And The Winners Are…

 

The Sound of Silence

Circumstance dictates that I shan’t be able to post content very often over the coming weeks. I recommend that anyone interested subscribe to this blog, which will ensure you receive updates upon each posting (although no other unsolicited email from me, I promise!).

Subscribing is easy, and can be done in the upper right portion of this blog page (under the “Follow Me” banner).

Thank you for your continued interest and support, and don’t forget to tip your waiters.

 

20 Things We Already Know About the iThingy…(UPDATE – 01/27 – 11:00am)

(Updated content post-unveil, at bottom)

Just a few hours before the Big Unveil, and I wonder whether Steve Jobs may not be revealing 2 big deals: The iSlate (as I think it should be called) is certainly newsworthy, although I don’t think (or – at least – I don’t hope) it will be the Kindle-killer so many are predicting. It’s probably going to be as different from the Kindle as a Victorinox SwissChamp is from a finely crafted Henckel. It’ll do a lot more, but what the Kindle does, it does so well…That said, I think that the probability of an iTunes store for e-books and e-Mags, with a plethora of already forged publishing house and media organization deals struck, would be a massive piece of news indeed!

As far as the tablet itself, I think the folks at Doghouse Diaries have a pretty good handle on things:

UPDATE (11:00am, Wednesday, January 27):

OK, so I was right, and I was wrong. He’s calling it the iPad (which sounds like a women’s personal health product to me). No big surprises as of yet, but the anticipatory coverage of this product was so intense that it was nigh impossible to present a piece of information that had not been discussed exhaustively by one camp or another. This is certainly an impressive product, however.

I suggest that, instead of being an e-reader killer, it is a Netbook killer. Netbooks have always been essentially little more  than shrunken laptops, with reduced functionality to boot! Here’s something that does all that and more. The battery life is impressive (10 hours), but nowhere near the weeks of battery life offered by the Kindle. The functionality blows the Kindle out of the water, but then why buy the Henckel knife in the first place, when you are looking for a multifunction Victorinox?

As I predicted, the introduction of the iBooks store is compelling, and THAT’S where the fire is being lit under the Kindle a***. Bookshelves, categories, ePub, oh my!

I don’t think the “page turning” experience was terribly innovative. I agree with Bezos’ assertion that it is a cop-out to try and replicate the “real book” experience on an e-reader. It is simply a different way of navigating the content, but the essential immersive reading experience is the same (if not better) on a successful e-reading device.

the iWork demo confirms that this device may truly replace laptops for some people, but I don’t think it will be a “laptop killer”. Apple has positioned it well in the “larger than we might have imagined” gap between the mobile phone and laptop.

For $700-900 (including tax and 3G coverage), this is going to appeal to a diversified cross-section of consumers, but none of them are going to be schoolkids and college students in lower income households (a $300 Kindle DX, with ebooks at less than half the price of “real” books, is a much more viable financial proposition, but still a challenge. Will Amazon move on this, or will they fumble?). This is not the device for people who are looking for an alternative to books. This is the device for people who are looking to own and experience the evolution of the mobile technological consumer gaming/communication/application device, to hold and cherish the love child of the laptop and smart mobile device (although, with no telephonic capability of note, it’s not truly the confluence point between laptops and smartphones, and that may be a good thing).

The Apple iPad is an impressive (though not as miraculous or magical as some might have wished) advance in computing and mobile technology. It is a thrilling “next step”, but not quit a “leap”. Unless Amazon mishandles this stage of their Kindle development and market penetration, this should certainly not pose a substantial threat to their goals.

That said, Amazon has goofed up a few times already: first with the “1984″ mess, then with the “let’s insult existing Kindle customers by offering them for free to people who have expressed zero interest in them” fiasco, and of course we must not forget all the complaints about the Amazon cover and customer service failures. Amazon has a opening to become the next “Apple”, oddly enough. They have a devoted (but recently abused) fan base. They introduced a new concept in content experience. The Kindle has been birthed at a moment in history when social media and crowd sourcing are growing exponentially. With strong marketing leadership ( I do NOT mean conventional product marketing, but rather cross-functional product/strategic/brand marketing that SHOULD be the purview of all senior marketing leaders), Amazon could retain and enhance its innovator position, all the while recognizing and addressing the fact that it’s no longer enough to appeal to a small tribe of early adopters…

I believe that Amazon and Apple are both sitting in their own respective sweet spots of opportunity, and it remains to be seen which, if either, will successfully manipulate and manage the next few months…

 

If You Fly Fast Enough, The Sun Never Sets

Few of us get to see a landing or takeoff from inside the cockpit anymore – for security reasons, I guess. So I was chuffed to find these video clips from 4 different flights:

Take off:

and

Landing:

and

 

CoCo Channel (not a typo)

So the new fragrance in town is the just-launched temporary 5th network, the Coco Channel. This fast-growing network has it all.

Legal Dramas: (This video was removed by NBC today, but you can still find it on their site here)

Historical Documentaries:

Reality Shows:

And, news coverage:

No word yet on who might be available to head the network, but word on the street is that someone may be announced very shortly.

 

Inspiration and Challenge to Our Disposable Society

I question whether most of us today have the fortitude or patience or perseverance to live this extraordinary life.

With thanks to L.Garrett for the link

 

Nothing to Say

…what did you do?

 

Study Break!

