Improvement Wanted

Mobile features – this is kids’ stuff!

April 5, 2012 – 3:44 pm

I promise not every post I make will be about children’s products, but this one will be…

The mobile is a standard baby product. They’ve been around for years – you would think that the companies that make them could get the feature set right. Granted, the actual customer can’t talk to say what they want, but there are plenty of books that talk about the best things that calm babies, and plenty of mom’s that have read those books if the mobile designers don’t want to read them. This is the mobile that I have:

 

It has cute jungle animals, and a “remote”. (Explanation of the quotation marks forthcoming) It was easy to set up and my baby girl seems to like watching the animals move around. I like that I can use the remote to start it up again when it stops, since she’s still sleeping in a bassinet in our room.

Now here are my complaints. First of all, babies need white noise. It’s general knowledge that gentle sounds don’t work very well (like a rainforest or ocean sound), they want something kind of loud and more blunt – like the noise of a fan or the static of a radio. Why can’t they put a noise like that on the mobile?

The next thing that bugs me is the fact that the mobile offers music or rainforest, but no option for no noise whatsoever. My preference would be to just have the animals moving, no noise. After all, I have a white noise machine going separately.

The remote – a good idea, in theory – only works to keep the mobile going after you’ve started it from the main machine. You can’t use the remote to start it the first time. If you could, it would be a lot better. Sometimes I might want to run it when she starts waking up in the morning to buy myself another 10 minutes or so – like a snooze button on an alarm clock. Or if I put her down when her eyes are closed, but suddenly they open after I’ve gotten into bed.

I don’t want to knock my particular mobile, I don’t think that there are any that really have the feature set that they should for such a basic product.  I’m kind of disappointed – sometimes I think that these companies that make baby / children’s products don’t do all they could to truly make the best product they could, but instead just assume that the sucker parents out there will buy everything.

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Random

Are diapers playing dirty tricks?

March 29, 2012 – 3:20 pm

After recently becoming a mother, I’ve been exploring the world of baby products.  One product I spend a lot of time using is diapers.  They have come a long way from what I remember seeing when I was younger and my cousins were babies.  They have much softer materials (I remember them looking like complete plastic) and they even have a line that turns from yellow to blue to show when the diaper is wet.

I think the wetness indicator was a genius idea on the part of the diaper companies, because I personally think that it probably leads to people changing the diapers more often, thus buying more of the product.  I think this because there have been times that I would’ve sworn there was no way that the diaper could already be wet, I just changed it 5 minutes ago.  But the indicator shows that I am wrong, my daughter has in fact already peed in the diaper I just put on her.  So I believe I am going through more diapers than I would with diapers that have no indicator.

My husband takes the opposite view – he says that he would probably end up changing the diaper more often if there was NO indicator, because he would assume that was the problem if she was being fussy.  He thinks that we would use more diapers without the indicator.

We did have a pack that had no indicator on them.  I don’t know about my husband, but I didn’t change those diapers quite as often because there wasn’t a big blue line on it telling me that I needed to change it.  What kind of mother is going to leave a diaper that has something on it screaming out that it’s wet?  Showing the world that she’s leaving a dirty diaper on her baby?  It’s a guilt producer as much as anything.  Which is why it’s genius. Not only did it probably increase sales but they most likely can charge more for those diapers because of the added technology.  I would love to know how much diaper revenues increased after they added that indicator.

 

 

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Improvement Wanted

Stop shoving the social reader on me!

January 25, 2012 – 10:21 pm

Dear Washington Post,

I want to read your articles online without having to do it in Facebook.  Is that still possible?  Many of the links that I’ve clicked (even links on the washingtonpost.com) take me to a page that wants me to install your stupid social reader.  Maybe I don’t want everyone to know what I’m reading.  Maybe they don’t care what I’m reading.  Maybe I don’t want to give up my privacy so that more and more companies can track every single news article I read.  Maybe I think reading the newspaper isn’t the most social activity and I don’t really want it to become a social activity.

