kuniform

I bought a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner, and it rocks. It’s all duplex, full text indexing, faster than a speeding bullet, paperless office, blah blah blah. And with a $50 rebate, who could go wrong?

Well, the thumbs are pointing at ‘this guy.’ I sent Fujitsu exactly what they asked for in the rebate packet, and what did I get in my email today? This:

Unfortunately, we were unable to honor your request for the following reasons: We did not receive an original serial number label with your request; We did not receive a rebate certificate with your request; You must submit more than one UPC symbol or proof-of-purchase tab to qualify for the rebate.

You will receive an additional notification by mail. You may also access your submission by contacting us at:

Online: http://www.fujitsu-fcpa.rebatestatus.com/link.aspx?xxxxx-xxxxx

Customer Service: 877-247-2328

We appreciate your business. Thank you.

I did send it all in, exactly as they asked for. Ironically, I can’t find my copies of those forms. I think these rebate form companies get extra cash for denying legitimate requests, it’s all I can fathom. This is the second rebate I’ve sent out and had this happen with, even though in both cases I followed the letter of the law.

The disadvantage of outsourcing everything is that there is no legitimate way to register dissent. Fujitsu has their cash, the rebate company probably keeps a premium, and calling them doesn’t let Fujitsu know how badly they’ve screwed a customer. It’s a win-win-lose proposition. So, I’m done. Done with warranties, done with rebates, done with operating with corporations as though they actually meant to honor contracts. It’s not like this is new ground for me, but it certainly is painful to tread it each time I do. It’s a system designed to screw people over. Feel the karma of that, Fujitsu, you’ve earned it.

Here’s a great interview on CNET with the founder of Pandora, the music Ai service. Nifty. Pandora observes what you listen to and then suggests more songs that sound similar. In essence, you end up making your own radio station. Neat.

One of the crazier aspects of the interview is how the founder did 348 roadshows before landing his first round venture. Now, that’s persistence!

Jeremy Sydik, a colleague from RailsConf 2006 and a bona fide accessibility guru of the University of Nebraska, is writing the Accessible Web, which looks to be a comprehensive look at web accessibility and full of practical examples. It should be released in late 2007, but is available as a beta book now. You can buy it, ask questions, and help drive its development. How cool is that?

It’s cool.

How do I know about this fascinating book, you ask? Because Jeremy asked me to be a technical reviewer of his manifesto. And I agreed, having nothing but total disregard for my pet projects and their timelines. If I don’t launch, they can’t be criticized, unless you can see inside my brain. You don’t want to look there, it is dark, dank, and inaccessible in there, unlike Mr. Sydik’s book. The book is bright and shiny and contains many useful and practical insights into the concerns of the disabled and practical approaches to addressing those concerns.

Kudos, Jeremy! I don’t know what kudos are, and I’m too lazy to google it. You should have truckloads of them, though, for having the talent, persistence and foresight to write this book and get it published. Huzza!

Enough Monty Burns talk. On with your day! Nothing to see here, please move along.

Yup, I pulled down the ‘kuniform is dead’ page even though the new version is not up yet. I had to! It was time to announce the launch of kuneshdesign.com, the presence of my new consulting gig.

I’ll be posting here again shortly to talk about some of the decision-making and technology that went into creating kuneshdesign.com, including some thoughts about why I’m launching a contracting business, plans for the biz, and a bit of the technical tricks behind the portfolio section.

I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t had as much time to post as I would like. I’ll make up for that with a post full o’ links today! A plethora. Plethora.

First off, in the spirit of the never-ending redesign, here’s a great 15 tips blog post on choosing a type face. I am a type amateur, but I love reading and learning about it. This Spiegel article is ancient in our 24/7 newscycle, but here’s a community that has done away with traffic signals. This is reflective of Christopher Alexander’s maxim to always design scaled to the user. It also shows how, though human-designed systems are good, human nodes in an amazing complex physical, emotional, and spiritual system called the world possess an innate ability to regulate themselves and their behaviors absent the enforcement of other humans. Libertarian moment over… now.

From a time slightly after the Spiegel article came out, i.e.—right after the dinosaurs started becoming oil—Tim O’Reilly felt compelled to redefine Web2.0 with a more compact definition. It’s a good read, but the Hype Curve has sailed on that one, Tim.

Some random accessibility stuff about video captioning, Dutch law and a new effort by Joe Clark to make media uniformly accessible.

Garrett Dimon has an interesting article about markup as craft. I’m pessimistic today, so all craft feels dead to me. Happy Valentine’s Day. However, Garrett’s 21 points are right on. They’re the implementation details of these 15 research article-derived design tips. What the heck is up with 15 being the magic number of tips? Who the heck knows?

Where did I get all this great stuff? Lots of it came from the Web Standards Group mailing list. This maxdesign guy put out the links for light reading weekly. Highly recommended.

In the file under random portion of our post, I’m beginning to research buying a hybrid, and this Jamis Buck article on concerns in activerecord in Rails hit the spot, oh, a month ago, when I began this post, back when my life was far less chaotic.