Thursday, June 10, 2010
Product Reviewed: Tawkon (www.tawkon.com) version 1.0.1 tested on a BlackBerry 9700 (Onyx).
The upshot: While documentation and online help for purchasing and troubleshooting are still sketchy, Tawkon is a remarkable application, and comes as close as I’ve ever seen to achieving the Holy Grail of “Set It and Forget It” as any application out there. Tawkon should be considered a vital utility for every mobile phone.
Tawkon describes itself as “a mobile phone application that gives users information and tools to avoid mobile phone radiation as much as possible, with minimal disruption to normal phone usage.”
Go back and read that sentence again. There are an awful lot of promises packed into that claim:
[1] a software application for your mobile phone (not a hardware measuring gadget); [2] delivery of information about your phone’s radiation emissions from its various radios; [3] tools to help you minimize exposure to cell radiation; and [4] a usable interface that lets you get on with your calls.
Does Tawkon deliver?
[Disclaimer: After some initial difficulties purchasing and activating the application, Tawkon provided me with the application and asked me to test and review it.]
I’ve been using Tawkon for a week on a BlackBerry 9700 (Onyx). Navigating to the Tawkon website [http://www.tawkon.com/m] on my phone’s web browser, I clicked the big green PayPal button. This took a leap of faith, actually, since no price was noted (Tawkon costs $9.99) and I associate big buttons like that with “one-click” purchases. I clicked anyway. Much to my surprise, I was taken to BlackBerry’s AppWorld and the message “This application is not available on your device or for your carrier.” Hm.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just closed the browser and gave up.
Within hours, and much to my surprise, I received a classy email from Tawkon, thanking me for my interest and asking about my experience downloading and using the application. This was a first for me, and tipped me off to the fact that the Tawkon team is serious — really serious — about getting the user experience absolutely right, every step of the way.
Who could resist a letter starting, “As a young start up, we’re eager for constructive feedback…”? I wrote back: “Today I finally got my AT&T Blackberry 9700 working with my Orange (Israel) SIM. Tried to download Tawkon, and got a message that it’s not compatible with my phone or my operator. Don’t know which. So, I’m disappointed.”
Four hours later, I got a personal email reply from a real person — one of the company’s founders. After some troubleshooting, he explained that the problem was that I had chosen to purchase via PayPal, which meant purchasing through BlackBerry’s App World store, which is not supported in Israel (who knew?). Instead, I needed to click the other green button, and opt to pay using my credit card via the Mobihand store. Purchasing via Mobihand was indeed quick and easy.
Obviously, this gateway to purchase is confusing and difficult to use, and Tawkon will have to make sure that customers see only relevant buying options, or they will lose many bewildered customers along the way…
…which would be a pity. Because once the aches and pains of getting to the right web page to purchase Tawkon were over, and once the application was installed (important — and undocumented — note: you need to restart your BlackBerry after installation in order for Tawkon to launch properly! You can tell if it’s working by checking for the Tawkon mini-icon in the top margin of the BlackBerry home screen), everything went as smooth as silk.Tawkon has done this application right. They have obviously put a lot of thought into making the application function seamlessly, so much so that it’s hard to believe this is just a first release. Once they cross a few T’s and dot a few I’s, you’ll never guess this is a start-up. Tawkon feels like a mature mobile app from an experienced first-tier company.
I launched Tawkon from the Downloads folder on my BlackBerry, and was taken directly to a Tawkon Prediction screen that scanned my system and reassured me that my phone’s radiation levels were low. The Real-Time Radiation Indication Bar is liquid mercury; it’s so sensuous and fluid you’ll want to walk around mapping your radiation environment just for the pleasure of making the colors flow.
Keeping that screen open, I placed a call from my cell phone to my landline and took a tour of my home. (When you’re not on a call, Tawkon scans using a “Prediction Mode”. When you’re on a call, Tawkon goes into “Call Monitoring Mode”.) The results? My home and office are in good shape, although I won’t be making any calls from the bathroom. It’s just as well.
In fact, you don’t even have to open the Tawkon application to see your phone’s emission status. That little mini-icon on the home screen changes color from green to yellow to red to cue you in, say, before you even make a phone call.
