On the Fej

Moving Day

2007-11-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Hey! I've moved!

This page should automatically redirect in a couple of seconds. But if it doesn't, you could just click over to lechtanski.net yourself.

Thanks Blogger!

Siriusly... I knew it!

2007-02-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I called it. Now I know it's not that special, but now I'm thinking about buying into satellite radio... maybe.

Variety is reporting that XM and Sirius have agreed to merge. This makes total sense for the reasons I pointed out early last Summer.

>> But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle.
>> Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and
>> Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It
>> may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers,
>> but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and
>> Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo,
>> FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content
>> delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.
>> At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s
>> going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or
>> synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to
>> content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and
>> we won’t think about it.
-- Why Radio will never go away from Fej July 28, 2006.

Now all they have to do is figure out how to get local stations incorporated and we're cruisin'.

Fiber-to-the-Future

2007-02-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

How much data do you need to move? Or more accurately, how fast do you want to get at your digital stuff? Whether it’s music, video or PowerPoint presentations, the trend is to access your digital files from anywhere, and to be able to download anything at the drop of a hat. The trend is fiber optic cable.

But this new technology requires a new physical network. And not just of fiber optics spread across the globe, but fiber stretched to every individual house, a.k.a. “Fiber-To-The-Home”. Construction of these networks will likely to represent the largest communications infrastructure upgrade in decades and Alpha Technologies is set to play a significant role.

But how much difference can a fiber network make? Consider that downloading a 5-megabyte MP3 with dial-up access - the original Internet technology - can take 10 minutes. DSL may take 30 seconds. Cable is pretty fast at 10 seconds. But, fiber? One second. That’s it. Snap your fingers.

And it’s not just for data. Opting for fiber service means you’ll not only get access to incredibly high-speed Internet access, but recently announced TV and telephone service. All of it… now…

An optical fiber network can reach millions of homes and everyone one of those home requires a power conversion and back-up system. That’s where Alpha comes in. Unlike cable networks, you only need power solutions at the front and the end, not the middle. And because of these power solution needs, customers include telephone companies and cable providers, and municipalities, property developers and even homeowners impatient for someone else to bring the technology around.

The use of dial-up Internet connections is waning. It is nearly impossible – well, maybe just unbearable – to try browsing the Internet with anything other than a high-speed connection. And with more and more people interested in seeing what a broadband connection has to offer, today’s technologies are being tested. As more people leave behind the painfully slow download speeds of a dial-up connection, some may be disappointed in the crowded realm of other broadband technologies.

Coax cable is reaching the upper limits of its data capacity. And telephone companies are doing everything possible to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible from their existing copper-based networks, much of which is at or near end of life.

And while those networks are being tested, many rural and remote communities have been left behind by the broadband train altogether. In order to get broadband access, many have been limited to satellite Internet technology, which is spotty at best. Pressed by community and business leaders many municipalities have taken control of their destiny and have followed the lead of cities like Bristol, Virginia, the first municipal utility to offer voice, video and data over a fiber-to-the-home network. Taking on the cost of bringing high speed data access to your town is not cheap, so most are looking toward the most forward-looking option available: Fiber. Today the number of municipalities currently fielding or planning FTTh networks is in the hundreds.

Over the last 24-months Alpha Technologies has been working on a full complement of telecommunications-grade primary and standby power solutions for home and business, as well as headend power solutions like AC Uninterruptible Power Supplies, inverters, rectifiers, batteries and large generator sets.

It’s units like these that help make bringing fiber to the home a reality. After all, high-speed on the information superhighway is no good if there’s no exit ramp to your house.

What's Up With All the Nuclear?

2007-01-16T21:50:00.000-08:00

There are two things that really freak me out. Well, technically three if you include computer-animated talking babies. But the two that really get me are garbage disposals and nuclear explosions. The first is just something I'm learning to deal with, but with the latter, I'm sure I'm not alone. So, what's with all the nuclear explosion action in the entertainment world? Is it really that entertaining?

This season's TV schedule is laden with the nuclear topic: Jericho, Heroes, 24... These are major network shows, so I can only assume there is a sizable audience. And I get it that people like to watch things that freak them out a little. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive. I don't like horror movies either. In general I don't like being scared. Happy, sad, stressed... those are emotions I can deal with. Scared is just something I don't need in my life. And Nuclear explosions scare me. Now that I think of it, maybe seeing The Day After at the ripe age of 11 had a negative effect.

I dig the Jack Ryan movies/books: Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games and such. But the Sum of All Fears just didn't do it for me. I know, you might saying: "But Fej, is that not just because of your natural aversion to Ben Affleck?"

I see what your saying and it is a possibility. But near as I can tell, the Affleck/Freeman saga, which involved a pretty serious nuclear explosion, is the stinkiest one of the Jack Ryan series. That is in terms of revenue at the box office and afterward. And I don't see plans for another Affleck/Clancy collaboration.

Seeing a spaceship take out the White House is one thing. It's a space ship, and it was a fun computer effect. Seeing a nuclear explosion take out Washington D.C. is pretty discomforting. Granted, it is still a crazy computer effect, but it is just a visual I don't want. I don't need to be desensitized to that. I can turn the channel to MSNBC to see about the latest plans of some crazy extremist somewhere trying to figure out how to make it happen for real.

Anyway, to all of you Hollywood producers: if you want a quick way to make me not watch your show or movie, involve a nuclear explosion. About the computer-animated babies: they will make me look the other way, but not necessarily change the channel.

What do you do?

2007-01-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

Remember last September, I told you I changed companies? Well, that’s true. I’m the marketing manager for Alpha Technologies, a company that makes back-up battery systems.

Now that I just typed that sentence, I’ve reread it and decided it is the absolute worst way to describe what I do. There are about 12 people on the planet who would be at all interested, and most of those either work for my company or a competitor.

I’ve read in a few places that when someone asks you what you do, actually tell them what you do. Don’t just give them your title. So how about this:

Do you remember that huge blackout back east in 2003? From Manhattan to Detroit, in Canada and the United States, millions of people were without power: totally without power. No traffic lights. No air conditioning. No gas pumps. No refrigerators. It was practically the middle ages. Accept for the telephone system in Ontario. The telephone lines in and around Ontario stayed active. Grandmothers could call families. Injured people could call for help. People with laptops could still “dial-up” to the internet and get some news.

My company makes those systems. I promote my company in the press, in the market and in the community. I’m the marketing manager for a company that makes battery back-up systems.

What do you do?

Internet/Inspiration

2006-12-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

We already know how much I think the Jetta ad campaign bites. Sadly, they have another round running. And the worst is that I think the commercials are great right up to the impact. This ad campaign literally played a role in me not buying a new Jetta. Which is quite a feat, I think, because I have a ’97 Jetta Trek that I love.

Anyway, now I’m compelled to write about one more ad campaign. Actually, I guess it’s just a commercial. Fortunately, I won’t be subject to this one much longer, because it’s for the Christmas season.

Let me give a little background. There was a lot of hype this last summer about the affect the Internet was having on entertainment and other mass media. I only mention the anti-hype from Snakes on a Plane for one. The world didn’t collapse because a movie had more attention before its release than after. Let's not assume if the SOAP producers had successfully renamed the movie Pacific Flight whatever, it would have had any more or less success. I'm thinking even though the movie didn't perform as some in the press thought it might, it did better overall than it would have without the Internet attention. And in hindsight, I’m kind of amused by the mass media hype that was generated by the Internet Hype. There’s some irony in there I think.

Anyway, the offender I'm choosing to complain about today is a huge beer company (HBC) that I will not mention, mainly because they don’t need it, but also because they don’t deserve it for this particular action (think: great taste, less filling…). For a commercial this Christmas, this HBC grabbed an idea for a commercial directly from a web video of last year: this insane shot of Christmas lights set to music, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I believe. This web video came out sometime around Thanksgiving 2005, which makes me think it was actually filmed the year before. It got featured on RocketBoom, and various other Vlogs.

So, this year there are lots of copies on YouTube. Some are decent and they're done by self-funded web monkeys, but one copy is well-funded and professionally shot and choreographed. Come on HBC!! How much did you pay an ad company to copy this web video? And here’s the big question: was it worth it since the original is so much better than your expensive rip-off? I can only guess someone went on vacation, because the man-law commercials are great...

Frankly, this is the worst of modern advertising. If you’re looking for a reason that the Internet is going to ultimately kill TV advertising and entertainment, this is it. To survive, traditional forms of media need to be more creative. Not less. If you really want to show how cool you are by attaching your brand to a web meme, play the actual video from the web.

Buy Yourself a DVR

2006-09-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

That's a Digital Video Recorder. If you don’t have one and you watch more than an hour of television a week, get one.

Right now.

I’m serious. Go to Dish Network or Direct TV or Comcast or Cox and buy one.

Today.

Great. Now that we have that out of the way, you can share in one of the very few frustrations I have with them.

Back in the day, I think it was TBS that started everything 5 minutes late. Bewitched reruns were on at 1:35. The Jefferson’s were on at 5:05. This is like 20 years ago, and somewhere along the line TBS stopped this inane practice. I don’t know the reasoning for it then, but all of the sudden, TV networks are doing it again. But now they are doing it irregularly.

Nip/Tuck is starting at 8:10. Rescue Me is running 5 minutes long. So, if I’ve gone through the time to set my DVR to record the season of Rescue Me during its first-run time slot, and FX decides to run it 5 minutes long, my DVR will miss the last five minutes.

Sadly, I’ve spent some time trying to figure out the possible reasons for the networks to do this. I’ve some up with two.

1. Networks are tired of people like me who were enjoying their
good programming but skipping their program-supporting
sponsors’ commercials. So, they just want to mess with me
and cut off the shows climax/cliffhanger.
2. Networks wanted to milk another few minutes of advertising
from the first run of their expensive original shows.

Possible-reason number one is a bit of a stretch, I agree. But I think I’m on to something with number two. Because if I watch an encore presentation (i.e. Rerun) of that same Rescue Me episode the next night, it amazingly fits into the standard one-hour time slot. Partially because of chumps like me who skip all those great commercials anyway, I’m thinking traditional ad revenues aren’t worth as much as they once were at the same time as the shows themselves are costing more and more. So, why not try to score some more ad dollars by inserting more ad minutes in the middle of your most popular shows?

And check this out. My Mom, who has digital cable, called me the other night because she noticed she wasn’t able to skip the commercials on the DVR-recorded TNT show Saved. I’ve not experienced this yet, but it seems threats might be coming to fruition. They are going to force us to watch the commercials.

Just when I come up with a way to watch more TV in less time, they pull me back in. This is not what I wanted!

From Allsop to Alpha

2006-09-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve changed jobs.

From Allsop, a consumer product company selling computer accessories, to Alpha Technologies, a business-to-business company selling all sorts of industrial power products.

I’ve not had many different jobs in my life. In nineteen working years I’ve only worked at five places. I’ve managed to climb up the ladder from job to job at these places, but I didn’t have to learn a new system every time I got a cooler office. So, I’m really shaking things up by starting someplace new. And adding to the fact that I’m making the switch from Consumer to B-to-B, this is quite the departure for me. Granted in my opinion, B-to-B marketing can learn a lot from consumer goods marketing, there is a pretty established mindset as to the best solutions.

So, anyway, you’re now reading the words of the new marketing manager for Alpha Technologies.

Do you want to know what products we make at Alpha? Hmm. Me, too. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now. But, give me a couple of days to figure it out and I’ll let you know.

Tri, Baby, Tri

2006-08-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Tri Without Borders

Finished in 2 hours and 35 Minutes. Ten minutes faster than my previous personal best.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

2006-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve never really heard this song from Notorious B.I.G. But I believe in it. Organic foods are hugely popular, but we are running out of supply. Apple is kicking some megabyte butt, but the iPod glow is losing some luster. MySpace, while growing, isn’t that cool anymore. And apparently Green Day sucks.

I see a kind of zero-sum game going on with supply and demand. For example, organic foods are selling like crazy. From food-coops, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and other upscale grocery stores. The demand is so great suppliers are having trouble keeping up. But with a national population in the US of 300 million and a world population of more than 6.5 billion, I would guess there is a point at which it is impossible for everyone to buy organic foods. This of course unless we lower the standards of what is considered organic. There are only so many farms and dairies and they are close to only so many metropolises. At some point growth hormones and insecticides and other “impurities” are going to need to be introduced to make sure there is enough affordable, and hopefully healthy, food for all income levels.

So it goes: Apple has gone mainstream. Rather, Apple has made it to mainstream with the iPod and now the Apple-haters are coming out. The worst are the former Mac-heads who no longer like Apple because it isn’t rebellious enough… it’s not their little secret anymore… it’s not the source of their quasi-intellectual status from which they get to look down on the rest of the population as lemmings and suckers and surrenderers to the hegemonic downfall of our Orwellian society.

Apple is known for being more expensive than the other guys. Sometimes double or triple. And with that comes the expectation of double or triple the quality and performance. And with the iBook, the iPod, the MacBook and the growing demand from the growing base of Mac-heads, Apple moved production to Asia. Like just about any other company with the business-skills to know they can lower labor costs. With this kind of production move, there are going to be problems. And a typical Mac-head is more technologically skilled than your average citizen. So if they have a problem, they are more likely to have an outlet to share their disgruntled ravings. The Internet forum/blosphere/media echo chamber starts and you hear about it a lot more. But for the 60 Million iPods that have been sold (frankly, most of them being Nanos) there are startlingly few problems.

But change is painful. With growth and popularity, Apple needed to extend their operations in order to meet demand. The bigger issue now is how Apple deals with product problems. The secretive nature with which they develop and release products (which I LOVE by the way) may not be the best to deal wth customer service issues, but at least it limits official Apple communications to the truth. Every organization makes occasional missteps, but Apple works to resolve negative issues. Sometimes it is done quietly and sometimes it’s done with a new product release.

