Poor Equipment for Pro Contact Sports

THE MAN HAS A POINT

merlin:

Now Up–to–Date & Contact [April 1997]

It’s mind-boggling to me that both Gmail Contacts and OS X’s Address Book application lack many of the basic features that have been available in equivalent apps for 10 or more years.

Back in the day, I was a big fan of the pairing of Now Contact and Now Up-To-Date. Starting around 1993 or so (?), and as the administrator of a small Mac/LocalTalk network, I finally badgered my boss into buying copies of the Now stuff for anyone in our office who wanted it. And it worked like a charm. People loved it.

Sure, the workgroup features weren’t exactly at the level of today’s Exchange, CalDAV, or Google Calendar stuff, but man. As a basic PIM? It was bullet-proof. And really pretty, to boot — the very clear antecedent of swell old-is-new apps like today’s wonderful BusyCal.

But, wow, the functionality. These were the salad days. Brace yourself. Now Contact would let you associate “people” with a “company.” Imagine! Even semantically! Which, of course, neither Gmail Contacts nor Address Book lets you do.

For Google and Apple, contacts are a drawer with slots. Companies are a field. Names are a field. Addresses are a field. The fields are, whatever, there. You can, you know, search or whatever.

Jesus, OS X’s Address Book doesn’t even have freaking autocomplete. Autocomplete! Jiminy, a ten-year-old kid with jQuery, a Mountain Dew, and an hour to kill before school can add autocomplete to any website with ease. Me? I still have to manually find and maintain 1,400 little islands of humanity with only the flimsiest manual associations and zero in the way of semantic relationships or automatic normalization. It’s. Wow. And don’t get me started on the syncing. Last time I checked I had six seoulbrothers and twelve Jason Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Marias.¹

It’s staggering to think that either one of these Giant Companies expects their apps to be taken seriously by other Giant Companies who do business with other Giant Companies. Because in Giant Companies, it becomes really important to know exactly who the employees are in your Giant Company as well as in other Giant Companies. And that’s the kind of thing you really don’t want a lot of people having to maintain separately and by hand. It’s one of those things that a computer is just unarguably better at doing for you.

So, yeah, go ahead. Take the Now suite’s tour.

It’s April of 1997. Bill Clinton is in his second term, Jewel is meant for you, and Seinfeld is, regrettably, starting to suck. But, yes, since it’s 1997, you can do things with your address book application that simply won’t be possible twelve years hence. Enjoy it while you can.

• 1997: “When entering new contacts, just type a few letters and the company address will be filled in.”
• 1997: ‘To get Now Contact to recognize two first names—for example, John & Mary—type “John [Option-Space] & [Option-Space] Mary.”’
• 1997: “You can change a zip code and, with a single click, change all your other contacts at that company or at that address.”
• 1997: “To attach a document to a contact, drag the document from the Finder and drop it on the contact.”

Well. At least Jewell’s not around as much any more. So, 2009’s not all bad.

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1. Yes, that’s what happens when Google and Apple contact syncing argue over what part of a name means. Semantics. Look it up. ↩

I warned you and now the water is starting to boil

(Image: Lobster - London Bridge, London, England - Friday 7th September 2007 by law_keven licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 license) I am reading Pierre De Vos’ post about Mo Shaik’s recent appointment as head of the South African Secret Service with a combination of amusement and dread. As I read this I think back to a post I published a year and a half ago where I warned that we are like lobsters in slowly heating water here in South Africa. At the time the hot topics were xenophobia and HIV/AIDS policy and I wrote the following:

A big challenge South Africa faces is being slowly brought to a boil at which point things fall apart. We have idiot ministers who can’t accept that we have an HIV/AIDS pandemic in this country that needs serious attention, not gardening tips alone. Our infrastructure is under severe pressure because of short-sighted and wholly inadequate planning. Service delivery is lousy. Our government seems incapable of tackling tyrants and instead offers its support of these vile regimes and now we are forced to watch as these mobs roam the streets with weapons, attacking and even killing anyone who might be a foreigner.

