Category: history

Ma Bell, confused.

communication history marketing technology

So, I needed an 1-800 number. There are lots of vendors. I picked AT&T. They were not the cheapest, but in telco services there are lots of odd offers and services. And it’s not crucial that number. Just something you also need to have. Getting the number itself was alright. They sent an email that it would take a nebolous amount of time (“several weeks”) before they were able to execute my order.

Months passed. No word from Ma Bell. Diving into voice-system-hell. Finally I got somebody that was the right division etc. He simply proclaimed that the number already worked. Which is great, and it actually did ever since. But they could have let me know.

Then I got an email telling me that I had not logged in their Buisness Website for a while, and that they would disable my login should I not do so within 30 days. So I logged in. A question that is innocent enough came up. AT&T would like to know which state I am. Not that they could deduct that from my address. But hey. Of course entering the info brings me right back to the same screen. Oh, Firefox quirk. Can happen.
Safari: Same result. So, do I have to buy a PC to tell them that I am in California? Of course, there are no links where you could contact that division of AT&T and let them know that they website is simply broken.

Neither is there a way to get in touch with AT&T mentioned in that email announcing me to lock me out of the website unless I would log in in the next thirty. Sure, I could spend an hour on the phone tomorrow with AT&T. Like everywhere, once you reach a human things are not even that bad. There are often ways to fix things.

But the problem is deeper than that: AT&T used to be a technology company. They invented the transistor and a couple of other important things. But in 2007 they can not even run a simple website. It fits in the picture that they spend billions, yes, billions not millions, for rebranding. Making them look to good to the outside. While everybody knows that internally it’s just barely good enough. Since they other telco’s suck equally bad they even get away with it. Time for a company like Apple to get into the cellphone Business. No, wait. Ok, nevermind.

CNN

history media

17 years ago Germany got reunited. Yet, CNN did not get around to reflect this change on the maps they use for their weather. Actually, that map was acurate before 1990. What kind of computers that can deal with map images did people have back then? I would guess you would have actually real trouble to find a file from back then.

No wonder some people have strange ideas about Europe:

nasa

history

your tax dollars hard at work

Well, the author is probably the cousin of some senator. Better he clutters the WWW (love to use that term here and there) than if it would try to do something that actually would be needed.

No news in the West

history media

Sony supports Divx on their PS3

When DVD came out there was a format war as well. Between what we know as DVD and something also called Divx. Not related to the format that Sony now supports. Or maybe just related in that they represent the opposite corners of the media/business spectrum: The old Divx was a system that would only play discs after they had been enabled via the phone (it’s that old). You would buy cheaper movies (around 5-8 US) and could watch them for 48 hours after the purchase. After that you would need to pay if you like to watch them again. Studois like Dreamworks held out of for years betting on this format. It folded. But it was a reality. Hard to believe these days.

According to Sony’s CEO the format war between HD-DVD and Bluray got into a stalemate. Great thing for a format to go with this concept into the shopping season. Some big shopping mall sold HD-DVD players for 100 US$. If there would be HD-DVD and Bluray players for a 100$ each then the format war would be over. Peaceful coexistense. Not the margins that the hardware vendors had hoped for. But the luckier ones of them, if not most, make flat screen panels anyway. Those run well above one thousand dollars. And each HD-DVD and bluray playe would be an argument for a 1920×1080 panel. If those companies would be able to explain this to their clients.

Having two players may sound annoying, but most people have heaps of devices around their TVs anyway: Game consoles, Set Top Boxes, Tivo & Co, DVD players, VHS deck, another two devices might not matter. Of course all this crap looks pretty hideous once piled up. And then there is the remote control debacle. And connecting the stuff is an interesting challenge.

Americans spend more than a billion hours a day in front of their entertainment centers. And -boy- do they spend money on hard- and software. Yet, the average ‘media temple’ they pay service to each day is not much more than pile of crap.

So what about PS3 and the new-Divx? Hm. I have no idea. All I know is that the PS2 will outsell the PS3 this Christmas again, and I doubt that will change next year.

not a hosting company to go with

history internet technology

It seems as if the some of the internet is run by amateurs. Of course an article in ‘pcworld’ is not really -ever- a testament of the truth. But, I could imagine that some hosting companies are, let’s say, scary. Problem in general is that you interface with the sales efforts not with the part that does the actual product. So it might have been that “NaviSite” had a brilliant sales team, which brought it and kept it in business. But in the end, it’s always engineering that makes or breaks things. Engineering without any marketing does not work, but also does not cause any harm. No so if there is good marketing and bad engineering. That is a common and painful combo.

about abortion

daily life history politics

Garry Willis writes about Abortion in the LA Times.
He says:


Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons.

There has been allot of hollow talk like “we didn’t know anything about it” after WW2 in Germany. And that is wrong. It also is wrong to try to escape the responsibility of the Holocaust. It is a part of German history. But this sentence suggests that Germans in general agreed to kill Jews. Which is bullshit. Some did. And some built an industry around killing people. Yes, as horrible as that. But to suggest that there was a poll and that just happen to go against one part of the people is simply senseless.

It is pretty strange to open such a piece by invoking Godwin’s Law

Abortition is a tricky issue. Such is Holocaust. Mixing them up in one piece is not really what makes a good start. The article itself rambles around some valid points, and then falls into total pointlessness.

color – owning one

communication history marketing technology

Yes, the T people think they own Magenta

They actually picked when they started the T-stuff so that they could have color in News Paper ads but only pay for one. Since Magenta is part of CMYK they saved millions in the production of newspaper ads.

“Newswhat?” you might ask. Well, it’s that stuff from the last century

ze

history internet marketing media

the strike has it’s upside

Somebody should sponsor 1 z-year. It’s probably less than car makers spend on crafts services of their commercial shoots in any given week.
No joke.

LA Times’ grid of how TV shows are impacted by the strike

40 months later

Apple history malware

In June of 04 I found and read Grubers “Broken Windows” post. Found it via blogsNow, and finding that post alone made writing the tool worthwhile. Gruber explains logically why Mac’s are without malware and PCs are not. Reading it today it still makes sense.

Back in the day the most prominent argument against this was market share: People claimed that there were simply not enough macs around to be attractive for viruses. Since Gruber’s post mac sales have almost trippled. And they have switched to the same CPUs that Windows runs on. Number of Mac viruses? Zero. Still. Not even a single one.

Back in the summer of 04 Apple shares did cost 15 US$, now they are 185 US$. Sure, there is the iPod and the iPhone. But even without that Apple would not look that shabby.

I actually makes me happy that the ‘broken windows’ post holds up. It’s hard to decide if it’s the pointless yet human pride to have been right. Or the happyness about forty month of right decissions based on the right theory. I am sure I save allot of time during those forty month in that I was not battling malware on my laptops.

mass media

history

no particular reason.