So don’t condemn Apple or Steve Jobs because they are mainstream. Apple still makes great products, has fun stores and provides a computer experience to satisfy the technically skilled and the technophobe alike.

They didn’t go mainstream. Mainstream came to them.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Since Green Day makes really good music, has sold millions of records and consistently sells out any arena, coliseum or stadium, they officially suck.

Netflix Weighs In

2006-08-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

Our view is that the current format war is unwinnable by either Sony or Microsoft in the next several years. They are both powerful enough to maintain the stalemate. Hopefully, early next year the single format studios will join Warner and Paramount in becoming format agnostic. The press will declare the format war over and the consumer adoption cycle for High Definition DVDs will begin in earnest."

-- CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings (via HDBeat).

Trade Show Sponge

2006-07-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

What’s happening with trade shows? Well, at least the trade shows I go to. There are tons of trade shows I’ve never heard of. In fact, I never fail to be amazed at the number of trade shows that exist. My favorite is the Consumer Electronics Association trade show for exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show. A Trade Show trade show. Funny.

I’ve always thought there were two routes to go with exhibiting at trade shows. Go to the big ones, like CES, the Housewares show or the Hardware Show. Or go to the smaller ones like all of the Gift shows, Retail Vision, or furniture shows. If you go to the big ones, you get as big of a space you can afford, and you do it once or twice a year. Hopefully, all of the customers stop by your booth. If you go the small show route, you do 30 little shows all over the country with a smaller, but strong and consistent message. It’s exhausting, but it’s regional.

It turns out there is a third way, and I see it becoming more of a trend. And here’s where I go into a little side bar.

Attending trade shows, especially the big ones, is not cheap. First of all, there is the cost of the floor space, which runs from between $10-$50 per square foot. This is just to buy your space on the trade show floor. Then there’s the booth structure itself, shipping, travel, lodging, time out of the office, someone to plan the whole thing. And there’s drayage. This is the cost you incur for the union labor guys to bring your booth structure crates from the shipping dock to your space, to store your empty crates and to take your crates back to the shipping dock after the show. This is a big cost, typically more than the cost of shipping your booth across the country. Trade shows are big business, and there are a lot of high costs associated with participating in the official events.

Here’s where I get to the up-and-coming third way to participate in trade shows. I’ll call it the “Sponge”. You sponge off of the trade show. You take advantage of the trade shows efforts to get your customers, vendor and competitors all in one town at the same time in the same building. You, on the other hand, book a hotel suite (sweet) and set-up your own traveling showroom. Your customers are already going to be there. You have their telephone number. Give them a call. Buy them dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or drinks. Take advantage of their off-show hours.

There are lots of advantages to this:
* No extra trade show costs associated with the show organizers, unions and over-priced concessions
* No costs to build a booth, you need only bring product, displays and sales material
* Fewer employees are needed at the event
* You get the undivided attention of your customers during meetings
* $50 a square foot can get a pretty frickin’ nice hotel suite (sweet)

But there are down sides:
* You are only going to get meetings with people you already know
* The accidental discovery that you see on the trade show floor won’t happen
* There is an energy to the trade show that might not carry over to your mini-show
* When you don’t exhibit at a big trade show, you lose your priority points, which could come back and bite you if you decide to go back to the show

But, if you’re thinking of going to a new show, the Sponge option might be a good way to do it. As long as you can get into contact with the right potential customers (that’s what regional sales reps or for) and you pick a hotel and transportation close to entertainment and the convention center. You don’t want to be shuttling customers an hour out the city, or get them stuck in traffic during rush hour.

But whichever route you choose: Make Sure the Whole Thing Represents Your Brand!

The Future is Now

2006-07-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

So, news this week has brought us two reports of convenience trouncing quality. Following the MP3 over SACD consumer choice, we’ve got movie downloads being introduced at the same time that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technologies are struggling to stay in the news/consumer’s mind. As I have said, never mind the Coke vs. Pepsi style blue ray technology battle trying to form in the media. Blue ray technology is too expensive, and it will remain that way for a couple more years. It will take off when it breaks $100 and is seamlessly coupled with current DVD technology. But even then, Blue Ray recorders will be used to save downloaded movies from places like CinemaNow and MovieLink, not to rebuild movie archives in prerecorded HD-DVDs.

Convenience is going to win, as it usually does. How do I know? I’m lazy, too.

But what of iTunes, I might ask. What with the current Video iPod and the forthcoming, “true” video iPod expected now in the first quarter 2007. Will iTunes do for movie downloads what it dod for music and music video downloads? It is going to let us rent movies over iTunes. But, I’m beginning to have my doubts.

Here’s why: the primary use of movie downloads will not be viewing on a 2-inch, 3.5-inch or 5-inch screen. Listening to music is generally something people do alone. Movies, on the other hand, are usually watched in a group. The video iPod is great for people to watch old episodes of Rocketboom or last nights Daily Show during their daily commute, but a 120-minute movie is a little too long, unless you’re on an airplane. And most won’t crowd around something the size of your palm. The primary viewing locations are going to range from 42-inch plasmas to 12-inch in-car DVD systems.

Even still, movie downloads are going to take off when the link from the computer to the TV is just as rote as connecting the DVD player. So satellite companies and digital cable companies already have a big headstart, since their machines are already plugged into the TV. Where Apple or another computer hardware company might make this happen is with a wireless connection, ala Wifi. See: Airport Express. I fully expect Apple next generation Airport Express to include a video output, letting my plug into the S-Video or HDMI port of my 37-inch LCD.

Keep in mind, sometimes the secret to the general population excepting a technology advance is by bringing a new piece of hardware into the house. It seems counter-intuitive that you can do great new things like buy movies over the Internet, with the same old stuff you've always had. So make it a new piece of hardware that's affordable, aspirational, technical and easy (Refer to the iPod in 2001).

Fej on Snakes on a Plane

2006-07-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

I guess, just as marketers spend a lot of time coming up with ideas, products and technologies that will make you buy more stuff than you need, writers, too, spend a lot of time pondering and writing about potential doomsday scenarios. (As a writer and a marketer I'm guilty on both fronts).

Take the recent furor around Snakes on a Plane. Some would have you think this is the end of the world. Esquire and Salon just for starters.

This Samuel L. Jackson-starring movie caught fire this last winter, partially because one of the rewrite-script scribes is also an avid blogger. A few other things made this really take off in the blogosphere world.
* The 70s-era disaster-film feeling of the title was perfect
* Samuel L. Is a quality actor, who appeared to be attached to a hokey film
* Snakes on a Plane just sounds quirky

It has been widely reported that after the Internet brouhaha grew to an audible crescendo, the cast was called back for five more days of shooting. My assumption for this is the producers realized they might have something here, but with a few nagging question marks in the back of their minds.

My first assumption: the script had been through several writers, and the movie was potentially on the verge of having the directing credit heaped on good ol' Alan Smithee.

My second assumption: the last script writer missed the obvious opportunity to have Samuel L. say "There's mother f**kin snakes on this mother f**kin plane." A line of this sort can be attributed to Samuel L. in just about every movie he has been in - except for maybe Star Wars (though I thought I heard him mutter something about the "mother f**kin Siths" in Attack of the Clones)

My third assumption: the producers decided they wanted to try and make the movie better, befitting of an Internet craze. Keep in mind though, five more days of re-shoots is not the route to perfection. I'm sure they were planning on shining up the turd a bit.

Not delving into the origin of the title (I imagine a perfectly befitting and descriptive working title), Snakes on a Plane is not a test of the blogospheres movie making ability. It is not a sign of Hollywood's demise. It is a cheesy disaster/horror film that will give you exactly what you expect.

For me, I love what Samuel L. said about the simple title: "What are you doing here? It's not Gone with the Wind. It's not On the Waterfront. It's Snakes on a Plane!"

The title tells you exactly what you're going to get. There won't be anything to make you go home and contemplate the moral consequences surrounding incarceration and false rehabilitation, but you will get snakes on a plane.

Protecting Your Baby

2006-07-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

With 50 million sold and counting, Apple's iPod is the aspirin of MP3 players. Whether its iPod/iTunes one-two punch will maintain its market dominance in digital music playback and sales is unsure. But don't bet against them yet.

Apple has made a habit of introducing an iPod update about once a year, just in time for the holiday shopping season. And while all of your music is safe, new iPods have brought you more capacity, color screens, digital image viewing, video capability and lower prices. Supposedly some kind of cell phone or wireless connectivity is on the horizon, but let's not talk about that until September.

But with all of the advancements, there are occasionally new problems. As with the latest 5th generation iPod and the iPod Nano's well reported propensity to scratch. Simply putting it in your pocket with say a wallet or mobile phone can result in a series of frustrating and blurring scratches on the front screen and the gleaming silver back. So just as it is important to protect your iPod from serious falls, it is important to protect it from minor bumps and bruises, because these are gadgets aren't free.

Check out Allsop's Slick Skins as a way to protect the body of your iPod. These work like a cross between a sticker and a vinyl window cling. It wraps around the player protecting the screen, the face and the backside. And whether you want to use a clear Slick Skin to show off your good taste, Allsop offers a series of images to let you personalize your player. Simply put: you can make your iPod look a little different than the other 49,999,999 other iPods out there.

One of the benefits of the iPod is its portability, and your ability to take it on the road, to the lake or white water rafting for that matter. This desire to take your player on your adventures makes sense. That way you can actually listen to Eye of the Tiger while you’re running up the steps of your local library, instead of just humming the tune to yourself.

But if you're going to take your iPod or digital camera or cell phone out into the wild, protect it. Allsop's Splash Pack gives you an airtight place to keep out water, sand, grease or Jell-o. But if you're going to take it swimming, you'll need to get some waterproof headphones.

The Splash Pack will let you listen to your favorite music in any atmosphere, while giving you complete access to the clickwheel so you can adjust the volume, browse around your playlists or showoff your iPhoto collection. You can even take pictures with your digital camera while it's in the Splash Pack.

Where Are Your Digital Photos?

2006-07-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

The advent of digital photography has led to more pictures being taken, fewer pictures being developed and picture archives measured by the gigabyte. But digital pictures are vulnerable. Now that your memories can be reduced to binary code as nothing more than a bunch of 1s and 0s, how are we taking care of them? How should we be taking care of them?

There are four main formats of digital photo storage.

Your computer hard drive - convenient, but not very safe, just in case you have a meltdown.
CD-R - Cheap, reliable, but slightly fragile
Flash Memory - Small, getting cheaper, but proprietary usually to the brand of camera you have right now.
Somewhere on the Internet - There are lot’s of places to store and print your photos. From Wal-Mart and Target to Snapfish and Kodak. And who can ignor Flickr? Easy to share with others, but feels a little like sleeping on your brother-in-law’s couch. Your stuff’s just out there, somewhere.

Don’t trust your computer hard drive. Please. There are just too many things that can go wrong. And since, on average, we as technology users are only printing about 15% of the photos we take with digital cameras, there are a lot memories locked up on your vulnerable hard drive.

Since CD-Rs are the single most popular format for archiving digital photos, Allsop has a few options to make things easier. The Photo CD Gift Envelope let’s you safely send a disc in the mail, but in the form of a greeting card complete with places to write personal message and display your favorite photo. The Photo Disc Album, let’s you keep 20 CD-Rs in one place. It is small and will keep your photos close at hand. Our other photo disc storage products are for archiving. These are great when you’re ready to stick your photo library somewhere for safe keeping.

For flash memory there are memory sticks, SM cards, USB flash drives. If you are using one of these: good for you. They are great for sharing and moving files around, but I’m not sold on them for long term archiving. It’ll require a whole new system of organizing and storage.

As much memory as you might be taking up with digital pictures, just wait until you start taking up even more space with digital home videos. Get in the habit of archiving and backing your system up. It can save a ton of headache in the future.

Women Are Driving Today’s Technology Trends

2006-07-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

The digital camera got past being a high-tech toy the moment its sales surpassed film cameras in 2003. Now they are a staple and many households are already moving onto digital camera number two or three. Women are the traditional keepers of the family photo album, so it’s no surprise that women are taking over the digital camera, the home computer and making technology fit in the home, instead of the other way around.

And everybody has been talking about this in the consumer electronics association. Allsop even jumped on the trend with our Bridging Technology and Décor efforts.

In the media most recently, there’s CNET reporting on “Girl Gadgeteers” and Rent-To-Own Online is letting us know about the shrinking difference in Mother’s Day versus Father’s Day Consumer Electronics Sales. These are last week, but reports have been going for a few years now. Just as I think the story is getting old, it crops back up again.

The Consumer Electronics Association is really one group that has really been trying to follow the trend. For three years now, the Consumer Electronics Show has had a “Technology is a Girl’s Best Friend” product showcase. The problem? Practically all of the products in the showcase were geared toward the kitchen. And the lifestyle photos associated with the showcase were retro photos of June Cleaver-like women. This is really the wrong idea. Let’s not get stuck in the outdated women=kitchen stereotype. I know plenty of women who avoid the kitchen and have more hi-tech toys than I do.

I think my wife might have been slightly more excited about the 37-inch LCD purchase we made last Thanksgiving (only slightly, though). And she’s the one who always remembers the camera, and the iPod. And she’ll log more hours on our Powerbook.

A general marketing mantra applies here: lifestyle will outperform strategy every time. When a product or a category hits on a lifestyle trend or creates a lifestyle trend it will take off regardless of the strategy behind it. Technology is letting you save money on photo processing, save even more memories, de-clutter your living area, reclaim your home office, carry your entire music collection with you and call home from anywhere in the world. Technology has hit the point that it can be inculcated into the everyday lifestyle without being strapped to a desk and without lugging around 45 pounds of electronics. And it’s with digital cameras, MP3 players, flat-panel TVs, mobile phones and laptop computers.

Consumers Win By Network Forfeit

2006-07-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

Consumer demand will overwhelm corporate protests.

