Archives for January 2008

The Nothing New Announcement

Posted on January 10, 2008 ·

Ever get the feeling that some tech firms have run out of anything new to say? So does fellow Enterprise Irregular Brian Sommer, so he offers a template for such companies:

XYZ Announces Nothing New

Nothing New to Become the New Industry Standard

January 9, 2008 – Chicago – Today, XYZ Corporation is announcing ‘Nothing New’ a revolutionary, industry-leading approach to stall-ware, procrastination and marketing waste. “We believe this is the most important announcement we’ve made this year – maybe this decade”, says Jim Bigwind, CMO of XYZ.

…

“This announcement is nothing short of extraordinary. It is, in fact, nothing” says XYZ customer Getz Fleeced Oftin at SoftTouch Ltd.

…

Blithering Media represents way too many tech firms and amazingly enough has no one on staff that understands the space. Blithering Media personnel are expert though at crafting press releases on just about anything (or nothing as in this case). For more info on Blithering Media contact us point.less@ blitheringmedia.com

I’m not giving away the full announcement – click over to Software Safari and enjoy.

Update (1/11): Wow, Brian is on fire: his next piece, Acronym Shortage to Adversely Impact Tech Sector is a must-read.

Filed Under: Humor, Marketing / PR · Tagged: Humor, pr, Software

Weird Google Blogger Error

Posted on January 10, 2008 ·

We’re sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

What request? I did not request anything. Did not touch my keyboard or mouse at all.

Describe what you were doing when you got this error.

I was simply reading this blog post when it blew up.

This is an error I’ve observed several times recently: click on a link to read a post on Google’s Blogger: the post comes up normally, but a few seconds after I start reading it, it just blows up and I get the above error. But I haven’t touched anything – is this a speed-reading test?

Update: apparently it’s a frequent error, but typically encountered while publishing, not reading.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: blogger, blogspot, error, Google

How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry … and Customer Service

Posted on January 10, 2008 ·

Oh, TechMeme has its ways of creating some fun… On the left are the odes of how Holy Apple changed the entire wireless industry. The untold story. Too bad it got juxtaposed with the much less cheerful story of a customer being denied warranty for having downloaded a custom ringtone.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Technology · Tagged: Apple, Customer Service, iPhone

Election Humor

Posted on January 9, 2008 ·

Techmeme’s political sister-site, Memeorandum is full of speculation on how the New Hampshire polls could be so wrong. As usual, conspiracy theories abound, amongst them speculation on the role Diebold’s voting machines played in the results. I’m not joining the speculation, nor can I completely ignore it; after all, we’re hearing about voting machine problems all the time, several states decertified them… but I simply don’t have enough facts to take sides in this debate (although I wrote about the issue in the past) That said, a little laugh does not hurt … and you have to admit these posters are just hilarious:

Filed Under: Humor, Politics · Tagged: clinton, diebold, elections, electronic voting, new hampshire, obama, Politics, vote count, voting, voting machines

Gmail Contact Manager Does Not Support URLs?

Posted on January 9, 2008 ·

I find it hard to believe…so much so that I ask everyone to open my eyes: what am I missing here? Gmail’s Contact Manager (the new one) allows you to capture the typical data like email, phone, address, photo ( a great plus!), IM, but there’s no field to capture homepage addresses! (???).

You can add as many fields as you like, but only of the pre-defined types, and if you use the Notes field to enter websites, they don’t become clickable URLs.

Of all companies on Earth, Google is the last one I would expect to NOT care about capturing web information…

Update: Charlie “Spanning” Wood adds:

…worse yet, it uses one big blob for mailing address instead of having fields for address, city, state/region, postal code, etc.

And we wonder why it’s difficult to sync Gmail contact data…

Voyagerfan5761 adds that the ability to add custom fields, a handy feature supported in the earlier Gmail version is gone now, too.

Add to this the idiotic restriction that now you can only delete 20 contacts at a time, and one can really wonder if the new Contact Manager in Gmail is a step back in functionality – albeit with nicer boxes.

(Oh, you wonder why you’d want to delete contacts? Because Gmail adds anyone you respond to as a contact, without the ability to change that default).

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: gmail, gmail contacts, Google

Amazon Pulls a Digital River + FaceBook

Posted on January 6, 2008 ·

Tax-time is soon upon us, and for millions of Americans that means buying TurboTax again. Fastest way to get it? Download from Intuit. Cheapest way to get it? Buy at Costco.

Not anymore. This year the fastest AND cheapest way is to download it from Amazon. Yes, Amazon entered the software download business, although initially the only available products are the different TurboTax flavors.

The traditional, box-sale page points to the download version, claiming you will “save time and money by downloading” software. Well, not quite. The downloadable version of each product is priced to match the boxed product+shipping charges. This is a missed opportunity, there are obvious savings from not having to manufacture, ship and store a tangible product, so they could afford to create financial incentives to move more customers to the download option. (Note: “they” means both Amazon and TurboTax maker Intuit, which also offers the box and download at identical prices.)

There’s one thing I really, really don’t like about this new Amazon service: before you can purchase anything, you need to download and install the “Amazon Downloader”, which in turn will download and install the actual product. Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly am not buying software frequently enough to justify the need for a client, whatever benefits(?) this approach may offer. And of course once you install software, you know you’re in for a lifetime of endless updates…

If you ever need to download your purchased software again, it’s available under a new section called “Your Media Library.” As Mashable’s Adam Hirsch discovered, this is a lot more than just a listing of your digital purchases: you can list all purchases from Amazon and other sources, adding your items by simply scanning their barcode through your webcam, Amazon will convert and import the information automatically . There are a number of ways to share all this with friends, start discussions, tag items, subscribe to your friends’ collections via RSS, and follow what’s hot at any time.

If you think this is all similar to FaceBook’s Beacon, that’s because it is. With a significant difference: Amazon’s version is entirely opt-in.

Filed Under: Business, Software · Tagged: amazon, beacon, digital river, facebook, facebook beacon, intuit, software download, software sales, turbotax

Gmail Search is Slowing and Google Knows…

Posted on January 6, 2008 ·

Perhaps the best thing Gmail has going for it is the power of search: the ability to instantly find everything. Except that instant is getting ..well longer and longer. And make no mistake, Google knows it, to the point that there is now a message recognizing the fact:

The Still working message comes up when you are waiting for search, stuck to the point that you can’t move away, stop the search …etc: your options are either wait it out, or close the browser/window. A Windows-like experience?

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: gmail, gmail search, Google, search

Don’t Try This At Home

Posted on January 6, 2008 ·

via reddit.

Filed Under: Humor ·

“Local Warming” – Quoted in a TED Presentation

Posted on January 4, 2008 ·

Investor and prankster Yossi Vardi delivered a lecture @ TED (March 2007, Monterey, CA) on the dangers of blogging. Specifically, um, for men. Eagle-eyed Amit Agarwal spotted a glimpse of my earlier blog post, Will Geeks Become an Endangered Species? embedded in the presentation:

Here’s the full video , it’s 6 minutes 15 seconds long, and my 4 seconds of fame come at 2:12

On second thought, this was my first 3 seconds of fame – explanation here. Ah, when I was young…