Brainrub

Starting around the second week of December, I started experimenting with interesting ways to give gifts or other random things to friends of mine who live quite far away from me. It’s been interesting to say the least, and has brought to light many of the security risks inherent to long-distance gift giving while using the web as the intermediary.

Keep in mind: I’m in Toronto, Canada.

Here are three examples:

1) Pizza delivery, San Diego, CA.

I have a female friend who lives in San Diego who I talk to very regularly. She was at home one afternoon while I was working and was starving, but didn’t have available cash on hand. On a total whim I decided: I’m gonna buy my friend some lunch. This turned out to be more problematic than it seemed. I first tried using online pizza ordering services like Dominoes, Pizza Hut, etc. All of these require that whoever’s credit card is in use should be present at the address to sign for the order. They both flatly disallowed any third-party purchase without the card owner being present. I suggested to both that they should have a “buy a friend a pizza” option, but both were dismissive of the idea.

I can understand why this would be the case. Any maliciously-minded person could just abuse any credit card and send random pizzas with no checks or balances in place. I get that. But there are several sites out there that offer “this is a gift” options, with reasonable means of verification. (Amazon and ThinkGeek immediately spring to mind.) But, no go.

So I asked her: if you were to order a pizza, where would you order it from. She suggested a place right in her neighborhood: Pizza Gourmet Express [link] They have a website, but no online ordering. It’s a fairly small but popular local operation. So I decided instead that I would call. As luck would have it, I got the actual owner of the establishment on the phone. He turned out to be very receptive. He even knew who I was talking about when I said who I was buying for. He made it clear this was an unusual request, but I made sure he knew he could call me back to confirm who I was, or even call my work to verify my identity further. He said that sounded fine. So I said I’d like to place an order for a pizza and some dessert. Fifteen minutes later my friend sauntered over and picked up her pizza.

Total time to find one pizza place that would accept my remote order: 25 minutes.

Total order time: 5 – 10 minutes.

Time from initial discussion to friend receiving and eating pizza: ~45 minutes.

Success!

I do believe this functionality will likely show up in the future. I just think about parents with their kids away at University wanting to surprise them with a nice dinner or some other little extra. Campusfood.com should offer this option but does not. I think it would be a huge success, and again: the technology to cover all the bases for this process does exist already. Hopefully this is a good “next step” that these restaurants can take.

2) Order a surprise book gift for my friend, Kim, in Seattle, WA

Kim, as you may know, co-authors this blog (though lately neither of us has had much available free time to do so.)

She and I had a lengthy online discussion about all manner of things and at the end of it I was inspired and wanted to send her a book I knew she would enjoy. I had never used any gift feature of any site, and I wanted to remain in my quick and spontaneous moment. I found the book, ordered it, chose to ship it to her address, and Amazon smartly recognized I had never shipped to a third-party address before. It asked me to confirm my credit card. I did so. A few clicks later and off it went. The entire experience lasted maybe 3 minutes, tops. I received a confirmation email 30 minutes later. The package had been shipped. She received it two days later.

This is easily one of the most convenient features of Amazon.com, or indeed any shopping site I’ve ever used.

3) Third party purchase of a DVD for me, via a friend in Austin, TX

I have a friend in Austin, Texas who I converse with regularly about film and music. We’ve known each other for nearly ten years now. He’s a quirky guy and he’s adamant about recommending films for me. I had heard that one of my favorite French films, Betty Blue (or: “37°2 le matin” [wiki]) directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix had had a re-release on dvd adding some 70 minutes to its original length. I had never been able to find a copy anywhere locally so I asked him if he knew where I could find one. He said he’d just go buy it for me but I said I wanted to compensate him for it, since this was a reasonably rare find. (Speaking of which: if anyone has a line on the director’s cut of Michael Mann’s 1985 film Manhunter, I’m all ears.)