In a Media Daily News story:

Today, to be sure, networks still haven't exactly thrown the DVR threat out
the window. But they appear to at least be coming to terms with the increased
penetration of the devices and the jarring predictions about how many homes
could eventually have them. And they appear to be developing ways to work
around, or even with, them.

And here's a smart, smart solution to getting ads seen without product placement. I call it TiVo-proof advertising. A new take on an old classic.

Adieu, Audiocassette.

2006-07-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Someone is actually saying that cassettes are on the way out. Yesterday. Not 10 years ago. In 2006. Really. I think we have all seen this coming for a long while, yet oh, the memories. My first cassette was Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1984. My last cassette was Duran Duran 2 (The Wedding Album) in 1993. Not quite 10 years, but the formative years of my independent developing music tastes. Bon Jovi, Keith Sweat, De La Soul, Anthrax, King's X, Seal, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stanley Jordan, Fugazi, the Chili Peppers…

Oh, the memories and the eaten tapes: The dull, warbled sound and magnetized heads.

Long before I worked at Allsop, I owned several of our audio headcleaners. I only used them when it was too late, for example: after my Subaru stereo ate my Queen Night at the Opera tape. But I used them. And you should, too. I’m sure like me, you have a library of old cassettes. Mine is some 300 tapes strong. They are in these great wall-hanging wood shelves, stuck together, wrapped I duct tape and stuffed in the back of a closet. But they cover a very important time in my musical development. Keep your tapes. And keep a cassette deck cleaner with them. Because when treated correctly, your tapes will always sound just as dull and warbled, but they won’t get eaten by your wretched cassette player.

My Wireless Heaven

2006-07-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

I have an iPod. It’s a 3rd generation 10 gig and I absolutely love it. I haven’t upgraded because I haven’t yet been so impressed with new features that I just couldn’t resist. And I see Microsoft is enviously making a move to mimic Apple’s vertical market dominance.

I used to want a cell phone that could play music (yawn). Then I thought I wanted a computer in my car that would connect to my home Wifi network when parked in the garage (still sounds cool, but a little much). With that onboard computer, I could even connect to the Internet when traveling via my cell phone. But there’s the key: my cell phone.

So then I thought I’ve been thinking about the cell phone the wrong way. Here’s what I want my cell phone, or my iPod, to do. I want it to play my 3,000 song music collection, but do it wirelessly. Forget about loading it up with 80 gig of memory to store my songs and photos. Let me buy music from my mobile phone, but download the music to my home network. I want it to connect to my home network, and broadcast from there. Play the music from my Wifi network in my car, or on my headphones or through the desktop speakers in my office. I want access to my photos, my songs, my videos and my email. I want my cell phone to act as my code key for XM or Sirius and broadcast, too. If I have my cell phone with me, I want to broadcast the satellite radio signal through whatever receiving audio system is within range and under my control. Make my mobile phone part of my home network, wherever I am.

I want my cell phone, or my iPod, to become my Mobile Wireless Router. Now that would be cool.

Why Radio will never go away

2006-06-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

I saw a commercial last night from Sirius. It's a great campaign all about discovering new music. Something dawned on me. I’d always thought radio would sort of whither away. I’d don’t listen to much radio. My work commute is only 15 or 20 minutes, and then I’m listening to NPR. If I’m in the car any longer, I have my iPod plugged in and I’m listening to my own 2,000 song radio station. I call it: K F E J.

Now, I love music. No. You don’t understand. I really, really love music. My blood pressure rises with the volume. My heartbeat follows the tempo. It’s a lifelong thing. So, whether or not radio will whither, here is the reason it shouldn’t: Accidental Discovery.

I feel the same way about Electronic encyclopedias and Google Maps and the Internet in general. Online search has gotten so good; you find what you want so quickly and easily that you can miss the things you didn’t know you wanted to know. I have found most of my new music from friends and the occasional sleepless night watching MTV. Yes. Music Television does still play music videos in the middle of the night.

Sure there is an argument to be made over the myspace music section or for any of the dozens of independent music sites where you can find tons of free independent music. But, frankly, there’s a lot crap to wad through there. I want someone to do some the weeding out for me. I found Maxwell one day while I was napping through the old Rosie O’Donnell Show. With Muse, it was one evening while I was reading and had my Dish Network TV box tuned to the Modern Alternative Rock channel. I found My Chemical Romance one night on MTV that my spring allergies wouldn’t let me sleep.

The randomness of radio done right can let you stumble on to new and old favorites. Music you forgot about, or never know existed. But AM-FM radio has been in trouble. Most areas across the country only have a dozen or so options, with fewer than that coming in without static. And these frustrations have given birth to the satellite radio phenomenon.

But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle. Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers, but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo, FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.

At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and we won’t think about it.

And it’s not all roses for satellites. First of all there aren’t local stations available on satellite radio. And I’m not sure the masses are ready to pay for music during their commute. Sirius signed up Howard Stern for $100 Million a year, and then signed up more than a million new subscribers. Yet even with those results Stern has fretted repeatedly about his audience's not following him to Sirius.

But terrestrial radio has hope. Think about the recent surge of the nearly talk-free Jack-FM. And then there’s HD Radio. Think HDTV: but only audio and in your car or on your deck. While only about 7% of the nation's radio stations offer HD a broadcast, the tipping point for HD radio is going to be cars. And at some point radios are just going to switch. When you buy a new radio, it’ll have HD capability whether you want it or not. You won’t have to think about it or pay extra for the service.

The “important” thing here is that any one of these offerings creates a new revenue stream for retailers and manufacturers in the form of new hardware. So stores and factories will hedge their bets to make sure they don’t pick the wrong horse.

For satellite you need to cough up the dough for both the hardware and the service. For HD Radio, you need only cough up the dough for the radio; the content is free. But even then, if you still want to hear un-FCC-encumbered entertainment and your favorite stars, you’re going to have to go satellite; but it’s gonna cost you. You’ll need to help pay for things like Sirius’ great new ad campaign.

Future of TV at Home

2006-06-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Just as movies are facing changes to their consumption model, so too is television. What was once three stations offering advertiser sponsored variety shows, game shows and soap operas is now burdened with Digital Video Recorders, satellites, cable, DVDs, cyberspace and, to confuse things more, the end of the analog spectrum in Feb 2009.

As much as TV has changed, it has stayed quite the same. Sitcoms are still sitcoms, except that we don’t have a Seinfeld, Roseanne, Cheers or Friends going on right now. Dramas, like Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and 24 are taking on more and more cinematic qualities, and in many cases, employ much better writing than most movies.

The 500 channels promised by broadband are consolidating due to less-than-expected ad revenue and lack of audiences. Yet there are still a lot more channels available than there were 10 or 20 years ago. With so many channels, and so many of those channels producing original content, syndication seems to be in trouble. No longer does a show that has survived five seasons have a chance to live on forever in reruns.

So here’s the big question: who is going to pay for television programming?

The advertisers?
I have a DVR from Dish Network. I record my shows and skip the commercials altogether. In fact, in the last six months I’ve watched more TV commercials on YouTube than I have on my TV. And I’m not alone. The only thing I voluntarily watch live is sports, so I see ad rates for football, basketball and other to jump. The rates of others, I’m not so sure. Why pay big bucks to hock your wares during the first run of a Lost episode, when that same episode is available for people to download the next day?

Of course, there is always product placement, which if done well is the solution to this whole deal. But don’t get me started about product placement.

And TiVo has been warning about adding some sort of unskippable commercial breaks added to TV programming. But would this revenue go to TiVo or the production companies?

The watchers?
Essentially, this is the HBO or Showtime model. But even these shows start to run into trouble when stars become huge and demand huge salaries (ie. James “Tony Soprano” Gandolfini).

Sure, people already pay for “regular” TV in the form on Cox, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network and others, but this is paying for the vehicle that delivers the signal to your house when you tire of the rabbit-ear quality. The content is mostly still supported by advertising.

But now for network shows you can now buy episodes or subscribe to some shows on iTunes and others. You can also buy most popular TV series on DVD. And not only the latest shows, like 24 and Gilmore Girls, but extensive backlogs like Battlestar Galactica and MASH. So far this has been a little extra butter on the production company’s’ muffin because a vintage show’s costs were paid years ago. But with future TV shows, I’m thinking it’s going to turn into a way to pay the bills.

To those cynics out there, it’s even being said that the movie and TV production industries are up for hyping the new blue laser technology is because they are running out of products to repackage. They are running out of stuff to convince you to buy. So they want to repackage old shows and movies again, and convince you to purchase them… again… to support their salaries and produce new shows.

Just like for movies, keep your eye on cyberspace as the end winner of this game. It’s too easy, convenient and pervasive to ignore.

They must read my blog.

2006-06-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Independent UK thinks the future of movies at home is going to go the way of cyberspace, not blue lasers. It sounds familiar. They must read my blog.

From The Independent:
Despite the claims being made for the new players, some industry watchers
believe the future of home movies and recorded TV shows lies not in physical
players and discs but in cyberspace.

In the next few years, the arrival of internet video will allow people to instantly
order and view films by broadband on their television sets; they won't need a
shelf of videos, DVDs or HD DVDs.

Adam Vaughan, online editor at Stuff, said the magazine viewed the battle
of the formats as "a red herring".

"It's being talked about as a format war but we think we will just skip to
internet video in the next few years," he said.

"It's a bit like SACD (Super Audio DC) and DVD-A (DVD Audio). We were
promised that they would be the future of how to listen to music because
they offered much better sound quality.

"But in fact everyone went for MP3, which is lower in sound quality, but
more versatile. I think ordering movies over the internet will be more
convenient."

Check out the whole article.

Style is Not Important. It’s Essential.

2006-06-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

In the early stages of any products life, function is what gets our attention. In consumer electronics: better picture, clearer sound, more organization, greater convenience. These are the things that sell the early adopters.

But the life of innovative function is short lived. We all know you can get a DVD player for $30. While manufacturers and retailers can continue to offer products that cost less and less, one alternative we see again and again is choosing to make them look better.

I recently ran into a friend, one of the most techie people I know, and he proudly pulled a brand-new one mega-pixel camera out of his pocket. It was tiny and could hang around his neck. Obviously, he did not buy this camera for the high-quality single mega-pixel pictures. He bought it because it was small, and it looked neat.

When function is the only thing that matters, a product can look like a giant orange turtle and still sell. But when there are lots of giant orange turtles, it won’t be long before someone decides to make theirs smaller or more attractive. Consumers will not forfeit function, but if a manufacturer is not willing to add an aesthetic value, their competitor will.

A Consumer Electronics Association survey showed us women account for 58 percent of electronics purchases.

That same study showed 46 percent of women say they have the most influence on home purchases and 42 percent reported having equal say.

In other words: "Ninety percent of the time women will make the buying decision because it becomes a function of home décor,” said Michael Steinberg, the former CEO of Macy's West, in a recent interview.

Let me repeat that: “…it becomes a function of home décor.” Translated: it has to look good; it has to fit in the home.

If you watch MTV, maybe you’ve seen the show Cribs. In this show, we get to tour famous people’s homes and without fail, right above the fireplace is a giant Plasma TV. This is not because it performs better. It is because it takes less space, it looks cool and it no longer forces the television to be the central focus of the room. One could walk into the room and not notice that you have a giant TV on the wall. Sure the picture is good; it is a huge screen and all that. But it could just as easily be all of those things and still take up half of the living room.

The point is it does not take up half of the living because people do not want it to. There are other things worth showing off in the home. Décor is important. Style is important.

Of course, “back stage” products like cables, batteries and cleaners do not need to look good, they need to be invisible. If it is not going to add to the décor, just make sure it will not detract. Given the opportunity, and comparable function, ugly accessories will get replaced by stylish accessories.

But back stage products aside, there are other appliances fighting for space in the family room. For example, computer workstations may not be in their own room any more. They could be in the corner of the living room, the kitchen, or in the “media room.” And no one can deny that computer manufacturers are making their products more attractive. I am not sure of the last time I saw a boring beige CPU in my local office store, but it has been a while. Now it seems the standard is ABB (anything but beige): black, silver, white.

Going beyond the elegant white shell of the iMac, Apple is heavily promoting the computer’s wireless capability. Using Bluetooth, the keyboard and mouse can connect wirelessly. No wires on the desktop. This makes it incredibly clean and attractive.

This seems counterintuitive to the Consumer Electronics study, which showed that a majority of women said using "female" colors on technology equipment is a bad idea and would not impact purchasing decisions. But in the market, out on the retail shelf, why does that very marketing strategy work?

In early 2004, Apple introduced the iPod Mini: the smaller, more colorful version of the industry-leading iPod. Sales of the iPod Mini exploded. But here’s the catch: a colorful four-gigabyte iPod Mini cost $250, while a plain white 20-gigabyte iPod costs $300. That’s 20% more price for 400% more memory. And the Mini sold! In fact, it was often out of stock. Could it be because the iPod Mini is pink, blue or silver?

When people say they are concerned with home décor, they mean they want good looking products. Form may follow function, but sometimes, function is not enough.

It is becoming widely recognized that women are playing a larger role in the electronics that are coming into the home. That fact, coupled with the traditional woman’s role as keeper of the home means we all have a new boss. Forget about working for the man. We’re working for the woman.

A new car. Do I have to?

2006-06-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

My 1985 Subaru Brat, a car/truck hybrid, is navy blue with a snow-white cap covering the super-cool rear-facing jump seats in the bed. The “Roo” is a small two-seater that is so skinny it takes up barely half of a lane on the expressway and fits comfortably into the most compact of compact parking spots.

The Roo has given me more than 175,000 virtually trouble-free miles. And I am not a person deserving of such giving.

I bought the Roo in the fall of 1991 from a couple of soon-to-be parents in Ann Arbor, Mich. They were making the move to a mini-van. With the purchase came a file folder containing every repair and maintenance receipt for the car dating back to the original purchase.

"Yeah, that’s great," I said, as I threw the folder in the passenger seat while testing the radio. "Do these seats recline any more?"