Where Tawkon really shines is when you’re on the move. Most of the time, I never even noticed that Tawkon was there, running automatically in the background. But when I answered a call sitting in a mall café — bzzz. I walked into an elevator while deep in discussion — bzzz. My phone vibrated and a message appeared on the screen, an alert from Tawkon that my phone was emitting high levels of radiation. I switched to a bluetooth headset or the built-in speakerphone and was pleased to see that Tawkon registered the change and let me know that it was helping. Tawkon also records the emission patterns during calls, letting you go back to review your call history to see how much you were exposed to — or avoided exposure to.
How the heck does Tawkon work? Tawkon says it monitors and analyzes your mobile phone radiation as a function of three key parameters: your phone’s specific absorption rate (SAR) – different for each phone model; environmental conditions – rural versus urban area, mobility, and distance from a cellular base station, terrain, etc.; and personal phone usage – the way the user holds the phone, distance from the user’s head or body, etc.
How reliable is Tawkon’s feedback? I’ll have to leave it to someone with a lab equipped to independently check Tawkon’s results against their own measurements. (Tawkon claims to have tested its results in collaboration with In4Tel, a strategic partner.) What I can say is that the feedback makes sense. Tawkon buzzed me in places where my phone would be expected to boost its power to get a signal — in elevators, enclosed stairwells and basements.
What is the impact on battery life? I don’t know how to gauge that, but I would expect it to be minimal, since Tawkon is a software solution. I spent a day at a convention and used my BlackBerry heavily all day for email, some long calls, Bluetooth radio on (WiFi was off), taking pictures of slides and constant Twittering during panels and sessions, and still had plenty of battery life left at the end of the day even though Tawkon was running in the background.
How does Tawkon know what it knows? Beats me, but I feel a lot better with Tawkon installed. You can read up on WHO’s most recent findings regarding cell phone emission risks here. I set out to purchase Tawkon because I wanted to feel some sense of control over my mobile risk:reward ratio.
The upshot: While documentation and online help for purchasing and troubleshooting are still sketchy, Tawkon is a remarkable application, and comes as close as I’ve ever seen to achieving the Holy Grail of “Set It and Forget It” as any application out there. With the risks of cell phone emissions still unclear, Tawkon should be considered a vital utility for every mobile phone.
Tawkon is a keeper. It’s earned a home on my phone.
PROS:
- “Set it and forget it” convenience
- Gorgeous interface
- Responsive, helpful customer service straight from the development team.
- Provides valuable information about what’s going on in your hand and near your head.
CONS:
- Instructions are not part of the application (you can find information in videos posted at Tawkon.com and on YouTube here and here, but it’s up to you to find them).
- Purchasing process become confusing if you’re outside the BlackBerry App World zone. (I guess it’s an “App Region”, not an “App World”, yet.)
Oh, very cool!
…a Burger King in Hillside, New Jersey tried out the MotionPower energy harvester from New Energy Technologies to see how it would hold up to the heavy traffic flow they experienced over the holiday period. As drivers wended their way to the window to get their Whoppers, the cars ran over a metal speed-bump affair that, using the weight of the vehicles to depress a plate and turn some gears, produced 2000 watts with each passing.
As it was just an initial durability test, the fast food franchise didn’t actually benefit from the “free” electrons but customers were treated to a very small light show that was installed to demonstrate the that system was working. The manufacturer envisions larger MotionPower machines installed in places where traffic is slowing down to prevent the scheme from requiring extra energy input from vehicles. [via autobloggreen]
I was using Wite-Out® today for the first time in years. As I painted out type, I thought for a moment what it might have been like to be a Wite-Out product manager 10 years ago. Imagine asking the user experience question: What bothers Wite-Out users about Wite-Out? What can we improve? The immediate replies that came to mind:
- Waiting for the Wite-Out to dry
- Clumpy application of the correction fluid after the first use; the fluid dries and sticks to the brush and the neck of the bottle
- Having to paint over the same words two or three times because they show through even after the first application
- The smell (some people like it, some hate it)
