Magnosticism

Random reflections during my latest jaunt this week between Boston and Milwaukee:

Innovation: As I went through airport security and heard the drone of “all laptops must be removed from their cases,” I was reminded of a recent NY Times article on the new “checkpoint friendly” laptop cases that the TSA has blessed and that bag makers Pathfinder Luggage and Targus are now “rushing to produce.” My question is, what took them so long? My goodness, Crocs can churn out multiple generations of its butt-ugly footwear in the time it takes briefcase and backpack makers to make a single security-friendly bag that passes TSA muster. Where are our priorities?

Bluetooth in bathrooms: I’ll never understand how men can talk on their cellphones while relieving themselves in a public restroom. Dude, those Bluetooth headsets can pick up all kinds of background noise, including all the unzippings and tinklings and flushings that the person you’re talking to doesn’t really need to hear. Another blow against commonsense phone etiquette, though it does give new meaning to the term “hands free.”

Earbuds: I have to wear bulky headphones when I listen to my iPod. I can’t wear earbuds - they always fall out. I’m not talking about when I’m exercising either - sitting in an airplane seat, if I turn my head slightly or inadvertantly tug on the wires, boop! they’re out. Even the models that hang over my ear don’t stay snug. Does anyone else have this problem? Do I need custom ‘buds? Should I try Superglue?

A Google search of iPhone this morning turned up nearly 73 million results; Google News turned up more than 12,000 references to recent articles and blog posts. Groups of early adopters-slash-yahoos are already parked in front of AT&T stores to get one of the phones - which don’t go on sale until 6 p.m. Friday. In fine capitalist fashion, some are offering to sell their spots to the highest bidder. Six months of user-generated hype and a slick Apple ad campaign have laid the groundwork for the iPhone frenzy, and now early reviewers are falling all over themselves in praise of the new device. Apple has once again orchestrated a masterful product launch, combining design innovation and unmatched marketing savvy to create what could be the MOST IMPORTANT NEW PRODUCT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

No one does this marketing/innovation thing better than Apple, but is the hype enough to get the masses to buy one long after the launch? I’m guessing not, for one reason, and it’s not the price; it’s the network. For the first time in recent memory, Apple has to rely on a partner to help deliver the promise of one of its products. AT&T Wireless, as the exclusive wireless carrier, will play a major role in determining the long-term success of the iPhone. And that must scare the bejeesus out of Steve Jobs and Co. Wireless carriers in general have shown a remarkable ability to not care about their customers, opting to put far more effort into acquiring new ones than retaining existing subscribers.

When you get a dropped signal while making a call or surfing the Web from your phone, you blame the network provider, not the handset maker. But with the extreme brand awareness around the iPhone, I sense that any connection problems will reflect just as much on Apple’s brand as on AT&T’s. A few bad network experiences from early users could take the air out of the iPhone’s pumped-up balloon pretty quickly.

The current issue of The Advertiser includes a feature I wrote on the increasing influence of digital technology in out-of-home advertising. The out-of-home segment - a market consisting of billboards, mall displays, and basically any other venue that can hold LCDs or traditional signage - is a small but growing slice of the overall advertising pie. The article is here, courtesy of The Pohly Company, which publishes the magazine for the Association of National Advertisers.

Not everyone is thrilled with the digital transition of outdoor signage. Google “digital outdoor advertising” and you’ll find any number of stories from local papers or TV outlets on some town’s attempts to ban digital billboards from their roadways. Here’s an amusing one from Arkansas, which chronicles the fight of a Fayetteville citizen who filed a federal lawsuit charging that his First Amendment rights were violated when local officials fined him for his digital sign; this righteous individual claims the authorities simply didn’t like the religious and anti-abortion messages he was displaying on the sign.  Well now, that’s a whole separate discussion for another time and place.

General Motors, which cannot afford to lose any customers these days, is alienating a big chunk of them - about half a million - thanks to wireless providers’ government-approved plans to drop analog support from their cellular networks on Jan. 1.

Here’s why: Many of GM subsidiary OnStar’s in-vehicle communications systems run on analog technology. Those who own 2003-or-later GM vehicles with analog OnStar equipment - about 3.5 million of OnStar’s existing 4 million subscribers - will be able to upgrade to the new digital OnStar network for around $200, according to ConsumerAffairs.org. Owners of older OnStar-equipped vehicles, however are, as my Dad used to say, shit out of luck, as GM is not offering any upgrade options for those vehicles. That means the cool little OnStar button in my 2001 Tahoe will be deactivated and completely useless at the end of the year.

