Posts tagged “beta”

Beta Blocked

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Well, Yahoo’s TV page is in beta with its new facelist. Sexy. Content-y.

And useless. I don’t need to have a Rich Media Interaction with the Property and the Brand. I want to see if this episode is a repeat. The old version said very clearly
Original Broadcast Date: xx/xx/xxxx – if that was today’s date, then it was a new episode.

Sometimes they’d put (repeat) if it was a repeat, but the absence of that information doesn’t seem sufficient to verify it’s not a repeat. And reading the plot summary and trying to decide if I’ve seen that one? That’s work.

I know, users like to gripe when things get changed. But did they ask anyone how they use it, first? Or did real estate for big banner ads for the show take precedence over actionable data? I dunno.

Update: even worse…if you click on a show in the grid, say, the 10:00 pm listing for Law and Order, Yahoo shows you the “Law and Order” page, with information about the next episode. But the next one is a 2:00 pm syndicated episode on TNT. It requires much more work to get to the details of the episode I already told them I wanted. Finding the “all upcoming episodes” link and then looking through that to find the 10:00 link, clicking that and finally, the info I am seeking. Ludicrous!

Living in Beta

I have no idea of Google Maps is in Beta or not, but man, is it broken. In Firefox and in IE, I can not print a map. It’ll generate a nice print preview with all the directions and so on, but the all-important IMAGE is absent. Argh.

Do you ever find yourself screwing around with some semi-working website (especially one you trust and expect to work, like Google) for a ridiculously long time, only to have to completely throw up your hands and go onto another method? It’s nice that it’s free and all, but what a waste of time! This used to work only recently. Very annoying!

Series

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