Love this extremely low effort phishing attempt, I don’t even think they deserve marks for trying – because they didn’t!
D- Must try harder…
Category: tech
Trouble checking in?
Checking in is now mandatory at all shops and venues in Victoria. A lot of people still don’t check in, though. Why?
It’s framed as a compliance problem, but I’m absolutely convinced it’s also a user experience problem, and that a simpler, more robust process, would lead to higher checkin rates. I’ve watched people attempting to scan, and failing at rates of greater than 50% – they are trying to comply, but it’s just too hard.
It’s common now to find yourself standing in a queue to check in – many businesses only have one poster up to scan, so for a variety of reasons, only one person at a time can check in. It should not take so long, and there are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, the Services Victoria app is just slow. I don’t have an brand new phone, but it’s not that old either – still, this app is by far the slowest to load to ready (25 seconds!) of any app I have. This is less of a problem now that the app can be correctly triggered from the camera, but even that didn’t work properly until more recent versions of the app, causing a lot of people to just stop using it.
Second, the codes are very complex. QR codes work best when the string of text is short. These ones, however, encode a monstrous 215 character URL! Here’s one I used today…
Why is this a problem? More characters means more dots in the QR code. More dots means smaller dots, that are harder for cameras to interpret reliably. Add to this, that most are situated in less than perfect lighting, and laminated, so that reflections cause problems as well. You have to be right in front of the poster, cut down reflections, wait for the camera to focus… it’s a perfect storm, really – especially for the sort of cheaper, low powered phones that many older people choose.
Infuriating, because there’s an easy fix – shorten the URL! The two QR codes below do exactly the same thing, but the one on the right has been shortened using bitly (not advocating bitly, just an example!). The result is a far easier code for a phone to read. Use matt lamination sleeves and you’ve solved most of the technical problems.
Blows my mind, really, because on the posters below the QR code, they have an alternate 6 character location code. If they can do it in 6 characters, why do they use 165?
Why use an app at all? If a six character code can be used, why not just use SMS? Phones are pretty good at that stuff! I suppose there’s the problem where a percentage of people have caller ID turned off, but I’d suspect that’s a smaller proportion of people than we have just giving up now.
Of course, the biggest question is, why did Victoria have to develop their own app? Check-in should have been a feature of the Covid Safe app from day 1, feeding into a single, centralised system. The bonus would be people opening the app on a regular basis, instead of it sitting idle, forgotten, and useless on their phones. Just another failure of the federal government to seize leadership when it needed to.
I can’t see the QR code thing going away in a hurry. I really hope they fix it.
Digitising 35mm negatives – a quick method
Between my father and I, there’s a lot of memories sitting in shoeboxes around the house. They’re not all great photos, but there are some great memories. Scanning them is slow, and when my scanner died recently, I almost gave up. Almost! 😉
This is a clip on macro lens from Struman Optics. It fits on any phone/tablet and produces a reasonable quality image. Most importantly, the macro is only 2.8x magnification. This means the captured area is around the size of a 35mm negative.
I cut a foam block to hold my phone just the right distance (25mm) from the negative.
I used a lightbox I’d already fashioned out of a plastic bucket, and some USB powered LED strip lights… (yes, we’re seriously low budget here!).
The negative carrier is from my old, dead epson scanner, but I don’t think it’d be too hard to fashion one out of card.
Now, here’s one of the fun bits.
On an iPhone, in Settings > Accessibility > Accessiblity Shortcuts … you can set a shortcut to invert colours on the screen. I use a triple click of the home button.
So, when I feed a negative strip through, I can get a reasonable preview of what the image is before capture.
This is important, because… well, TBH, there’s a lot of boring photos!
With iCloud photos, in a very short time, the images are available in the Photos app on my computer. I rotate and flip them before handing them off to Photoshop for the next step.
Invert the image, then head to Curves, and the advanced Options. Using Enhance Per Channel Contrast will get you 95% there most of the time. Save it as the default, and you’re ready to churn through them.
Save and close, and they’re back in Photos and ready for any tagging and fine tuning.