But there’s good news! GM is offering an additional year of OnStar service for free - ”with the purchase or lease of a 2006 model year or newer OnStar-equipped new or certified used GM vehicle.” With the monthly plan I’m on now, that cool deal will save me $203.40 (minus the price of the new vehicle, of course)! Thanks, GM!

I’m sure GM made a basic business decision based on the cost of rewiring older models (if indeed that’s even possible). But they could certainly do a better job of taking care of loyal customers who, like me, expected a key feature of their car or truck to last longer than five years. Like a Rock.

Xerox simulcast the launch of some new office products yesterday from two venues: Fenway Park in Boston, and Xerox Innovation Island in Second Life. Xerox exec Jim Firestone said the simulcast demonstrates the intersection of the print-based and paperless worlds.

The Fenway event was cool - free food and drink in the EMC Club, a few swings in the indoor batting cages, and Jim Rice signing autographs. The SL event - well, not so good. Xerox Chief Technology Officer Sophie Vandebroek used her avatar to walk through a couple of product demos from within the virtual world, which featured streaming videos of real-life product managers embedded in virtual displays, and a skinny Al Roker avatar running around as some type of investigative journalist/narrator. Vandebroek said Xerox is using Innovation Island to study the social dynamics of the virtual world and potential opportunities for Xerox. I’m sorry, I still don’t get the appeal of Second Life to marketers.

The news that IT trade pub InfoWorld is ending its nearly 30-year-old print publication (while continuing its online and events properties) is not a wet blanket over the entire print publishing world. It’s more of a long-overdue nod to the bloated state of the tech publishing industry. When dozens of IT publications - three within IDG alone targeting senior IT execs - are competing for ad dollars in an industry that has gone through massive vendor consolidation (meaning the ad pie is shrinking), you have a problem even before what’s left of your print revenues start flying over to the Web.

I haven’t read the print version of InfoWorld for years, but I have fond memories of the publication from my days at PC Week - InfoWorld’s bitter rival during the ’80s and ’90s, aka the tech journalism boom times. We competed fiercely for every piece of breaking news. Outside my office in the newsroom of PC Week (now eWeek), we kept a “Scoop Scoreboard” to track our wins vs. the competition. Our receptionist, the legendary Betty Edwards, would call me every Tuesday morning to let me know when the stack of InfoWorlds had arrived, and reporters held their breath as they scanned the front page to see if they’d been scooped (and would soon be answering questions from cranky editors as to why).

Both publications would both send massive news teams to Comdex - I once had an $11,000 bill from the Vegas hotel where we housed our newsroom - and, after we launched our respective Web sites (PC Week’s crude 1994 implementation, built by our lab rats, was one of the first news websites) our goal at PC Week was twofold: to post every bit of breaking news from the show ahead of InfoWorld, and to beat them with exclusives from the event in the following week’s print mag. 

Jim Forbes, a former colleague of mine who worked for both publications, has a great look back at InfoWorld’s storied run. I will never have as much fun as I did in the PC Week newsroom during the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s too bad that the leaders of great publications like PC Week and InfoWorld let new competition (CNet), new media (the Web) and a paryalyzing unwillingness to embrace new publishing models pull the rug out from underneath them. The writing was on the wall for print rags like InfoWorld long ago; look for others to follow.

Adweek reports on a study by the Web Marketing Association indicating that companies are not keeping up with rising consumer expectations regarding their corporate web sites. The WMA’s Internet Standards Assessment Report, released on Tuesday, benchmarks websites across 96 industries and, for the second consecutive year, shows a decline “in the overall standard of excellence.” From WMA President William Rice:

“Web standards are not falling, [but] we believe that consumer expectations … indicate that Web sites have to work harder at creating a total user experience that both informs and entertains the visitors who reach their sites.”

Website assessments are based on seven criteria: Design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting, and ease of use. The industries whose sites scored highest are (in descending order): airlines, computer retailers, gaming sites, toy and hobby sites, and food. Those with the lowest scores were Internet service providers, credit unions, brokerage sites, and directory or search engines. 

There’s plenty of other interesting data in the paper, but I don’t need a 117-page report to tell me what my own eyes can see: that many companies are woefully clueless in their efforts to provide a satisfactory experience to website visitors. Some simply don’t put enough resources into their efforts; others over-engineer to the point where their sites become unnavigable (I think that’s a word). Many sites are a confusing mish-mash that show the conflicting functional agendas between marketing, IT and anyone else with some skin in the game. And I don’t see those types of baked-in cultural issues being resolved anytime soon.

Can Microsoft possibly be spending $500 million on its Vista marketing campaign? Half a billion dollars to hump an operating system? Microsoft has never been known to underplay a new software launch - remember, this is the company that hired the Rolling Stones to sing Start Me Up at the Windows 95 launch.  And it calls Vista its “most aggressive launch ever.” Heaven help us all!

