What’s wrong with technology? Why does it profess to making our lives easier so we can spend more time doing ‘other’ things? Why is it that 90% of the time I am using technology I am configuring it, setting it up or sorting out problems?

Recently I have been delving into the realm of podcasting, mostly listening to the ‘Daily Source Code’ by Adam Curry, a popular podcaster and very active in the development of this relatively new technology. But since my MP3 player stores only 128MB of data, when most podcasts are in the 10-20MB region and it doesn’t remember at which point in the current MP3 I had reached when I switched the unit off, I thought I’d look for an alternative. Rather than splashing out on a more feature rich MP3 player, the answer was, I thought, to use something I already have… an IPAQ Pocket PC. It’s a mobile device, it runs windows media player, plenty of storage space, connects to the desktop PC via a USB cable. Sorted.

You would imagine with the IPAQ running windows, as with the desktop, you could set the whole thing up so that listening to podcasts while out and about was a cinch. I thought that maybe I could slot the IPAQ into its cradle, have it automatically download any new podcasts from feeds I am subscribed to, so I could just pick it up and listen to the tracks on the bus to and from work. Instead it was just technical problem after technical problem. Can I get my IPAQ to connect to the internet while cradled? No. Even simple tasks are an issue since sometimes the IPAQ likes to say it’s connected but not let my desktop browse the filesystem. Sometimes it doesn’t like to synchronise emails, etc. etc. It’s too unreliable for the simple tasks to even begin to try a slightly more complex yet theoretically simple procedure.

I put most of these issues down to chronically bad design, since it seems those responsible for the features of new gadgetry are driven by what sounds great, rather than innovation and usefulness.

Gripe over, it’s late and I feel more like taking a good old fashioned device and using it’s primary function to reduce everything electronic into a small pile of basic components.

I’ve yet to find a nail that my hammer isn’t compatible with…