October 31, 2003 12:01 AM

Broken: Playground design

 Mark Foley writes from London:

These photographs were taken on a walk in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe in London.

This is one of those things were you figure at least, say, five people must have been involved in the decision, and no-one at any point seemed to think it was a bad idea.

Perhaps it's deliberate - so that parents can say, "If you don't place nice, now, you know what's going to happen..."

October 30, 2003 03:01 AM

Broken: First Class seating

Leigh Duncan writes:

Ahh, First Class on Northwest Airlines. You have to straddle the cold metal seat bracket and figure out who gets to use the middle foot area -- the only compartment big enough for a briefcase. Once a bag is in place on the floor, there is almost no room is left for feet. So, passengers are then forced into further discomfort as they avoid kicking the bag or shove both feet to one side of the bracket.

Of course, you can flip down the "foot rest" -- but the height is really set for average to short legs -- so the effect is not much better than riding coach.

October 29, 2003 06:45 AM

Broken: Tube color

Jim Duppenthaler writes:

The Loctite Company makes a range of products called 'threadlockers', a liquid applied to threads to keep nuts, bolts, screws, etc. firmly in place. Every mechanic has a bottle or tube of blue (medium strength) and red (high strength) Loctite in his or her tool chest.

The problem: Loctite Red comes in a blue tube, and Loctite Blue comes in a red tube. This makes you think very carefully before grabbing a tube, as using the wrong one can have serious consequences. Here's what they look like, including a couple drops of the contents of each tube.

Correction - Nov 17, 2003: A representative from the Loctite corporation just wrote in to correct the misunderstanding....

In regards to the problem posed above, please examine the picture Mr. Duppenthaler provided more carefully. When viewed larger you will notice the two tubes are from two different manufactures. The red tube is in fact a Loctite® threadlocker however the blue tube is not a Loctite product but a Permatex® product.

All of the Loctite® Threadlocker products are in red bottles or tubes and have been for 50 years. Since Loctite offers many strengths and grades which are differentiated by colors such as red, blue, green and purple, most packages except for the very small tube pictured do have a color coded strip across them in addition to the written description such as "Medium Strength".

The Permatex® Company introduced their blue bottles several years ago. There is obviously some confusion in the marketplace and Loctite welcomes anyone to visit www.loctite.com for any further information about Loctite® products.

Thank You,
Karen V.
Henkel Loctite Corporation

October 28, 2003 08:26 AM

Broken: Citrus juicer

 Amy Laskin writes:

This juicer has a simple design: press and turn the half-lemon against
the ribbed dome and the tray catches the juice. The fence of teeth will
catch the accumulated seeds when you pour the juice out of the spout.
Voila! Seedless juice.

The broken part? The sharp, pointed teeth are located precisely where
the first knuckle and cuticle of your fingers will land if you press
and turn a lemon! In other words, as you juice, you firmly scrape your
knuckles against the sharp pointy teeth. Bonus for the lemon juice that
then gets into the fresh wound. Ouch!

October 27, 2003 08:19 AM

Broken: Rebate instructions

S. P. writes:

The rebate depends on place where you purchased the product, yet they tell you to call the same exact number for both. What's the point?

October 24, 2003 08:32 AM

Broken: Museum display

Scott Wilkinson writes:

The National Constitution Center, a high-tech history museum that sits across the street from Independence Hall (in background) and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, PA, cost over $150 million to build and just opened this past July 4th.

Well, it didn't take long for browser problems to render useless these information kiosk screens at the museum's entrance! I'm glad the founding fathers didn't use HTML to write the Constitution!

October 23, 2003 08:30 AM

Broken: Street sign

Steve Coan writes:

It's kind of useless to have a brand new, beautiful, blue
street sign if there's going to be a stop sign in front of it. Picture taken in Colleyville, Texas on 9/22/03.

October 22, 2003 02:07 PM

Broken: Restaurant sign

Steffi Kieffer writes from Barcelona:

"It's not here" toilet sign: the photo was taken in a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain.
Try and find the toilet in this place...

Broken: Train indicator

Alexander Colville writes from Woking, England:

This is a picture of the air conditioning status indicator onboard a British train - taken while in motion, so excuse the fuzziness.

I can just about cope with the light labelled with a single exclamation mark, but the second, with two, has got to make you start to worry...

October 21, 2003 12:41 AM

Broken: Cleaning fluid bottle designs

Brian Donohue writes:

I stumbled across the website for these household cleaning products. The problem is, they look
just like fruit drinks! The liquid itself is colored in bright, appetizing, fruity colors, and the bottles are the same relative shape as bottles of juice or Gatorade.

A young child with limited reading skills would not understand that these are poisonous chemicals.

P.S. A quote from their site:

"In blind tests, Pirel was chosen 3 out of 4 times over its competition."

I'd be interested to know who tested these products, and how many of them went blind. Oh, that's not what "blind tests" means? My mistake.

