I've met a lot of whining scripting language writers
in their late teens, some which thought they were
hacks after a couple of dos batch files and making
attempts at visual basic. Some then turned to
drag-and-drop web page design and importing, positioning
their favorite gif and jpg files, a masterly move in
an expanding market.
I guess it is too much to also ask them to check
the settings of their phone, SMS or Data for WAP, as well
as make a call to their operator asking for local
Data support. (even if internet information said
some operators in India don't support SMS-messages,
a niece spending some time there was able to do
SMS messaging to Finland almost every day from som
10 different locations, even on the train from to
Bombay, which was fun)
After that demanding task the hacks could of course remember
to figure out how to query what phone visit their
site and do some testing (for example the same hacks
who open their html pages as full screen and open
another at every close command).
Anyway, I'm doing banking, getting news, checking my
(finnish) investments,etc on the 7110, have not yet
had a urge for selling so that is untested.
But the service is similar enough to the desktop
version that my brother's wife accessed her accounts
at first try with some help from her kids on the navigator
roll and how to fill in the password-code.
That is, that WAP-designer used the wrong symbolic
representation for when to advance to numerical
input mode compared to selecting items from a menu.
She additionally had the standard problem of finding
out how to "get back to where I went a moment ago",
another thing needing a more intuitive system in desktop
browsers.
But it is fantastic how things speed up when going from
the appr. 300bps, 160 byte SMS-channel to 9.6kbps
streaming data when transfering some 321-600 bytes of text
and commands(when the local operator supports that)
That is, I decided not to make any consumer behavior testing
on myself, since I've been doing electronic banking since
the early 80s in and to Finland, from all over the world.
It is pretty incredible how it now becomes more and more
common in USA as well as UK for the individual, not
just for larger corporations.
Ilmarinen.
p.s.
To keep the "personal identification" target and
avoid age discrimination:
This winter I plan to take some time to have my ageing
(80) godmother start to pay her bills with a 7110,
good when her doorstep, yard is covered in snow with
a possibility of ice beneath. (she insists on paying every
bill herself, to not use any automatic billing from her
account)
Btw, she already likes the 7110 display and the predictive
text-input, easier for her to write me and her
kids and grandkids text messages. (but at that age one
needs to have one's time to get used to the idea of
replacing things, probably some association with too old
versions in the market and beeing forced to part from them, like when the old refrigator reached the limits of
refrigator age) |
