Notifier Twitter App

Review of iSkoot's Notifier on the Samsung Eternity.

*Note* I have no account on Falebook, so I did not make use of the Falebook portion of the application. I only briefly tried the RSS client, but was so irritated by it that I only used it twice. YMMV *

From the clunky, klutzy interface to the lack of key features, this client is the worst mobile app I've ever used. Let's just get to the bullet points:

- No read/unread marking. This essential feature is missing, causing frustration and irritation as the user hunts (usually fruitlessly) for the last tweet read. This deficiency is so severe that it is the main reason I will be deleting this application.

- Tweets are collapsed so that only the nick of the tweeter is visible. The area to tap to expand the tweet is impossibly small to the point that even stylus taps miss the mark, and expanding the tweet will not always show the full tweet, necessitating a double tap on the expanded tweet to take the user to a paginated style of tweet viewing. Making me tap three times (or more) defeats the purpose of having an application. I could get to the web interface in the same number of taps.

- Clicking on a link causes a "confirmation" (nag) screen to appear asking if you'd really like to open the browser and view the link. Your only options are "No" and "Yes, Always Ask". The "Yes, Don't Ask Again" option is missing! If I wanted my mother on my phone I'd call her, I don't need a nag screen second guessing me as well.

- There is no parallel stream to collect all @replies and mentions. While this isn't an "essential" feature, it is one that, once you've had it, you never want to be without.

- No TwitPic integration. None. At all.

- Unable to pull the originating tweet when someone replies directly to a tweet. ("show conversation")

- Description claims "real time" updates. In reality, updates come every 20-30 minutes depending on reception. There is no way to change this, and if you're following quite a few people (30+) you will never see enough tweets to make Twitter useful in this application.

This is everything I can think of at the moment. If I happen to open it just to see if I can piss myself off again, I may add more.

Conclusion: Little to no thought was put into the functionality of this slow moving application. Not worth $2.99/mo in the media mall, not even worth free in beta.

Twitter's Myocardial Infarction

Is Twitter living in denial of its own arterial plaque buildup or have the developers been sniffing the Ruby dust again?

Recent changes on and reports about Twitter, along with the staff's dodgy answers to the outcry generated by these changes and reports, are pointing to Twitter's demise - a situation that is quickly becoming inevitable.

First came the #fixreply debacle, when thousands of users found their Twitter streams suddenly silenced in a "we-know-better-than-you-what's-best-for-you" feature removal by the Twitter crew (second paragraph of the post added after the move blew up in their faces). Twitter posted three blog replies, the last marginalizing the ordeal as a "kerfuffle", then proceeded to completely ignore user's requests for reinstatement of the reply feature, compounding the problem. Twitter has apparently decided that the ostrich strategy is their best tactic here and that if they leave it alone long enough, the glassy eyed masses will return to their cud.

Hot on the heels of #fixreply came reports of a "Twitter TV show" that would center around the use of Twitter as a tool for "spotting" (read: stalking) celebrities that use the service. Twitter has responded with two blog posts, one post reeking of plausible deniability, claiming "simple agreements" with production companies and the other dancing past the subject with the statement that "Twitter is not making a television show" (of course not, the production company makes TV shows). Regardless of Twitter's protests celebrities world-wide have stated clearly: should such a show become reality they will abandon Twitter en masse.

Are these two examples blips on the screen or the numbness before the ambulance? Personally, I believe that Twitter needs to make sure its health insurance card is handy.

The longer Twitter ignores the #fixreply issue, the more likely the users crippled by it will leave and either explore other platforms or build their own micro blogging service. While Twitter claims that only 3% of accounts had the feature turned on, this number still equates to an estimated one hundred fifty thousand users who are likely to get their kicks elsewhere should Twitter continue to fail to provide a reasonable answer.

