The top 10 unsolved tech problems? help wanted
Update: here’s a revised list based on all the comments (thanks).
I posted weeks ago asking for suggestions for top problems consumers face with technology that are so persistent we forget they’re there. Here’s the best of the 40+ comments I received.
- Making a 3-way conference call without hanging up on people
- Hooking up a laptop to a projector hitch free
- Remembering to switch phone mode in a movie theater / airplane flight + remembering to switch it out when it’s over.
- Transferring a phone call
- Video + whiteboard conferencing for > 2 people
- Lack of a universal, no-hassle cord free gadget recharger
- Unified / simple manager for all your inboxes (social networks, instant messaging accounts, twitter, text messaging, voicemail – it should all be managed in one simple way)
- Keeping music in sync across all computers and devices
- Remembering online passwords (lots of people recommended 1Password)
- Using technology to broaden viewpoints, rather than reinforcing narrow world views (ok, that’s a human problem, but still).
Know of a) solutions to these? b) other problems that should be on the list?
Remebering online passwords, especially when many sites these days require you to adhere to their idea of a secure password. What if I don’t want to include an uppercase letter, a number, and a hieroglyphic in my password?
I have a couple:
1) The need for a single remote control (not for $500) that will work tv, set top box, stereo, blu ray player. This might be solved via adoption of a single open source protocol for remotes…
2) A way to condense all of the wall wart chargers for every small device into a single standard so that one doesn’t accumulate a boxful of 35 different ones (usually in multiples of 1.5V, but with different plugs).
Making a phone call while going through a tunnel.
Remembering to switch your phone to silent in a movie theater.
Remembering to switch it back out of silent when the movie ends.
There are such devices to relay cell signals, they are just very costly to implement in tunnels.
What if there were a bluetooth protocol code that simply suppressed the device?
Waking up in the morning– alarm clock interfaces that can be accurately operated when tired and/or sleeping.
Getting photos off of the camera.
Transfer a document from place A to place B.
Substitute A and B with ‘computer’, ‘laptop’, ‘phone’, ‘tablet’, ‘camera’, ‘usb flash drive’, ‘outlook’ (or other email client), ‘internet explorer’ (or other browser) … etc ….
Transferring a phone call
Making a playlist in iTunes
Getting the right ink for your printer
Paying bills online
Synchronizing your address book across multiple devices
Data backup (via)
Using a multi-purpose fax/copier (via)
Charles, have you tried lastpass?
Scott, skype and Google voice are pretty good with conf calls, but I’ll agree on the projector issue – it’s far more difficult than it should be.
Silencing phones in movie theaters is so close… there are location based settings services (at least for Android) which can change phone settings based on location (I use it to switch off gps when I’m home to preserve battery for example). All it would take is hooking up an app like this with something like Google maps to do the auto-phone on silent in movie theater.
My list:
* Keeping music in sync across all computers and devices
* Single inbox – we seem to keep creating more (sms, facebook, email, voicemail, …)
* Sign-in and all my stuff is waiting for me, no matter what device [though arguably Chrome OS is trying to solve this]
* Using technology to broaden viewpoints, rather than reinforcing narrow world views.
Vanessa:
Nice list. This was my favorite.
> Using technology to broaden viewpoints,
> rather than reinforcing narrow world views
Some way to get people to read an entire email
Only write relevant information to the receiver. That is a writing problem not a technology problem.
1. Prevalence of Windows installs :-)
2. Office’s Ribbon UI
3. Video + whiteboard conferencing for > 2 people
4. Good quality cell phone calls
5. Different I/O and power interfaces (USB/Firewire/power/etc)
6. Bluetooth connections
fast and stable browser.
Syncing contact and calendars seamlessly and intelligently between multiple devices. Tired of seeing appointments in triplicate…
I have read an interesting post a few days ago titled “Your battery life sucks, and why it’s your own fault” (http://www.neowin.net/news/your-battery-life-sucks-and-why-its-your-own-fault) and thought battery short living (having to charge it more often and see it die when you need it the most) is something worth figuring on your top 10 list.
1. Lack of cheap, zero-carbon, renewable energy sources. (Perhaps not directly a consumer problem, but enough of an existential threat to technological civilisation that it’s worth mentioning).
2. Seconding “Using technology to broaden viewpoints, rather than reinforcing narrow world views” – see “information cocoons”, “echo chamber” etc
3. Automobiles insist on being driven by hand, and thereby steadily but slowly kill & maim thousands upon thousands of people. More indirectly, reshaping geography for automobiles gives you suburbs, which make mass transit expensive, discouraging walking & bicycles, and encouraging sedentary lifestyles. (See: New Urbanism, Cities for a Small Planet, etc).
4. Terrible user interfaces on almost everything: obscure hierarchies of bizarre options, confirmation rather than undo, long delays in response to user action. (Compare everyday reality of appliances, cars etc to “Tog on Software Design”, “The Humane Interface”).