When I plunked down the $2,000 to buy the four-year-old import, I just thought it was a great way to lug my music equipment around. It was also much cooler than the rusted-out 1974 Ford pickup I was driving at the time.

There was a time - during one of the Roo’s oil-leak phases - when I used the oil pressure gauge like the gas gauge. If the oil pressure was low, I needed to put in a quart. If I waited long enough and the engine started ticking, I needed to add two quarts. Since I was putting in new oil to replace the oil now decorating the street, that was just as good as an oil change. The mechanic who fixed the leak - something to do with a head and a casket - corrected my naive theory.

Later I developed a schedule. The Roo got an oil change once a year, whether it needed it or not. An annual car wash was also in order; navy blue hides dirt remarkably well. Tires needed replacing when one blew out, hopefully close to home.

After a couple years in Ann Arbor and Detroit, I saw gold and platinum in the fabled grunge scene of Seattle. My band mates and I made the trek across the country in a four-car caravan and the Roo made the 2300-mile trip with ease.

After I settled in Seattle, the Roo became very loud and needed some exhaust work. I looked through the folder of receipts to see if any exhaust work had been done before. As I flipped through, the first few were from Dunning Subaru in Ann Arbor, mainly for oil changes and a burned out blinker bulb. Further back in time, the dealership changed to Renton Subaru. That being in Renton, Washington.

The Roo had come home. In January of 1985, those car-selling parents-to-be were newlyweds living in West Seattle. They bought the Roo and drove it to Ann Arbor sometime in 1988, only to have me drive it back five years later.

Fifteen of my 18 years of driving have been in the Roo. A lot has happened in those years. There’s a tear in the front-seat upholstery that has been growing for about 10 years. What at the time sounded like a gunshot was actually a rock from a gravel truck I was following. It started a crack in the windshield that now stretches from one side to the other. Two small patches of rust, one on the hood and the other on the tailgate, are the only imperfections on the body.

I’ve gotten married, bought a house and a new Jetta for my wife. Occasionally my wife will ask me when we are getting another car to replace the Roo. “Next summer,” I say. That has been the standard answer for seven years running.

Future of Movies at Home

2006-06-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while. I like movies. I signed up for Netflix really early. Like, 2000 early. It was a great way to get movies, and I’m sort of a geek, so it was a cool way to demonstrate that to my wife. I quit after a couple of years because of lots of scratched discs and, the last straw, a disc completely broken in half (The Corruptor with Mark Wahlberg and Chow Yun Fat. I’ve still not seen it…).

So, I quit. But I couldn’t stay away. After a few years of rental stores, I came back last year and I love it again.

I admire Netflix. It’s a mix of antiquated technology (USPS), current technology (DVD) and the future of technology (Internet). Brilliant. But I’ve always thought their days were numbered. There’s been a way to download movies illegally just about as long as you could download music from the awesome and original Napster. But bandwidth, memory capacity and lack of video quality did not lead to as quick adoption of movie downloads as music.

Well, the bandwidth problem is going away. Something like 42% of the country is on broadband. Computer hard drives regularly have upwards of 60 to 80 gigabytes and more. External hard drives are being used by less-than-geeky people. And blank DVD-Rs and CD-Rs are selling in insane numbers. The only issue still outstanding is quality. Simply, because the better quality you want, the more bandwidth and memory you need. And with people accustomed to DVD quality and 42 Plasma HDTVs the general assumption is that people will only aspire to get better quality and bigger TVs.

Well how about this?

Consumers have been known to sacrifice quality for the sake of ease and convenience. Think back to the most referred to event in the history of consumer electronics - betamax vs VHS. It is generally acknowledged that BetaMax was the better technology, yet VHS won by having more partners and better distribution.

The concept of movie downloads, too, has more partners and better distribution.

And besides that: It’s Already Happening. Look at DirectTV, Dish Network, Vongo … These are video on demand sources that let you view a movie as many times as you want in a 24-hour period. The only thing that will hold up the concept of movie downloads is giving consumers the option to keep the downloaded movie file. I believe most people only buy DVDs for the repetition. So their kid can watch The Incredibles two times a day, everyday, for three months. But notice I said “hold up the concept” back there. That’s because it’s going to happen. Even if the movie companies get dragged along by the arm… by iTunes… or some college drop-out programmer in Albuquerque…

Band aids like TiVo, is going to be up to you. It’s going to do the same thing: pull files on demand from a source on the other end of your coax cable, phone line or satellite dish. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what happens now, every time you log onto the internet.

NOTE: So I’ve finally realized the real industry drawback to movie downloads. There is a reticence on the movie studio and distributors part because they are running out of things to sell. TV shows to package, movie sets to compile. Movie downloads give consumers too much freedom. But, man, consumers are going to drag movie companies along, just as they did to the RIAA.

NOTE 2: It may be slow, but it's coming...
Netflix says mulling options for downloading
Apple's iTunes Movie Store Hurdles - 2007?

New Award: Worst Product Names Ever

2006-06-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

And the winner is... A&W

And it pains me just a little to say that. I like A&W. For some reason, I view A&W along with Arby's as a little less fast food than McDonalds and Burger King. (I know I'm just fooling myself).

I offer three things to back up my decision:
1. Chubby Chicken: I don't want to know the name of the chicken I'm about to eat. And worse, they make Chubby look like a mother in an apron, so I can only think they are serving up her own animated chicks. Like most people who've never had to kill their own chickens, I live in denial.

2. Cheese Curds: This just sounds gross. Curds? All I can think of is curdled, rotten milk. Granted, cottage cheese packages include the words Large Curd or Small Curd; but I'd venture a guess that the consumer of small curd cottage cheese at the Haggen is not the same consumer buying the large order of Cheese Curds at A&W. For my money, Fried Cheese would have been a great name option.

3. Getting rid of the Mama, Papa, Grandpa nomenclature: They came back to it, which only makes me think they have someone on their marketing department who has a clue. My advice? Assign this person the duty of reviewing new product names and brands.

PR at Work 4 of 4: Consumer Press

2006-06-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

In general, I find consumer advertising expensive. Like, buy-a-new-BMW expensive. That’s why I generally opt for consumer PR. Because the right product at the right time can triple traffic to a web site and impress the heck out of vendors and retail partners.

The downside to consumer PR is you lose control of your message. A product review might be good and it might be bad. Your web site address may or may not get included. The information may end up wrong. You are not in charge, and just about anything can happen. Plan for the best, be optimistic and talk your product up. But keep in mind most products are not going to change the world. Most products are not, in fact, the best things since the iPod. So try not to say your idea is the BEST EVER. Of course, unless it is.

In general, go from the angle your product or service is going to make some people’s lives better or easier. But prepare yourself for a less than stellar write up.

Consumer PR is a bit tougher because everyone wants it. When someone thinks of PR, it is nationwide magazines, newspapers and television they are thinking.

For newspapers, go for the big guys. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, etc. Allsop had a small mention in a Washington Post article that resulted in two or three dozen mentions in smaller town papers. That being said, soliciting PR coverage in several smaller newspapers is a little more work, but is usually pretty effective. Just make sure you are sending your information to the correct editor (usually the business editor).

For magazines, target the ones whose readers shop at the stores your products are sold. Go to Barnes & Noble or Borders and look at the magazine section. Think about your subject and think about what kind of magazines your consumers would read. Buy a few magazines (come on, spend the $20). Read the articles and find a writer who might fit. Send them a release and a sample. Better yet, email them the news release in the body of a message. Then follow up with a sample and release in a third-day FedEx envelope.

It helps if you can get an editorial calendar. It’ll give you an idea of planned feature articles throughout the year. If you time it right, you can get your product mentioned in a longer feature story, which has way more impact than a product review.

For television, send it to the right person. Don’t just send info to the newsroom. Send it to the on-air personality who talks about your technology, market or hobby. There are lots of hosts, so spend some time on Google and find the right person.

If you’re lucky, someone from the consumer press will call you. These are reporters. They are just people doing a job: looking for new and interesting things to write about. In general, they have lots of writing assignments going on at the same time, and they can use the help. They may have seen you at a trade show. They may have seen an article in a trade magazine. They may have had someone they were interviewing mention you in passing. If they call: respond. Answer their questions, call them back, be honest, tell your story, offer anecdotes, be prepared to offer other resources. After you’ve spoken with them, ask them to let you know when the article is published.

One final note on this: nothing will drive your web traffic up and drive your conversion rate down more than consumer PR. Put more simply, tons of people will come to your site and see your offering, but the vast majority will not buy. Don’t worry, because the traffic alone will generate sales in the long run.

PR at Work 3 of 4: Trade Press

2006-06-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

If the term is foreign to you, a trade magazine is a periodical of some sort that publishes news and features particular to an industry. Say sporting goods. No one outside the sporting goods industry (except for maybe investment people) cares about this publication. It covers promotions, new hires, product launches, product trends, athlete licensing and such.

I recently stumbled on a summary of the top 100 trade magazines. Initially, I was a little surprised there were 100 total trade magazines in existence, let alone a top 100. But think, for every industry from promotional products to holistic vitamims to Hollywood to truckers, there is a community of professionals who need to be connected. And that connection can be made through a trade magazine.

So, who reads Trade magazines?
* Customers (hopefully)
* Competitors (guaranteed)
* Vendors (prospecting)
* Your Sales Team (they better)
* Ad Sales People (prospecting)
* Consumer Press (more on this later)

Really, trade magazines are almost like catalogs: page after page of reprinted product and personnel news releases, with a section of news snippets and one or two longer features. The best ones, in my humble opinion, read like hot sheets or gossip pages. Some look like Vogue, some look like the Wall Street Journal and others look like a college extracurricular newsletter.

If you’re not sending regular news releases to the applicable trade magazine, shame on you. Start today. Take the latest product or service you have, write three paragraphs on it and email it to the editor in chief. Chances are your release will appear in the next issue… for free… in almost the exact format you submitted it. And then that long lost sales rep from Albuquerque will call because he saw the article and you can ask him what he’s been up to for the last three months.

Seriously, the article will get noticed. Also, it’ll be on their website; you can link to it from your website and get some search engine play out of it. And here’s something cool, the consumer press reads these things, too. So if the stars are aligned, that trade magazine coverage could garner some consumer press. All from a three paragraph email you sent to the editor of your favorite trade magazine.

Just like every other journalist, trade magazine writers want new and interesting things to write about and publish. If you help them out, they will help you out with more coverage, and maybe one of those coveted feature/trend stories. They might even start calling you just to check in and see what you have going on. Take advantage of this and make a friend in the publishing industry. It’s not hard. It’s just work.

Those who do the work, get the coverage.

PR at Work 2 of 4: Local Press

2006-06-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Working for an international company, there are different publics with whom we relate. Our trade industry. Consumers around the world. National and Regional media. But the one that raises the most questions in the building is the local press. There are things we tell the local community that we tell no one else. Personnel promotions, new employees, formation of a Ski to Sea team, and we still share bigger company news, like new customers, products or advertising campaigns.

What is the value of local public relations? Obviously it's not product awareness, because the relative sales that result are small. But when communicating with the local community, there are more important things than sales.

Think about this: Company Morale.

About a year ago, the president of my company was on the cover of the Northwest Business Monthly. A couple of days after it dropped, he stopped in for lunch at his favorite Thai restaurant. The owner was excited to see him, because he had seen the magazine cover and he got special attention the whole lunch. I heard about this experience for two days straight.

I later learned that our President’s mother Betty, the Allsop Matriarch, was passing the Northwest Business Monthly around at a dinner party. She had a great time talking about her sons with her friends. And funnily enough, I learned that Betty was showing the article off from the editor of the magazine. Someone he was interviewing had been at the party and mentioned Betty’s gloating. So it fluffed the editor’s ego a bit, knowing we were so happy with the piece.

People love to see their name or their organization in the paper. Friends, family, casual acquaintances and others will see little clips about the organization and comment. "Oh, I saw that you hired some new people, or you launched a new product or you're moving to another building. You must be growing. How exciting!"

But even beyond company morale there are other benefits. Being visible in publications that members of the local government read improves your status as a community member. You are thought of as a local employer, taxpayer and benefit to the community. This eases the way in any face-to-face interactions or disputes.

And even family businesses have investors. They're called bank executives. People like to claim a little bit of responsibility for successes and seeing customers in print gives them a chance to point and tell their friends and associates: "Hey, we work with them."

We recently had some budget meetings with our accountant and bankers and very early in the conversation, we heard: "I saw you guys in the Bellingham Business Journal. I didn't know you had a company store."

It's true. Sometimes there's more to business than sales. Local public relations for an international company can help the organization through company morale, creating a positive community image and building ties with other local businesses.

So I have a plan. I’ve made a mental list of the people at my company who doubt the value of local public relations. And I am going to get each of their names published for something. An anniversary, a promotion, being on our Ski to Sea team. My guess, the first time they see their name in print, I’ll have a new ally.

PR at Work 1 of 4: Advertising or PR

2006-05-31T16:30:00.000-07:00

Have you read The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR? If not, click over to Amazon.com and get it. It’s a great book.

As a mid-sized marketer, I see the value in PR much more than I do in advertising. I think an ad for one of my company’s products or brand, opposite a page from Maxell or Verbatim looks a little odd. If anything they paid way less for their space, yet the cost was a much smaller percentage of their budget.

And besides, there is an inherent mistrust in advertising. Advertisers can say anything they want because they are paying for the ink. But PR on the other hand is above reproach. If a reporter or editor put it in the magazine, it must be true. It must be news.

Hopefully.

But, not always. Magazine and newspaper reporters have a set amount of space to fill. And they are always on the lookout for interesting, new things. And strangely, there is not always an influx of new and interesting things to write about. Frankly, those that take the time to send out news releases get attention.

At their best, editors and reporters will receive a release and use it as a reason to call for follow up, or request a sample for review, or put together a trend story. At their worst, editors will copy and paste the text of a news release directly into their publication. Either method gets your name in print, but savvy media consumers know the difference.