Don’t know about you, but these guys just make me feel better about my day:

If you’re one of the last few remaining people on earth who have not seen their equally complex choreographed piece “Here It Goes Again“, here you are:

 

Waiting for Pooh Bear to Float By

Once again, a volume of rainfall considered “manageably heavy” anywhere else in the world has paralyzed Greater Los Angeles. Today it rained 2.4 inches. That’s a lot of rain, but it’s not End-of-the-World-Where’s-The-Ark levels…unless you live here.

In the Los Angeles area, the wash systems (sewers and drains) are built to accomodate the volume of water generated by a wasteful idiot, too lazy to rake or broom sweep his driveway. You know, that chap who aims his hose at the concrete and stands there watering the sidewalk clean of all those awful leaves…

Anything more than that, or more than the amount of water needed to regularly wash one’s blinged-out SUV (with those great new spinning hub caps), overwhelms the system. Drains backup, and street sides flood. Less than an hour after it began raining today, I drove through a section of town where the cars parked on the side were actually submerged up above the TOP of the wheels!

In the Los Angeles area, there exist a system of dips at most intersections, ostensibly designed to slow vehicular traffic in the same way speed bumps do along residential streets. It works during the other 360 dry days of the year. It works too well when it rains. Giant lakes 12 inches (or more) deep form at these intersections, which sounds fun unless you’re the one diving…uh, I mean driving though it.

In the Los Angeles area, the idea of porous tarmac, white paving, and other sustainability practices simply has not taken hold. Perhaps, one day, someone with some influence might choose to repeat that suggestion about larger drain systems and porous tarmac…

The above footage was taken by a 15-year old boy in the Los Angeles area today. Granted, the issue extends beyond drainage, in to the realm of wildfire prevention and erosion control. The point remains, however, that this is not a new phenomenon!

The forecast calls for heavy rain every day, for the rest of the week.

 

AT&T Sucks

AT&T sucks. There. I’ve said it. Their services suck. Their mobile network sucks. Their customer service sucks. There is so much sucking going on that I would not be surprised if James Dyson was a majority shareholder in the company.

In case anyone thinks I am the lone voice of frustration, one need only recall the company’s inability to keep up with the times, with respect to iPhone services,  or how they completely snafued their offering at SXSW 2009, or read today’s AP report outlining just a couple of many instances where the company has used its own head to perform a self-colonoscopy.

Hey, for those who want to really wallow in AT&T fails, just follow this Twitter feed…

Of course, AT&T – in its “let’s show ‘em we can handle Social Media and crowdsourcing” wisdom – recently launched an iPhone app, inviting users to give feedback on outage areas….:

But guess how far that got!?:

As a result of my ever deepening disenchantment with this brand, I have switched my mobile allegiance to T-Mobile (very happy now, thank you very much), and am researching the options that may soon permit me to sever my relations with their landline and UVerse broadband service offerings, currently UnderServing me in an impressively creative array of ways.

On the landline front, I find myself with all sorts of alternatives.

Google Voice is performing very well, with only rare instances of noise on the line. I haven’t yet worked out how to use all aspects of the service, but it seems pretty intuitive. One other disappointment is the fact that they only have an option that rings ALL registered phones at the same time, instead of a daisy chain effect (ring registered phone number 1 or 3 rings, then auto-transfer to phone number 2, and so on – effectively searching for the user, instead of ringing all his/her phones. The benefit being that when my Mother-in-Law calls, I can set Google Voice up to recognize her incoming call and IMMEDIATELY route to my wife’s cell first, then her work, and only as a last resort to my number! (and Mama Carline, if you’re reading this, I love you and am only using that as an example. Of course I love to hear from you!)

Shame, though that Google Voice only offers “once you’re online” services, forcing me to still seek out a provider.

Magic Jack seems, at first blush, to be fabulous, and it is, if you don’t mind the risk of no telco service whenever you have a problem with your PC. Worse than that is the fact that the End User License Agreement states:

You also understand and agree that use of the magicJack device and Software will include advertisements and that these advertisements are necessary for the Magic Jack device to work … Our computers may analyze the phone numbers you call in order to improve the relevance of the ads.

No Thank You!

Vonage obviously has the same internet connectivity outage issues as Magic jack, but instead of advertisements and invasion of privacy issues, they offer questionable QoS, subpar MOS, and customer service reps who barely speak English. Oh, and their reputation for making it almost impossible to drop their service is well-documented.

Does anyone have other suggestions?

When we turn to the Broadband services, things tend to dry up really quickly. I’ve already experienced the pain of Charter Cable, and the dead space of Dish Network Satellite service. I yearn for the much lauded services of Verizon FiOS, but apparently the notion of anti-trust and monopoly busting does not extend to broadband services. I have the “choice” of only one fiber optic services provider, and only one cable provider. Apparently monopolies ARE permitted, after all..?

So I continue to struggle with the absence of customer service at AT&T – in fact, the absence of service altogether sometimes (internet outages, consistent freezing on screen during TV shows, billing for services never rendered, and refusal to reverse those charges unless customer contacts BBB and/or FCC…the fun never seems to stop when AT&T is in the game!)

I dream of a telco/broadband service provision that still works in cases of internet or power outage; that offers good value for the money; whose service levels are reliable and reasonable; and whose commitment to customer satisfaction is legendary…oh, who am I kidding?…