Linkedin Add Media Continuous Buffering Wheel
In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).
My prestigious colleagues have written great essays in this Let's Fix It theme — ranging from the economy to healthcare. I operate at a lower and more tactical level than them, so I've compiled a list of problems that I wish tech companies would fix.
Microsoft Word
Retain the selection of the type of list. The options in the Styles dialog are Recommended, Styles in Use, In Current Document, or All Styles. 99 percent of the time, I want this set to Styles in Use, but every time I close a document and open it later, the selection resets to Recommended.
Displays the styles in alphabetic order in the Styles dialog box. I cannot figure out what order styles are displayed in now (see above). It must be something to do with frequency of use, but that's a vague algorithm. I'd like simple alphabetization so that, for example, Bullet, Bullet Follow, and Bullet Bullet are all together.
Google+
Enable third-party products to schedule posts to personal profiles. You can do this if you use a brand page but not a profile. This means that most people cannot use tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout to schedule and automate their posts.
The bummer is that if you jumped on Google+ when it started, you could only use a profile because brand pages did not exist. You'd be stuck today and unable to switch short of an act of God. In other words, the early adopters are getting punished.
For a while, that stated rationale was that Google+ didn't want spammers to ruin the Google+ experience with automated posts. Of course, these tools have worked with Facebook and Twitter and surely Google knows how to kill spam. Vic's gone. What's the reason now? :-)
Remove the squiggly line. There's a squiggly line under the images of linked article — as if the images were cut with pinking shears. If you manually added the picture, there's no squiggly line. Can we get rid of the jaggies?
Revamp the HOA interface. The HOA interface is difficult to figure out and even harder to explain. Words would be better than icons. For example, "Mute" instead of "that white thing that looks like a microphone in the middle of the top of the window?" You'd be amazed at how many people have never seen a microphone that looks like that.
Here's a test to see what I mean. Time yourself: how long does it take to find the toolbox and add a lower-third label to your video feed?
Enable IMAP access to LinkedIn messages. It's too slow and difficult to deal with LinkedIn messages using the LinkedIn page or app. After slogging through dozens of emails every day, the last thing people want to do is deal with another set of messages using a proprietary interface. I hardly ever get responses to LinkedIn email, so I hardly check it, so people who send me email there hardly get responses from me...
iOS
Enable people to place app icons anywhere they want on the iOS desktop. Are Apple employees such control freaks that they want to manage where people place icons? What if I want the empty row to be at the top of the screen? (With Android you can organize your desktop any way you want.)
Provide an alphabetic listing of all installed apps. I can't find apps that I think I installed, so I go to the app store, search, and then open them after the app store tells me it's already installed. As Steve would say, "There must be a better way." I don't want to swipe and enter text to search. I want to scroll through a list of all installed apps. (There's a full, alphabetical list with Android.)
Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout
Integrate the Canva button so that people can design social-media graphics within any of these apps. The first one of these companies that does this will have a significant competitive advantage—not to mention that I'll make it my life's goal that everyone use it. (Disclosure: I work for Canva.)
Gmail
Enable sorting by fields. I need to sort Gmail by more fields than the date received. Specifically, I'd like to sort by sender, so I can see all the email from one person in a group. One should be able to sort on many fields: date received, date sent, sender, subject, attachment/no attachment.
Fix delegation. Did you know you can delegate access to your Gmail account? This is very useful because you can have a virtual assistant help you with your email. However, if you do, the responses will show that the mail came from you but also display the text" (Sent by virtual assistant's name)."
To get around this, I have given my Gmail password to my virtual assistants which is not exactly a security best-practice. It makes little sense to enable delegation but then display the assistant's name — this is like Audi selling an all-wheel drive car and advising customers to not drive in the snow. Perhaps Google had a last-minute conscience attack: "We can't enable people to fake sincerity. Let's force them to jeopardize their security instead."
Tell me how to post. I fantasize that Facebook and I have the same goal: interesting posts that engage people. Every day I look at how many people view my different posts, and there is absolutely no pattern that I can detect. Maybe the algorithm is random or it changes so often that it looks random.
If Facebook wants me to manually embed wide pictures, I'll do it. If Facebook wants me to link to the source and let Facebook bring in the picture and have no link in the comment area, I'll do it. If Facebook wants me to post personal pictures in Instagram and not Facebook, I'll do it.
I just want Facebook to tell me what to do. I'm not trying to game Facebook. I will play by its rules. Mark Zuckerberg can explain the rules in Mandarin, and I'll get them translated if that's what it takes.
Calendar
This doesn't refer to a specific app, but the entire category. We've had 2015 years to figure this out. Here's what I need. When I'm at home (California), I want all appointments to display at the local time where I will be for the appointments. For example, sitting in California, I want to see that I have an 11:00 am meeting in Sydney when I'm in Sydney.
Right now, if I put in the California time and change time zone when I get to Sydney, the appointment will be wrong. If I put it in Sydney time when I'm in California, it will be right when I change to Sydney time, but it will be wrong until I get to Sydney.
Thus, I don't change my computer's time zone when I travel and set all appointments as if they are in California. That's the best that I can do. And this is only the issue with my computer. Imagine what happens to my calendar on my phone when the local carrier sets the date and time. It's a miracle that I get to any meetings in other countries on time.
Google Calendar and TripIt
Make Google Calendar and the TripIt iCal feed work. Somewhat related to the previous issue, these two things do not work together. Airlines send reservations with local time zone information. TripIt imports this information and correctly displays it in time zone of the other city. However, when it sends the information to Google Calendar, and Google Calendar displays it, the time gets messed up.
TripIt told me it's Google's fault for not support "floating time zones." I have no idea. All I can tell you is that I have to manually enter every airline reservation into Google Calendar because of this, and I fly 200 segments per year.
Micro USB connector
Decide: does the narrow side go on the top or the bottom? Every time I plug a cable into an iOS device in the dark without any trepidation, I hear angels sing. 50 percent of the time I plug a cable into an Android device, I get it wrong, and I hear the devil sing. Can manufacturers get together and just decide on one convention?
Big Connector of the USB Cable
Make which side goes on top more obvious. If you added up all the time people plug this cable in the wrong way, how much does it cost society? And then Apple, the same company that makes the small end so enchanting, makes the USB connector at the back of iMacs go up and down, so I'm wrong 50 percent of the time.
All this said, perhaps the problem is me — that I don't know how to do these things. If this is true, please tell me now. But if the problem isn't me, are these issues too much to ask? I don't think so. The issues aren't that big a deal, but what's the harm in constantly making things work better.
Write your pet peeves in the comments. Maybe companies will read your comments and do the right thing.
Guy Kawasaki is currently the chief evangelist of Canva and the former chief evangelist of Apple. He's the author of thirteen books including The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur — How to Publish a Book, What the Plus!, and Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Action. Guy shares enchanting stuff on the topics of marketing, enchantment, social media, writing, self-publishing, innovation and venture capital.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141103213223-2484700-let-s-fix-it-solve-the-tiny-things-that-drive-people-crazy
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