Pause everything
One of the ways DVR has ruined my life is that I expect to be able to pause, rewind, and replay everything.  I was at a wedding the other day and something happened at the exact moment I looked away, and I thought, "Oh, I'll just rewind life and watch it again."  Sadly, this didn't work.  I've been at a few live sporting events and wished I could've watched the instant replay or simply created my own, but again, this isn't how real life happens. #technology

Small web annoyances
This applies to people who publish content on the internet: 
  1. Underlined text.  Underlines are the international identifier of links.  So unless your text is linked, it shouldn't be underlined.  Otherwise people will try to click on it and then wind up hating you when it doesn't link to anything.  If you need to emphasize something, use bold, italics, or quotes.
  2. Spaces in links.  (I wrote about this a while ago.)  Or I should say "spaces at the beginning or end of links."  Many web publishing tools allow you to create links by double-clicking on your text and clicking the "Insert Link" button.  But when you double-click on a word, it automatically selects the space immediately after the word or string of words.  And links like this or this look stupid.
In other news, I'm a perfectionist, and not in a good way. #technology

Non-user iPhone complaints
I don't have an iPhone.  I'm not opposed to owning one in the future, but I refuse to switch cell phone providers just to get a cool phone.  Many billions of people apparently feel differently and are more than happy to fork over their $120/month to use a great phone on a crappy network.  Anyway, as an iPhone outsider, I have a few complaints about this silly little device: 
  1. Apps.  I understand what an iPhone App is, and I realize there are a lot of other people who also understand this, and there's some sort of exchange of money involved, which has a positive impact on our nation's economy.  That's great and all, but there are like eleventy jillion people who, like me, don't own an iPhone, so all this talk of Apps and App Stores and whatnot is simply meaningless.  It's one thing to have a mobile version of your website so non-iPhoners can play along.  But as soon as you create an App, you've just alienated approximately eleventy jillion people.
  2. SMS character limit.  Apparently the iPhone lets you send text messages that are longer than the industry standard 160 characters, which is fine and all because the messages are simply broken up into 160-character chunks, but which is pretty stupid for the countless (I've heard it's around eleventy jillion) people without iPhones, where these chunked text messages show up as separate (and often numerous) chunks, sent by some stupid iPhone user who doesn't understand how text messages work.  But this isn't a user issue; it's a software issue.  One simple workaround would be to show the user when their message is going to be split up, which would hopefully encourage them to be more concise.
  3. "Sent from my iPhone."  First of all, I don't care where your email comes from.  That goes for you too, Blackberry weirdos.  But I'll concede that there's occasionally value in knowing why an email doesn't contain complete sentences and sounds like you're mad at me.  But at least Blackberries are used by working folk.  Yes, iPhones can work with corporate email too, but honestly, who on earth has a work iPhone?  Like four people in Silicon Valley.  The rest of you are simply flaunting the fact that you own a coveted piece of technology.  Yes, I'm jealous.
Eleventy jillion and shrinking. #technology

National broadband coverage
There's been some political discussion about the possibility of making very fast broadband internet access available to the entire country, which is generally a good thing in my opinion.  But the arguments people use in support of it, and specifically in comparing the situation in the US to that of other countries, is ridiculous.  It goes something like this:  "[Some country] has had [high number] Mbps broadband access for [low price] per month since the year [long ago]."  My main objection to this argument is that the countries people reference are places like Japan, South Korea, and France, which if you'll simply look at a map are ridiculously small compared to the US.  South Korea is about the size of Indiana, or about four times the size of New Jersey, and the fact that this tiny country has national broadband access really isn't that impressive. #technology

NASA posters
NASA has been producing movie-themed posters of some of their recent missions.  Awesome.  (via Neatorama) #technology

