Monday, January 31, 2011

Matchstick Message #25: The Screen Light-Up Tease

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateMon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:36 AM
subjectMatchstick Message #25: The Screen Light-Up Tease




Dear RIM,


You know when you're trying to go to sleep and in your pre-dream thoughts you're walking along and then you trip, and in real life you jolt awake? It sucks, right?


Well, this happens with thousands of BlackBerry users every day. It happens like this: you hit a button on your BlackBerry just to check the time or see if you have a message or something, and then go back to engaging in non-electronic forms of communication (or reading or something, this is another healthy activity people once used to engage in), and then all of a sudden you're jerked back to cyber-world because your screen lights up!!! And you think, "Do I have a message?", "Is somebody calling me?", "Did I win?!??"... but alas, no. It is just a BlackBerry glitch. The screen is lighting up for no reason. Just to pull your leg.


Please, fix this peculiar behavior of the screen lighting up about one minute after the screen goes to sleep. We know our BlackBerry wants us to give it our full attention, and we actually are closer to this than we are to giving our full attention to anything else. But to tease us is just mean.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

Truth Enthusiast


--

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Matchstick Message #24: I know My Number

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateThu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:37 AM
subjectMatchstick Message #24: I know My Number




Dear RIM,


OK so everybody has their moments of James Bond or Oceans 11 or Gossip Girl where it is a desperate matter--of national security or of hundreds of millions of dollars or of choosing between two beautiful and well-dressed college boys--to make sure the phone in our pocket is actually our own. Even though everybody falls for that trick of the look-alike phone slipped into your pocket by the seducter/ress in the movies, we shall never let it happen to ourselves.





And to that end, it is wonderful that every time we make a call we get to see "My Number: xxx xxx xxxx" on the right side of the screen. But honestly, and despite the many useful instances I listed above, it is just a waste of space.



For most of us, we don't need to see our own phone number on the call screen all the time. Maybe it could just flash at the beginning to verify our identity. Maybe it could be a setting. Maybe we should take it away altogether.








Yes so my suggestion is just to take it away altogether. This is especially logical because it shows "My Number" on the call log screen. So you can verify your identity without actually having to call somebody and pretending you pocket-dialed or just embarrassedly hang up. Also, here it is not as obtrusive.


This is the best of both worlds. We can avoid the danger of a stolen soul I mean phone, but without the waste of valuable screen real estate that is best left vacant.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

Vacancy Enthusiast


--

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Matchstick Message #23: We Want To Know When They Aren't Still Typing

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateSun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:43 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #23: We Want To Know When They Aren't Still Typing


Dear RIM,


Remember when you were a little girl or boy (kind of like a blackberry when its still green and hard to pull off the vine, you know?) and you would be on AIM talking to that 8th grader you have a crush on (Rebecca went to the bathroom... so tell me... do you have a crush on her)? Remember the absolutely riveting, breath-taking, exhilaration of Instant-Message drama? The he-signed-off-move, or the on-purpose-ignoring or, my favorite, the IM-all-her-best-friends-but-her-after-eight-minutes maneuver. ANYWAY, what is one thing that enabled the central drama of our internet lives? The magical ability to know when the other party is typing!!!!!!!!! SO MUCH MORE EXCITING!!!! And of course, because the best is never the best for long enough, the necessary addendum to this wonderful gift is that we can know when text has been entered by The Other, but no typing is happening. Namely, we know when they are staring at the screen wondering what to say. Brilliance.


My friend Mikey just got great advice for starting work this month; "people are pigeons". This is very wise advice but I would venture to add on that people are children too.


So with all these baby pigeons wandering around cyber-space, they are going to want to be fed small snacks and to relish in the drama of Entered Text. BlackBerry is the best poised to bring this non-innovation to cell phones because BBM is the fastest messaging phone application. You've given us notification of when they are typing, and when they have read our message, but the extra half-step of Entered Text really must be made if you expect to satisfy our current connectivity expectations. I'm not suggesting anything cutting edge. Just becoming caught up with the standard of AIM circa 2001.


So please, tell us when the person we are in a heated BBM conversation with is stumped. Or when our friend we asked a question to stopped typing an answer. There's no point of staring at the screen and waiting if they aren't actually still typing.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

Drama Enthusiast


--

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Matchstick Message #22: Send Multiple Pictures

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateWed, Jan 19, 2011 at 8:11 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #22: Send Multiple Pictures



Dear RIM,


This is a very simple post.