What jumps out here is that improvement in any one of the first three areas will have a negative impact on one or two of the others. If Wite-Out dried faster, it would dry (and clump up) on the bottle and brush applicator faster. If it clumped less, it would take more time to dry; it would also be a thinner fluid that would be less opaque once the liquid evaporated.It’s a no-win scenario, which is probably why there were no major changes in Wite-Out technology over the first 20 years of my life: the product designers had found the best balance — or perhaps the least-bad compromise — between drying quickly and maintaining wetness (smoothness), and were sticking to it. But it must have been frustrating if you were trying to make a better product and increase market share.I popped over to Bic’s Wite-Out site to have a look. Guess what? As of 1994, there are four different formulations of fluid Wite-Out: Quick Dry, Super Smooth, Extra Coverage and Water Base (low odor). Hm.I suppose a cynic might say that there are four different packages for the same product, and the formulation label just panders to the public’s varying degrees of Wite-Out insecurity. In fact, the proliferation of Wite-Out recipes reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s classic statement from Howard Moskowitz that “There is no perfect spaghetti sauce. There are only perfect spaghetti sauces.” In The Ketchup Conundrum, Gladwell expresses it thus:
The answer appeared almost immediately: a specific recipe that, according to Moskowitz’s data, produced a score of 78 from the people in Segment 1. But that same formulation didn’t do nearly as well with those in Segment 2 and Segment 3. They scored it 67 and 57, respectively. Moskowitz started again, this time asking the computer to optimize for Segment 2. This time the ratings came in at 82, but now Segment 1 had fallen ten points, to 68. “See what happens?” he said. ”If I make one group happier, I piss off another group. We did this for coffee with General Foods, and we found that if you create only one product the best you can get across all the segments is a 60—if you’re lucky. That’s if you were to treat everybody as one big happy family. But if I do the sensory segmentation, I can get 70, 71, 72. Is that big? Ahhh. It’s a very big difference. In coffee, a 71 is something you’ll die for.”
I’m guessing that a similar process went on at Bic: if you can’t actually improve a product’s features without making some other problem even more annoying, then instead of finding a compromise balance (as was done historically), optimize for each problem separately. Voila! Four kinds of Wite-Out.Of course, you can then go ask Barry Schwartz
Poka-yoke (ポカヨケ) (IPA: [poka joke]) is a Japanese term that means “fail-safing” or “mistake-proofing”. A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a Lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka). Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur. The concept was formalised, and the term adopted, by Shigeo Shingo as part of the Toyota Production System. [Wikipedia]
Peter Abilla offers a great new example of design that accommodates human frailty: Embeda, a newly FDA-approved pain-killer with
…an interesting property: If you take the medication as prescribed, it works fine; if you abuse the medication, it ceases to work.
…EMBEDA(TM) contains extended-release morphine pellets, each with an inner core of naltrexone hydrochloride, an opioid receptor antagonist. If taken as directed, the morphine relieves pain while the sequestered naltrexone hydrochloride passes through the body with no intended clinical effect. If EMBEDA(TM) is crushed or chewed, the naltrexone is released and absorbed with the morphine, reversing the morphine’s subjective and analgesic effects.
After all, if pain killers can’t relate to human weakness, what can?
illative: [adjective]
- Of, relating to, or of the nature of an illation.
- Expressing or preceding an inference. Used of a word.
- Of, relating to, or being a grammatical case indicating motion toward or into in some languages, as in Finnish Helsinkiin, ”to Helsinki.”
(American Heritage Dictionary via Dictionary.com)This word also seen in Five Days in London: May 1940
“Yet the immediate effect of these speeches [of Churchill’s] on the British people was limited. Their effect was cumulative (or, to use Cardinal Newman’s favorite adjective, illative).”
It’s an interesting use, since in this context, illative implies a significant effect produced by a prior accumulation of insignificant impacts, whereas the dictionary definition suggests a subtler manipulation.
rhodomontade: braggadocio: vain and empty boasting; vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious, blustering talk. (Dictionary.com)Wow.Not just an unusual word, but one I don’t think I’ve ever even seen before. I came across it in the following context:
…now Halifax asked Churchill ‘to come out in the garden with him’ for a talk. Before that Halifax told Cadogan, ‘I can’t work with Winston any longer.’ Cadogan: ‘I said, “Nonsense: his rhodomontades probably bore you as much as they do me, but don’t do anything silly under the stress of that.”‘ (from Five Days in London: May 1940
(Do you think Cadogan actually used the word “rhodomontades” in conversation?!)
Lovers of language, unite!Back in December 2007, I quoted a passage from The Meaning of Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod. Tingo is a book I enjoy dipping into; discovering words from other cultures that express a novel viewpoint is always delightful.So I was pleased to hear from Adam the other day, telling me about his new book, The Wonder of Whiffling
Discover all sorts of words you’ve always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one’s money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.