But even the worst case scenario helps you out in the Internet era of public relations. Each time your news release shows up on the web, Internet search engines see more value in it. And that makes your company and your web site show up higher in search engine results.

But to be most effective, you’re going to need to make a few changes to your news release style. Lose some of the news speak. Make it more like a blog. Go conversational and load it up with hyperlinks. Not too many; keep it to one every paragraph. Keep in mind you’re ultimately trying to appeal to a writer/editor, so keep everything pertinent. Link to your homepage, the web page of the featured product or service, try and tie the release to another more prominent company or trend, so you can link to their web sites. One neat effect of adding these hyperlinks is if your text gets copy/pasted, your links might follow and build more search engine juju.

But never forget you’re trying to appeal to a writer - reporter, editor, blogger, product evangelist, lonely teenager who spends too much time alone on the Internet - who in turn will share your news with their audience. So keep it human. Appeal to aspirations and fears.

Of course you can buy your way to the top of the Google results page, but those show up under the “Sponsored Links” header, and have less genuine appeal than organic search engine results. And people really do look at paid placements with a touch of cynicism

So, for my time and money, I’d rather send out samples and releases, and call and email; I want to get to those writers who might be interested in the news I have to offer. As long as you’re honest and have something interesting to talk about, they listen.

Over the next few days I’m going to throw out some thoughts in dealing with Consumer, Trade and Local PR. Because they are all different, and yet oh so alike. It can’t hurt to think of them as cousins who like the same stuff, but live in different neighborhoods.

The Display Dilemma

2006-05-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

So, the flat-panel TV. All the kids are going to have one. Everybody from CNET to the Consumer Electronics Association is banking on the success of flat-panel TVs.

This trend got a big jump start with everybody on the show Cribs having one over the mantle. It’s not about just keeping up with the Jones’, it’s about keeping up with the Star Jones’. But that’s not the only influence.

Prices are finally getting into the Trading-Up ballpark. And more people are interested in the wide-screen action. And Congress finally voted and approved a hard date for ending analog television broadcasts (2/17/09). It’s widely thought ending analog TV broadcasting will create enough confusion in the general public there will be a rush to buy a new TV. (As much as I reassure by Cable-TV-subscribing Mother-in-law that she’ll be OK, she’s still freaking out about it.)

And with all of these new TVs, with new ways to show it and display it, the options go a little something like this.

- The Stand with which it came - All of these TVs come with some sort of a stand. This means you can pull it out of the box and set it up on the same old entertainment center you used for your CRT TV. (Yawn)

- Mount it… on the wall - Throw it up on the wall. This requires a wall-mount of some sort that’ll run you anywhere from $50-200 depending on bells and whistles. The problem that arises here is the cables. You can hide them by cutting some holes in your wall, which while being a pain, can look pretty slick.

- Stick your TV somewhere new - This is a cool option. And it applies more to your second or third TV. Stick it on the ceiling. The kitchen counter. A bookshelf. But keep in mind that most of you will need a satellite receiver or DVD player to get the most from even your secondary TVs. So following is a shameless plug for an Allsop product.

Our new TV Stands. They seriously make it easy to put an entertainment center in every room. And they do it without adding another piece of furniture or wall mounting.

As for me, I splurged on a 37-inch LCD TV at Costco. I am in love. My wife and I sometimes talk to the TV: greeting him or letting him know we will return soon. I dig my flat panel TV because it gives me and you more options in how to present the TV. Previously, a big TV became the centerpiece around which a room was arranged; because the TV was about the size of a Honda. With Flat Panels, you can take the focus off of the TV and let the room become more of a conversation area.

So after the initial purchase came the display dilemma. First we looked around the living room, where our old (CRT) TV was. We have an 80-year old house with a big fireplace. Should we go Cribs-style and mount it over the Fireplace? How about a media wall and put it on the opposite wall? Either way we were letting the TV become the focal point of our living room, our reception room, our main living area.

No deals, we cleared out the home office we never use, and now have a fantabulous Media Room. The best place north of Seattle and south of the Colossus in Langley to watch a movie... or back episodes of the X-Files.

Pres. Bush? Meet nuance. Nuance? Our president.

2006-05-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Our president’s lack of interest in nuance and his reveling in “straight talk” appear to have come back to haunt him. Two things in recent days come to mind.

First, President Bush goes on TV on 5/15/06 to explain the immigration policy. “This is not amnesty, because…” In explaining why the 11 million illegal immigrants who are here, have been a valuable member of society since they got here should not be herded up and sent back he required some nuanced words. A little strange seeing this coming from him. This required more than three words, a few commas and even some propositions thrown in. Well, his co-horts in the House of Representatives aren’t having any of it, passing a bill requiring deportation. The Senate came along, passing a bill along his lines of Bush’s preference. The two bills are polar opposites. Who knows what will come of it.

Then on Friday, a British reporter asked Bush about what mistakes he has made. Remember, if you will, the last time this happened, Bush couldn’t come up with an answer. This time he was ready for the question. His first thought was to say that his using lines of great bravado, such as “Bring it on” and “dead or alive” were wrong. He went further saying he learned he needed to be more sophisticated in how he communicates. This is a far cry from the tough talk campaign language of his presidential campaigns.

Apparently, someone in the communications office has decided that appealing to the lowest common denominator is not the best way to govern a country. Life is complicated. Governing is complicated. Policy is complicated. It takes more than three-word phrases to explain it.

iPods make the world go 'round

2006-05-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, we launched this great new product last week. We've been developing it for a while now, and really started showing at CES this year. It is taking on a really cool internet buzz. It's fun when these happen and traffic to your site jumps, people started insulting your stuff, but more people get it and start proselytizing for you. It's fun.

Check out the Splash Pack DriPod. It's a simple concept. It keeps your iPod protected in an airtight case. But it still shows off the player and lets you control the volume or click around your playlists.

And check out a couple of these links.

MacNN - Splash Pack DriPod keeps iPods dry
CNet - Waterproof iPod case makes a splash
iLounge - Allsop Splash Pack Dri Pod Protection from Water, Dust and Sand
Daily Mac - Allsop Dri Pod

It's fun when something catches.

Oh, Advertising. I Hate You... yet I'm strangely attracted...

2006-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve had an unexplainable attachment to M&Ms for most of my life. I don’t remember the attachment initially, but as a child you could push me down on my diaper-covered toddler butt and I'd be fine, but taking away my little bag of M&Ms meant trouble. So I was surprised when Elliot threw down the Reese’s Pieces to coax E.T. out of the bushes. But in hindsight, it’s better to sacrifice your Reese’s Pieces. Save the M&Ms for yourself. Anyway, I gave a lot of thought to this subject. And Reese’s is probably happy about it. Because they paid Spielberg $20,000 to have their product featured in the movie, and their sales jumped 66% overnight. It’s one of the seminole moments in the marketing in movies. Along with Jaws being the first summer blockbuster. Another source of advertising revenue was found. Paid Placement.

As a marketer, I’ve bought magazine ad space. I’ve bought local newspaper ad space. I’ve even arranged for an on-location radio event for a warehouse sale at our headquarters.

But couple those things with my knowledge as a media consumer (ie. I read magazines and watch TV) and I am an expert in my mind.

And advertising is going through some growing pains. To a large degree, advertising dollars are a zero sum game. There are only so many dollars that will be spent on advertising. The dollars get shifted around from format to format. Old forms of advertising die. Types of companies that advertise change.

Take radio. It’s gone from a national advertising medium to a local and regional advertising medium. But it’s still viable for local businesses. TV is giving way to the Internet. The best commercials made for TV never get shown on network TV but become an Internet phenomenon. Ad words and banner placement based on the context of the searches made by browsers is giving way to behavioral advertising over time.

Internet business models have gone from “make money by selling stuff” to “build a killer app that people use and sell advertising to those who want to make money by selling stuff”. That’s a big part of what caused the dot com bubble to burst. There are only so many dollars in the online-ad well. Even still, I am amazed at how many successful companies are still popping up with this model. Though I hear we are on another bubble. And what are the chances that at some point we’ll see Google-Like ads appear somewhere on the screen during your favorite TV shows.

But here’s my product placement vent. When I was reading the Fog, I was amused and engaged when I read that a bottle Ragu was smashed over someone’s head. Because we had a jar of Ragu hanging out in the cupboard. But now, if this were pulled off in a movie, I’d immediately view this as product placement, done for a fee by the movie producers, and call all of my friends to bitch about it.

Sure: TV, movie, music and pc gaming producers and artists need to make money on their product. I get it and support it. If TiVO, disappearing CD sales, slacking box office receipts and online digital media theft are going to eat up their profit, go ahead and make it up on the front end. But remember that if it looks like advertising or smells like advertising, it will look untrustworthy and suspicious. Make your creative people be more creative.

No Cash, No Problem... Keep My Friend.

2006-05-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

I totally did this once.

> A German woman left her friend as a deposit at a gas station because
> she did not have enough cash to pay for her petrol, police said Wednesday.

So, I was 16, driving over to a friend's place at 11 p.m. Right as I was driving past the only gas station for 10 miles in Hamburg, Mich., I felt the engine sputter. I turned around and made it back to the gas station on fumes. Then I realized I'd left my wallet at home.

After a little negotiation, I got $5 in gas and left my friend, Tony, there while I retrieved my wallet. By the time I made it back to the gas station, the attendent had Tony restocking the candy aisle.

Wikilicous... Wikirrific... Wikimusing...

2006-05-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to say that I’m a fan of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. That’s because I’m not a fan. But I have seen it a few times. And of the lifelines, the 50/50 is really for chumps. I mean, really. They say it’s random, but the producers get to pick which two potential answers go away. If I was in the position, “phone a friend” would be my first choice only because I know two of the strangely smartest people on the planet (Hey, Gavin… What’s up, Kevin…). But a close second would be “Ask the Audience”, where you get to see a percentage result of the audiences opinion of the question’s answer. By and large, the masses are going to lead you in the right direction.

This is where I get excited about the wiki phenomenon. If you’ve not heard of this, check out Wikipedia. I link to it all of the time from this very blog. It’s like an encyclopedia of sorts, on the Internet that gets contributions from everyday people, crazy obsessed maniacs and professional experts who want to show how smart they are. It’s a great reference because it gets constant bulls**t testing. Every post made is open to editing from other contributors. And the other contributors could be any of the billions of people on the Interent. Wikipedia gets updated by cyber-geeks who think they know more than that academic buried in the back of the library working for Britannica.

The premise of this and other wiki sites is that a new opinion, fact, noun, whatever, will get posted and experts from around the planet will log on and share what they know about it in as clinical terms as possible. Sure marketers have tried to co-op it, but managers of the web site and other “everyman editors” do a pretty good job of shutting those down.

The really great thing is that, in general, wiki sites are more up to date than you are. If you hear about some crazy buzz on some random movie coming out this summer - say… Oh, I don’t know… “Snakes On A Plane” - go look. At this time, the Wikipedia is ground zero for where a lot of buzz grows. Check out pastafarianism (Have you been touched by his noodley appendage?).

And aside from the Wikipedia, check out Amazon, ShopWiki and Wikitravel. These are sites that allow potential customers and past customers to share what they know. Different from Wikipedia, these sites are intended to be less clinical and more fan-club like. This is a pretty neat way to get information on a vacation site, or ironing board or music.

But Wikinet apps have their down side.

One I will call Wikibullies: I imagine these guys monopolizing conversations at dinner parties if they had any social skills. But with no social skills, they sniff out words, commas and anecdotes they feel are out of whack and change them. If you’re not contributing to a wiki of their interest, I doubt I’d know they exist, but Oh they exist. These are people who spend a little more time than me paying attention to their respective topics of interest. But changes to listings get tracked and if someone’s posting a bunch of crap, the site managers can shut you out.

Another, I’ll call wikiLittlemuch is an issue I have with Amazon’s use. Take a look at their product pages. There is so much below the fold. Now I’m a big fan of testing. And the Internet lets you test and test and test until you find things that work. But with so many options at the bottom of the product page, I’ve stopped paying attention.

And then there are the Wikipranksters. I read of some guy who changed a wkikpedia entry as a prank - not really a funny prank, unless it was an inside joke - claiming a new twist on the JFK assasination. But that topic is rife with conspiracy hounds already, so I wasn’t too surprised.

Take Wikinet sites with a grain of skepticism, but take advantage of them. It’s free, it’s informational, and even if it’s wrong it’s entertaining.

Another MP3 Player. News?

2006-05-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

See the technology media try to get excited about another MP3 player.

I just read about the SanDisk e-something today.

iRiver relocated and wants to offer a better experience.

Sony’s set to joust with Apple? I do like the medieval touch, but it seems a stretch. (Full Disclosure: I owned a Sony/Nike MP3 player about 5 years ago. I think it was 64 megabytes. It had this crappy software for uploading music that crashed my computer two out of three times I used it. I ended up literally throwing the thing away in frustration.)

Creative flails.

I’m all for competition, so I’m a little torn over the attempts at excitement over a new commodity player from one of the guys fighting over 1/5 of the market. There are a few people/companies talking about the next step in MP3 players, namely that it won’t be just a music or video playback device, but when will the rest of the media catch up?

Phone, video, PDA, dictation machine, GPS, heart rate monitor and more in some crazy as yet to be determined/announced configuration? Though I am concerned about too much convergence and multitasking.

Five years ago, we had like 20 printers in our building. A few laser printers and lots of ink jet printers. We had five fax machines and four copy machines. It seemed they were all over the place. In 2004 we got this massive Savin Printer/Scanner/Fax/Copier. We thought it’d be great that all of those functions are now in this one machine, saving us money and space and work and adding ten years onto the life of every employee.