I'd like to be able to send multiple pictures at once. This is quite simple too. The menus are already overcrowded, so one more line entitled "Send Multiple" or something to that effect would do more good than harm.


Then we can go to a screen where the pictures are shown with little square check-boxes in the upper right hand corner. Then we will check them.


It would also be nice if these pictures are sent in a thread, as discussed before, or in a single email. Sometimes pictures need to be sent in large quantities when trying to get an opinion of a pair of shoes or show the wreckage of your bumper if its hanging from a fire hydrant.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

Multiple Enthusiast


--

Monday, January 17, 2011

Matchstick Message #21: The Shutter Sound

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateMon, Jan 17, 2011 at 12:39 AM
subjectMatchstick Message #21: The Shutter Sound





Dear RIM,


I'm not a creep or anything, but why must the BlackBerry camera shutter sound be so absolutely unavoidable? I do admit its super cute to have a fake shutter sound go off every time I take a picture (which is interesting because surely the newer BlackBerry users don't even know where that sound comes from), but for it to be permanent and un-mutable is just... just... no.


True, there are times when I want to take a picture of a cool dress (that somebody happens to be wearing), and one might argue that the shutter sound alerts the pictured party that their privacy is being disregarded... but what is privacy these days anyway? Just kidding. Anyway, most of the time, I'm in a quiet place like the beautiful turquoise synagogue in Florence, and I would like to quietly capture the exquisite interior architecture. But to do so would compromise the sacred religious ceremonies happening inside. My final and tangentially interesting point is that anything that forces you to choose between technology and religion certainly must be destroyed.


So please, at least give us the option of removing the shutter sound from the camera so we can get closer to our goal (and your goal) of experiencing the world solely through our smartphones.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

Silence Enthusiast




--

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Matchstick Message #20: I Can Navigate To Paste On My Own

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateWed, Jan 12, 2011 at 6:41 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #20: I Can Navigate To Paste On My Own



Dear RIM,


Oh the joys of Paste. So wonderfully useful when you want to ask different people the same question, or for copying a long URL, or when showing your friend the scathing yet witty response you wrote to your ex-best friend who wore your missing Marc Jacobs skirt to that party that there are 100 pictures of on Facebook...


But one of the funniest design peculiarities of the BlackBerry is that when you copy a piece of text you are typing, and then you finish typing and want to send your message, the first option when you hit the menu key is Paste. This may make sense as a short cut for 9 year olds enthralled by typing Hello or Lol as many times as they can before their hands get tired (you did that too, right?) but for all adult and semi-adult users of the BlackBerry (young women and men, respectively) you copy text to paste it SOMEWHERE ELSE. It is very rare that you would need to use the same string of words twice in one transmission of a text, BBM, or email, so why would Paste show up instead of the normal thing you expect to see when you hit the menu key, which is Send??


Instead, it just becomes like that table corner you always try to remember not to bump into. But your thumb works faster than your brain sometimes and then you invariably have to delete the second half of "Hurry up or else we're not going to get in!! We have too many guys with us.Hurry up or else we're not going to get in!! We have too many guys with us."


So please, though it was a nice gesture to make Paste the default menu option after somebody copies text--yes, it demonstrates an almost psychic understanding of the Copy-Paste behavior pattern--it ends up being much more disruptive to our goals of constant and efficient connectivity. And I'm all for speed of course, but I'd rather navigate to Paste on my own.



Sincerely,




Tara Raffi

EnthusiastEnthusiast


--

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Matchstick Message #19: I Don't Always Wake Up At 7:45 AM

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateSun, Jan 9, 2011 at 4:22 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #19: I Don't Always Wake Up At 7:45 AM




Dear RIM,


When you search for alarms on BlackBerry App World, there are a plethora of multiple-setting alarm applications.

When there are so many reproductions of such a basic application, it means that there is clearly something wrong with the BlackBerry version. What could it be? I know! The fact that you can only set ONE alarm at a time!!!!!!!


Come on. This phone can message across the world in an instant, but it can't have at least an alarm setting for each day of the week? My Samsung flip-phone had this 7 years ago. Yes, the BlackBerry target user is on the older and less-technology-savvy side, but that is no excuse. Once they learn the joys of a technology, like if they got an Android for instance, then they would never be able to look back.





