I have to wonder if Chevy knows that everyone hates their “This is our Country” ads and continues to run them because there is no such thing as bad publicity, or if they really don’t know how poorly received they are.

Talk to any die-hard college basketball fan about CBS’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament and you’ll hear mostly grumbling about their lack of understanding of what the viewers want. I wonder if they actually do any user research?

- Their choice of which game to show and when to switch between games is generally horrible. Instead of trying to figure out what the people want, why not take NBC’s lead (with the Olympics) and ESPN’s lead with pretty much everything and show all the games on different channels? Viacom owns Spike, BET, and CSTV, all of which would be reasonable options.

I’ve noticed an interesting issue with the use of Comcast’s onscreen guide, related to the fact that the channels move from low to high on the screen. To some extent, this makes sense, because we read content from top to bottom. On the other hand, when I scroll “down” through the guide, I am actually scrolling “up” through the channels, creating a visual mismatch.

For example, in the screenshot below, as I scroll through the guide I notice that the “Daily Show” is below “Dead Like Me”. If I were to want to check out both of these shows, I’d click on the first one and then click “down” on the channel button. Only problem is, if I’m on channel 59, clicking “down” will bring me to channel 58. Though it is certainly logical that when on channel 59, clicking down will bring me to 58, the visual display on the screen tricks the mind into thinking otherwise.

As I mentioned before, humans read from top to bottom, so switching the guide to read bottom to top — while solving this problem — would create another one. So, I guess I’m not really sure what the answer is here, but it is an interesting issue nonetheless.

In honor of the great Festivus holiday, today I choose to air some of my UX related grievances. In the infamous words of Frank Costanza, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!” Feel free to post your own grievances below.

To mog.com, for having the worst search engine ever. Searching for “roger clyne and the peacemakers”? That brings up nothing. But “roger clyne & the peacemakers” — we’ve got a match! (Just “peacemakers” brings up nothing too, btw, so we’re clear.) Cool site otherwise, though.

To Lotus Notes, for “finding” (Ctrl + F) messages off the viewable area of the screen, so I have to exit out of the “Find” dialog and scroll down to see if the message found is the one I’m looking for, and if it is not (usually the case), having to re-enter the dialog and start over. (I could have an entire list on Notes, but that’s enough for now.)

To the Chester County Library System, my library, for requiring “www” in front of their url, www.ccls.org. Typing http://ccls.org only times out. University of Richmond (richmond.edu) and Colgate University (colgate.edu) are two additional culprits (out of many, many more).

To MySpace, for putting my password in plain text in my account confirmation email. I just registered guys — I remember my password. Please don’t send it to me through one of the least secure channels on the entire internet!

To everyone who has a MySpace page that plays music when I visit it. Aside from a specific band’s page, I can’t recall ever enjoying the song that plays. Why must thou force it on me?

To every retail site that doesn’t remember that I like to “view all”. It is so simple to remember this — why make me click the damn link again and again???

To the new Yahoo! Mail, for — despite being the very best webmail — not having an advanced search feature, so everytime a person is copied on an email, that email appears in the search results. I’ve got 4,000 emails people, I need some additional search functionality! While we’re at it, why does it jump to the very top of the list when I sort by Name or Subject? How about jumping to the selected email? Even Lotus Notes can do that.

To Firefox’s developer toolbar, for only having “800×600″ as an option for browser resizing. Clearly developed by someone working at 1024×768, who didn’t think about those of us who develop at higher resolutions and want to test 1024 as well. Yes, I know that I can type it in manually, but that isn’t very convenient, is it?

To Comcast’s DVR, for not being TiVo. I like that you record HDTV and integrate into my channel guide, but after that it is all downhill.

To my DVD player, for not having a shuffle option when playing MP3 CDs. How am I supposed to celebrate Festivus without good music?

What problems do you have? Comment below.

Mark it down. September 12, 2006. The day that changed everything. The day that brought the TV/Internet convergence era from a theory to a reality.

Amazingly enough, it came as an afterthought to a press release about the new iTunes software. While it is cool and interesting that Apple is now offering more TV shows than ever and feature length movies for download, this is not the groundbreaking news I’m talking about.

No, I’m talking about the announcement of the tentatively-titled ‘iTV’, a novel-sized device that allows users to wirelessly stream iTunes video to their TV sets. Just like the iPod didn’t invent the mp3 or the mp3 player, iTV does not invent this technology — I could rig this up on my LCD TV today quite easily. It will, however, just as the iPod did, bring this technology to the mainstream. (And I’m not even one of those crazy Mac people!)

According to Apple, the videos will also now be offered at near-DVD quality, which pretty much makes this new device and software package an immediate competitor to Cable OnDemand services and DVDs (rentals, sales and online memberships). It pretty much turns the world of TV on its head!

So, a few years from now, when the way we acquire and watch video content is totally different than it was in 2006, remember this day. And remember that you heard it here first.

I was reading Electronic Retailer, one of those free industry rags, at a break during the recent eTail conference, when a headline blared out at me from the page: “Study Shows That Nearly 25 Percent of Hispanics Subscribe to Mobile TV”

WOW, I thought. That is an amazing number for a technology that is so new. How could this many people be subscribed without this mobile feature getting more fanfare? Of course, this number is nowhere near true. It turns out that 23% of moblie TV subscribers are Hispanic, which, as you may have already guessed, means that far less than 25% of all Hispanics subscribe to mobile TV.

Talk about a quick way to lose credibility — Electronic Retailer quickly lost it with me.