A phone ring broke my morning peace. 

 

Hello? (1 second silence) "Hello, my name is ___ and I am a firefighter in your neighborhood. I am calling to encourage you to vote YES for referendum ___." That's when I hung up. Was I rude? What's there to be rude to a machine? If you care enough about an issue, at least call me in person. Don't send me a recorded message. 

 

Here's a better one. Phone rings, and I pick it up. (1 second silence and then click). "Hello, please HOLD until the next agent is available." Then I become very confused. Did I make the call or did I just answer the phone? Then I come to realization of what's happened and hang up promptly. Why should I wait for your telemarketing message? What kind of marketing tactic is that?

 

Technology is only a tool. If used properly, it can improve efficiency and effectiveness. If used improperly, it can bring undesired outcome. Telemarketers better come to realize this... before people start using phone technology to detect calls coming from a machine rather than human dialing-in (does such technology exist already?). Then we get into "tech - war" with neither side winning, and people attributing all shortfalls to technology. That's a discussion for another day.

With all the hype about Bing (and I like Bing more than any other search engines Microsoft produced), I can't believe that I just spent 15 minutes looking for a place to change my Live ID password.  I normally went to www.live.com to login and access my account.  Now that URL takes me to www.bing.com and I can't access my account... only my preferences!  After couple of savvy maneuvering around redirects, I figured out Windows Live is now http://home.live.com.  It's been awhile since I last visited Windows Live homepage (my fault for neglecting to pay attention to constant changes on the Web for the past few months), and I was literally lost in what seems to me modules after modules of UI elements ... network, preferences, safety, profile... but no account!  Finally when I scrolled down to the bottom of the page (I don't know what prompted me to do so), I found a link to my account at the bottom right corner!  Ahh... 15 minutes of treasure hunt just to change my password to keep up with Web safety.  It's got to be easier than this!