January 31, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Universal City Nissan ad

Troy Pozirekides points out:

I found this gift card in an ad for a new Nissan car dealer in Universal City, California. However, after reading the back of the supposed gift card, I found out that

- This is NOT a gift card.

- This card is in NO WAY an endorsement for, promotion of, or represents any company other than the location listed on the attached advertisement.

- This card has NO monetary value.

- This card can ONLY be redeemed at the location listed on the attached advertisement.

I also never figured out what the card could be redeemed for.

January 30, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Carnival wine recommendation

John Smith from Cape Town in South Africa points out:

I bought this Carnival Grand Cru wine and the printed recommendation is to "Consume the wine after six weeks of opening the container..."

I think they meant to print within six weeks.

January 29, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: One way signs

Brendan Bartholomew submits a picture taken in San Francisco, California:

I saw a pair of contradicting "one way" signs in San Francisco's financial district.

Also of note is the little, orange sign nearby, whose arrows seem to be saying "not one way."

Best of all, the "one way" signs were at the corner of a dead-end street, which means if you are already on that street, you've disobeyed one sign in order to get there, while exiting said street would require going against the other sign!

There was some sort of construction or roadwork taking place down that dead-end, so it's possible the dead-end-ness of it was only temporary.

January 27, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Amazon "see larger picture" option

Keith Klier writes in:

I was looking at a portable hard drive on Amazon.com and I wanted to show my wife a picture of it so she could get an idea of the actual size.

I clicked the "see larger picture" link, but found that the only thing bigger about the picture was the pop up window that contained the image of the hard drive - the picture of the hard drive was still the same small size it was in the original view!

January 26, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Misuse of apostrophes in signs

A photo from Jannygirl's Flickr photostream:

The plural of oreo is oreos - not oreo's.

For examples of the rampant misuse of apostrophes in signs see the Grocer's Apostrophe image pool on Flickr.

January 25, 2007 12:17 PM

Broken: Diebold voting machines (again)

Link: Boing Boing: Diebold voting machine key copied from pic on Diebold site.

Diebold voting machine key copied from pic on Diebold site

Duhhhhhhhh.

Broken: Mr. Big candy bar

A reader named Agent_Koopa points out:

If they are going to name a candy bar Mr. Big, then the size of the candy bar should be made to match the name!

January 24, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Self-serve ice bag freezer warning

Rachele DiTullio submits a picture taken at a Wal-Mart in Austin, Texas:

At my local Wal-Mart, there is an interesting sign on one of the self-serve ice bag freezers.

The sign warns: "Caution!!! Ice bag will drop from machine ceiling without notice!"

I agree that this is a cause for concern, however there are other freezers just to the right of the one making the ice. They should set it up so that only employees can access the ice-making freezer and then move them into a less dangerous freezer for customer access.

January 23, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Sign with website url

David Barnes submits a picture taken in the UK:

I spotted this sign on a primary school display board with the website address UNCONDITIONALCOMPASSION.COM in all upper case, which is not broken in itself.

What is broken however, is that on the same sign, there is text underneath the url in all upper case that states "all in lower case."

Whoever printed the sign should have checked to see if web site addresses were case sensitive, (and they would have found out they weren't) before they printed the sign. It is broken to make people think that website addresses are case sensitive.

January 22, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Opel Astra TwinTop convertible top

Rowan Manahan writes:

So there I was, ready to buy a spanking new Opel Astra convertible for my wife. She had the Hermès headscarf and the Jackie-O sunglasses all ready for a test drive.

The Opel salesman couldn’t have been better informed or more courteous. He went outside to demonstrate the roof dropping for us prior to our test drive, wittering on about the unique “folding hardtop” action.

Now, I live in Ireland, where it rains between 150 and 225 days per year and, sure enough, it had rained the night before. So when the salesman hit the button on the remote to drop the roof, it pitched up and then gracefully folded itself back into the boot/trunk of the car – but not before dumping about 3 pints of water on the front seats … I have never before seen a car salesman with NOTHING to say. Not a syllable. I just can’t wait to hear some marketing person from Opel describe this as a “Feature” …

January 20, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Buzzer menu

A reader submits a picture taken in New York City:

This is the buzzer menu for a building located on the corner of Lafayette Street and Kenmare Street in Soho.