Even better, there’s a blog at the book’s web page with some interesting word discussions.And even better than that, you can follow @wonderwhiffling on Twitter, and get words delivered right into your Twitter feed. For example, the three most recent tweets:
NEW WORD: tyromancy (1652) fortune telling by watching cheese coagulate
new phrase: ash cash (UK slang 1989) a fee paid to a doctor for signing a cremation form
today’s word: pingle (Suffolk) to move food about on the plate for want of an appetite
Enjoy!
I had an experience yesterday that was totally exhausting, but fascinating. An expected action catalyzed an unexpected emotional reaction; a relatively small incident set off a huge welter of emotions. The trigger turned out to represent — and therefore evoke — much larger, parallel, issues that lurked under the surface.
It’s almost like a pain path: when a person has physical pain, it stimulates the nerve path to the brain. The more often that path is traced, the more developed — and responsive — that nerve path grows. And the more sensitive and exquisite the pain.
I don’t know if the identical neuronal process applies to emotions. If it doesn’t, it surely provides a useful parallel, a useful analogy. Once an emotional route is traced — a certain type of event, a certain interpretation of that event, a certain emotional response to that event — that same route is more likely to be retraced the next time an event of that type occurs.
[I suppose this is the foundation of behavioral psychology: to encourage a desired emotional response by forcing interpretation (either positive or negative) to a controlled event combination (grafting a contrived event onto one that otherwise occurs spontaneously). And by repeating the process over and over, to “retrain” the interpretation to that type of event, thus leading to a different, more desirable, emotional response.]
Musing on Using
All of this led me to think about how the best products or interfaces take positive advantage of this quality: of the ability of one small experience to somehow tap into a depth of prior, more emotional experiences.
In some ways, this is the goal of great User Experience design: to create a series of positively felt interactions that build upon one another to create a superlative overall experience of a product.
Every “Little” Interaction Counts
This is why every “little” key press, every symmetry of interface, every tactile feedback, every sound, every visual transition matters so much. It’s why people like Steve Jobs and Jon Ives are totally obsessive. Because the User Experience as a whole is created by tens and hundreds of little interactions, little trigger events.
On the one hand, this means that the system can tolerate a certain degree of bad experience (think Symbian S60 menus), if the overall experience is positive enough (think Nokia phones). Because the positive emotional reaction will still be triggered often enough to keep the overall experience positive.
On the other hand, this means that the first series of experience event absolutely has to be wonderful, to establish the desired User Experience pathway (think original Palm Pilot). If not, a neutral or negative pathway is established, which is difficult to overcome — perhaps impossible to overcome entirely (think Motorola RAZR).
Creating Passionate Relationships
But the really powerful lesson is that if once you’ve established a solid experience path, you can evoke a strong response in it with even a very small interaction (think iPhone). You can leverage the historic cumulation of experiences to evoke a disproportionate emotional response… for better or for worse.
Each little experience doesn’t just add to the effects of the previous ones, it builds upon them. The speed and intensity increase, up to a certain point. You get more bang for your buck. And you create passionate user-device relationships.
Today is Day 2 of the Google Books game. The game is a brilliant way of exposing new users of Google Books to the service, and to spread the word about the service.It’s also fun!
Play the 10 Days in Google Books gameWelcome to the world of books! The 10 Days in Google Books game consists of 5 questions per day, each day with a different theme. Find the answers using Google Books!Daily PrizesEvery day is a new chance to win. Here’s how: after you answer today’s questions, write a brief creative entry on the topic of books. Each day, the top 3 submissions will win Sony Readers. The first 20,000 people to play the game will also get Google Books laptop stickers.
An interesting twist to the game is that you also have to provide a 50-word entry with your take on the future of books and reading. It’s this blurb that is considered when they choose their Sony Reader winners.
Here’s mine:
The sensory experience of the context, geography and tactile feel of the book as it meshes with the story is not replaceable. We’ll use ebooks, smartphones for reference and mobile purposes. But for pleasure, we’ll have reusable folios instantly printed from online downloads. The best of both worlds!
What do you think the future of books will look like?
Thanks to Michael Danziger for the tip.
It’s the first day of Av. I’m seeing a lot of Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets griping about the Nine Days.*
I’m thinking (…can’t stop thinking…) about the bereaved young family not far from here who lost their 3-year old darling daughter in a sudden, tragic accident. Thinking about their loss, their pain. How the preschool-teacher mommy will be able to bear teaching her students again. How the babysitter will face herself, her friends, her future children… and on and on….