Samples – links open in a new tab:
Fly-tying under lockdown
So, with the COVID-19 virus keeping us all tucked up at home, everyone is moving their activities online. Videoconferencing for the masses – pilates, music, comedy, and … fly-tying!
Yes, I know it’s niche, but it’s a way of keeping social networks going, and keeping fisherpeople sane through these long, dreary days! Running a fly-tying demonstration online, though, comes with some special problems.
- Fly fishers, in general, are not tech minded people. Getting set up for video conferencing. The apps, the logins, the cameras – it’s all new stuff. So it needs to be as easy as possible.
- A fly in a vice is small, and incredibly difficult to capture satisfactorily with a phone. Not impossible, but you have to know some tricks if you want to host a good looking demo.
Here are my solutions to the problems.
Keeping it simple
Videoconferencing isn’t that hard, and there are a few companies who’ve had enormous growth with our enforced ‘social distancing’. Zoom is the obvious example. You can use it for free – you don’t even need an account to join a meeting. There are a couple of problems, though; Free users can only run time limited meetings, there are many options that new users will find confusing, and with all the extra publicity, there’s a few security issues being highlighted.
Zoom is still good, but from what I’ve seen so far, Jitsi is better. It’s so simple, it’s hard to see how anyone could have problems with it. It’s 100% free, Open Source – so there’s scrutiny of the code. It just works. So, sure, use zoom if you want – it’s fine, but maybe try Jitsi first.
Production values
Fly tying is fine, detailed work. If you can’t get a good image, nobody is going to know what’s going on. The problem is that automatic focussing cameras (eg: phones), focus on the most ‘interesting’ thing they can see. They look for edges, and try to resolve them to remove blur. If there’s anything in the frame other than the fly, the camera is going to focus on the largest thing it can see – you, for example! Not good.
This is how I set up for video of my vice. An LED task light directly above the vice, to avoid annoying shadows and reflections. My phone sitting on a mount (I used a lump of foam) about 15cm in front of my vice, and another 15cm behind, a backdrop of neutral grey paper or cardboard, large enough, that it fills the background of the camera view.
That’s it. Because your vice is the only ‘interesting’ thing the camera can see, it will focus on that. My iPhone would actually go quite a bit closer, but that would make it hard to tie. Still, adjust the distances to suit, the principles are the same.
The quality of the video is quite impressive.
Hosting the meeting
Whichever platform you use, anything can, and will, go wrong in a live demo. If you want to really do this properly, pre-record your video. Even edit and trim out the clumsy bits if you can be bothered.
Now, run the video in a video player application, and use screen sharing to present it to your meeting. Zoom and Jitsi both allow you to share a specific application window, so you only share the video itself, not your whole distracting desktop. You can talk along with the video – replay bits that people want to see again. It all goes so much more smoothly.
Even better, it’s all run from one device, so you’re not running two meetings through your internet connection at once – less bandwidth, more speed.
Flexible SVG in CSS backgrounds
I think I made something neat using css and svg, based on ideas from @chriscoyier and @noahblon.
Bustin’ chrome
Good, simple bugs are rare in software these days. Someone’s just found a beauty in Chrome.
Even hovering over this link: http://a/%%30%30 causes Chrome (just the tab you’re on) to crash.
I’m currently using Version 45.0.2454.99 (64-bit). I don’t expect the bug to last very long. Enjoy it while you can 😉
Why does it happen? Something, something null, I dunno! ask this guy.
Apple Maps #fail : My own experience
I was quite pleased when Apple chose to break away from Google. The steady infiltration of sponsored, and inaccurate information on Google Maps really bugs me.
I also didn’t join the chorus of deriders of the new Apple offering, because I remember how woeful the Google maps were when they were new.
But now I have my own thing to whinge about.
I was arranging to pick my daughter up after a theatre performance in the city last night, so as part of the text messaged arrangements, I dropped a pin on a map and shared it with her. All arranged, I thought.
