I was very impressed to hear a Bituach Leumi (Social Security) manager say, “We have to get to the point where our desk has no lines, and we can do it.” It seemed a laudable goal (especially since I had been standing in his line for 15 minutes waiting to get a number.)

Unfortunately, the context in which he was publicly rebuking his colleague (whose line moved a lot faster than his) took the shine off his public service aspirations.

Still, a startling change is in the air at the Jerusalem office. Two years ago, if you required service from the Bituach Leumi, you had to call a voice-mail system to find out which days of the week the service you required was being offered, and during which hours (8.00-11.00am? 4.00-5.30pm?). You showed up, only to find that the employees were on strike.

Today, they’ve opened a new branch to reduce lines and pressure at the first one. A supervisor has the job, apparently, of approaching every person in the waiting room and inquiring after their purpose in coming, and making sure they are in the right place with all the right documents. If not, she walks them over to where they need to be. I’m bowled away. Is a government agency with a captive audience actually thinking about “customer satisfaction”?

There’s this neat old lady who mans (?!) a service desk at the Social Security (Bituach Leumi) office in Jerusalem. She certainly isn’t a day under 80. The last time I was here, she was wearing a enormously wide-brimmed hot pink floppy hat and an old-fashioned floral print dress. Today she’s got on a cardigan, a fashionable scarf and a chic black beret trimmed with white ribbon.

She’s obviously completely with it, and doing her job as she must have done for the last 50 years. I think it’s great that if she wants to and is able to, she’s allowed to keep working, to keep on being productive. I’m glad they haven’t forced her retirement (this is the social security office, after all). I think that’s the way it ought to be.

Reported today on MedPage:

“The morbidly obese may be missing out on essential diagnostic imaging.

“Consider that a heart attack patient weighing 350 pounds is too fat to undergo angiography because the standard table cannot support that much weight.

“Consider that 475-pound patients with severe abdominal pain are too big for CT to diagnose the cause, necessitating exploratory surgery as the most likely alternative.”

I have heard of cases of this before, but anecdotally, not formally. People weighed on veterinary equipment, because the hospital’s could not accommodate them. I’m not sure that the humiliation isn’t worse than the treatment limitations. Isn’t that reason enough to justify manufacturing appropriate equipment?

To add to the weight of the argument (sorry), with one in three Americans obese, don’t the statistics demand a wider range of weight specifications for the imaging products, even granting that “obese” does not equal “morbidly obese”?

The Talmud says that shaming a person (literally, causing the blood to drain from his face) publicly is like killing him.

The Book Page at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced the winner of the world’s worst book title:

“The winner was Cooking With Pooh, which is a real book from Disney. It barely beat out “Letting It Go: a History of American Incontinence,” “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification” (which I think maybe some people did not realize is also a real book) and “Everything You’ll Need to Remember About Alzheimer’s.”

[via Igor]

Right on. CNet’s One More Thing blog, inspired by the Verizon Wireless announcement that it would be opening its network to compatible, non-Verizon branded handset devices, analyzes the importance of open cellular networks, wherein consumers buy their devices outright from whichever retailer they prefer rather than receiving subsidized handsets.

Key points:

1. “This might make for more expensive phones up front, but it could also give phone makers the opportunity to come up with more innovative devices without having to get approval from Verizon for every last piece of software.”

2. ” ‘The provider of the device will determine the OS, distribution system, and whether to include Java applications. It is not ours to make that determination, that is up to the provider,’ said John Stratton, Verizon’s chief marketing officer.”

3. “…we’re going to want to do more than whatever a certain company’s executives decide is appropriate for us to do…”

4. “The dozens of companies gearing up to build phones based on Google’s Android software will have a huge network to design for in the U.S. And application developers will have 63 million potential new customers.”

All that said, I’m not convinced that Verizon’s announcement of this week heralds the fall of the cellular Iron Curtain. It would be nice if it did, though.

Wow! Peter Grant’s images of decorated Pakistani vehicles are a feast for the eyes.

They also are a statement about how we conceive of our belongings (especially vehicles) as expressions of our own selves.

In Los Angeles (my hometown), it’s well-known that “you are what you drive”. Sad, but true. Your identity is defined by your vehicle. This is true in many parts of the United States, but Los Angeles represents the extreme. In other locales, you are your mobile device. In haredi Jerusalem, you are what you push… er, that is strollers, not drugs.

What do these images of Pakistani truck decorating teach us about self-image, image idealization, and identification with the vehicle? To what extent does this tell us anything about how people in that same culture relate to their possessions, including consumer electronics, homes… and perhaps relatives?

[via Street Use]

Um… hello?

Wordpress spellcheck flagged the word “internet”. If you zoom to view the screenshot image, you may be struck by the other word flagged by the system. Listen, guys…

Some interface problems stem from just plain carelessness (click the image to zoom):

“Please fill in the form below and press “Submit” to email it to us, or email us at…”

The only button on the form is labeled “Send”.

Ricky at SMS Text News has posted on the realities of the U.S. cell phone market, as seen in the trenches. No mind-blowing news here, but if you have anything to do with mobile hardware, software, services or sales, you’d better check it out: you do need to know this.

It’s scary how many people make decisions knowing so very little about how people react to them.

“3. SMS/Data is bad because it only runs up your bill. The carriers really botched this one a few years ago when they first launched data services. By activating pay-per-use as the default, most consumers have had the unpleasant experience of the ’surprise bill’, which left a bad taste in their mouths. Add to that the fact that every handset has at least one shortcut key to the internet, and you can imagine that consumers dislike mobile data. 8 out of 10 people, when asked, “Would you like to go ahead and add a data package, as well?” reply “No, actually, I want you to disable everything but calling. Don’t want any surprise bills…” I wish the carriers would have offered people their first month free and unlimited, to give the customer a better idea of what their usage would be and offer customers a pleasant way to experience the mobile web and all it can do.”

Isn’t it great what creativity can generate when the right limitations are imposed?!

The results in this case are eye-catching works of art, albeit not always the most usable calendars.