He said (via MSN) “well you could do a wire transfer.” I thought that might be too much work. Instead I said “how about a straight online banking transfer?” He felt that would be too complicated. I went to my bank’s online banking section. They actually offer a “transfer to another account” option. Previously this was for accounts which my own bank handled, but I guess they now offer it for any account. I asked him for the details of his account based on the numbers on a typical cheque. He provided this. Approximately 30 minutes later: he had the money transfer.

He went out later that night to buy it, and shipped it the next morning. I received it five days later. (This guy is a pathologically efficient man.)

That may not be the most obvious way to do things but I was surprised to discover this expanded functionality from my online banking. As one would expect, there was a lot of prerequisite “are you sure?” moments in setting up the actual funds transfer, and I did overshoot the actual dollar amount due to the exchange rate. (Call it a gratuity for my film friend’s access to the rare dvd.)

I’m intrigued to see if this kind of transaction becomes more common in the future. When the Internet started to first get popular, I remember seeing pizza delivery sites based solely in Manhattan, which had really comprehensive ordering menus. That was in 1996. Maybe in the coming decade I can buy my friend in San Diego a pizza shipped from Manhattan. That’s obviously a bit of a long shot, but it’s the kind of wacky undertaking I’d love to explore.

Thanks for reading.

ad

My coworkers were lounging in their recliners, numb from an afternoon of tryptophan leftovers, back-to-back movies, and napping. Somewhere in all of that the wireless Internet connection went down. Given past experience, I expected an onslaught of profanity followed by pounding fists and a handful of tears. But none of that happened; no one moved, and the room grew quiet again.

I was sacked out on the couch, drifting between states of dream-filled bliss and hazy awareness. I was pulled lightly from sleep when I heard their voices. I thought I had heard someone say the Internet was down, but I wasn’t concerned. I was busy napping, see, and napping trumps everything, so I drifted back to my dreams.

Like most people I’ve observed lately, my coworkers are masters at what I call multi-format multitasking (MFM). They are able to watch movies on the television, surf the Net with their laptops, chat online, send text messages, read a book, study for their next test, do their homework, and nap. And like most, I’ve watched people hit the tremor-filled wall of wireless withdrawals.

So when the Internet went down that afternoon, I was surprised no one had gotten up to check the router. It seems the fastest and easiest solution to keep the tremors from surfacing. But that would require stepping out of the master control room of their electronic bubbles. Why do that when it’s easier to shift your thinking instead?

Anything that required the Internet, no matter how important, was shifted to the back burner. They filled the now-unoccupied space with something else: doodling, making playlists, writing notes in their PDAs, working on projects. All the while they continued to watch the movie, send text messages, make phone calls, do homework and nap. They did this, too, with ease and simplicity.

It seems similar to what happens when you hiccup, or sneeze, or miss your step. It happens—and then you move on to the next thing. Think of the last time you played a scratched CD. When it hits the scratch you click the “next” button and move onto the next song. The scratch doesn’t matter, see, because there are plenty of songs left.

When I finished napping and slid off the couch, someone asked me a question. I couldn’t process it very well in that moment, but I heard very clearly what came next: “the Internet is down.” It took about five seconds for my brain to run through a series of steps: check phone, check modem, check router.

The fix was simple: turn the router off, turn the router on. In less than 30 seconds, the wireless connection was back up. And in less than five seconds, I watched my coworkers seamlessly transition the Internet back into the fray while simultaneously moving its replacement to the back burner. They paused, too, long enough to say thanks.

It was like the scratched CD: they hit the “next” button and moved on, never missing more than a beat.

The Lure of Data: This NY Times article talks about data overload, addiction to gadgets, and whether or not all this multitasking is actually productive.

Multitasking or A.D.D.: A wired mom with three kids wonders if she’s the queen of multitasking or experiencing the symptoms of A.D.D.

Multitasking makes us stupid? We think we’re getting more things done by multitasking, but it turns out we aren’t doing any of them very well.

If you know a great website that’s hip and hot on technology, let us know what it is so we can add it to our list of sites to read.