Then, much closer to the time, I just had one of those moments of doubt, when you recheck your arrangements, so I tapped on the dropped pin myself, just to see where I’d said we’d meet. I was more than a little horrified to find that it was almost 200 metres (the red pin on the screen grab) from the spot I’d pinned. Even worse if I’d sent it by email, as then the maps.apple link loads google maps on a desktop, which just drops a whole mess of pins over a spread of about 5 kilometres! Utterly useless either way if you’re trying to meet someone in a busy city in the dark.
Curiously, the link actually includes the correct latitude and longitude coordinates, it’s just that it also includes automatically geocoded street details. Stupidly, both Apple and Google prefer the street address to the coordinates. Just changing the structure of the Dropped Pin link would yield a much more accurate result.
Hope they fix that one real quick, because it’s going to cause a lot of people to get very pissed off waiting for their friends on the wrong street corner!
@telstra #fail rant!
OK, so it’s easy enough to mock @Telstra, they are a pretty big target, but this most recent episode pretty much ticks all the bumbling, idiotic, #fail boxes, so I’m going to write about it. It’s long, but I hope it’s worth it for a smile or two.
Last Thursday Aug 2, a few strange things happened, we got some wrong numbers calling us, and our broadband connection died. I was pretty sure our ISP had somehow screwed up the broadband, my router clearly showed it was failing at the authentication server – did all the usual password checks etc. no joy.
I really didn’t have time to follow it up properly until the weekend, but by Saturday morning we were getting so many wrong numbers, we lodged a call to Telstra. Lo and behold, our lines were crossed! We were getting all the calls for the local Post Office, and they were getting all our calls! How does this even happen?
Oh well, the helpful lady with the weird accent told us that it was a programming error, and that it would be fixed within “9-15 hours”, which seemed a reasonable explanation, and timeline.
24 hours later, and we’re still off the air. You don’t realise just how much of your life relies on internet access. Study, travel plans, birthday wishes, workplace issues, they all go on hold while you thrash around trying to troubleshoot. Thank you Live Connected… your no nonsense approach to mobile data and personal hotspots helped us scrape by!
Anyway, I ring Telstra back, go through the tragic/comical voice prompts, and get another totally bizarre accent telling me that “a technician has been assigned and will be at the front of your house”, but that it may take until “Tuesday 7pm”! What?! …another 3 days? This does not tally with the programming error story, in fact, it sounds like complete nonsense – very angry now, but what can you do? Oh, I know, there’s going to be a satisfaction survey at the end of the phone call, I’ll be able to vent a little there… Phone call ends. Line goes dead. Hmmm, well that’s the second time that’s happened. I’m guessing they avoid a lot of negative feedback that way!
OK, so I try bleating about it in public… to Twitter! To their credit, @telstra respond promptly, and offer what assistance they can. Eventually pointing me to this URL: http://www.telstra.com/24x7help which loads on the iPhone in a reasonably friendly manner, and I proceed to tap out my complaint and hit submit: “Server Error”. Back to complain again on Twitter, where I get the utterly unbelievable response from Telstra: “Sorry form does not work via a phone”. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
OK, so I wander next door, and my lovely neighbour happily gives me their wifi password, so I’m at least properly back on the net. Out of curiosity, I try that 24x7help URL again on my desktop – this time it’s all: “Duplicate headers received from server. This problem is generally the result of a misconfigured website or proxy. Only the website or proxy administrator can fix this issue.“. So at least they’re not just blocking phones from their 24×7 help line, no, they’re blocking EVERYBODY! Win for Telstra!
Eventually, they get my email via DM and I send off the full story, hoping for a positive response, or even better, a resolution – you know, some actual help! Too much to ask?
Sadly, it seems so. The word is now steadfastly: “I am unable to have this appointment for tech visit moved forward”, Tuesday 7pm is, apparently, not negotiable 🙁 Any wonder people get upset!
sorry, @path
So, I’ve read your ‘sorry’ post,
I’ve got the latest version of the app,
I’ve searched the settings screen on the app and the web.
Nowhere can I find any method of opting out of your secret contact siphoning ‘feature’. Does this mean that because you’ve already done it, it’s too late and you think perhaps I should get over it? No, I don’t think so.