No meat. No music. No luxuriating in the shower. No swimming. No fun… Why not? “To remember the destruction of the House of G-d.” What does that mean? Why do we mourn now, today, this year?
Others have taught about learning the lesson from the past to the present; to repair the sins rampant then and now. “If the Temple is not rebuilt in our time, it is as if we destroyed it.”
Others have taught that the Destruction goes on until Redemption. We live in a world where humanity, the Jewish Nation, and the Expression of G-d’s Presence are in constant suffering. “One who mourns the destruction of Jerusalem shall merit to witness its rebuilding.”
I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking about “nosei be’ol im chaveiro”. Shouldering the burden with your friend. How putting yourself truly into the experience of another person makes you both stronger.
I’m thinking that the Nine Days is also about keeping in touch with the global, historical Nation of Israel. Feeling a part of it, being a part of it. Maybe feeling a part of it IS being a part of it. In good times and in hard times.
“Getting through” the Nine Days misses the point entirely. Will that family whose daughter died be thinking about “getting through” the Nine Days; “getting through” their shiva? They’ll be the week in the deepest form of grief, finding expression in rituals of mourning that the Nine Days only shadows dimly. Will they be griping about the lack of chicken? About sitting on the floor in torn shirts and unpressed trousers? About not listening to music? About not having fun?
And why not? [I don’t mean: “Because the minor inconveniences are overshadowed by the enormity of grief.”] And why not? Because the actions suit the emotional state. They won’t be wanting to take a vacation this week. Or shop for new clothes. Or eat a steak… or much else. They won’t want to listen to a capella singing groups. They won’t want to be drawn out of their grief; they will want to experience and share and touch and reach and be drawn close. They will want to feel held by G-d and know He is carrying them to somewhere good.
Their pain, as almost-impossible as it is for me — a stranger — to bear, is right now. It is only my own pain for as long as I am willing, capable of sharing their burden.
Holocaust survivors know that the world is forgetting their pain. It isn’t gone. But we aren’t always willing to shoulder the emotional burden with them. We want to have fun. We want our meat and music. Despite an individual and human burden of pain that is so vast compared with that of a single family. (”Compared with…” is unfair. There is no “compared with”. What I mean is the vastness of numbers of individual sufferings, each unique and whole.)
The Churban Bayis. The destruction of the Holy Temple. It wasn’t just a demolition, a political or military casualty. It was a whole, long, agonizing war. A siege and famine. A Holocaust, if you will. The nearly complete destruction of the Old Country, the cities, towns, villages, educational system, government. A whole country, a whole people, a whole way of life. A thousand — nay, a million and another million individual sufferings, each unique and whole.
Experiencing the Nine Days is not about “getting through it” until the melave malka on motzaei Shabbos Nachamu. If you feel the pain, you aren’t trying to have fun. You are seeking meaning in the tragedy. You are seeking to experience, to share and touch and reach and be drawn close. To feel held by G-d and to know that He is taking you somewhere good.
You aren’t yet feeling the pain yourself?
It’s about shouldering the burden with your friend. Which friend? Your grandparents. And their grandparents. And theirs. Which friend? G-d, your Father. He does not experience time; it is all fresh, new, raw to His Shechina, ke’v'yachol.
“Kol rodfeha hisiguha bein hametzarim. All who pursue her [the Shechina] shall grab hold of her during the Straightened Times [of Mourning].”
Can you stop thinking about your meat and music long enough to sit down in the house of mourning? To shoulder the burden with your friends? To honor the freshness of pain by taking it into yourself, by acting as one with the body nation of Israel? To become the realization, the actualization, the embodiment of Jew, of Human, of Tzelem Elokim (image of God)?
“G-d is your Guardian, G-d is your Shadow at your right hand.”
*The “Nine Days” count from the 1st to the 9th day of the Jewish lunar month of Av — this year, beginning Wednesday, July 23. They are part of a three-week process of increasing mourning, culminating in the Fast of the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av). During the Nine Days (or the week of Tisha B’Av for Sephardic Jews), the Torah teaches to avoid eating meat; enjoying significant new acquisitions such as clothing, houses, cars; restricting bathing to cleanliness (as opposed to pleasure); and listening to music. A summary of the Laws of the Three Weeks, Nine Days and Tisha B’Av may be found here: Halacha For Today.