Microsoft product names (3)
There exists a software company called Microsoft.  Perhaps you've heard of it.  It makes, among other things, two major pieces of software:  The operating system Windows, and the productivity suite Office.  Both Windows and Office are updated every few years, and instead of using some sort of intelligent auto-incrementing versioning system, Microsoft decided to go with whatever felt good at the moment:  3.1, XP, 2003, Vista, 7, etc.  For this, Microsoft is deservedly criticized.  However, being the nerd that I am, I'm baffled by the fact that people can't understand the difference between Microsoft, Windows, and Office.  I've heard many a computer-user say, "I think I have Microsoft 2007," or "I'm using Office Vista."  To set the record straight, here's the deal:  Either you're using
Windows [3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7]
... or ...
Office [95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007].
That's it.  I know the version numbers are hard to remember, but since both pieces of software are used by something like 90% of computer users on earth, let's all become nerds and try to remember these things.  Thank you, and have a nice day. #technology

iPod complaints
The iPod is a wonderful piece of machinery.  I was a late adopter, but I'm a full convert now.  I've used some other mp3 and video players, and nothing is quite as sexy as the iPod.  My only complaints are the following: 
  1. Navigation.  The clickwheel was a novel concept, and it's good for moving quickly through long lists of albums and songs.  But it doesn't have fine-tuned control, and that's a problem.  Pretty much every time I try to navigate to a specific item in a list, I accidentally overshoot it by one, then I overshoot it again on the way back.  A solution would be to give the user some tactile feedback so he/she could "feel" each item in a list, kind of like the volume dials on many car radios.
  2. Scratches.  The screen gets scratched easily, but oh well.  The more easily-fixable scratchable surface is the beautiful stainless steel on the back of the device.  I realize a scratched back surface doesn't affect the functionality of the iPod, but it's the thought that counts.  One solution would be to use titanium, or some other light, hard metal.  I would say tungsten, but it's heavy (unless that's what you're going for).
  3. Podcast sorting.  Podcasts are essentially recorded radio programs, and they're broadcast in chronological order.  So why would I want to listen to the newest one first?  That's how the iPod does things, and I would at least like the option to do things my way.
That's really it.  Otherwise it's the best device ever invented, besides the Xlerator. #technology

Content overload
I recently traveled for work for a week and didn't have much access to a computer.  When I got back, I was overloaded with things to read and catch up on.  Nothing important, of course.  Just entertainment and time-wasters like Not Always Right and IMMD.  But I think I finally reached the point of content over-consumption.  It's no longer even enjoyable.  I just do it to do it.  So I went through and unsubscribed from about 15 things in my feed reader.  Here's to less content overload! #technology

People are stupid
In the past few years, the internet has grown tremendously as a result of the extremely low barrier to entry for content production.  Blogs, YouTube, and social networking sites are all pretty easy to use, so people are able to produce tons and tons of content on a regular basis.  This is generally a good thing, because in the past the internet was run by geeks, and geeks are boring.  Regular people want to hear about and connect with regular people, not geeks.  So the internet is good. 

The problem, however, is that people are stupid and they do stupid things.  And they record those stupid things in text and video format and publish them on the internet for all to see.  This is generally an entertaining thing, like the TV show America's Funniest Videos, but without that stupid host's voice doing a running commentary (seriously Tom Bergeron, just shut up).  Sites like Fail Blog and Failbooking have popped up to record these great moments in internet history, and again, this is a good thing.  People are stupid, and that's funny.  We should all laugh at stupid people. 

Maybe I've watched a few too many teenagers faceplant after attempting a bike jump, or maybe I've read too many personal details about people that really shouldn't have been broadcast to the entire universe, but I'm starting to change my mind about this whole thing.  Don't get me wrong, I still believe people are stupid.  But stupid used to be funny.  Now it's getting ridiculous.  Sad.  Unbelievable.  Pathetic.  Disgusting.  Horrific.  Un-undo-able.  I'm starting to doubt the earth will still be around in a few years, let alone a few generations.  We could very well die of stupidity. 

But seriously, this is pretty funny.  And this.  And this too.  And those were just from two days of content!  Thank God for stupid people. #technology

Click for larger image
I can't put into words how irrationally angry I get when the "Click for larger image" button on a product website opens up a bigger window with an image the exact same size as the original.  As a casual programmer, I can attest to the fact that this problem is stupidly easy to fix: 
if (largerimagesize > currentimagesize) {
  display_link();
} else {
  do_nothing();
}
Internet, fix it! #technology