Historical views while you wait
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Waiting for a bus the other day, I noticed this ad on the stop about a mobile service that allows you to view photographs taken at and near that location from past decades. In essence it was just a mobile-optimized website at tolppa.mobi but it’s nice to see such things starting to pop up – and better yet, be advertised so people know to look for them.
Left below is a screenshot of the site in action – you input the bus/tram stop number that’s displayed on the stop and you get a list of photos categorized by the decade, from the very early 20th century to modern times. Select a decade and you get a list of photos with thumbnails and a brief description of each. All in all a neat little service. While waiting for your transportation, it’s interesting to browse how the area has looked like decades ago.
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The site is reasonably easy to navigate on the mobile phone, but of course there are still some improvements to be made. For example, the decade selection could be a simple link list instead of a drop-down list and when clicking on the photo, a big enough version could open immediately.
Sonera “simplifies” pricing again
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Sonera has long been the gold standard of incomprehensible pricing of mobile plans in Finland. Just when I thought they couldn’t possibly pull yet another stupid pricing stunt, they manage to do just that. They’ve recently introduced a new plan called “Minun Sonera” – creating a two-word plan name that is grammatically incorrect is an achievement in itself, but that’s just the beginning of the woes here.
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The plan is marketed as giving you what you want, customized to meet your personal needs and all that. That’s great in theory, unless you happen to want simple, understandable pricing – which, incidentally, is what many consumers want! Click on the picture on here for an “example case” and you see how many selections and choices a consumer will have to make. For your average consumer, this is next to impossible! The data plan options alone are bizarre.
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Do the math; previously Sonera had a half a dozen or so plans with a handful of extra services. Now, in an effort to simplify things, they have a plan that has – count ‘em – hundreds of trillions of different configurations! (6.9 × 10^14). Even if you leave out the additional services options, you end up with two thousand different plans. I dunno about you, but I say that’s far from simple.
How glad am I that someone else admits to getting all worked up over the grammar à la Sonera, too. So far, no one has sympathized, let alone shared, my antipathies.
And what comes to simple, understandable pricing – well, you said it all. Seems to me like they’ve something to hide behind the myriad of different plans.