So you've got some fancy phone number that forwards to wherever you go but your caller ID doesn't show that phone number - it shows the number that you're calling from. The expectation can't be that you want people to ignore the number on caller ID and instead dig up this special other phone number you have. That's not what people are used to. They're used to hitting redial on their cell phone, office or home phone since it's so easy, right? So don't get mad when people can't get a hold of you. :-)

For technology to work well, it has to work as people would expect. You can't expect people to conform to some other system just for the technology you've chosen. Apple (and maybe Microsoft) know this very well.

Another example. We've got a web design project now that's using a flash based video player. The client didn't want the YouTube logo on their videos and they have some videos that are just for members, so releasing these videos to the whole world via YouTube just wouldn't work. Well, we're finding out that it's not easy to get a video player to work just like it does on YouTube. The client knows (and I know) that people expect it to work just like YouTube, so we've been on this project a long time, trying to get that player to meet those expectations. Sending something else out there that's below people's expectations causes problems.

I guess my point is that getting things technologically right just doesn't "happen" on its own. There are often large teams of people working on the smallest part of a project and you may never even know all the man hours that goes into something since the expectation is that "it should just work".

I guess that's why politics is often so frustrating. :-)

-T

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