Recently, the local Time-Warner Cable affiliate, Oceanic, debuted interactive TV ads on digital cable service. The first client, First Hawaiian Bank, is using the technology as an easy way of opt-in marketing. During specially-encoded commercials, the cable box pops up a screen which offers to have the bank mail you a pamphlet or call you back. All it takes is to push A or B on the remote (PDF).

I’m really not a fan of these popups. For starters, they’re not particularly pleasing to look at. I don’t mind commercials; I know they pay the bills for the shows I watch. But when you have these pop-up graphics rendered by the set-top box, they’re really hard to read. Plus, they cut off the pictures that a team of creative professionals spent a lot of time designing.

Secondly, I don’t like the fact that the commercial options are available to whoever happens to be watching at the time. At the moment, it’s only a minor nuisance if somebody pushes the button and inadvertently invites a business into their home. What will happen when a pizza delivery chain starts adding a simple one-touch way to purchase today’s special?

If interactive commercials are going to become commonplace, the least they could do is try to make them look like a single product. The Weather Channel does a good job of this – certain commercials for national chains include a computer-inserted list of local stores at the end of the spot, keyed over a nice, blank area of the screen. This is what needs to happen to the FHB commercials. (I don’t expect it to anytime soon, however, because the same commercials are aired both on analog and digital TV.)

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of SDIO Wi-Fi cards. A Palm handheld is so much more useful when it can talk on the Internet. My handheld already has all the software I would need to be productive on the ‘net. All it needs is a way to get access.

When I learned that SyChip was testing reference implementations of a Wi-Fi card, I was thrilled. The card, slightly larger than a postage stamp, would plug into the top of my m515 (and most newer handhelds) and let me connect via my Linksys wireless access point. Once connected, I could surf the web with AvantGo, HotSync, check my e-mail with Eudora, and even control my notebook computer anywhere in the house with PalmVNC.

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Well, the bad news is that SyChip’s first major reseller, SanDisk, has been pushing the release date back ever since the initial announcement, from the second quarter of 2003, to June, and now to July, with Palm OS drivers available in Fall.

I suppose I should be optimistic, seeing that the latest announcement is the first mention of the card that SanDisk has made on its web site.

Seeing that Dean was kind enough to feature me in his tech cache over at b4G, I figured it was time to actually post something technology-related.

I discovered yesterday that Movable Type thought the time in Hawai’i was an hour later than it actually was. I hadn’t noticed before because I tend to write in spurts, saving drafts and publishing stuff whenever it’s convenient (and updating the time of publication manually).

Technology has rapidly been improving in its understanding of the horrible wrinkle in timekeeping known as daylight savings time (which Hawai’i was smart enough to ignore when it was introduced). Even my watch lets me set daylight savings time on my world clock mode with only two button presses. Even so, technology seems to get confused – just like me – from time to time. (No pun intended.)

I tried Internet searches without any luck. Finally, I bit the dust and sat down to do some tedious blog manipulation and kludging (I hate kludges):

• I manually changed the RSS 0.91 and 1.0 templates to hard-code my time zone as GMT-10.
• With the conveniently pre-installed copy of phpMyAdmin, I manually changed every time in the MT database to reflect the correct time. Good thing I’ve only been doing this a week.
• On the Weblog Configuration page, I set my current time zone to Nome Time, effectively lying to my blogging tool of choice.

So, two hours later, Waileia is now chronologically accurate, if not confused. (I think.) Now all I have to do is remember to set the time zone forward to -1000 when Standard Time resumes (when? October?).

I don’t know what technology to blame for this irritating error. My web hosting provider seems to get both its local time (MDT) and GMT right, and it’s unlikely the problem is Movable Type’s fault for the simple reason that my provider’s user forums are off by an hour too.

If it weren’t for its blatant commercialization, I might be more agreeable toward switching the world to Internet Time.