Can’t you just give me a link that lets me read the news?  I am never going to install your Facebook app so just get over it.  Otherwise, I will just read the WSJ and the NY Times and ignore the articles from your newspaper.

thanks.

 

 

 

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Customer Experience

The E-book Experience – it’s a market Extension

January 23, 2012 – 11:04 pm

It sure seems like you can’t talk about reading without talking about e-books.  Understandably so, since that is how many of us are reading this days – digitally.  I read on two different Kindles and sometimes my iPhone.  The only physical books that I’ve bought in the past year are how-to books (with things like sewing patterns) and photo / coffee table books.  In fact, just recently I sent in some of my physical books to Amazon to “trade-in” for credit because I am sick of them taking up space in my house.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love books.  I still read quite a bit, and there are some physical books that I’m never going to get rid of because I love those particular books.  Many of those are classics, which I can also put on my Kindle for free, but I still like having the physical copy at home.  However, I think e-books are awesome, and not just because now I can carry one thing that’s the size of one book and read virtually any book I want at any moment.  But also because I think it has the power to change the experience dramatically and help make many more people “readers”. read more »

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Pricing

Yoga class prices out of alignment

January 8, 2012 – 8:35 pm

Today I explored the recently updated site of YogaDownload.com (YDL as they refer to themselves).  This is a site that I’ve been using for a couple of years now to download yoga podcasts onto my iPod. read more »

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Improvement Wanted

Hard luck with hard drives

January 7, 2012 – 5:42 pm

About 4 or 5 months ago, I realized that my computer was running out of storage space.  I already had an external hard drive that I was using for backup.  However, I decided that if I was going to have to take files off of my computer altogether, in order to free up space, then I wanted to get a second hard drive so that I would have all files stored in two places – after all, there’s a chance one might go bad.   read more »

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Improvement Wanted

Impossible Packaging

January 7, 2012 – 4:58 pm

Like the rest of middle class America, we like to get things from Costco – however sometimes I find certain types of packaging unbearable.  The most annoying being the cardboard / plastic combo used for smaller things like toiletry items.  I realize we are trying to save money, but would it really cost so much more to put a strip in the packaging that would help it tear open (similar to envelopes), or some perforation?  Instead I have to use our monster scissors, using the most deathly hand grip I can muster, to cut it open! read more »

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Improvement Made!

Amazon Kindle Gifting Improved!

December 26, 2011 – 11:43 pm

Since I haven’t tried to “gift” a Kindle book since last Christmas, I can’t say when it happened, but if you remember back in January I write about how you could only send a Kindle book as a gift on the day you purchased it.  (See original post)  This year when I was Christmas shopping, I wanted to send a Kindle book so I went into the site, and now it will let you choose a date to send the e-mail & book to a recipient!  Simple feature, but it makes a world of difference, since I was ordering in the middle of December and didn’t want it to actually be “delivered” until Christmas day.

Thanks Amazon!

 

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Improvement Wanted

Truly Personalized Cards for a Group – Hard to Get

December 26, 2011 – 11:20 pm

Between baby showers and Christmas gifts, I have a lot of thank you notes to write.  I realized today that what I would like to do is pick out a thank you card design online, upload an address list, type in an individual message for each recipient, and have someone send them for me, rather than me handwriting each message and address out myself.  Yes this is the result of my laziness, because I can type a lot faster than I can write.  Also, I can edit before it prints, which prevents me from making mistakes and scribbling or wasting a card, as I often do when I’m handwriting.   But I can’t find a way to really do this anywhere. read more »

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New Stuff

For phone and key losers…this is a winner

December 21, 2011 – 9:25 pm

I just saw something about a product that seems pretty cool – in fact, if I hadn’t already finished my Christmas shopping I’d probably be buying my Mom one.  It’s called the ZOMM – they call it a wireless leash for your phone.  Basically, it’s a key chain that uses bluetooth technology to help keep your keys and your phone together. read more »

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