Xenophobia and HIV/AIDS aren’t in the headlines these days but two personalities are: Mo Shaik and Julius Malema. We joke about Malema’s education and the nonsense that comes out of his mouth but he didn’t become ANCYL president by chance. He has charisma and he appeals to a great number of current and future voters. I don’t think I am being too alarmist when I point out that Hitler was also a very charismatic leader. Malema likely won’t lead us into a world war but he can disrupt our society at a fundamental level. Mo Shaik’s appointment is a blatant illustration of how the Zuma government is rewarding cronyism and party loyalty over suitability for the positions those appointees are appointed to. That isn’t to say all appointments are corrupt but an alarming number of high profile and influential positions are. As Justice Malala pointed out:

South Africa has a cultural problem: we have lost our sense of right and wrong, our sense of the proper and the improper. We have lost our sense of shame. We are sitting with leaders who cannot see the shame in what they do and insist on going on in their offices as if nothing has happened. Leaders are found guilty of the most offensive crimes but, instead of stepping down, they stand brazenly before us and vow to fight the system. They have no shame.

Just consider Judges Hlope and Motata, Jackie Selebi and Leonard Chuene. Each of these people have or currently occupy positions of trust and influence and they are at the centre of severe corruption and criminal allegations which appear to be true. What do they do? They lie, obfuscate the truth and dodge their responsibility for their misdeeds. Not only do our leaders have little shame and sense of right and wrong but there is a growing culture of tolerance for corruption. It doesn’t even matter if you get caught. As long as you are aligned with the right political figures you will not have to account for your corrupt deeds. And you know what? This is becoming more prevalent and while we protest each time some new character pops up, we are losing sight of how long this has been going on for and what the cumulative effect is. Put simply, the water is starting to boil and pretty soon we will be thoroughly cooked. Just saying.

It isn't a debate about Israeli "apartheid", its a matter of survival @rolemarks

I just read an article by Rolene Marks in Richmark Sentinel titled “The Myth of Apartheid Israel- political sex appeal?” and I started writing this comment.  By the time I finished it it was too long and I decided to post it here instead.  This is a subject that I am increasingly passionate about.  The more I think about it the angrier and more frustrated I feel.  Rolene’s article just gave me an opportunity to express some of that.

I was looking at a world map yesterday while I was meeting with a client and I had to squint a little to see Israel.  It is a tiny country surrounded by Muslim countries for the most part, many of which would be only too happy to see that sliver of a country wiped away.  You can argue that what Israel is doing is basically the same as Apartheid but what I see is a fierce struggle to survive.  From what I can find online there are between 13.3m and 15m Jews in the world.  That is a pretty small percentage of the world population which is fast approaching 7bn.  That tiny population is constantly being threatened both in Israel and elsewhere by a variety of forces that would see Jews eradicated.  In Israel there are attacks from Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza (frequently supported and armed by Iran and other like minded countries) and before the barriers went up I remember hearing about a suicide bomb going off in a bus or coffee shop every other week (at least it felt like that).

Ironically when Israel takes action against these militants the Web is inundated with calls for support for the beleaguered Palestinians who are caught in the middle.  I didn’t see any protests when Israel was being shelled for almost a decade before the Gaza incursion.  I barely even knew it was happening because mainstream media just wasn’t covering it.  But when the Israelis take action against the militants who have been launching these attacks from within densely populated cities (the cowards they are), the world’s sympathy is for the Palestinians.  Can I also point out that the Palestinian authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t put an end to the attacks on their end in all that time weapons were being smuggled into the region and used against Israeli civilians going about their lives.

The Israeli government has declared itself to be in favour of some peaceful solution but there is no peace in the region.  Back home you don’t hear people talking about improving relations with criminals while they attack us in our homes.  We need peace before we can have that sort of conversation because, until then, we are constantly under threat.  When I look at criticism of Israel’s efforts to protect itself I just see an underlying call for Israel to lie down and take what’s coming as if it doesn’t deserve anything but violence and ultimate destruction.  This isn’t new.  As a nation Jews have been under constant attack for thousands of years.  The big difference now is that Israel has better technology and a fierce determination to survive.  That tiny sliver of a nation has real teeth and that frustrates its critics endlessly.

It isn’t just about Israelis either.  Attacks on Israel’s right to exist extend to Jews worldwide because Israel’s critics rarely distinguish between Israeli Jews and Jews living outside Israel.  We’re all just Jews, we’re all the same aren’t we?  At a fundamental level we are and that makes Jews living outside Israel just as much targets.  We may not be targeted by rockets but we are practically an endangered species.  There were around 70 000 Jews in South Africa a couple years ago.  The South African population is north of 48 million (a 2007 statistic) and being a distinct minority in an environment that still sees a fair amount of anti-semitism (never mind anti-Israel sentiment) is like wearing a target on our backs.

This isn’t a discussion about apartheid (I agree with Rolene, equating Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens to apartheid in South Africa detracts from the terrible injustices the Afrikaans government inflicted on the country’s population in the name of racism).  It is a discussion about the right to life and self-determination.