Which button would you press to to buzz the concierge?

January 19, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Scissors packaging at Staples

Jeremy Esland writes:

Somehow I lost my office scissors, so the next time I was in Staples, I bought a new pair of scissors made by Tonic Studios.

Back in the office, I tried to get them out of their display packaging - seems I needed a pair of scissors to free them. Ok, that's no problem - I just bought a pair, right?

January 18, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Packaging for chocolate Advent calendar

Hendrik Zobel writes in:

January 17, 2007 08:56 AM

Broken: Unsubscribe Request

There must a better way of designing an unsubscribe confirmation:

To unsubscribe [address] from this mailing list, click 'Continue'. Click 'Cancel' to keep your subscription active."

Broken: Nextel phone selector

Jason Sherrill points out:

When managing your phone's services at nextel.com, after logging in you are required to select your phone model from a grid of approximately 50 phones.

Unfortunately, the phones are not sorted in any alphabetic or numeric order. Furthermore, the pictures of the phones are tiny, so it's hard to spot your phone on appearance alone.

It's a real pain finding your phone on this page. Perhaps they could offer a simple alphabetic or numerically sorted drop-down list as an alternative for the users who know their phone model number - which you can easily see on the phone itself.

January 16, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Office emergency exit door

Jeroen Bouwens writes in:

Imagine the building is on fire. You're surrounded by flames, there's panic everywhere and the only way you are going to live is by opening this emergency exit - it consists of a heavy sliding door that is locked by a mechanism designed by an engineer who did his best to make the task as hard as possible.

The "doorknob" is a smooth metal cylinder that takes a lot of force to turn. On top of that, unlocking is done by turning the knob CLOCKWISE. Yes, that's the direction all other doors in the world use for locking.

Also, the "manual" you see on the door was only added after we complained to the building manager that this was a really broken system. When we told her that this was not the fix we had in mind, she turned all indignant on us and refused to talk about it any longer.

Finally, this is located in the Netherlands. While most people speak English well enough, it seems a sign in our native language would be more appropriate. This may be the most broken emergency exit in the world...and it's in my office!

January 15, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Free customer parking

Giudo Loches submits a picture taken in Salem, Oregon:

We saw these two signs together in downtown Salem - "Entering FREE Customer Parking District" on top of "No Parking."

I couldn't tell if I was able to park on that block or not.

January 13, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: PocketPC PIN lock

David Deckert writes:

This one has bugged me for years but it took me until now to take the picture. The screen lock function of my PocketPC phone has appropriately large buttons so that you can enter the PIN with your thumb on the touchscreen. Unless you mis-key it.

Then you need to press that tiny little OK button in the upper-right corner. To further add to the torment, there is a dedicated hard button for OK on my phone but it is disabled, wait for it... when the phone is locked!

January 12, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Non-linked sitemap

Matt Baume points out:

I found this sitemap from the Millman Retirement Planning Center. It's a sitemap with absolutely zero hyperlinks. It tells you what all the names of the site's sections are, but doesn't provide any links to them.

January 11, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: (Just for Fun) No fishing sign

A No fishing sign from the site Signs of Life.

Thanks, Jerome in Paris.

January 10, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Cancellation process for the New York Times electronic edition

Brent Toellner points out:

This is a screen shot of my instructions when I tried to cancel my subscription to the electronic edition of the New York Times.

I registered for the paper online.  I read the newspaper online. Now, knowing that I obviously prefer the online experience, they want me to cancel my subscription via the phone.

An online option to cancel my subscription should be available instead of requiring me to talk to a customer service representative over the phone and then having to provide all of my information to them again, when all my information is saved on their website.

