Last month I noticed some shady activity when I tried to sell stuff on ebay.

This weekend I tried selling something on Craigslist, and this is the response I got back:

Good Day,
This is Dr Moss Frank..I am so much interested in buying your advertised  () for sale that you places on Craig List site…For a legal and legit business i will like you to get back to me with your Front page of your passport and also i will provide mine for you so that they can be trust and understanding just because of too much scamed on Craiglist by Nigerians…
I will like you to get back to me with the present condiction of  (x)  Thanks
Dr Moss

The front page of my passport. Uh. Yeah. Right.

I read this piece by James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom of Crowds), and it really resonated with me. It’s about “Feature Creep“, why it happens, what it’s bad, and why a possible solution might just be wrong.

It’s a pretty short read, but for your convenience here is the short version of it:

• Technology products tend to spiral with added stuff - features. These things cost manufacturers and consumers time and money - and frustration. For example, why does my new digital camera have a special mode for “Birthdays pictures of senior citizens underwater during solar eclipses”? (Ok, that’s an exaggeration.)
• Part of the problem is that companies - from engineering to marketing tend to pile on features because they’re cool, they give people more control/freedom, and they can differentiate. For example, my new digital camera can detect trace amounts of anthrax and automatically neutralizes the threat - does your brand? (Ok, that’s an exaggeration too.) This means that companies don’t listen to their customers, right?
• Wrong: If you ask consumers, they’ll tell you they want all the features, but they won’t actually use them - in fact, it might make things worse. That last part is classic - here’s the direct quote:

A recent study by a trio of marketing academics—Debora Viana Thompson, Rebecca W. Hamilton, and Roland T. Rust—found that when consumers were given a choice of three models, of varying complexity, of a digital device, more than sixty per cent chose the one with the most features. Then, when the subjects were given the chance to customize their product, choosing from twenty-five features, they behaved like kids in a candy store. (Twenty features was the average.) But, when they were asked to use the digital device, so-called “feature fatigue” set in. They became frustrated with the plethora of options they had created, and ended up happier with a simpler product.

This is classic. Just a few months ago, I read at WSJ article that talked about how 3rd row seats are a hot demand feature amongst SUV purchasers - but the reality is that only ~9% of people ever actually use them. The rest of the time, they’re lugging around extra weight, creating mor expenses for everyone: tires, gas, roads, pollution.

Another key quote:

We’re also willing to pay for extra options because we feel shortchanged if we don’t have them.

Being that I’m on the engineering side of the house, I can definitely see Jaime’s point about how there’s a natural inclination to want to provide features that gives users more control. After all, isn’t cutting a feature that gives the user more control, tantamount to being against democracy? Again, I exaggerate, but one topic that really interests me is the Paradox of Choice - that “Too many choices undermine happiness.” If you get a chance, you should watch this talk.

In Jaime’s article he says: “There is no easy solution to this.” That’s putting it mildly. But it’s clearly worth trying to solve.

Update: Title of the post corrected.

As some of you may recall, earlier this year I was notified by the IRS that they found a problem with my 2005 filing, and that they believed I owed a huge bunch of back taxes. Needless to say, that was not fun.

It was even less fun when I found out that it was due to a bug in TurboTax 2005 - and that the same bug was in TurboTax 2006.

In the end, I submitted a multi-page document, with lots of photocopies of statements, listing my case for why it was a mere mistake (coughcoughTurboTaxcoughcough) and that I didn’t actually owe any money.

Well, the other day I got this notice:

Phew! Boy am I relieved.

That’ll teach me a lesson for not triple checking my return before submitting it.

I received a letter from Bank of Kenosha (Kenosha, Wisconsin) today. Here’s a snippet:

I’ve never done any business with Bank of Kenosha, so needless to say this is pretty puzzling. I checked TransUnion, and sure enough, this inquiry was there. It also knocked off 20 points from my credit score!

While I’m certainly glad that Bank of Kenosha somehow found out that they were reported as having checked my credit history at TransUnion, and that they let me know, this isn’t exactly what I had hoped to see when I got home an hour ago from work.

I imagine it would like receiving a notice that in a class you recently took, someone in the class came down with tuberculosis - leaving you to wonder if you’ll be coughing a fit in a few days. (This actually happened to a friend.)

Have you ever received a notice like this?

On April 30th, an envelope using United States Postal Service Priority Mail from New York.

At the end of the week, I checked the tracking information for the package and was told this from the USPS website:

Label/Receipt Number: 0306 2400 0002 9098 2445
Status: Delivered

Your item was delivered at 4:43 AM on May 3, 2007 in MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94039.

However, the mail room at Microsoft reported never receiving this. The Post Office in New York claimed that it was delivered, and the fact that the zip code was wrong on the website was no big deal.