More remarkably, Twitter is courting the loss of several million users should celebrity accounts bail on the service. To quote Ashton Kutcher, with 1.9 million followers alone, "It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked." Kevin Spacey, who has advocated an open conversation with his fan base since the creation of his Twitter account, echoed the sentiment with the statement that he "too would disappear from Twitter" should the proposed Twitter TV show be greenlighted. Twitter seems to believe that the masses would stick with them, even if celebrities disappeared or began to endorse another service.

With a steady diet of these value-meal sized misjudgements on Twitter's part and whiffs of further grease choked decisions such as banner advertising on the site and the implementation of SMS support for foreign countries before scalability issues are resolved, one has to wonder just how long it will be before the internet hears Twitter calling "You hear that, Elizabeth? I'm coming to join ya, honey!"

Nightline: Filthy Liars.

[Updated March 6, 2009 7:40pm CST New information in brackets.]

Omission is still a lie. This evening the ABC program "Nightline" lied their collective asses off. From what I understand, FOX News, that pantheon of truth, has also picked up the story. [FOX News eventually declined to run the story. The Nightline broadcast also coincides with the introduction of an obscure piece of legislation that asks for all chimp research to be halted. There's nothing like a little fear mongering and magical editing to trump up support for an otherwise doomed bill.]

The UL Lafayette New Iberia Research Facility. You heard me: monkeys and the allegation that facility researchers are abusing them.

Begin with this statement in the story's lead-in: "...chimpanzees and other primates, entrusted to the labs to be safely and humanely treated, but who would know if they're not?" Instead of listing the six agencies that oversee the facility, Nightline falls silent, leaving me to wonder if their research department is really just that bad.

"...a nine-month investigation into the largest chimpanzee research facility in the country." In the world. Perhaps the research department at Nightline really is a steaming pile.

The video footage begins with a sedated monkey falling from a counter. This clip is used twice in the broadcast. In nine months, this super undercover sleuth has brilliantly cracked the case in that one monkey, out of the six thousand housed at the center, fell off a counter. Bravo. By the way, that "investigator" who wished to be protected? She faked her credentials to get into the center. She has zero training in veterinary sciences or any other aspect of the facility's operation. Yes, the public knows about you Ms. Caroline Cook.
[The tech responsible for the safety of the monkey that falls is the tech you see picking up the monkey, Ms. Cook, our camerawoman. Additionally, Ms. Cook is now facing jail time, charged with perjury, for falsifying documents in order to obtain a government job.]

The next clip shows chimps being shot with darts to sedate them. The angle of the video and the reporter's voice tells you that the perches you see the chimps on are "several feet" off the ground. In reality, they are no higher than the seat cushions of your average couch. As Ms. Cook talks about chimps "smacking to the ground", please remember the woman who is recovering from the critical injuries she received from a chimp, then ask yourself if you are going to be the one who rushes into the pen to catch the animal. Also notice that Ms. Cook never makes this attempt herself.

The footage labeled June 2, 2008 is described to the viewer as a random researcher cracking a monkey in the teeth with a pipe. It never mentions that this "pipe" is actually a restraining pole similar to the ones used by dogcatchers and zookeepers throughout the nation. It also fails to identify that the researcher is not striking the monkey, he only brings the pole near the monkey while making sure the monkey can see the pole. This is to acclimate the monkey to the pole so that it can be used to calmly walk the monkey from his pen to the research chair, which Nightline and Ms. Cook both neglect to mention.
[The same device is also used to hold an animal's mouth open for the placement of an NG or other medical tube. This is done by timing the movement of the pole so that it reaches the monkey's mouth when he already has it open, not by striking the animal.]

The next bit tells us it was shot on March 10, 2008 and showcases an employee who strikes a small monkey on the head. It fails to inform you that the incident was never reported by Ms. Cook, who was the only witness to the event, and the employee was terminated.
[The employee has not worked at the facility for months, it is unclear as to whether she was terminated or quit prior to termination. Additionally, Ms. Cook did not follow clearly outlined facility procedure that calls for all acts of suspected or verified abuse to be reported immediately. Clearly, Ms. Cook was more interested in obtaining secret footage than actually protecting any of the animals in the facility.]