But here’s the problem. The other printers are gone... The other copiers are gone. We have two fax machines in the office. When one person wants to print 10 copies of a 50 page presentation, in color, and three people want to make two photo copies and one person want to scan a press clipping (that’s me…) The system breaks down. And imagine for a moment, what happens when the machine breaks, which it does about once a month. It's chaos.

I complain, but I like the machine. There is usually not a problem, but there are problems.

So right now, I carry around my wallet, my keys, my phone and my iPod. When I travel I add my Powerbook and digital camera to the mix. I can see a time when a few of those things "converge". But am I looking to Creative or Zen to make it happen? I’m banking on Apple and here’s why.

1. I’m pulling for a lifestyle unit, that’ll change the number of things I carry around in my everyday life.
2. Style: At the very least, it won’t be an eyesore.
3. Usability: From a one-button mouse, to OS X, to the iPod’s scrolling clickwheel. I have faith.
4. Content: Music, videos, text. If it’s not coming from Disney, NBC, Fox or Dreamworks, it’ll be coming from some of the most creative independent minds around: Other Apple people.
5. Friendly Features: The lifeblood of Apple.
6. 80% market share is incredible. Apple killed the iPod Mini in favor of the Nano, proving that when it’s time, all good things can get better. For example, while everybody else is talking about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, Apple is talking about skipping the disc altogether. Forget how good the current system is. Let’s talk about how we make a new better system.
7. And finally, I’m a Machead. Sue me.

Don't Believe the Hype

2006-05-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

So I've been saying that Blue Ray DVD Technology is a tough sell and nothing at all like the Beta/VHS Wars of the 70s.

Check me out. Today, Reuters is saying Tepid interest seen for next-generation DVDs in 2006.

> "We were quite surprised to see that a very small number of those die-hard
> DVD fans envisioned moving into the high-definition format this year," Levy
> said. "With all the talk and excitement around high-definition DVD they are
> still a long way away from moving into that format."

And these are the hardcore DVD buyers and renters they are talking about. The article clarifies that the adoption rate will be way smaller among the general population.

I'm thinking the biggest use of the Blue Ray technology will be archiving and data storage at the home and office. As far as movie distribution goes, I'm looking to downloading and iTunes-like services taking over from the current DVD technology, rather than a new shiny disc format.

Accidents are a Bad Idea

2006-05-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

I think, in general, we can mostly agree on this. Accidents are a bad idea.

So how about this advertising campaign I’ve been seeing from Volkswagen. These commercials start out with a multi-racial assortment of people chatting in a car, being all cute or funny, and then - you see it develop - a car pulls out of nowhere and a startling car wreck happens before your eyes. The next image is of the passengers standing outside the car wreckage - shaken, but not visibly injured.

I own a ’97 Jetta Trek. I love it. I’m shopping for a new car to replace my other car, a 22-year-old Japanese import, and was thinking about another Jetta. But these commercials make me think twice about it. Obviously, VW’s goal is to demonstrate how safe their car is, what with the commercial’s slogan being “Safe Happens”. But I’ve never been a fan of auto makers showing their cars getting demolished in commercials, even in crash testing. I like the Porche one where their engineers can’t bear to watch their masterpieces get crash tested. Or even the passengers who were saved by an air bag. It was emotional and memorable, but in a way that bothered me less (maybe, because ostensibly they weren’t actors). But showing real world wrecks, simulated or not, is different.

Here's what VW has to say in a USA Today article today: "There are mixed reviews but no matter what, the ads make you think that you can be driving along and you can't control what's happening," says Karen Marderosian, director of marketing for Volkswagen of America.

Talk about the safety rating. Let Consumer Reports give its ranking. Go ahead show me the safety features, but show me them in a sanitized form where I could never possibly believe that I will ever actually need them. I want to know I’m safe, but I don’t want to think about the situations in which I might actually need that side curtain airbag to keep my head from shattering the side window.

Here’s a test: come up with some commercials that show airbags deploy in a sudden and extreme yet comical series of situations. Slogan: “Always there” or “Just in case”.

You Think You’re Cynical?

2006-04-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

I had it out with my dog this morning.

She barked at the dormant lawnmower, and then looked up at me.

I was like: You’re only doing that for the attention…

And she was like: Woof.

And I said: I can’t believe I actually thought for a second that my dog thought she was sneaking something past me. Her actions are pretty transparent. Of course, she’s occasionally sneaky, but when she is it’s for food or attention. And she’s just so cute when she does that.

Anyway, I put my cynicism in check and officially started my day over.

Music solves a lot of problems for me. In this case I was humming “I Just Want to Celebrate” from Rare Earth before I even got back in the house. I’d moved on to U2’s “Beautiful Day” by the time I was pouring the food in Maggie’s bowl.

Now? I’m going for another cup of coffee.

Mid-Sized Marketers Get Their Due

2006-04-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Imagine a spectrum. On one end you’ve got Apple, Coke or any of the Forbes 500. On the other end you’ve got your local mechanic, accountant or any of the small businesses you pass on the way home. One end employs marketers-o-plenty, and maybe even a Chief Marketing Officer. While small businesses have the marketer/owner - the barber or bartender. Al Ries and Jack Trout write for one group. Jay Levinson writes for the other. This is for the big space in the middle: the mid-sized marketer.

I’ve read Guerilla Marketing, Marketing Warfare, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I’ve read how GM has worked to be/stay #1, how Miller and Budweiser duked it out in the 70s and the dot coms spent billions of dollars buying Superbowl ads and vinyl wrapped cars. But it takes some effort to find the nuggets in there for the mid-sized marketer. And that’s strange, because I think the number of mid-sized marketers outnumber mammoth marketers.

I for one, after living in Bellingham and paying attention to local business media for ten years, am occasionally surprised by another $10-15 million company within five miles of my house. They are all over the place. And they are surprisingly small, say 20-30 people.

If you walk down the aisles of your favorite Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Fry’s, once you get away from the TVs and cameras, you’ll stumble on tons of products from mid-sized companies all over the country and the world. Greeting cards, vitamins, glassware, candles, ladders, the list reaches into every consumer interest category.

Let’s look at some traits I’m assigning to companies of this sort:

National, if not International.
Not too concerned with local media, since their market is not concentrated in the local population.
Want to play with the big boys by building a web presence.
Might outsource some marketing, public relations or advertising.
Quite possibly a marketing department of one.

There’s a lot to be said about a marketing department of one. It’s not all good, but there is a lot to be said about it. Your work is high profile, but there’s also some confusion about what you do in the company. You get a lot of credit and a lot of blame. You get to be both creative and analytical.

I’m going to spend some time here in the next few weeks and share some things I’ve learned as a mid-sized marketer. The freedom I’ve garnered, the successes I’ve managed and the flops I can call my own. And this is because I don't think there are enough props shown to the humble mid-sized marketers of the world.

So here it is. Here’s the well-deserved shout out to the mid-sized marketer. There are more of us than you think.

Web-adword-seo-blog-podcast-videoblog-myspace

2006-04-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Every other month there’s a new technology trend that marketers are supposed to jump on, corrupt and make dirty. That’s not how marketers talk about it, but that’s what happens. Marketers have a long history of soiling new technologies. Mail service has its junk mail. The telephone has its telemarketers. TV has commercials and (shiver) product placement…

But the web has made it easier for everyone with an idea to try to make some money (check out Commission Junction and Constant Contact). So everybody’s a marketer. I read this marketing trade magazine called B-to-B. And there is a predictable series of articles about any new tech fad.

Check it out. This new thing exists.

The smart people are doing this. Are you?

Everyone should be doing this.

Why isn’t everyone doing this?

Slow down, Bessie. It’s not all about technology, remember the marketing part.

That last one is usually written in a condescending tone by some young marketing professional who “gets it” that this Blogging-thing is actually not the best thing since duct tape.

Podcasting is cool and new. I have a few friends who created their own. And now people are asking if Podcasting is the next great medium for advertising. And the extension of Podcasting, Video Podcasts like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom are a lot of fun. But they are little tiny TV shows. In fact, RocketBoom was available for your iPod Video before The Daily Show. Keep in mind Jon Stewart’s audience is way bigger than Amanda Congdon’s, but holy cow is it smaller than Brian Williams’. But who is going to watch all of those Podcasts? I’m reminded of the 500 cable channels I was expecting, which are now consolidating into nine because of lack of an audience. (But here’s a thought, are Video Podcasts the bush league for Network TV and Cable).

I’m thrilled people can find a way to support themselves by making these great little clips. But once you put the plastic Coke glass in front of you and start talking about how great those Reebok shoes feel, the luster will come off. There are only going to be a few people making money, and most of those are the people already making money in other mediums.

Most new technologies are shinier versions of stuff we’ve been working in for a hundred years. Yeah, there are variations: the web is the perfect micromarketing tool, mass-customization, viral marketing and such. But after the first two weeks of marketing’s invasion, none of these technologies are any different in that decades-old marketing principles should take hold. Look at some of the best web advertisements. They look startlingly like the best magazine advertisements. Look at the web-only commercials that take the world by storm. First of all, they reach no where near the audience of even the crappiest commercials shown on network television. But secondly, of the most memorable ones, people don’t remember what product the commercial was for. That’s crappy marketing.

Yes, technology is cool and fun and all that. You can get creative and get exposure for little money, but just remember that little sock puppet from Pets.com. I saw him doing a commercial for a cut-rate car loan place on early morning Comedy Central yesterday. So, everyone calm down. Technology is fun. Play with it. Pet it. Love it. But control it. And make sure you’re paying attention to how it affects and complements your brand and your other marketing efforts.

NOTE: Yes, I do realize that as a marketer, I am at this very moment participating in the sullying of a perfectly good technology tool: blogging. Hello, everyone. My name is Jeff, and I’m a recovering hypocrite.

Cingular Took My Phone

2006-04-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

So a couple of years ago, I was a Verizon customer. I’m not going to link to their homepage, because a) you can probably figure their web address, and b) I’m still mad at them.

I was having phone problems (it was not working) and I still had three months before I could get a phone upgrade, and Verizon offered no help, even though I was not able to use my phone service. So, I calmly waited for my contract to expire, and walked over to a friendly Cingular store. I have since learned a few things about the meanings of the contractual obligation, and the eBay options for getting a new/used cell phone, but that is for another day. As well, I’m sure there are several people who have just as tainted view of Cingular, as I have of Verizon, but whatever, this is my blog.

The main thing I learned in my Verizon experience is this: the warranty on a new cell phone is for one year, but the commitment to the cell phone company has grown to two years. So for that second year, please, please, please, little cell phone, please don’t break. Otherwise you’re hosed, and need to find a solution with no help from the service provider.

So, on my switch to Cingular, I first got a Nokia phone and was not satisfied. Inside of two weeks, I exchanged it for a Motorola V551 That was 11 months ago. In general, I’m very happy with the phone, but for a couple of minor quirks.

V551 problem number one: I could no longer hear the person calling me.
V551 problem number two: the screen sometimes didn’t work.

But, here’s the good news. I am still within the one year warranty. So I thought I’d try something. I thought I’d get a new cell phone for the second year of my commitment. And Cingular made it so frickin’ easy.

I clicked on a link on their web site, and faster than I could have ordered a new book on Amazon, I had requested a replacement phone. Two days later, the UPS man dropped a little brown box on my porch. Check out these contents. New (well, reconditioned…) phone, return shipping label, reprogramming instructions… everything. They even included a strip of tape to reseal the shipping box. They solved my problem and didn’t even make me work for it. Sweet.

Cell phone companies get a bad rap, frequently because they tend to be large uncaring corporations that are only concerned with their absolutely huge bottom line, and the occasional spurned customer will not really have that large of an impact. And even if someone at Cingular was not personally concerned with me and my phone problem, they’ve got this thing down. They’d rather send me a new phone immediately, rather than deal with the ten half-hour telephone calls that would have ensued. One visit to their web site, and a happy customer am I.

Let’s pencil it out:
Happy customer with problem immediately solved = cash in the bank and good karma for all.
Satisfied customer with problem talked about, bantered about and marginally solved = Cash until contract runs out and bad blog entries-o-plenty.

Looks like Cingular has won a customer for at least another year or so. At least until my contract runs out in May 2007. Even then, I’ll give them first right of refusal…

Why do I do triathlons? Stairs.

2006-04-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

My goals of running sub-eight minute miles, cycling at a 20-mph average and swimming for an hour all originate from one Seminole moment. One day in the spring of 2005 I jogged up a flight of stairs and was out of breath. And I’m not a big guy (6 feet, 190 lbs).

I was breathing hard, I was disgusted at how little it had taken and I had a new goal. I wanted to be able to jog up a flight of stairs and not be winded. So I started running four or five times a week around my neighborhood or Lake Padden. Twenty minutes, a half-hour, maybe 40 minutes if I was feeling crazy.

But the goal of not being winded when I jog up a flight of stairs got old. It’s not that exciting. And on days when I wasn’t feeling up to running, it was easy to put it off because there was no hard date, or ultimate test of my efforts. So, then I started thinking about races. And I started getting a little bored with just running. I started cycling. This was made a little easier by the fact that the company I work for also owns Softride, a bike company geared toward triathletes. So I got a great bike, pretty affordably. And co-workers told me about a local Triathlon at Lake Padden. So I also started swimming-cycling-running, just to see if I might feel up to racing in a competitive triathlon.

Well, I did it. Last year I participated in two Olympic distance triathlons. Lake Padden and the Baker's Breakfast Cookie International. I would have done a couple more, but I had scheduling conflicts and whatever. I even hunkered down for the last couple of months of 2005 and toughed out my first running marathon in Seattle.

I have plans for more this Summer, at Lake Padden, Tri Without Borders and maybe Lake Stevens, Black Hills or Black Diamond. The Disneyworld one would be awesome.

So now my goals have become to post better times than I did last year. For example, in the Baker’s race, the Bellingham Herald, our local paper, published the top 15 finishers in each age group. I finished 16 out of 23 missing the top 15 by one minute and 23.5 seconds… or so. No newspaper ink for me. This year I want to be in the top 15!

