i gaze upon the cellphone options before me, and weep

Well, you are a designer, aren't you?

--The_Lex Tue Apr 25 11:14:57 2006

Dunkin' Donuts really bugs me. In particular, I dislike two business practices of theirs:

1) Placing standalone stores in high-traffic areas that cause major traffic tie-ups due to people turning left and/or overflowing undersized parking lots.

2) Deliberately "clustering" lots of stores near each other, even at the expense of profits for the individual franchisees, for the sake of building brand.

--Max Tue Apr 25 11:53:47 2006

I recently picked up a new/used 20GB iPod photo. (Actually, it's really for my wife to use in the car as any easy way to select what my 5 year old son wants to listen to.) The UI is pretty good considering the limitted interface. But I still find myself griping at it a bit. My main one is there's no easy way to alternate between shuffle and sequential modes. (My son likes to listen to albums in sequential order, my wife wants to listen to playlists shuffled.) Maybe holding down play?

--ericball Tue Apr 25 12:24:46 2006

Is that clustering delieberate, as opposed to just careless?

--Kirk Tue Apr 25 12:49:55 2006

I've been told that it's deliberate. Specifically, the parent company encourages local franchisees to open up several locations nearby each other, even though they will cannibalize each others' business, as the corporate strategy is sort of a "one on every corner" type of thing.

--Max Tue Apr 25 12:54:35 2006

Feh.

CVS has done the same thing I think. I love the ones right across from each other at Coolidge Corner.

--Kirk Tue Apr 25 13:20:42 2006

Am I mistaken or is cellphone caller-ID a load of hogwash anyway?

In my phone, which claims to have this feature (and my service plan which claims to offer it), it'll tell me the origin phone number, but not a name that I would get from a common Caller-ID unit on my landline. Now, if that phone number matches an addressbook entry, *that* is when it gives me a name, but it gives me the name that I put in there-- "Dad cell" instead of my Dad's name, or whatnot.

I think the feature you desire doesn't exactly exist.

--LAN3 Tue Apr 25 14:56:17 2006

Subway, which in this area at least only recently started franchising (I gather), used to have 1 within walking distance of my job, and now has about 6-7*. Some of them are just at the edge of the range, but on the other hand, I can stand in front of one of them and see 3 buildings that have Subway shops on their commercial ground floor. I can tell that at least 4 of the new ones are owned by the same franchisee because of the way he shifts employees around, while the original one has had the same staff for eternity (which, by the way, is an awesome thing in fast food, for regulars).

Novel fact: Subway shops are the #1 single consumer of tomatoes in the US, so when the price of tomatoes goes up, as it did last year, so do Subway prices.

*figure 10 minutes walking distance at most

--LAN3 Tue Apr 25 15:02:20 2006

LAN3, I think you misunderstood me; you're right in that the "caller id" in cellphone land means "do I know the digits that dialed me?".... so the only calls that fit the "no caller id" filter are the few that are actively blocked, like with a headhunter.  Clearly the filter in place is not very useful, which is why I'd much rather it have "in phonebook" "not in phonebook" filter.

--Kirk Tue Apr 25 16:03:49 2006

My favorite cell phone was the first one I ever owned. The display was nice and big, it could receive text messages, and it was really easy to lock it with a security code.

The second cell phone had smaller print, and I couldn't lock it with a security code, but it had this neat voice dialing thing where I could push-to-talk and say "papa john's" and it'd call the pizza place. And a speaker phone.

The third cell phone: same, but no speaker phone. But it was color!

My fourth cell phone has a bigger screen but smaller text, IM applications that don't work, and a bunch of other crap I don't need. It's harder to use the phone book because you have to actually go into the phone book, you can't just dial "32" and see Dave's name show up.

The color on my previous and current cell phones have never once been useful.

--Nick B Tue Apr 25 17:12:59 2006

Ah, I thought perhaps "no caller ID" would be basically the same as "this person is not in your phonebook" *because* of the shortcomings of cellphone caller-ID."

My current phone lets me create dialing shortcuts for entries as long as they're stored in the phone and not the SIM card, so I can choose which ones I store to my phone. In fact, to use any nice features, such as "pull up this picture when Kelly calls" or voice-dialing, the phonebook entry has to be on the phone, and moving it to the SIM causes it to lose those features as well as any other fields in the expanded phonebook entry. I would take some time to explore the individual phone books to see if you can't in fact set up some short-hand dialing.

--LAN3 Tue Apr 25 20:48:20 2006

I do think it's odd that I haven't heard anything about SIM cards at any of the stores I was at

--Kirk Wed Apr 26 06:33:51 2006

I told you Dunkin' Donuts is evil!

--Candi Wed Apr 26 15:40:54 2006

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