Finally, yesterday, 5/15, I received the package from the mail room at work. Almost 2 and a half weeks after it was sent. Here’s what the envelope looked like:

Do you notice anything curious about it? And if you do, what do you think was the full path of this envelope?

I have a guess, and I find it mildly amusing.

I thought it was just Smartphones, but I guess a lot of other devices suffer from the buzzing sound as well!

Trying to Minimize A Lot of the Buzz About BlackBerrys - WSJ.com
A community of fed-up users of BlackBerrys, Treos and other wireless email hand-held devices is emerging, rallying against the buzz that interrupts business meetings, conference calls, courtroom proceedings, congressional hearings and sleep. In the hopes of avoiding interference with speakerphones or amplification systems, some hold their devices under the table at meetings and conferences. Others move them away from alarm clocks and baby monitors to block the buzz. Some have bought thicker cases for their devices or improvised aluminum-foil shielding. One user described removing the back cover of the device, spraying it with lacquer and sprinkling on a layer of metal shavings.

In public settings, the buzz culprits are often ashamed and try to surreptitiously silence the offending noise. While attending a panel discussion with the cast of the TV show “Everybody Hates Chris” in Los Angeles recently, Grant Cohen couldn’t resist pulling out his BlackBerry email device for a peek at incoming mail. But Mr. Cohen, who is 25 years old and works for a technology start-up, unfortunately was sitting next to a gigantic speaker and sent the buzzing across the entire audio system, causing hundreds of people in the audience to cringe.

“I immediately thought: shoot!” says Mr. Cohen, who shoved the device back in his pocket so as not to give his indiscretion away. “I was terribly embarrassed.”

Something like that happened to me once - I went to a talk in a conference room, but I was standing near a plate that connected to the in-ceiling speakers. And then the bzzz bzzzzzz bzzzing started.

There was also a car I rented once which was really prone to this interference. It was pretty darn distracting. Finally, I’m pretty sure I drop kicked my phone once to keep it away from a speakerphone in meeting.

Here’s a possible solution, but with severe consequences:

David Cowan, a managing partner of Silicon Valley firm Bessemer Venture Partners, is bothered by the hum in his car radio when he goes for a drive with his BlackBerry. But he thinks there is a plus to all this noise.

“In meeting rooms with a speakerphone,” he says, “the horrible buzz forces BlackBerry users to turn off their devices and pay attention to the discussion.”

Gah!

Your mail is here, come and get it!: It’s Here and the Fun Has Only Just Begun
We did it!  Windows Live Hotmail is officially launching worldwide!  This means as early as Monday morning (we’re rolling this out gradually), you can sign up for a new Windows Live Hotmail account and get instant access to our new, world-class email service built from the ground up.

Hurray Windows Live Hotmail has launched! The post linked to above has lots of fun pics, and amazingly I managed to miss every single photo shoot we had due to conflicting meetings. That’s just as fair because I only had a small role in this release having been on the team for just a few months.

Check it out… let me know what you think!

Once in a while, I read something that truly blows my mind. Here’s one:

The Real Deal - One block, six hotels planned
At the low end is an 80-room budget Comfort Inn, at 305 West 39th Street, which will cost about $15 million to construct and offer rooms for about $150 a night. Across the pricing spectrum, there’s a four-star, $110 million, extended stay Homewood Suites (a Hilton brand), at 311 West 39th Street. The Homewood Suites will rent rooms for $275 a night and offer a 4,000-square-foot library and sitting area.

The other hotels on the block will likely be a Hampton Inn at 337 West 39th Street, a Candlewood Suites at 339 West 39th Street, and a Holiday Inn Express at 343 West 39th Street. Those three properties will be connected, and each will have 200 rooms, creating a total of 250,000 square feet.

I suspect, 99% of the readers of this blog won’t understand why this is so peculiar - after all, these look like pretty decent hotel rates for Manhattan.

But the fact is, I know 39th street pretty well - having grown up and worked in a factory in the Garment District. 39th street is… well… I’m not sure what the euphemism would be. Up and coming? Developing? Authentic? Gritty? Less Shady?

Here’s what it looks like on Live Search Maps:

(I think the hotels are going where the cars are parked between the buildings.)

These days, the neighborhood is a bit better. When I worked there in 1997, it was really bad. I’m never sure whether the low point was seeing a worker drop his pants on 8th street and “do his business” over the subway grates, or seeing a dead rat underneath a sidewalk sign advertising a lunch buffet. Or maybe it was the time I watched the employees at the now-defunct Burger King get into a fight because one cashier snatched a Whopper that another cashier was reaching for. Or maybe it was the Friday afternoon where a bunch of guys got drunk on the street and had a broken bottle/belt fight. Ah, the memories!

Still, in that neighborhood, you’ll still see scenes like this photo which was taken 1955. The fact that there will soon be hotel rooms for $275 on 39th street, simply amazes me.