Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Google Now Suffers From "V 3 snydrome"

A new product only happens when somebody with vision makes it happen. That visionary has specific ideas how the product should perform, and his/her vision is apparent in the new product. Skype was that way. Google Maps was that way.

It's almost impossible for the visionary to get all their ideas out there in the first version. Scarcity of resources and time-to-market combine to force a compromise. The first version is often excellent, but it is incomplete. The visionary then builds the second version, which is even better than the first version and also has more features.

At this point in the product's life, the visionary often moves on, and a team takes over to evolve the product. But that team doesn't have the vision. They don't know why something was done just that way, and they make arbitrary changes that slowly move the product away from its carefully crafted usefullness. I call it "V 3 Syndrome".

I know why Skype was done that way. With Skype, I could Copy (Ctrl-C) a phone number (from a web page, for example), press a single hot key to pop up Skype, Paste (Ctrl-V), and Enter, and then the number would dial. Very streamlined. At least in versions 1 and 2. Now, with version 3 or later, I have to hit Enter a second time. Why? Was something gained by this change? Not that I can tell. It's just that the new team doesn't use this feature and doesn't know why this feature was this way. Have you ever accidentally double clicked on Today in Skype? (You were trying to double click on the first entry under Today and missed.) The entire Today section disappears, and it takes some good consideration to figure out what happened. Why is this "feature" there? Nobody ever wants to close Today.

Google Voice Search was streamlined too. I could hold down a single key on my phone, and Voice Search would activate. Siri works that way still. I have to fire up Google Now, wait, say "Ok Google", wait, and *then* I can voice search. It's several more steps and very annoying.

Much worse, some voice commands used to work well, and now they are entirely broken. The frustrating thing is that they have been broken for months now, and Google hasn't noticed. These aren't obscure features, but key features. For example, tell Google Now, "home". Or tell Google Now "note to self meet with bill january 7th at 9:00". The home case *appears* to do the right thing. It gives you a thumbnail map of your home as well as your address and a "street view" link. Except that nothing is clickable! Click on the map. Click on the address. Click on the street view link. Nothing happens. I can't get home!

Used to be, for about two weeks, I could tell Google Now, "take me home", and it would. Works on Siri, but no longer on Google Now. "take me home" tells me about a 2011 movie of that name. (Hmm. Maybe "take me home" worked until that movie came out.) I have to say "navigate to home". (If I say "navigate to" and other things, it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. There is no way to know if you should say "navigate to" or not, until you try it.

The Google Voice Search "note to self" feature was incredibly useful. You say "note to self" followed by a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, and it emails the a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g to your email box. Surprisingly, this feature does not work reliably in Google Now. The screen shot shows that Google Now was able to handle the hard part perfectly: It transcribed the voice to text perfectly. This step is really, really hard, and Google does an excellent job of it.


The second step is completely trivial, and Google Now screws it up most of the time. It should see "note to self" followed by a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, and email a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g to me. How hard is that? When Google Now sees "note to self meet with bill january 7th at 9ok", it sends "Self meet with Bill" to my inbox. Whahhh??? What happened to the rest of the message? And why is "Self" in there at all??

I asked Peter Norvig, Google VP of Research if I need to report these issues, and he said no. Google would figure it out automatically. Thing is, it's been months, and "home" and "note to self" are still broken. How does this happen?

Sadly, I see the same V 3 Syndrom happening at Apple. Obviously it's been happening for years at Microsoft. Used to be that new companies would leapfrog these older companies, as the older companies decline. Today, these leaders are all in decline, and nobody is showing up to make products better. For the first time ever, the next generation of software isn't as good as the last.

I have a request for Google and the others: maybe just STOP! Leave well enough alone.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Wire to Wrap Wires?

A friend saw the WIRE WRAPPING WIRE on my desk. She wanted to know why one needs wire to wrap wires. I explained that "wire wrapping wire" is the wire one uses to do "wire wrapping", which is a really useful (and almost forgotten) method to prototype electronics projects.