While the makers of the Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray (a desk that attaches to your steering wheel "for easy access to a writing and drink storage surface") warn consumers that they ought not use this product while driving, "for safety reasons," users of Amazon.com have lit up switchboard at the product's Amazon Customer Image Gallery and Customer Reviews section, registering their views on the fatuousness of this warning, and on the danger of this product design more generally. It's an unusually great moment for Amazon customer feedback working as a vehicle for social critique.

Oh, did I mention it's damn funny?

Some Choice Customer Images

Some Choice Customer Reviews

These worked great in the cockpit for our tanscontinental flights!, November 4, 2009

My copilot and I both used these during our "daily grind" transcontinental flights from San Diego to Minneapolis. We had to modify them a bit to fit snug against the instrument panels (when we bought them we didn't realize the planes we fly don't have steering wheels!), but in the end it did the job. With our laptops firmly in place we were able to focus our attention on what really mattered, participating in raids with our WoW clan. During our last flight we were so immersed in trying to take down Eranikus that we overshot Minneapolis by a full hour and a half before some annoying flight attendant interrupted us, babbling something about "FAA and F16 fighters."

We'll definitely use this product again at our next gig, whatever and whenever that happens to be...

Highly recommended!

Amazing! Holds my sheet music perfectly while driving., May 7, 2009

This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.

Makes a boring drive easier, November 19, 2009

You wouldn't believe how much more interesting my commute is now that I have something to do other than just stare out the window! I'm using it right now to post this review and I never

An interesting story in Wired last week about the rise and fall of a certain Firefox extension.

Here's the plugin in question. For those unfamiliar with Amazon.com, there's not usually a giant "Download 4 free" bar on the product page.

The extension in question hijacks pages on Amazon.com and inserts in them a (large) link to the product a user is currently viewing as free download on The Pirate Bay, an "illicit torrent-tracking service," if it is available there. The net effect of this is that if you are viewing a CD on Amazon (and thus presumably considering its purchase), you are alerted to the fact that by clicking "here," you can download the same product for free.

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Dear Amazon.com,

Hi, I'm Paul: Long-time fan, first time complainer. First of all, I want you to understand that I know shipping is getting more expensive, and that it's cutting into your profit margins. Especially, I am sure, as concerns your long-standing offer of free Super Saver Shipping. But a nag?!?

Original image via The New York Times.

I just ordered two books from you, with Super Saver Shipping, and I now see on my account that they're (a) in stock, and (b) not going to depart from Amazon for ten business days. What else could this be? It didn't used to take ten business days to ship my purchases to me!

Again, in sympathy, there are way better ways to handle this. For example, why not just charge me a dollar a book for Super Saver Shipping? Then I could get my books on time, your profits could equalize, and we could both be happy? As it stands, neither of us are. At least you could have the decency to just tell me that part of the new Super Saver deal is a shareware-esque nag. I might have just upgraded my shipping plan if I knew what I was in for. As it stands, I'm just cranky.

Gripingly,
Paul

The Situation

Piracy is the biggest problem facing PC games. Publishers claim it’s so bad that it threatens the very existence of the platform. Since it’s so easy to copy games, it’s no longer profitable to develop for the PC.

To help stave the flow of lost sales, many newer games come with DRM (Digital Rights Management), a kind of software lock designed to prevent unauthorized copying. It sounds okay in theory. I mean, we can generally agree that companies have a right to protect themselves.

But that’s where the game publishers have gone overboard—putting their rights above their customer’s. And so, instead of profiting as they should be, they’ve created a storm of controversy and actually made things much worse for everyone involved.

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For several years, I worked with a startup, which, more than anything else, is really just a process of convincing yourself that all the pain now is worth the rewards in the future. Or else your startup is privately funded, in which case you basically work for a corporation with a policy where employees can give themselves their own job titles, but I digress, and anyway, this was not the case for me.

From my experience dealing with people in both situations, though, I think it is safe to assume that either way, you are surrounded by people thinking about money. I did this. I inadvertently surrounded myself with people who thought and cared a lot more about money than I did.

And you know what? Slowly but surely, I started to care about money. It crept up on me. I started thinking about it. I started using it as motivation for myself and the people on my team.

I turned into exactly what I didn't want to be, and it was because I had nothing else. The hours were crap, the pay was bad, the responsibility was enormous. I had no social life to speak of, and barely any sleep. It was everything it wasn't supposed to be.

So that ended (I won't tell you how). And after a several-month tailspin coming out of the experience, I am glad to say I've finally got something else again: My little design firm, Design Less Better.

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Thibaut Sailly does not like the Amazon Kindle. Not the whole ebook-DRM thing (which is also broken), but the form factor itself. For example:

I don't have anything against asymmetrical designs... the volume itself is ok to me. But having symmetric elements (the keyboard and the screen) that give the most visual weight to an un-centered (left aligned) element in an asymmetric shape can only result as a mess. If you choose asymmetry, stick with it. For example, don't make a symmetric keyboard when you can do an asymmetric one. But first, don't choose it when the purpose of the object is to display a book page that looks like it has a center line (apparently they acknowledged this fact by placing the logo centered under the screen).
(Note: Edited a few words-- his English is not perfect.)

I’m inclined to agree with the guy, not only because of the clear arguments he makes with his visuals, but also because he follows a posting about the gorgeous video game Bioshock with a video about Paul Rand (“hero” tag, indeed!).

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