From AdAge:

Indeed, the planned scope of the campaign — 6.6 billion impressions in its first few months — is wondrous by today’s narrowly targeted, niche-media standards. “The Wow starts now,” two years in the making with McCann Worldgroup, encompasses an online consumer-participation promotion themed “Show us your wow” (the winner gets a trip around the world), sponsored webisodes at Clearification.com featuring “Daily Show” comedian Demitri Martin and an alternate-reality game called “Vanishing Point” that moves between online and offline. …

But it’s the TV ads that will garner much of the attention-and inevitably it won’t be all good. The spots picture “Wow”-murmuring moments such as a ’60s-looking family staring at a black-and-white TV as a rocket blasts into space, a hippie climbing up on scaffolding to look out over the Woodstock crowd, a young boy staring out his window at a early-morning snow-blanketed street, and a man putting down a chunk of rock on the table as those gathered watch the Berlin Wall being torn down on TV.

Ah yes, space travel, the fall of communism, and a new operating system. Wow!

Some companies don’t understand the crap they put their customers through. As part of a general tech meltdown I’ve been experiencing lately, an external Maxtor hard drive I used for backup zonked out on me after eight months. Since it was still under warranty, I foraged online for details to return the unit for a replacement. A few clicks on Maxtor led me to Seagate warranty support, because “As of December 9th, 2006 warranty services for all Maxtor products are now fully supported through Seagate’s warranty services.” Forty-five minutes later, following multiple page time-outs and resubmissions of my product information, I was plopped into a return system that was clearly designed for Seagate’s high-volume channel partners and corporate customers.

First I had to verify that the drive was still under warranty. Then I had to request an RMA (return material authorisation <sic>). Then I had to wait for RMA approval (requiring two email confirmations, one that the request had been received, another that it had been approved). Then I had to package and ship the product back - on my own dime of course. I was instructed to closely follow these shipping instructions or risk voiding my warranty:

• Use original packaging when possible. [I tossed the box long ago.]
• You can find packaging supplier(s) at our Packaging Information page.
• Enclose each drive in a SeaShell container or an ESD (electrostatic discharge) bag. If packaging more than one drive, use a separate container for each drive.
• Enclose the static-protected drive(s) in 2-inch foam rubber in a corrugated box. Multiple drives in a single box must have foam rubber between each drive. DO NOT USE foam packing pellets, bubble wrap, or newspaper.
• Warranty is void if the SeaShield cover or top cover, or any seal or label is removed or damaged, if it is improperly packaged, or if the drive experiences shock in excess of its Gs rating.

I clicked on another link for ”more packing information for consumers and resellers” and was presented with a 15-page PDF with helpful schematics for shipping items such as a 20-pack of 3.5-inch drives “with desiccant and moisture barrier bag” - in other words, nothing remotely resembling my Maxtor external drive. 

Dead end. I shoved the drive in a recycled box with some foam padding pulled from my daughter’s recent iPod shipment (another replacement for failed hardware). No electrostatic bag, just taped it up tight and hoped for the best.

A few days passed, and I went back to the site, armed with my RMA, to check on the status. I was routed to a trouble ticket with 49 freakin’ categories - ranging from “ARO credit status” to “qty RUR’d” to “receiving disposition.” [I tried to reproduce it here but couldn't figure out how to embed a table without blowing out the margins.]

The irony is, I think Seagate actually shipped a replacement. The ”ship status” field said “complete” and the “receipt due date” said “2/9/07.” Will be interesting to see what I actually get in return. Perhaps a 20-pack of 3.5-inch drives wrapped in a desiccant and moisture-barrier bag?

Here’s my point: If Seagate wants to play nice in the consumer space, it had better learn the difference between Joe Consumer and Acme OEM.

IBM is introducing Lotus Connections, a set of social networking services for office workers. Reuters says the team productivity software will include “member profiles, activities, blogs, communities and ‘dogear’ - IBM’s word for how users identify and share Web bookmarks with colleagues.”

Sounds a lot like IBM has dusted off the old Virtual TeamRoom application for Lotus Notes and bolted some Web 2.0 features (or at least nomenclature) on it. I remember TeamRoom from my time at McKinsey - we used it half-heartedly to store and track our project-related documents. I always thought it had potential, but the interface was kludgy and it was always easier to ask someone to email a document that you really needed instead of sifting through a confusing hierarchy of folders and views. Maybe the corporate workforce, softened up to the concepts of social networking, will be more receptive to such a tool now - assuming it’s not just another bloated piece of enterprise software that’s hard to install and even harder to understand.