Yeah – I missed it! Thanks to @benwest0411 for picking me up on it. In my defence, it never actually says exactly how the opt-in would work.
Your post says ‘If I accept, and later decide … to revoke…’, I should email you, but just because I never accepted sure as hell doesn’t mean I don’t now want to revoke. So, Please remove my stolen contact data from your servers. Yeah, you already did
…and… just while I’m full of righteous indignation,
- put a button on your settings page so that I can have the satisfaction of doing it again all by myself, any time I want to
- and another button that says ‘Delete Account’ – one that really deletes my stuff, whenever I want to!
I think that still holds
Really pissed off with this. I feel like I’m a pretty savvy user, and I like your app, but you really blew it with this episode. You need to do some serious rebuilding of trust.
and probably that too!
Google – more evil by the day?
I find this very troubling.
Someone at Google appears to be deliberately and systematically polluting and plundering the crowdsourced data of competitors. Two instances seem to have been all but proven so far (check this post about OpenStreetMap and Mocality), it seems unlikely that it stops there.
If ever an action was hypocritical and seemingly calculated to destroy trust, it is this. In fact, it’s an action which could be terribly damaging to Google, which relies so much on trust every time someone uses Gmail, sends a Google+ message, hosts a document, amends a map. Crowdsourcing is trust in action.
For these reasons, I can’t imagine the actions have any basis in official policy at Google, but are likely the actions of an over-zealous group or individual. Whatever, the case, Google need to come clean about this REAL FAST! full disclosure, and nothing less will do. We’re waiting!
Google, the street view trike came, and went
Update: 18 months now, still prodding google, but no answers yet 🙁
Google Street View is brilliant – in fact, the whole digital map revolution is largely driven by expectations set by Google. Their tech is amazing. Unfortunately, as an organisation, they often fail to come up to scratch. A shame… here’s an example:
Every now and then Google have a flurry of promotion about their street view partners program, most recently in March this year the blogs seemed to be getting the message out. It’s certainly a cool idea, and there are some stunning examples out there. Our University applied for this years ago, and after a few slips and trips, were delighted when the trike finally visited the campus (on May 9, 2010). Then we settled down to wait for the images to come online. The site said it could take up to 90 days.
Today is the anniversary. Yup, 365 days later, and still no Street View on campus. Now, I’m sure they have their reasons – obviously, being very busy would be one of them. They have since released some excellent street view partner sites. I know we’re not being singled out or ignored, because I understand that the day before they came to us, they did the MCG… and it’s not online yet either! I guess what I find infuriating is [a.] that they are still soliciting for partners, when they’ve obviously got a massive backlog of images already, and [b.] that they never tell you anything – no communication, no progress updates, nothing. It’s always “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.
So, Google is as Google does. It’s free, so one certainly can’t complain, but like a lot of people, I do wonder about the direction Google are taking. That they were so long congratulated as innovators, but now that innovation is contributing to a lack of focus for a business that was built on focus. I wonder how long before they do start to officially start to trim their programs, rather than just let them die of neglect.
And now they’re even going indoors! Don’t know if we’ll ever see our images online at this rate.
Yet more trumpeting about excellent new StreetView locations, but no response to any of my enquiries.
StreetView updates… eventually!
Couple of new things on Google Maps / Street View.
They’ve added some new imagery captured by the trike, Google Earth Blog has a good write up of the additions.
While I was there, I was alerted by user “Munden” that the blue dots of user generated photos had disappeared from the Google Maps when you dragged Pegman. Indeed! That does make it a lot easier to drop pegman on a ‘real’ bit of streetview. You can still access the photos by turning on the photo layer first, then dragging pegman onto a photo. Works OK, but I found it didn’t work in the little inset map that displays in the lower right corner. Maybe that’s on their list!
Speaking of “on their list”, at the start of May last year, the Google Street View trike visited my uni’s campus, but still no sign of the images online. The LatLong blog seemed to be using the recent additions to trumpet their partner program, but I have to say, if our experience is any guide people will have a looong wait for any results!