Yes, its pretty. But what's that saying? Something about the flower but the flower pot is empty?











<----- Single alarm setting






Quite the opposite. Ugly, but with supreme functionality.

Thank you, QuickAlarm, for accomplishing what a technology giant thinks unnecessary, but is in fact, not.












So, for my sake, for yours, and for those of the multitudes of business men who have too much on their mind to change their alarm every day and are being silently cheated by those people that sell alarm apps for FIVE dollars, please just make a multiple-alarmed alarm.



Sincerely,



Tara Raffi

Alarmed Enthusiast


--

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Matchstick Message #18: What is View Folder?

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateWed, Jan 5, 2011 at 10:08 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #18: What is View Folder?



Dear RIM,

Tonight I am writing about a BlackBerry Jem that is needlessly hidden: View Folder.

So you know those times when you have a project in Accounting and your partner puts their number in your phone and you realize five days later that you forgot to save it? And for some reason the call log on the old curve has entries for only the last day and a half. Well after a number of these unfortunate incidences somebody introduced me to the View Folder--a place on your phone that actually has records of all your activity in a way that is both orderly and comprehensive.





Since then, the new OS has fixed the call log problem so there are more than 20 entries in the call log (thank you), but the way View Folder is handeled needs to be fixed.







First of all, why is it called "View Folder"? Nobody even knows what that means. Even if they had noticed it there is no reason why anybody would think they would need to "View Folder".

The second issue is that you can only find View Folder in the Email and SMS folders. Its contents don't even have anything to do only with Email or SMS, they have information about alll activities on your phone. And it isn't even given its own icon on the application menu.

View Folder is useful place to see your activity on your phone in a succinct and complete view, it just needs to be renamed and put somewhere more useful so people can actually, you know, make use of it.


Sincerely,


Tara Raffi
Usefulness Enthusiast

--

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Matchstick Message #17: Two Ways To Receive Pictures Is One Too Many

fromTara Raffi
toStudent Information Requests
dateSun, Jan 2, 2011 at 7:01 PM
subjectMatchstick Message #17: Two Ways To Receive Pictures Is One Too Many





Dear RIM,

Happy New Year! I've missed you, but it was finals, and though I would much rather spend all my time on my BlackBerry, I had a lot of Finance to learn. After a relaxing holiday though, I'm back! Anyway, let's get to business.

As with all communication intensive holidays, New Years brought to light another BlackBerry hang-up; this time it was pictures. With the rise of Facebook and now Twitter and Flickr, we are used to being able to see pictures instantaneously. In fact, one of the great things about BBM is that it probably the fastest way to send a picture to somebody. It is certainly must faster than using MMS, and without the thread discontinuation issue. So even though this New Years Eve everybody seemed to be spread all over the country (because LA is just soo uncool) I still got regular multi-media updates.
But there is one inexplicable inconsistency with photo sharing over BBM. Sometimes, when somebody sends you a picture, you can "Preview" it and it just shows it to you. But other times, you have to download it in order to see it at all! Why?!

There are two things that are annoying about this. One is that sometimes you have to wait a whole 40 seconds to see a picture and only for it to get automatically saved on your phone and then you have to delete it. The second annoying thing is that you can't tell the difference between the actions of sending a picture that can be previewed and one that can only be downloaded.
Furthermore, there is no reason to have these two different methods, particularly when there is one that gives you both options of previewing and directly downloading. There are times when more is more and this is one of them. It is possible that I am missing something very obvious here, but the other option is that this is just a design hang-up in BlackBerry Messenger. Either way, if there is something that can't be easily figured out (I couldn't get an example of the download-only picture even if I wanted to) and it has no apparent additional usefulness, it shouldn't exist. The is the Google Age, and now that the precedent of intuitive functionality has been set, those who can't keep up will ultimately be unusable by the children of iEverything.

RIM, please make it so there is only one way that pictures are received, with both the Preview and Accept (which should be renamed to Download anyway, but I guess its nice because we BlackBerry users love to feel elitist) options available.

Sincerely,



Tara Raffi
Instantaneous Enthusiast

--

Below is a screenshot of the way it should always be (thanks Sah). I would have posted a picture of the other way, but I have no idea how to.



















2/28: I found an example!! It's the opposite way (above Im receiving a picture, below I am sending one, but still, Rebecca didn't get what I got to see above. Her options were just Download or Reject, or whatever)