Ms. Cook goes on to claim that the footage titled March 6, 2008 shows an infant monkey being terrorized by having a "substance forced down his throat". What she does not talk about, and Nightline overlooks, is that when any animal in the facility refuses to eat on his or her own the staff must tube feed the animal. The "substance" referred to here is food.

Nightline spoke with Narriman Fakier, who claims to have been told to "quit or be fired". In truth, Ms. Fakier was informed that she was being sacked for a failure to show up for her job many times over the course of several months, at which point she quit and immediately filed suit claiming that she was fired for "whistle blowing". The USDA did investigate Ms. Fakier's claims of abuse, resulting in exoneration for the facility.

Nightline also spoke with a third former employee who chose not to appear on camera. This particular employee directly disobeyed medical orders given to her regarding the care of a sick chimpanzee, resulting in the animal's death. It is this offense that resulted in her termination.
[While an employee was terminated for the offense described above, it is now suspected that Nightline's "third former employee" does not actually exist.]

Nightline then claims that these three former employees have never met each other. As a resident of south Louisiana and a long time figure on the university campus, I call straight bullshit. The residents of this town are the original six degrees of separation and the people who work at the university are cliquish, even after they've moved on to new employment. I am sure these people have met, probably over at the Community Coffeehouse on the corner of Johnston Street and North College Drive.

When talking to a member of the Humane Society of America, Nightline shows video of monkeys biting themselves and running in circles inside cages. What they do not mention is that these are animals that have been sequestered from the main population in order to treat their wounds and protect the others while staff studies the behavior so that the situation can be rectified, allowing the animals to be soothed so that they can return to the main living area.
[This behavior occurs not only at every research facility in the world, but also in the wild. In fact, the average occurrence rate in a facility is around 7% while the NIRC maintains an occurrence rate of around 0.5%.]

Nightline then moves on to a couple of rapid-fire allegations. They repeat the clip of one monkey falling to the floor, then reveal complaints that cages are not maintained. Other than one cage that appears to have slid off of its base, no visible damage appears in the footage.

The next assertion is that the animals are sedated then transported without protection or restraint. This is a contradiction in that it is stated that the chimps are sedated, which is a chemical restraint. They are moved to the back of a van where two staff members ride with the animals while it is transported across the facility at a blistering pace of between five and ten miles per hour.

At this point, Ms. Fakier claims that the sedated chimp "could wake up at any moment" and that the "direction was if he wakes up, run". Ketamine is the sedative of choice. When the ketamine begins to wear off, the animal does not suddenly spring up, fully awake and spoiling for a fight. The process is very gradual and if the sedation begins to subside while the chimp is still en route, another dose is administered. Any suggestion that personnel should "run" if the chimp begins to wake is a joke since there would be no reason for flight.

In short, this is a steaming pile of crap that never should have been aired. Three disgruntled employees and out of context video that amounts to roughly seventeen minutes of footage after "nine months of undercover investigation"? That's all you have?

I am not Paul Harvey, but now you know the rest of the story.

[For more information please see the reaction from the University President, additional video and information from the local paper, as well as continuing updates from local news sources.]

Finish Work and Productivity

A few weeks ago, I got a wild hair to transform my front porch. Objects were cleared, shutters rehung, rails stained, new furniture bought and assembled. Two hundred and fifty six square feet of previously unused space was now reclaimed for both work and recreation, just in time for Louisiana's two days of spring.

While my husband and I spent more than a few days on the comfort of our new porch, I could not get any reasonable amount of work done while I was in that space. I kept seeing the overhead light bulbs that had gone unchanged since the installation of black lights during Halloween, the unstained porch gate that had been skipped in the previous fervor, and the unkempt weeds masquerading as our yard. In short, the job was not done.

Slowly I tackled the items that bugged me so much. I took down the Halloween lights, and have kept vigilant watch on the weather for the day when conditions fall within the manufacturer's guidelines for applying stain to the gate. While I wrestled with the lawnmower in an attempt to tame the overgrown yard, I realized that most of my distraction could be attributed to one thing: finish work.