Just so we can keep track, my goal of posting an Olympic-Distance Triathlon time under 2 hours and 40 minutes stems directly from my goal to not be winded after running up a flight of stairs. Make sense?

Bathroom + TV = Absolutely, Amazingly Genius

2006-04-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

I remember sometime in the early 80s, my Mom threw a huge Superbowl party. As I remember it, it was really fun. But one of the things that made it so was that she arranged to have a TV in every room of the house, including the two bathrooms. Now if I remember correctly, this involved extension cords and a couple of old school 13” black-and-white TVs. To me, as a 10-year-old child, this was an absolutely, amazingly genius addition to the bathroom.

Flash forward to last weekend, and I was out at this little Indian restaurant in Vancouver called Rangoli: great food, cute place. On the way out, I stopped in the restroom to take care of some business. What did I see? A little 6” TV buried in the wall behind the bathroom mirror. It was beautifully positioned so one sitting on the throne is at eye level and able to watch the esoteric music videos of Indian influence the restaurant was showing. I immediately thought of hanging out in the bathroom as a child watching the Superbowl, and as an overly-connected adult, I was stunned at what an absolutely, amazingly genius addition to the bathroom this was.

Now granted, a flat-panel TV hidden in the wall of the bathroom mirror seems like a pretty high-end household accessory, but I’ve made a decision. I’m officially high end. I’ve got a little handy-man skill going for me, so I can set it up myself. And that combined with my meager salary is enough to make me eligible for high-end additions such as this. So we have a pretty serious remodel planned for one of our bathrooms in the next year or so, and this will definitely be part of it.

A little research led me to these three options.
1. Philips MiraVision ($1000 and up)
2. Seura Television Mirrors ($3000-ish)
3. Twowaymirrors.net with this 7” LCD TV from Pyle (total about $250). Hmm. Choices, choices.

Now my morning routine is pretty streamlined. Shower, brush teeth, step out to pick out the clothes for the day, step back in to put some goo in my hair, to make it look like I just don’t care. We share the room with our cats’ food and litterbox, so I don’t just hang out there for fun. But I’m thinking for the combined total of say 15-20 minutes per day, plus the occasional extended visit, I can have background noise of CNN or Jon Stewart to keep me informed. Granted a very big issue to be resolved is coming up with a sanitary way to deal with channel and volume changing. Hmm.

I like the idea of having only one TV in my house. It’s in the media room. If we want to watch TV, we go in there and watch. If we want to not watch TV, we go into one of the other five rooms of the house. And having this TV in the bathroom mirror won’t change my feeling on that. Even though I did spend more time than necessary in the black-and-white TV bathroom of 1982, as an adult the bathroom TV will only serve as ADD-style entertainment, distraction and information that one might get in the car on the way to work. And since my work commute is only 7-10 minutes and I hardly get anything good in that time, I’ll be more informed.

But that sanitary remote control is an issue. I will have to research that.

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, Hurry! Choose a side!

2006-04-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

It sure seems there is a whole lotta yellin for something that’s not going to mean anything for a few years. In the realm of DVD players, that little laser that read your disc is red. But with the advent of HDTV, now all the talk is about blue ray high-definition DVDs. The main players in this game are Blu-Ray, backed by Sony, and HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba. I know this sounds a bit familiar. It’s a format war reminiscent of Beta/VHS and DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW.

But let’s clear something up here. This is not a Betamax v. VHS situation. In the early 80’s you had no other choice. If you wanted to rent or record a movie, you had to pony up the dough and choose a videotape side. That’s not the case today. You can keep getting DVDs delivered in the mail from Netflix, back-up your computer on a 4.7 G DVD, and not have any idea that industry giants are kicking each other in the groin trying to get in front in this battle for “format dominance.”

Lest we forget, the landscape is littered with failed forms of media and even a few other format wars that no one really noticed. Who can forget the mid-90’s battle for digital tape format dominance (DAT v DCC)? Or MiniDiscs (Yeah, thanks again, Sony)? Or Super Audio CDs?

These had their place, and in some circumstances they were better than the mainstream media format, but that’s not good enough to be the default. What about DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW? In 2002, this drove people nuts, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard nary a complaint, I forgot there ever was an issue.

But I digress. Back to high-definition DVD. There is a bit of a connector conspiracy going with it. And here’s why. Standard DVD players are seeing very little market growth, because there’s not much reason to buy a new one unless your old one stops working. And it doesn’t help that you can buy new ones at Wal-Mart for $30. DVD technology has been one of the most quickly adopted technologies ever. In terms of household penetration, it is now right up there with Color TVs and telephones, around 90%. So a lot of this development into high definition DVDs is simply to give you a reason to upgrade and buy a new player.

But that’s me being a cynic. The industry line explaining the development is that with so many HD-Ready TVs being sold, the consumer demand for better looking, feature-packed DVDs is huge. This is of course because so many of us ran out and signed up for HDTV service through our cable or satellite service provider.

But, I disagree. DVDs look pretty fricking good on large screen TVs. HDTV is great because it actually makes broadcast television look better on large format TVs. Comparatively, regular TV broadcasts, even on cable or satellite, look a little like VHS playback when compared to HDTV. It really is quite a difference. But as great as HDTV is, the Consumer Electronics industry is having a horrible time explaining it. I’m looking for people to dig on HDTV before they start thinking about changing their movie collection format over to blue ray high definition whatever.

But here’s an interesting angle. On opposite sides of the battle/argument/whatever, you’ve got Sony (Blu-Ray) and Microsoft (HD-DVD): two corporate technology behemoths. Now think of it in the context of Playstation and Xbox. Ahaaa… Gaming and high-definition DVDs…. Sony is planning to incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Playstation 3, while Microsoft will offer an external HD-DVD hard drive for its Xbox 360. The odd thing is that the game discs themselves will stay with the previous red laser DVD technology we all know and love. So the blue laser will just sort of hang out until someone notices. Regardless, gaming consoles could lead to the first appearance of blue laser technology into many consumer households, since stand-alone high-definition DVD players/recorders for either format are expected to go for $1000 and up for a couple of years.

If you ask me, Sony’s name appears in this whole brouhaha quite a bit. They have a way of wanting to change the whole world in their favor. So, if anyone asks me: it’s all Sony’s fault, what with their dementia-induced world domination plans, and all.

Who needs a mouse pad, Part Two.

2006-04-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

Whether you use a roller ball or optical mouse, there are plenty of benefits in using a mouse pad. Some are technical, some are not, but they are benefits nonetheless. Let’s put aside the reasons that some feel mouse pads are no longer necessary because: they’re cheap, they’re not needed for optical mice and they’re cheap.

A mouse pad can serve a number of roles in your daily computing. So let’s take a look at the non-technical perks.

The first, and this is a big one, is having a nice clean open area on your desktop to use your mouse. In this era of the internet, it is quite common to use the computer mouse as often as or more so than the keyboard. So you need it ready to go at all times. Without a mouse pad to reserve mousing space, you’ll find the area quickly cluttered with catalogs, paper clips, junk mail and receipts. So, a mouse pad creates a sort of mousing refuge on your desktop.

Another benefit that may seem superficial is the sound and the look. Try mousing on a wood surface for a few minutes. I tried it, and it’s noisy. From the scraping, the bouncing, the clicking. A mouse pad dampens that sound a bit. And for a minute think about what that scraping and bouncing is doing to the surface of your desk. Why not let a mouse pad take that abuse, instead of scratching up your desktop, counter or dining table.

And finally, one of the reasons so many mouse pads have sold is the novelty value. Some people just like having a picture of puppies and kittens on their desk. Or beach scenes. Or pictures of their kids. Or any number of image mouse pads available on the market. Like refrigerator magnets, mouse pads have become a way of expressing ourselves. Like the stationery market, this is enough to keep the product category alive and kicking for years.

So, what now of those technical benefits of mouse pads? Seriously, there are some benefits.

First of all, some of us are celebrating more than 20 years of computer use. That’s 20 years of typing, mousing, spread sheeting and more. These have not always been the most posture-friendly positions, and a word that’s been thrown around quite a bit in years of late is: ergonomics. That is the science of reducing unnecessary or awkward postures and motions. A quick way to jumpstart you on the path to an ergonomic workspace is with an ergonomic mouse pad. These let your wrist rest on a little pillow while you’re doing your mousing to keep your wrist at a more natural position and to keep the blood flowing. It’s a simple concept with some complicated variations, but it can make a difference.

Also, for PC gamers and professional graphics people, there is a need for an ultra-smooth consistent surface. For gamers this is a life-or-death situation. For graphics professionals, we’re talking about cash. For people who are just really picky about accurate cursor movements, it’s simply peace of mind. Optical or roller-ball, you still need a flat, smooth surface: kind of the definition of a mouse pad. On a going-over-the-edge side bar; I’ve heard of gamers going so far as to put silicone pads on the bottoms of computer mice and spray coatings of Pledge on their mouse pads. Whatever it takes, baby.

I’ve heard of a little talk that a reflective surface can help optical mice work better by conserving the battery of wireless mice. The juries still out on this one, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Who needs a mouse pad, Part One.

2006-04-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

Mouse Pads aren’t rocket science. And actually they aren’t computer science either. Mouse pads are a strangely non-technical thing directly associated with a highly-technical thing. It’s kind of hard to believe that you need a rubber place mat to use your new Dell Computer. But there are reasons you do and reasons you don’t. It’s quickly becoming a matter of preference.

Initially, mouse pads had an actual physical value to computing. That little roller ball inside of your computer mouse works better when it has just a little bit of surface friction that a mouse pad provides. This was true in 1969 when the computer mouse was invented. It was true in 1984 when the Apple Macintosh brought the mouse into the home. And it’s true today when the majority of computer mice out there are still the roller ball-type.

But mouse pads have gotten a bad rap for a quite a while. And that’s really for a few different reasons.

First, at the most basic level, a mouse pad is cheap to produce. You can just take a flat piece of rubber, slap a piece of fabric on it and voila: a mouse pad. Because they are cheap to make and because they score some great visual real estate on your desktop, mouse pads are one of the most popular promotional products (along with pens, T-shirts and key chains). You don’t have to work very hard to find a free mouse pad printed with a manufacturer, auto parts or website logo. This has helped to create a dime-a-dozen mentality when some consumers think about mouse pads.

Secondly, it is not technically necessary to use a mouse pad with an optical mouse. Manufacturers, like Microsoft and Kensington, tout their optical mice as only needing a flat smooth surface. So this has led some people to chuck their mouse pad out the window and go commando on the desktop. However, if you still use a roller-ball mouse, don’t give your mouse pad the heave ho just yet.

Lastly, people perceive mouse pads as cheap. I know this one’s pretty similar to the first reason, but stay with me. Nowadays the price range for mouse pads is literally $.50 to $30 or more. While the majority of mouse pads are made from cloth and rubber, you can also get them made from plastic, glass, metal, leather or wood. I know. We sell them at Allsop. Some people get it (Gamers, Graphics Professionals, really picky people who want accurate cursor movement…) and some don’t (those who proclaim: “mouse pads cost like $.50!”).

Whether you use a roller ball or optical mouse, there are plenty of benefits in using a mouse pad. Some are technical, some are not, but they are benefits nonetheless. And I’m not talking about the kitschy, novelty benefit of having a picture of Spongebob on your desktop.

What! VHS tapes still exist?

2005-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

So, Wal-Mart and Target are going to stop carrying VHS tapes? This is a total surprise to me. I thought they stopped carrying them years ago!

Circuit City and Best Buy dropped them in 2002 and 2003, but Wal-Mart and Target have been holding on. But now, they are planning on only carrying them for new releases and kids' videos. Now that DVD players are in some 75% of US households, it is about time. The only reason I even have a VCR is to play old 1990's recordings of the Headbanger's Ball and My So-Called Life. The last actual movie I bought on VHS was Speed. You know, from 1994?

Since Wal-Mart is responsible for 1/3 of home video sales, I can now rest assured that VHS tapes will die the death I presumed it already had.

NOTE: Strangely, The two VHS tapes I have with my DVD archive are the aforementioned Speed and my Allsop VCR Cleaner. My VCR is practically moth-balled, but just in case I keep VCR Cleaners around.

The Mouse Pads Are Alright

2005-06-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have this awesome Memory Foam Mouse Pad sitting on my desk.

It is sweet. I used to have an old gel mouse pad, but it just felt weird. Like I was resting my wrist on a big gob of goo. But this Memory Foam feels right. It's made from the same stuff that those Tempur-Pedic matresses. I do a lot of work with spreadsheets and graphics and Power Point, which requires a lot of mousing. And after a while my wrist starts to ache a bit. The first couple of times I used the memory foam, it seemed strange because it got warm. But that is good! It retains my body heat to help with blood flow to my fingers. The pad also raises my wrist about an inch, keeping my arm more straight.

Allsop has a whole page of information on selecting Mouse Pads. Even if you don't want one with ergonomics they have them for PC Gamers, for executive mouse pads and tons of image mouse pads.

They even have this monster pad that is part of Allsop's Metal Art line. It has a heavy metal frame with a rigid textured surface. Its great for PC Gamers because it won't move. It is a solid Mouse Pad.

Check them out.

Apple vs. Microsoft. Yawn.

2005-06-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

So, Microsoft opened an online music store, the MSN Music Service, last September. Yeah - I didn't know about it either. It was/is rather similar to the Apple iTunes music store, selling songs for $.99. Just like Apple, MSN's songs are encoded in a proprietary format (in this case WMA files). Ostensibly, the reason for the special format is to help protect the artists; it limits your ability to make illegal copies of the song file. The real reason for this is to lock you into their operating system and player. Of course Apple does this with the ACC file format, but not surprisingly, I'm OK with this practice. Whatever - that's another story.

So, Microsoft opened an online music store last September. Well, let's say it hasn't had a ridiculous level of success, since in the meantime Apple has grown to a high of 82% market share of the online music store market. Meanwhile other services have cropped up based on a subscription model, ala Napster. Sure, all of these are snipping at Apple, though none are making a dent yet.

