Gizmodo: manual

64% of Men Don’t RTFM Before Calling Tech Support

Chris Jacob — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:30:00 EST

Gadget Helpline, a UK tech support service, found that well over half of their male customers didn't even bother to read the manual before calling tech support. C'mon guys, is that the best we can do?

Apparently, only 24% of females don't read the manual before picking up the phone. Good on you, ladies. Apparently you're far less lazy than us when it comes to reading.

We guys are worse at figuring out the easy stuff, too. 12% of male callers needed to do something stupid to fix the problem, like plugging the item in or turning it on, versus 7% of female callers.

We're also much less pleasant to talk to. Even through the average female customer spends 33% more time on the phone than the average male, 66% of the helpline staff said they preferred talking to female callers.

Of course, I know that all of you male readers fall into the category of never reading the manual and never having needed to. But still, we could be doing better. [BBC]

FEMA Firefighters Manual Covers UFO Attacks, Crashes

Jesus Diaz — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:30:00 EST

This video shows how FEMA no only deals with credible threats as hurricanes and terrorist attacks, but also with credible threats like alien attacks and UFO crashes: They have an entire chapter dedicated to this topic in their firefighters manual. Great. As if it wasn't enough with the UK government revealing airplane encounters with UFOs and Hubble discovering unidentified objects in Space to fuel my absolutely cuckoo, sculpt-giant-mountains-out-of-mash-potatoes, I-hope aliens-are-two-meter-tall-buxom-blue-amazons, I-want-to-ride-a-warp-capable-spaceship fantasies. [io9]

Wii Safety Manual: The Missing Pages

Jason Chen — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:15:57 EST

In honor of the Crazy Japanese Wii Manual, Iconfactory (our favorite icon site) has released a series of missing manual pages.

We like the one above. Can you guess why? We're going to need a large version of this so we can frame it. – Jason Chen

Flickr Gallery [Flickr]

Wii Safety: The Missing Pages [Iconfactory]

The Japanese Wii Safety Manual is Crazy

Jason Chen — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:30:07 EST

This crazy Japanese Wii safety manual is pretty much indicative of Japanese people's general insanity. Our theory: a secret battle between Godzilla and several Gundams in the early 1980s bombarded the whole of Japan with cosmic G-rays, which allowed then-youths to grow up and draw these weird-ass manuals.

First, hitting your husband in the face with a Wiimote is not acceptable even if you're pregnant. Do not blame it on your hormones.

Lots more after the jump.

Do not pour half a bottle of orange-flavored tea onto your Wii. Anything less than half is fine.

The Wii is not a tie. (I actually did this when I was playing Zelda.)

Do not attempt to control your heart with the Wiimote.

Do not imitate that clip of the "smoking woman" with your Wii.

When the Wii catches a cold, use a hypo-allergenic blanket.

Do not remove the four leaf clover from your Wii. It is Nintendo's secret to motion sensing.

Do not unwrap the Wii over your head.

Do not attempt to produce your own twist-ties for the sensor bar. One is provided for you.

Test have shown limited success with playing the Wii with your feet. However, you will produce lightning.

Blu-ray discs will not work in the Wii.

Do not lay out a Wii for homeless Japanese citizens. They should clean themselves up and get a job like an honorable salaryman.

Do not forcibly remove Wii discs. There is an ejection mechanism. Jerk.

Do not attempt to wake up the Wii when it is napping.

Do not attempt to plug the nunchuk attachment into your foot. Again, lightning.

– Jason Chen

[Kotaku]