In my tenure as an art student finish work was drilled home on every project. You could produce a masterwork, but if the finish work was neglected there was no chance of earning an "A" or even a "B" on the project. Besides giving off an air of shoddy craftsmanship, finish work left undone stole an entire level of professionalism from a piece.

Beyond the obvious payoff of producing finely crafted and professional work, finish work gives us more, even on the smallest of tasks. It gives us productivity. Finish work left undone, from failing to staple a completed report to leaving the dishes in the dishwasher at the end of the cleaning cycle, eats at the edges of our attention span and distracts us from the task at hand. We may not even be aware of it, but the lack of "polish" on even the most mundane of jobs steals our time.

Make yourself a list of "unfinished" tasks. My personal list includes large tasks such as completing the trim paint in the living room to small tasks such as putting the boxed holiday decorations back in the attic. Once those items are really finished, how much brain clutter will you have cleared up? How much time will you have back without having to worry about them anymore?

Bulletin! $900 Million to Palestine!

This just in from BreakingNewsOn: The US will pledge $900 million of aid to the Palestinian Authority, with a third of the money earmarked for Gaza - US State Department.

Um, just a second there. Last I understood it, the United States's bank account was overdrawn. I'm not sure about you, but when my account approaches zero balance, I stop writing checks!

A quick summary of where the US stands financially: the word "deficit" appears in Obama's address to Congress, delivered last week, a total of nine times. This does not include the hundreds of words that add up to the same meaning as "deficit".

Here's my final word to our leaders: WE'RE IN A HOLE, QUIT DIGGING!

Poll

Lookin' Up

The following is a short story I wrote for an English assignment on metafiction. It borrows the style of a piece we read in class, though I'll be damned if I can remember the name of that story now.

Lookin' Up

“I don't know why you even ask me about momma now. Been dead six years. Ain't no use in digging up bones.” Emily sighed and dropped the dishcloth she'd been washing with. “Even if I did pull out my shovel and start, it's not like she ever let me near her long enough to know anyways.”

“C'mon, now, you know she tried. Don't you? She never...” The words were cut short before they had a chance to be aired.

“Yeah, she never. That's just all there was to it. She never tried to have anything to do with me unless it was to get me out of the way.” Bitterness soaked every word.

“She never once kept me home. Always just sent me away til she needed me to do something for her.”

“That wasn't the way of it.”

“Wasn't it though?” Emily turned back to the sink full of dishes and slowly began to run the rough cotton dishcloth over the soiled surfaces under her hands. The distant fog of a forgotten time rolled into her eyes as she stared past the kitchen window. Her voice came floating out soft and low like the rumble of thunder on the horizon as she began to remember.

“You know, I must've been just over the age of remembering, it was so long ago. I can see it – like pictures gone all old and yellow, creased and worn around the edge – just snapshots one or two at a time. All I'd known, all I'd had... when they tell me I have to go home. Just out of no where one day. You're going home. Wasn't nobody listening while I cried. I was home, but they send me away to this woman who says she's my momma.

Three days of dust and dirt on that bus. Young as I was, nothing but the note the ticket man had pinned to my shirt and a grubby paper sack of soggy sandwiches. Finally the driver who'd watched over me came and said it was time to get down. I stepped off into the heat and you know the first thing she said to me? 'Quit walking like a dog been beat too much.' Ain't forgot that my entire life.”

She fell silent a while longer, still swiping at the same dish, oblivious to the fact that it'd been clean since before she started. She seemed to be lost that fog of hers, unable to escape back to this place she'd made for herself. Her next thoughts rushed forth with the sharp crack of lighting in a tree.

“Even when she had me home, she didn't want me around. Sent me off to that school, they called it. Was nothing more than a pen full of dirty kids too poor and too coarse to go to proper care. Might as well just been cattle. I begged her please. Please don't leave me there, let's go anywhere else, but she always sighed and asked me if I thought money grew on a tree in the backyard. Learned fast not to cry after her when she left. That old fat cow that sat watch over the pen would smack you if you went to crying.