January 9, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Canada Science and Tech museum sign

Jay Heins submits a picture taken in Ontario, Canada:

While approaching these steps at Canada Science and Tech museum our observant three year old exclaimed that we couldn't use the stairs! 

This sign, I suspect, was meant to prohibit climbing on the concrete bench. Two changes could have made the message more clear:  place the sign on the front side of the bench, and re-draw the pictogram steps to look less stair-like and more bench-like.

There was no sidestepping the meaning of the sign for the boy, though. We had to go around to the side door to get in.

January 8, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: (For fun) Weird store combination

Kevin Lecky submits a picture taken in Ontario, Canada:

I stumbled across this wacky store in the Westwood mall in Malton, Ontario (a suburb of Toronto, by the airport). Imagine how much time people save by buying cat litter and cigars at the same time!

January 6, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Microsoft Excel "Help" for removing hyperlinks

Alexa Weber Andrzejewski writes in:

I've been battling hyperlinks in my Microsoft Excel documents (because in Excel, entirely blank cells and black text that does not look like a link can remain or become hyperlinked accidentally) and decided to search the Help documentation.

For removing a single hyperlink, you can right click and say "Remove Hyperlink" (which in some cases requires mousing over to actually locate the cells where your pointer becomes a hand, but it's a pretty reasonable method otherwise.) But to remove ALL the hyperlinks? Help says...

1. Type the number 1 in a blank cell, and right-click the cell.        
2. Click Copy on the shortcut menu.        
3. While pressing CTRL, select each hyperlink you want to deactivate.        
4. Click Paste Special on the Edit Menu.        
5. Under "Operation" click Multiply and then click OK.

What? First, this still requires finding and clicking on all the hyperlinks (just doing it to the entire spreadsheet doesn't work, and worse, makes a mess of some cells). But what really peeves me is that official Help documentation should have to contain hacks!

If it occurred to someone at Microsoft that this might be something users would want to do, why not fix the experience?

Of course you could always buy a $20 piece of software to do it for you: Excel Remove Hyperlinks Software 7.0.

January 5, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Reef sandals bottle opener

Bob Sifniades points out:

These Reef sandals have a bottle opener built into the sole, which is convenient, and a very clever design, but not very sanitary. Who knows what you walked on before you open the bottle with the bottom of your sandal!

January 4, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Harajuku station sign

(Just for fun...) Dominick Washburn submits a picture taken in Tokyo, Japan: it appears that smoking giant, human-sized cigarettes isn't allowed in Tokyo's Harajuku station.

January 3, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: DIRECTV online order form

Mike Bunnell writes in:

I recently ordered an additional receiver for my DIRECTV system - a free offer as a 'valued' customer.  When it came to the payment page, even though the order total is $0, I was required to enter a credit card before completing the order process. 

Just to be clear, by this point I had already logged in with my account information, and was provided this offer specifically based on my payment & service history. 

Too bad nobody thought to program that information onto the apparently standard ordering interface.

January 2, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Barricade at Cornell University

Zach Lipton submits a picture taken in Ithaca, New York:

This is a photograph I took on the Cornell University campus. A barricade was placed inexplicably in the middle of a pathway, forcing everyone to detour on to the grass to get to the event tent.

The barricade is captioned "Providing a safer environment for the visually impaired" - which makes one wonder how large objects in the middle of a walkway wouldn't be somewhat hazardous for the blind, not to mention for the trampled grass around the barricade.

January 1, 2007 08:31 PM

Broken: (fixed) Google's calculator

(Update: This is now fixed.)

Google's calculator - a great feature that I use a lot - appears to be broken at the moment. From the Google Help page...

To use Google's built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you'd like done into the search box and hit the Enter key or click on the Google Search button.

Clicking to use their own example, 5+2*2, yields a page of crazyquilt results.

Broken: Metro car dealership sign

Jay Heins submits a photo of a car dealership sign in Ottawa, Canada:

This is a sign in front of a car dealership called Metro, which I pass daily.

They are always cycling through pithy sayings but this one takes the prize. If you can't get the customer's business, you may as well insult them!