5. Finding some half-decent middle ground between zero anonymity and privacy on the one hand, and hordes of anonymous trolls on the other (the greater internet f* theory).
6. “Information overload” in general: “There’s lots of information and I can’t find the thing I’m looking for”.
7. Encouraging attention to detail and sustained, focussed attention (rather than continuous partial attention to most things, most of the time).
print on both sides of paper maintaining correct sequence on single sided printers
It would be nice if we could :
– work on a document without having to ‘Save’ it explicitly.
– unplug a USB harddrive without having to ask for the authorization from Windows
– eat vegetables and meat that are not technology-enhanced at a level or another (Genetically Modified Organisms, Cloning…)
– drive non polluting cars
The worst being technology artificial obsolescence and companies profits : Today, creating long-lasting products makes companies profits go down because of the decline the demand. For example, printers are programmed to fail at a certain number of copies. If only we could find a way to force companies to create long-lasting products…
Answers to your problems in order
-google docs
-ive pulled out usbs for 17 years and never asked permission once with no negative results
-go to the farmers market
-buy a Tesla or similar electric car
-learn to repair or invent your own printer, take advantage of paperless options like evernote or google drive, take part in the Open Source community and leave the rat race behind
Prevent people from including your email address in email to people I don’t know. Force BCC:
Finding out how to start your rental car & program it’s navigation system especially in a foreign country.
I’m surprised that this hasn’t come up elsewhere. Or maybe I haven’t seen it.
In my family we set up a domain for myfamilyname.com. Then I set up a free Google App service to the domain so then we have shared family email, docs, contacts, calendars and all the other services like google voice. So, easy groupware for families seems like a no-brainer. Maybe it’s too nerdy.
Also, I always hear how deep fried turkey is so awesome. How come there aren’t any restaurants doing it then? Extreme fire hazard? I dunno.
(Plenty of overlap with others, but fwiw here’s my picks)
3. Print a double sided document correctly first time and once done, then print something else one sided
4. Connect to dial-up now that everyone/everything assumes universal wifi access (yes, my parents live in an area without ADSL/cable/3G)
5. URLs. Vast majority of consumers search for a site/url and pick whatever link comes first in Google (or whatever circa 2004 search engine their browser still defaults to).
6. Get two bluetooth devices to connect and then work together
7. Somehow comprehend the unholy snakepit of wallwarts and connection cable their gadgets create. Q. Why did everything not connect/charge via USB in 2006 already, and now in 2011 why is everything not connecting wirelessly (see 6)?
8. Not have a child do one of 3 things to one of your devices; a) render useless b) optimise c) reveal some previously unknown feature
9. Not scream ‘Screw it lets just buy a new printer’ when navigating the forest of ink cartridges (and seeing the prices)
10. Media distribution at home. To a CS grad/geek the correct solution is to store things centrally and share/stream to other devices over the network (cf Sonos, DAAP, DNLA/UPnP, AppleTV, etc). To consumers it’s conceptually easier to consider eg music is on the ipod, therefore I’ll just get a dock per room and move the ipod around (what I would snobbishly call white trash media distribution).
The solution to #2 is simple; use a Mac!
“Hooking up a laptop to a projector w/o restarting”
Anecdotally connecting to projectors is actually getting worse with Macs due to the various similar-but different video ports. I’ve certainly seen a lot of Mac users with this issue. Not sure why the restart’s required though.
Compare that with my EEEpc; running XP, stock standard VGA out and a dedicated key for connecting to projectors… no problems :) I’d be curious to try a Win7 machine as that OS has dedicated keyboard shortcuts for managing multiple monitors.
“Transfer a document from place A to place B.” and to an extend, “data backup”
How has nobody mentioned Dropbox yet? :) Dropbox covers quite a few bases… not quite every last location though and doesn’t extend to pulling data from devices like cameras. Still, I currently use it across PC, Mac, iPad and Android phone.
(If you try Dropbox gimme some referrer love http://db.tt/KWvQkEl ;))
“remembering online/secure passwords”
Try a password manager like 1password, Keepass, etc. Never worry about remembering the different passwords, making them strong doesn’t make them harder to deal with, you can keep your password file in Dropbox. Makes life much easier.
“Keeping music in sync across all computers and devices”
Yeah I wish iTunes/iPods worked better between locations. eg. I can’t plug in my iPod at work and use the column browser without disabling auto-sync; and trying to retain metadata is doomed to failure – sooner or later you have to reformat your ipod or move your library and it’s all gone. I know someone who keeps their music in dropbox but I don’t think they sync the metadata.
“Using technology to broaden viewpoints, rather than reinforcing narrow world views”
Not really a tech problem, it’s those squishy humans that are the problem ;)
I think at the macro level, communications technology has brought the world closer together and changed viewpoints – probably just not as much as people would like to see. We do seem to treat news from around the world as being far more immediate (ie. we empathise with people far beyond our own tribe). That might be as far as we get for a little while.
At the micro level, people are still people… and people tend to hold on to their viewpoints.
