Plausible Deniability in Customer Service

Mon 12 Dec 200507:47 PM

There’s nothing revelatory in this post, and certainly nothing you won’t be seeing a lot more of at Nick Denton’s latest Web site, Consumerist, but sometimes one just has to vent: few things have consistently angered me more in life than the enterprise-level flavor of plausible deniability suffusing larger companies’ customer service operations.

I’m talking about the infuriating phenomenon of encountering a bewildering and apparently ridiculous oversight or mistake in a company’s services or offerings, and being told by a customer service representative that it’s a matter to be dealt with by another department entirely, that the person to whom you’re talking accepts no responsibility for the gap in spite of the fact that it’s all the same company, and that you need to go talk to that other department. Oftentimes, the representative won’t even do you the courtesy of transferring your call!

Post-Trip Wrap-Up

Wed 7 Dec 200511:47 AM

Surfing in Viet Nam

Sat 3 Dec 200503:30 AM

Two years ago, broadband internet came to Viet Nam in a big way thanks to the country’s Ministry of Post and Telematics, which brought ADSL to most urban areas throughout the country. Today you’ll find dozens of small, ramshackle shops marked with signs that say “ADSL,” “Game Online,” or simply “Internet.” It’s hard to miss them because they’re everywhere.

The proliferation of this industry is fueled mostly by Vietnamese kids nursing increasingly pronounced addictions to online gaming. The most popular MMORPGs, like “Swordsman,” are ported from other culturally complementary sources (read: Chinese game publishers) by local upstarts like VinaGame. At just about US$0.19 for an hour of playing time, the result is an apparently ferocious gaming market that wasn’t in evidence just four years ago.

You can use the machines for anything you like, of course, and so it’s not uncommon to spot disproportionately tall and/or well-dressed Westerners surfing next to thin, gangly Vietnamese kids; the former playing at business, the latter at swordplay. Such sights are as close to an advertisement for technologically-enabled cross-cultural bridges as you’ll see this side of an IBM commercial.

Sleepwalking Abroad

Tue 29 Nov 200504:21 AM

First Day Back

Wed 23 Nov 200506:18 AM

As much as small things have changed each time I come back to Saigon — roads laid with gravel now paved, broadband Internet now almost commonplace, newer, taller and more gleaming high rises towering over old construction — the city is basically the same as it was when I first returned here eight years ago. Undeterred by progress, it remains a mess of human traffic, diesel exhaust and unkempt and unregulated commerce everywhere.

I can’t resist it. Its disjointed clicks and whirrs are in sync with a romantic idea of home that I nurse very tenderly: so too the omnipresent and melodic sound of spoken Vietnamese — nasal, drawling, bearing hurt and satisfaction at once.

I was born here but I left when I was three and a half. So just being back, in the midst of the quotidian and the unremarkable, is profound in a very private, intimate way. It’s more than just being a visitor to a place one cherishes; it’s like playing tourist in another course of events, sightseeing the attractions of a life I might have led if it weren’t for, you know, global politics and war and all. Everywhere and everything is a could-have-been for me, superficially strange and foreign but, in an emotional way, also deeply familiar. It’s weird, it’s fun, and the food is amazing.

Feature Parity Tricks

Mon 21 Nov 200503:47 AM

To pass the time during this tryingly long flight from New York to Saigon, I picked up a copy of Mac Addict Magazine at the airport. I haven’t read it in years, but its lightheartedly written geekery is still an amusing diversion in short doses. For this trip, one nice thing about the magazine is the free CD-ROM full of trial software, shareware and on-the-cheap instructional videos included with each issue. Since to travel by plane, in 2005, still means being away from Internet access, I’ve been digging through the CD-ROM a bit and playing with its contents; soft of like surfing a very small, very limited Web.

This issue’s disc includes a copy of BeLight Software’s Image Tricks, an image manipulation application for Mac OS X. Written as a kind of demonstration vehicle of the power of Apple’s Core Image technology, Image Tricks is perhaps best described as a utility for applying Adobe Photoshop-like filters to photographic images with fantastic speed. It’s lightweight and extremely adept at adjusting an image’s exposure, color balance, gamma etc., and applying sometimes ostentatious visual effects.

Away from My Desk Right Now

Sun 20 Nov 200506:03 PM

A quick housekeeping post before I head out to Newark International Airport: as mentioned earlier in the week, I’m leaving for Viet Nam this evening. I’m bracing myself for the day-long plane ride that it’ll take to get my feet back on the ground in Saigon, but it’ll be worth it. Like a dutiful digital dork, I’m toting along my digital camera and my PowerBook, so if I find the time and the Internet connection, I’ll post pictures on Flickr and updates here. Otherwise, I’ll be back in New York in early December. Happy Thanksgiving!

Get Away from It All (with Your Computer)

Thu 17 Nov 200511:49 PM

On Sunday night I’ll be leaving for a long-delayed trip to Viet Nam to visit some family: aunts, uncles, cousins and my dear grandmother, most of all. I’ll be back in early December, at which point the year will be practically over, save for the customary holiday craziness. In the spring I went to see my mother, sister and nephew in California, and of course I also just returned from a week visiting my father in France.

With relatives in so many far flung locations, I spend most of my vacation days each year simply traveling to visit them. With the balance of those days, I try to get away with my girlfriend as much as we can — and that’s basically all the time I have away from my desk between January and December.

I’m not complaining about the way I spend those days, because I enjoy the time with my family and the traveling my girlfriend and I do together. But I’ve started to think also that I should perhaps be devoting some portion of my holidays to just me, specifically to some personal growth.

New Interview at Design in Flight

Mon 14 Nov 200512:18 PM

The November issue of Andy Arikawa’s resurrected Design in Flight magazine is up. Until recently, I had missed its relaunch this past summer, which transformed it from a PDF-based, pay-for-download publication into a Web-based magazine with free access to its content, but I’m glad it’s still around.

This newest edition also happens to feature a new interview with me, and for those tired of me talking about Behavior’s redesign of The Onion, rest assured that topic is never broached in this piece. Instead, I fielded several tough questions from Justin Goodlett about grids, practicing design in New York City and the nature of opposing factions within the profession, among other topics. It’s probably my most articulate interview yet about my thoughts on design in general, for what that’s worth. Go read it.