Here's the new news: Microsoft has abandoned its initial price-per-song model for a subscription model. In an attempt to win back Windows users, Microsoft is even thought to be planning an offer to let new users download Microsoft versions of songs previously downloaded from the iTunes store. You might say it's a direct attack. So let me get this straight: MS goes from copying Apple to copying Napster and they think they're going to win? Even if they aren't planning on winning, they think they'll carve out enough market share to be viable? And even if they aren't planning on carving out enough market share to be viable, do they think it will be perceived as cool? Even if Apple and the iPod is becoming slightly less cool, it is firmly entrenched.

And sure somebody out the is saying: But Fej, remember the Sony Walkman? It's dead! Apple and the iPod's days are numbered!

Yeah, I remember the Walkman. I had one. But here's the thing. I used it until a new technology came around: The compact disc. So here's my prediction. When the next music format comes along, Apple might temporarily be on the sidelines. But Microsoft will still be snipping at the heels of innovation.

But until then, my iPod is cool.

Home Office = Lame

2005-06-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

You know? When we moved into our house in 1999, we had this extra room. Most people would have used it as a guest bedroom or a workshop or, well, anything other than a home office. But me - no. I had this big-ass desk, I got book shelves, hung manly pictures on the wall and put my computer in the center of the desk like any intermediately technical person would do. While this did give me a great place to surf the internet (at dial-up speeds, thank you very much), I did little else in the room. It was essentially storage. Even though the room did little else that house my computer, I didn't have anywhere else in the house for it.

That was six years ago. Now, having owned only laptop computers for four years, the desk now serves as a resting place for my Powerbook to charge. And the only time I sit at the desk is when I have let the battery get too low when there are still web pages I want to visit, or blog entries I want to write, or emails I just must return NOW!

So, here's the deal. Home office - gone. Of course I still need somewhere to put my printer, but I still have my Allsop Metal Art Jr monitor stand for that. I need someplace tidy to leave the computer when it's charging. And on the occasion that I let the battery get too low, I might have to get the charger and plug it in while I'm sitting on the couch. I found this little desk: it's kind of like a old school secretary, as it has a front panel that folds down if you absolutely need a work space. Otherwise it serves as a resting place for the laptop, the cell phone, the digital camera. But the whole thing is only like four feet tall, and 16-inches wide. It's approximately 1/6 the size of my desk. It will fit in the corner and look like a coffee table or something. The bad thing is that I now I've seen it. It was on something like Crate and Barrel, or Pottery Barn or HoldEverything, but I can't find it anymore. So I'm on the prowl.

My new plans for this room? Home theatre, baby. Flat panel. Recliners. Little refrigerator. Sweet.

NOTE: I try to be unique, but alas - I'm not alone. According to cnet other people want laptops for their home offices, too.

Keeping Buffy Clean

2005-06-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter what I do. I complain about other people leaving CDs and DVDs all over the place, but I do it too. When I'm tired, in a rush or lazy, occasionally when putting a DVD in the player, I take out the Buffy the Vampire Slayer disc (the TV Show, not the movie) my wife left in there, and leave it on top of the player.

Here is the danger. My wife is a little obsessed with Buffy. Actually "obsessed" is really not the right word. It's not like she carries wooden spikes around with her or stalks Sarah Michelle Gellar. Let's say she is just really, really devoted. When I take one of her Buffy DVDs out of the player and leave out in the open, it's going to get dirty. And the value my wife places on Buffy is a little higher than the food she eats, so the key to household tranquility is a little DVD cleaning.

Allsop has a few different DVD Cleaners that have saved me more than a few times. Whether it was Disc 2 of Buffy season 3, or the copy of Pieces of April I just got from Netflix. The CD and DVD cleaners and DVD scratch repair kits have rescued movie night.

A Partnership in the Making

2005-06-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

So, first let me say that there are many things that I do not know. But for the sake of this post I am going to focus on this: I do not know how many DVDs Netflix purchases of new releases. For example, when The Aviator was released last Tuesday, I don't know how many copies they purchased to meet their subscribers' demands. Since they have more than 3 Million subscribers, I am going to be assume it is a substantial number.

Now you might remember that a few weeks ago Wal-Mart gave up on the mail-order renting-DVDs thing. Wal-Mart actually partnered with Netflix, agreeing to refer customers to Netflix for online DVD rental, in exchange for a link on the Netflix site reminding people that they can buy new DVDs at Wal-Mart.

So here's my thought: What is Netflix doing with all of their previously viewed DVDs? Netflix does offer an opportunity to buy previously viewed movies on their web site, but it's on a select group of titles. and I can't imagine they move a ton that way (of course, I'm sure it's more than I would guess). Are we going to start seeing bargain bins at Wal-Mart filled with previously viewed movies from Netflix? This would be a pretty smooth move, since Netflix could also stuff a coupon in with the movie for a discounted membership and Wal-Mart can cross sell new releases. The Netflix/Wal-Mart partnership door has been opened. There has got to be more action on the way.

Nokia is so five minutes ago

2005-05-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

So, I recently switched to Cingular. And in the process I got a new phone. Previously, I had always opted for the free phone. Through discounts and mail-in rebates, I never wanted to pay for a phone, and therefore got a no-frills phone that was outdated before I even took it out of the box. This time, I wanted a toy. I wanted to take pictures, send my wife little videos, sync to my Powerbook, download games and ringtones. My first choice was the Nokia 6230.

I picked it up about a month ago, and I was having fun. It was incredibly easy to get started and I loved it. But strangely, it started rebooting ... a lot. Like every time I took it out of my pocket. Sometimes I would grab it and it would be off, though I hadn't turned it off. So, I decided this was not fun enough to be my toy. So I did what the American Dream allows me, I returned it.

Now I'm sporting the Motorola V551.

This one actually links up to my Powerbook better, through iSync. Using bluetooth, it automatically grabbed all of my contacts, my calendar. Even the pictures look better. And the exchange at the Cingular store across the street from my office was so simple. I know you might be thinking, "Why not go for the Razr?" Well, feature for feature, I haven't found something the Razr can do that my V551 can't. The Razr is just more sleek. Oh, and it's $100 more.

Don't tell the MPAA, but...

2005-05-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

... I am making my own DVDs! It all started when I wanted to test the DVD-R burner on my computer. It seemed silly to use this DVD-R as a larger capacity CD-R. I wanted to do something I could only do with the 4.7 gig capacity disc. My office mate said this: "Hey, check out DVD Shrink."

Of course, I wanted to just make a copy of my Ocean's Eleven DVD, just to see if I could do it. But most prerecorded DVDs have two layers of data. So they have something like a 9.4 gig capacity. So to get the movie to fit onto a 4.7 gig DVD-R, you have to trim all of the extra stuff away and just make a copy of the movie. That's what DVD Shrink does.

So I put the Ocean's Eleven disc in my computer. DVD Shrink scanned the disc and showed me all of the files. I deselected all of the extra stuff I didn't need on the copy (you know, the French and Spanish subtitles, the extra scenes, the coming attractions, pretty much everything but the movie itself). That almost got it down to the size I needed. Then DVD Shrink reduced the file size just enough to fit on my disc. Awesome.

Then I heard about DVD Covers. It is this huge archive DVD Cover art. So, I can print cover art for the DVDs I am copying, er... making back ups.

All bow to Netflix

2005-05-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Wal-Mart has. Wal-Mart.com is ending its online service for renting DVDs. If Wal-Mart has given in to Netflix, shouldn't we all?

There's kind of a "10 Percent" rule when it comes to Wal-Mart. When they enter a market they end up with about 10 percent market share and they cause the overall price in the category to drop 10 percent. Well, the price drop happened, but Wal-Mart appears to have given up on trying to get 10 percent market share. They are actually going to recommend Netflix to browsers at Wal-Mart.com. Of course, they'll make sure to remind people that you can buy DVDs at Wal-Mart, but when it comes to renting, Netflix rocks.

Sometime in 1999 I found Netflix. I was there for the padded shipping envelope debacle. Anyway, I used it for a couple of years, but I started getting some damaged discs. The first time I got a disc that was literally broken in half, I dropped the service. Then three months ago, I signed up again and am in heaven. They added distribution centers, went back to the original paper envelope and I couldn't be happier. They've got it down. So much so, that even Wal-Mart doesn't care to complete.

I guess my only question for Netflix is: do you have a plan for a Post-DVD-download-movies-over-the-Internet world?

NOTE: And it just keeps coming. As reported in Yahoo! today, Blockbuster is hiking its prices! You might remember that a few months ago, when Blockbuster started hitting the online rental market pretty hard, it priced its service at $14.99 to undercut Netflix's $17.99. Well, now Blockbuster is matching Netflix's price. Blockbuster is saying the "promotional offer" is over. But maybe Netflix just does it better.

The Problem with DVDs

2005-05-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've had it with DVD cases. I'm talking about the ones movies come packaged in when I buy them at Best Buy or Wal-Mart. They are so much bigger than they need to be. And I don't want to make space around my TV for all of those cases. I've had it. They're gone. I've thrown them away.

I just took out the DVDs, and the DVD covers and put them in a DVD Album. I used a leather one from Allsop.

I put all of my movies into two of these albums and stashed them on a bookshelf next to the mantle. I got rid of the clunky TV stand and cleaned up my living room. The only movie clutter left are the Netflix envelopes from renting DVDs. But Allsop had a solution for that. I put one of their DVD Storage boxes on the shelf right next to the DVD Albums.

It's a leather box that even matches the albums. The wife is happy.

Oh, iPod. Will you not live forever?

2005-05-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

So, according to the New York Times, the iPod's days are numbered. (As the iPod Stays Hot, It Risks Losing Its Cool)

One of the tell tale signs, as Ken Belson writes, is that President Bush is has been publicized as having an iPod. But does anyone seriously think he walked into Best Buy and put down his Visa? And certainly, W is not sitting down at his PC loading songs (downloaded legally, of course) onto this cool bit of technology. The fact that the White House press office is talking about this at all is just an example of marketing in politics. The man who sits on the throne of the establishment is not going to tarnish the image of the product that is geared to the non-establishment uber-cool. His people are just trying to get their boss to appeal to that young voters demographic.

Everything will pass in due time. Sure, somewhere in a New Jersey garage, there's a 17-year-old kid creating the thing that will kick the iPod's ass. It's all cyclical, and one day my current 3G iPod will be sold on eBay or buried in a shoebox somewhere. Just like my Cassette Tape Sony Walkman.

But here's what Apple has done with the iPod giving it a good chance to stick around:

Adding features and versions before people know they want them - iPod Mini, iPod Photo...

Updating the software on iPods (eg. making it do new and exciting things) is incredibly easy . Just plug it in to your computer as if you're charging it.

Encouraging tons and tons of accessories. (Belkin, Monster...) Other companies are banking on its success.

The deal with HP.

And finally: Making it seem techie, while keeping it simple

And even if the iPod doesn't live forever, I am really digging mine right now.

My Elf is Skipping!

2005-05-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

So, I got Elf last week. It came from Netflix, of which I am a HUGE fan. But right at the part where Buddy (Will Ferrell) is in the Doctor's Office with James Caan and Jon Favreau, and he's eating the cotton balls, the movie started skipping. Then it actually jumped back to the part where he gets hit by the taxi. How frickin' irritating.

Fortunately, I found this site and found what to do. Allsop has a bunch of products to help with problems from renting DVDs. I used a little DVD scratch repair solution and the movie played through great.

And for a quick review, even though I'm not a huge Will Ferrell fan, this movie had a few laugh out loud moments. It was a good time.

I Need My Space

2005-05-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

The area on my desk is quickly dissappearing. Partially because it has become the dumping ground for mail, magazines, catalogs, random photos, receipts, coupons, rebate forms, books and clipped comic strips. But also because I got a new printer.

Costco, baby. An HP 4215 Printer, Scanner, Copier, Fax, Toaster...

Great printer, but it took up more space on my desk. So I added this.

It's a monitor stand from Allsop. It's called the Metal Art Jr. and works great for my printer. It's just a little bit wider than the printer and the exact same depth. And with the space underneath the stand, it actually gives me a great place to stack/hide magazines, mail, catalogs and receipts!

Hey, Verizon... Can you hear me now? No? Good.

2005-05-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

After too many Verizon years, I've moved on. Though I'm sure I'm fooling myself in thinking that Cingular is going to treat me any better, I am feeling a sense of freedom being out of the Verizon Shadow.

But, my cell service provider move was not only based on my feelings of neglect and humiliation at the hands of Verizon. Cingular just had way cooler phones for things I wanted to do. I went with the Nokia 6230.

A half hour into it, I have taken photos, sent Multimedia messages to my Mom and hooked up to my Powerbook via Bluetooth. I'm feeling pretty good about everything. I'm having a little trouble finding how to change my ring tone, but that's because I haven't even opened the manual yet!

iTunes is awesome, but...

2005-05-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

So, I was doing a back up of my hard drive and I thought of something. I usually only back up my digital photos and documents and stuff (fits on to one DVD-R). But I don't back up my music. Partially because I have almost 12 gigs of it. But mainly because I figured most of the music on my computer is from physical CDs I still own. But what about the music I bought and downloaded from the Apple Music Store? It turns out if I should lose the music I got from Apple, or buy.com, or wherever, I can't redownload it unless I pay for it again (they're pretty strict, actually). So if my computer crashes, I'm jacked.

Here's my solution. It's going to take a little time, but I'm going to burn actual physical CD-Rs of my Apple Music Store purchased music. I'm even going to find the CD covers to print and put with the CD-R. For physical CD storage, I use a CD Album from Allsop, so making these back ups is not going to take up any more space on my bookshelf. I might need to run over to Circuit City to buy another album, but protecting my music is worth it.

Anyway, my music's important to me. I feel better now.