When I got too old to stay with the rest of the herd, it was off to the hospital. Horrid green place that always smelled of ether. Don't how they thought they were gonna get us better. Didn't see a kid in there that was sick for anything but love. But they still sent us off to 'treatment' in the ice baths and gave us pills to make us 'calm'. Just another cattle pen as far as I saw. When the baths and drugs didn't keep us in with the others, there was always isolation. Long hours strapped to a white bed in a white room. No one to see or talk to.

Of course, she made a show of it, being there on the 'Parent's Weekends'. She never came up with the regular parents. The ones who genuinely thought their babies where sick. No, she stood underneath the balcony with the ones that pretended that the hospital said they couldn't come. But we knew different when we watched other kids wrapped up in the arms of their sobbing mothers who cried even harder when the orderly came to tell them it was time to go. We knew we only had each other. Had to be careful about keeping each other company though. If the doctor found out he'd strap you to the white bed long enough to move your friends to another part of the hospital where you couldn't see them.” She paused long enough to heave another sigh that had the sound of wind rustling tall grass. She didn't seem to notice that the dish water had long gone cold and sud-less. Softly, the next set of words began to fall from her lips.

“When Susan got old enough to be trouble, she finally sent for me to come home. There'd never be a cattle pen for dear little Susan, I was to be her nanny and servant. Even when it was time for me to go to school, she'd find some reason and I'd stay home, taking care of Susan or the newest baby. Once when I was really sick, I made up a game to play with the boxes of things she'd brought for me to sort and clean in my sickbed. Only time I ever got to play it again was when Susan wanted to play.” Emily rinsed the dish and found a cast iron pan beneath the swirling murk in the fresh white sink. She circled the cloth around it slowly at first, then began a more furious scrubbing, as if to scour away the blackness of it. Suddenly her voice rushed forward in a pounding torrent.

“It was only when the other kids went off to school that she finally let me go back to school proper. Waited for her to call me home when Ronnie was weaned, but I think the teacher visiting scared her. Think she knew then that she couldn't call me back again. Not after I won the show at school. Never even bothered to come to that show. Never said a word about after it was done. Like it'd never happened. Like I'd never done nothing to be proud of in my life. Been one of the others, she'd have been there. So I got on my way out, and wasn't nothing going to stop me. I got out fast as I could after that. Ran off and joined a show. Put food on my table from it. Made my family and never once sent my babies away. I did my life different. Wasn't going to be her, not for nothing. Even in the last years, when she came round begging for me to let her take them to see the ocean on her way to Susan's, I never sent my babies away. Never cared a lick for me. Just stood at that old iron of hers telling me not to be the dress on the board. Not one thought in her head that she'd been ironing me for my whole life. Just a crease to get over.” The pan slipped from her hands and fell into the sink, splashing water everywhere and breaking the plate hiding underneath the brown, greasy surface. She cursed something foul at the pan before carefully fishing for the broken pieces. Her hands stopped for a moment while another thought breezed across her mind.

“Sometimes wonder if I got on the wrong bus that morning. Got on the wrong bus and took the long ride. Wasn't no driver, was the ferry man. Was that old ferry man took my coins and left me on the other bank. Lord knows I never saw a single day of grace in that damn house.” She threw a hot look over her shoulder before collecting the rest of the plate in her worn hands. There was a slight pink tinge to the water that ran down between her fingers and collected in a small pool on the spotless counter top. If she knew her skin had been breached, she gave no sign of it. The fog lifted in an instant, leaving her voice cold and stiff as it came across the kitchen.

“You better get on home before your daddy gets back. He'll be madder than wet cat if he finds you here.” She turned back to the sink, nothing more than a gray silhouette against the bright light streaming through the window. Age and time had made her even thinner than she'd ever been, and creases laid heavily on her face. She looked more than a little like her mother had. No doubt the rigors of life would continue the progression.

“I love you, Em.”