Brian’s Annoyances

In January of 2008, Palm released a firmware update for the Treo 680.  One of the improvements listed was “Enhanced ringtone support”.  Specifically it said “MP3 and other sound files purchased from the web or sent from friends can now be set as ringtones and alerts (formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, MIDI, WAV, and AMR).”  Too bad I can find no instructions from Palm on how to use this new feature. 

Palm’s own knowledge base has an article on ringtones that says “Your Treo smartphone doesn’t include built-in software to allow MP3 files to be used as ringtones.”  This negative sounding phrase is repeated in the onboard help.  Thankfully, a palm fansite has the instructions on adding an mp3 as a ringtone.  It involves opening the mp3 in Blazer (the onboard web browser).  So very obvious. 

Before this update, the way to use an mp3 as a ringtone was to use a third party program (such as the free MiniTones).  The Palm knowledge base article referenced above about ringtones warns; ”Beware: Some ringtone managers can cause odd behavior, such as crash or reset when an incoming call arrives.” 

With the crappy mechanism that Palm themselves provide, and the warning about third party programs from their own technical support group, I found it funny when a representative of Palm’s PR firm makes a post to the official Palm blog about mp3 ringtones.  In it, they suggest  using third party ringtone manager.  Pathetic.

I went to a a movie last night at Eastridge AMC Theatres. It was a busy night for the theatre and there was a long line for the ticket counters. Thankfully their were wonderfully underutilized credit card ticket kiosks machines.

I tap the screen to wake the machine up; tap the date for the day I want the tickets for; tap the field for The Bourne Ultimatum and am given the option to purchase tickets for 10:50. Now I took this to mean that tickets for 9:50 were sold out.   Thankfully a cooler brain (that of my friend John) prevalied and he tapped back a screen and selected a different listing for the movie (which escaped my notice the first time through).  This time we were presented us with the option to purchase tickets for 9:50.

Now the movie was showing on multiple screens, so I can sort of understand why there were multiple listings for the movie.  But I as a consumer don’t care that it was showing on multiple screens, I want to see all the times the movie are showing in one place.  It should list all the times that the movie is showing that day and any showing that was sold out, should have been indicated as such.  The only excuse for what I saw here is a lazy and incompetent programmer or a poorly written specification.