Your #2 is strictly a Mac problem. PC users have not had to restart since the introduction of Windows 98.
However, my own top tech issue is related to this, but in a more generic way: I’d like to be able to assume compatibility across platforms (from projector hook-up to ability to display Flash). I urge vendors (software and hardware alike) to build their business cases on something other than forced exclusivity.
I lived through the days of networking incompatibility (TCP/IP, UNIX, DEC/LAT, AS400). When Steve Jobs said in 1989 that the 90s would be the decade of INTERpersonal computing (the 80s were strictly personal), I fell in love with the man.
With HP and others leading the way, the industry managed to get operating systems to play nicely in the same sandbox (via the esperanto of ISO/OSI or another stopgap). From a network POV, Ethernet and Token Ring never did solve their problems: in these kinds of battles, there is only one winner (e.g. Betamax vs. VHS). Alas, it’s not always the best technology that wins.
But I digress…
Today, I see similar problems in the mobile and PC worlds – not for historical reasons (e.g. everyone working in a vaccuum, as we did in the 80s), but to enforce brand loyalty.
This is as sad as it is counterproductive. For me, this is the top unsolved tech problem – and it’s not technical at all.
Showing houseguest/grandma/the babysitter how to just get the damn TV turned on already! YES with sound!
Recording and sharing media across your devices. We have a media server I built, and it’s a cornucopia of TV recordings, family photos, our entire music collection, but Jeebus does it ever require hard-core geekery to get rolling, as well as doing it wrong a half-dozen times. Make. This. Easy. And keep it out of the grabbing hands of the entertainment companies. And make it transparently integrate our media in the house with media from outside. No, Boxee is not sufficient for this task.
Spam.
1. finding the channels on your tv – no, not all cable companies give you a fixed list and yes, some still change them around unexpectedly.. try explaining that to your grandpa!
2. managing all your social networks and instant messaging accounts – and don’t say TweetDeck – it’s an insanely buggy piece of software.
3. keeping a compact digital photo camera still while taking the picture – if you’re not a photographer. Has anybody noticed how people push the button like it had an internal spring and then move the camera and get blurry shots?
4. getting the music you want, when you want it, how you want it – and don’t even attempt to give an answer to that.. (hint: if you live in the US and think iTunes caters to all of your needs, then forget you ever read this point :)) )
These may be “bigger picture” than the list you’re looking for, but specific instances of each may make sense.
* inconsistent and surprising software
Software has bugs or features that are not obvious. A user may accidentally hit a key or click and have something happen they did not intend, do not know how they did it, or even what it actually did. Undo is not universal.
* rapid obsolescence of stored data
I recently eliminated all my floppies and Zip-disks, but I have some TR-3 tapes that I have no way to read. There are files in data formats I no longer have a way to render. Then there is the VHS -> DVD -> BluRay side of that same problem.
* erosion of privacy and control
The abysmal state of computer security is part of this.
Of course facebook, linkedin, etc. are the most popular to point to.
But also, why don’t we all use PGP and https? Why is there _any_ plaintext transferred across the internet?
And then there are things like OnStar, where others can control the machines upon which our lives depend.
Not to mention phones which are tied to a carrier and controlled by them, but are ever-present in our lives, able to measure and record.
* lack of a public domain for software
The closest we have is OpenSource software, and it’s addressing much of the need. But we need works flowing into the public domain through the expiration of copyright (and that means sourcecode, not just the shipped binaries). This would give us a ‘trailing edge’ of technological progress.
Having to actually “drive” a car.
I should be able to get in, punch the destination into the GPS and snooze / eat / talk on the phone / floss while it gets me there at the fastest speed possible.
Programming a single remote to control the TV, Cable Box, CD, DVD, etc.. without having to spend $200 on a Logitech Harmony remote, or guess at which one of a list of several codes works for your Sony (or LG, or Toshiba, etc…)
One disc that plays in my XBOX, Playstation,Wii and PC!
a universal document format
#2 : Win+P (windows 7)
The mystery of browsers having shitty days… especially when using WinXP. One day Firefox won’t work at all with facebook, or WordPress, or livejournal, with IE all is fine — the other vice versa.
Some user-computer relationship problems that are too difficult to give advice on via phone, which doesn’t keep people from phoning me up at night.
“Please… type dxdiag.” “I won’t type anything there, it looks dangerous, I might break something.” “Get a screwdriver then… Are you even logged on as admin?” “Sure!” ….*time elapsing, about 10 minutes,…* “What do you mean, admin?” … Unsolvable!
Too short USB-cables! I suspect the designers of the hardware never actually use it.
To achieve that a child looks still “clean” even after about 10 minutes when you fished it out of the bathtub.
To manage to not get any spam-mails any more offering remedies to enlarge my p*nis. No ty. Happy even without one.
How about a laptop that allows you to un-dock it safely without powering down. Every laptop I’ve ever had had a feature to do this, but I’ve never seen it work reliably without locking up my machine enough to require a cold boot.