Category: marketing
Personalized consumer technolgy, reflected in their names: iPod, mySpace and YouTube. Nintendo’s decission to rename their upcoming “revolution console” into “Wii” might not be so ridicolous after all.
Chris Anderson writes about the end of the hit era
His Book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” that this article is adapted from will be available 7/11.
Companies like AT&T and others that move the bits around on parts of the internet and to clients want more money. They realize that companies like Google or Apple/iTunes make a bug or two on the internet. Now they want in on that action. Since it runs on their wires they think they have a valid angle. Which is highly ridiculous. They get paid what they asked for. Providing internet bandwidth was good business. But now they want to be able to charge more for those ‘precious bits’. Like Apple iTunes. Apple could afford it. The download cost is only a small fraction of the 99 cents they get per song. Same with google ads. However, the precedence is ugly. And, worst of all: Nobody stopped big and old and stupid companies like AT&T to provide services like search or music downloads. Except that they are old and stupid companies. Being big didn’t help either. The outrageous aspect is that AT&T feel that they have a birthright on the value inside of the bits they transfer. That is ridiculous. I don’t think that this would need regulation and legislation. Ideally people would understand what’s going on and tell the big telco’s that they don’t get it. If they try to extort google and Co then those companies should expose this. After all: Think of the internet, and think either google or AT&T has to go away. If you think that we would need AT&T to push a couple of bits around then you have been fooled by their brainwash. There are lots of providers and ample net capacity. The real value is in search. And that drives those old telcos crazy.
It looks as if Kevin Smith will release a directors commentary for his upcoming Clerks II movie on iTunes. The story floats around on the internet. People point ot a Times interview with him. Of course this is a great idea. It makes allot of sense. Specially for an audience like his. I did watch most of video podcasts that he had running along the production of the sequel. They vary, some are nice, others are not. He ran through his crew and asked people like the loader, script supervisor etc. what exactly they would do on a movie set. I am surprised that these posts never got any big traction on the internet. I only watched the Singer/King Kong episode from similar King Kong and Superman projects. I wonder is “Snakes on a Plane” needs one. Probably not. That movie got made by those four words. Four words can get a movie into your head. No podcasts needed.
look, there is a head floating Zardoz like over the uncanny valley
Interesting, and I think pretty smart, move on Warners behalf to put a little “Making of” out there.
Something tells me that Warner will not give Panavision the same nice vendor treatment that R&H enjoyed here on this show.
Mark responds to a daring fireball post that was triggered by Mark switching from Apple to linux. Or some other open OS.
I agree with Mark 100%, but don’t have the time or nerve to do something about it: I let my personal data march knowingly into slavery. Be it apple or google. I use them, and now they own what I accumualed.
Yet, going on in gmail. I could get back to the copy on my linux machine, but it would take a while, since the mail file grew unattended and is unfiltered. So that lump of linux mail is a theoretical possibility.
This is probably what all the current corporate frenzy is about: capturing peoples data in propretiary formats and systems. I am sure that’s how Microsoft keeps their user base. Standards change only very little, people seem to change even less. Not a new thing. Smokers stay smokers. Great product! When ads for smoking are legal then they target the young people. To make them start, but mostly to make them start with a specific brand. Certain brand habits never really change in the life cycle of a consumer. I still use ‘Persil’ for my laundry. If only I could get in the US. It’s neither better nor worse then other powders. It actually rocks, but even if it wouldn’t I would not switch to any other brand any more.
Writing this from the fancy Detroit NWA terminal. A building so long that they have a railroad inside. Flying NWA is not that bad: Their airmiles don’t expire. And if you have enough then you have a pretty good chance to get into first class. (Lufthansa: ever wondered why you haven’t seen me a while?) Interesting how much of corporate America operates on ‘Chapter 11’ these days.
I must omit that I caved in and paid 7.95 for internet access. Compared to how little effort it takes to set up wifi I feel that is horribly overpriced. Interestingly there is only ONE wifi provider at all the airports that I have been two.
I would wonder what would happen, if there would be TWO. I would wonder how cheaps could get. Maybe some of them would even install power outlets. The Terminal here got build only a few years ago. Yet, Poweroutles are spaced for vacuum cleaners. That people have laptops, phones and twelve million other things that might need power has escaped airport planers. It’s easy to produce a ridicolous amount of iPods in China in record time. But adjusting little things like power outlet frequencies seems to take forever.
unrelated:
I gonna miss youTube
too bad they will not survive their next bandwidth bill. Chapter 11?
Philps patents a technology that would not allow a TV to switch a channel during a commercial break.
Interesting how consumer electronic companies have a very skewed perspective how to serve the people that actually buy their products.
this sounds like a personal Steve Jobs nightmare before Macworld, but it is rather the harsh reality of tech-CEOs trying to use their own products.
Amazing how these companies get to waste Billions of dollars just by ignoring s simple fact:
Features don’t exist if they are not accessible.
The amount of high tech they cramped into those device is certainly impressive. But those don’t do anybody any good if they can not be used.
Windows is not an interface, it’s a hack. People use it since they have to, not because they like to. The biggest miracle is how a crappy system like this could get so far. Trying to resize it into Origami dimensions is not helping.
But let’s focus on something less complex than a OS interface to show that Origami is a dead concept: Battery life.
So it went black during the presentation. That will happen to allot of people. Imagine that the alpha geek you know shelled out seven hundret dollars for this lump of plastic. Eagerly does want to show it to somebody. The chances are rather high that it will run out of juice just inmidst or before this private demonstration. Let that happen a couple of times and your product evangelist moves on to the next gadget. Something that does not let him down when he needs to show off with it.
Origami’s are a debacle. They might get sold to a couple of vertical integrators. But ‘selling’ to big companies and the government does not really count. Those processess share an eiry ressemblance with inner working of the market-economy of the failed soviet empire.
Intel, Microsoft and Samsung might be able to churn out some industrial products in vast numbers. But together they can not innovate. 800 pounds gorillas can not enact a decent ballet.