves less purpose and requires more maintenance.
I just cannot believe that we can send somebody to the moon, but it still takes a machine half the size of my closet to replicate a piece of paper.
Flash
Look, I realize that you can do a lot of cool things with Flash (and for a while that was the only way to do some things), but it’s 2009 and the world has moved on. Open standards and JavaScript rule the roost now, and having to surf using your custom Flash application just stinks. It takes forever to load, I can’t right click or scroll with my mouse, and I can’t see any of your stuff through my iPhone. Unless you’re doing something extremely interactive, there’s no need to bog down my browser with an old and bloated technology.
So that’s it for my Friday rant. What technologies drive you crazy?
This post is hilarious! I like a good gripe session
I would like to add car alarms, they are useless. No one looks or cares when a car alarm goes off except to think, which losers car is making that noise. I have not ever once thought, gosh someone is stealing that persons car, I must run to help.
I second Duncan - car alarms are utterly useless. I also hate fax machines. I like voicemail because I hate the phone; I won’t call you back if you don’t leave me a dang message. And my best friends are the ones who leave messages containing the entire gist of their call, so I can respond via email or text and never have to call them back.
I would clarify Flash as a web design tool sucks. But flash allows some cool things…flash video for example.
you’re kidding, right? flash sucks? you must not like online video then…
and helloooooooooooooooooooooooooo… FLEX…? common man! the Open Source framework rocking off flash plat? flex is freaking dope. if i had more time in my life i’d learn it.
dude, gimme a break. flash is awesome.
No, I’m not kidding.
Most of the Flash developers I know have moved on to JavaScript. Flash 10 is a bloated mess that eats up processing cycles and scales poorly for mobile devices. I’ve seen very few real world uses of Flex beyond the showcase on Adobe’s site.
In my mind, 80% of the stuff we used to do in Flash can now be done with some standards-compliant code and AJAX.
As for video, Flash is losing it’s foothold there too. Google recently switched their video encoding to the more efficient h.264 codec. The need for plugin-based Flash video containers is quickly being replaced by a standards-compliant HTML 5 containers. If you’re on a recent browser, you can see YouTube’s Flashless video player here: http://www.youtube.com/html5. No bloated Flash plugin required.
I’m not saying Flash has never been useful or had no utility; I’m saying that it’s quickly losing its dominance in the interactive marketplace and struggling to remain relevant.
This is a good one. Two guys I respect and follow and feel like I learn from, John and Eric. I gotta say, though, I totally agree with Eric on the Flash issue. Bloated and out of date. I would think, John, as much as you dig WordPress and Open Source, I would think you would be more on the HTML5/AJAX side and H.264 and everything. Heck, even QuickTime offers a great deal of interactivity without the bloat of Flash. It’s ok, though. I still think you’re awesome, though!! Thanks for the post, Eric. Keep it up.
are you guys even aware of flex?
html5 is going to change things up considerably, but just because it’s on the horizon doesn’t mean that what we have today with flash is lame.
i think we’ve gotta give it some more love.
[...] a few lines of code that works on all modern browsers. As I mentioned in a Friday Four (to some controversy), I’m pretty excited about being able to ditch Flash for most animation and video embeds. [...]
[...] Perhaps the major gripe that people seem to have with the iPad (and the iPhone/iPod Touch) is the lack of Flash support. Though the geekiest among us have decried this situation through every message board at our disposal, it seems that Apple is intent on leaving Flash to die (something I’m more than okay with). [...]