October 17, 2003 11:47 PM

Broken: Burrito claim

Albert Yee writes:

I have a huge head. Liars!

P.S. Albert may want to add that restaurant here...

October 16, 2003 08:44 AM

Broken: Contextual Web ads

Adam Clayman writes:

This is a screen grab I made some months back from Wired.com. The contextual Web ads failed here. The article decried the use of PowerPoint. This didn't stop the advertisers.

October 15, 2003 10:15 AM

Broken: Playground sign

Dianna Ott writes:

What am I supposed to do, now that I know that there's a playground for the next 4,350 feet?
This unit of measurement is beyond my comprehension while I am
driving at 35 mph.

October 14, 2003 10:09 AM

Broken: New York City signage

A New York Times article a few days ago covered broken signage all over the New York City area. Pictured at right is one such sign, pointing to Yankee Stadium. The problem: this sign is located in lower Manhattan, and the stadium is in the Bronx - about seven miles away, with lots of street navigation in between.

As the article states, "signs pointing to destinations miles away in other boroughs are not of much help."

October 13, 2003 10:18 AM

Broken: Cottage sign

Darryl de Necker writes from South Africa:

This sign for a guest house was found in Simon's Town, South Africa, while we were out watching the whales off the coast... it speaks for itself really... a picture of a dolphin for the Whale Cottage... very broken indeed.

October 10, 2003 10:27 AM

Broken: Windows "copying" message

Ben O'Hear writes from Spain:

I know copying a jpeg graphics file is a lot to ask from poor old 233mhz PC running Windows 2000. But 8.5 years?!

October 9, 2003 10:29 AM

Broken: Highway sign

Stephen Cullar-Ledford writes about a highway sign I've wondered about for years:

This sign is commonly used to warn drivers that the right lane is ending and that they need to merge to the left. However, the two lanes on this sign only get closer together instead of actually merging. My (unlikely) theory about the design is that we're supposed to see the negative space between the lines as the shape of the roadway, which would make it correct.

October 8, 2003 10:30 AM

Broken: Match heads

Manuel Razzari writes from Argentina:

These matches' heads are black - the same color a match becomes after you burn it.

As many people place used matches back into the box, it gets harder and harder to pick a new one, as the new ones look like the used ones.

Kind of the same issue with links and visited links, which webmasters often color the same for aesthetics, but then you can't tell where you've been.

October 7, 2003 10:31 AM

Broken: Pen design

Katherine Lumb writes:

The Sharpie Twin Tip pen is badly designed. Great idea: a permanent marker with a broad tip on one end and a fine tip on the other. I was impressed by the pen's versatility, and picked up a few on a recent trip to an art supply store. The first time I used the pen, I took the cap off the broad tip and, like virtually every pen-user I know, slipped it on the other end. When I tried to put the cap back on, it didn't fit. Then I noticed that the cap on the fine tip was missing. I realized that the cap on the fine tip, which was significantly smaller than the cap on the broad tip, had been completely swallowed by and become stuck inside the other cap. I hadn't pushed down especially hard when I stuck it on the other end of the pen, but it was really jammed in there tight. It took 15 minutes of banging, prying and swearing to get the smaller cap out.

Was any product testing done before this pen went to market? You'd only have to put this pen through the paces of normal use to discover this fatal flaw. I can only imagine that thousands of other Sharpie loyalists are as frustrated as I am by this botched effort.

October 6, 2003 10:36 AM

Broken: Weather.com temperature

Erich Neumann writes:

Self explanatory, from Weather.com. Dayton, Ohio always claimed to be a hot place to be....

October 3, 2003 10:38 AM

Broken: Keyring alarm

Carl Myhill writes from the UK:

Here is the keyring that came with my motorcycle alarm. I really liked the warning saying, "If kept with ignition keys, damage may occur". Hmm, then why make it a keyring?!

October 2, 2003 10:40 AM

Broken: Blackberry Phone/PDA

Julie Stanford writes:

I recently had the misfortune to try out a RIM Blackberry 6210 Phone/PDA
for a week. The button to end a call is located in the EXACT location where your right thumb sits on the Blackberry during a call. On numerous occasions, I accidently hung up on people while I was holding the phone.

Another broken feature appears when another call comes in. The call-waiting options encourages you to hang up on people: The first and default option is "answer new call and hang up on current call." Second is "answer new call and hold current call," and third is "don't answer." I can't believe that the default is to hang up on the current person -- an option that I chose on two occasions when I accidently clicked the thumb roller when attempting to navigate to option 2.

This device is very broken.

October 1, 2003 10:41 AM

Broken: Harvard library dropbox

 Charles Henebry writes:

These two pictures show the dropbox for Lamont Library, Harvard's undergraduate library in Harvard Yard. A new sign was put up recently to clarify when the dropbox should be used; unfortunately (as is clear from the close-up photo I've attached) the directions don't make sense.