adamyntium

Category: business and consumers

  • Review of Sony’s new music service, Connect

    I’m a glutton for punishment. When new music services come out, I love to try them, including Roxio’s Napster, MusicMatch, iTunes, BuyMusic, Rhapsody, Coke’s music service, FullAudio’s MusicNow, RealOne, emusic, Weed, and many, many more.

    Trying Sony’s new music service, Connect (which runs on Sony’s SonicStage software) was probably one of the most punishing of all. Let me count the ways:

    – Huge, cumbersome download.
    – Long install process, and reboot required.
    – Downright UGLY and confusing interface.
    – Same “low prices” (ha!) as most of the other major players… 99 cents per track / $9.95 per album.

    But what sucks the most about Connect? YAFMF (“Yet Another $% Music Format”).

    That’s right. When you pay for and download a track (which I was masochistic enough to do), you’ll get a file with an “OMA” extension (not even fit my Grandma!) that’s apparently encoded in Sony’s charmingly proprietary ATRAC codec that no one else touches with a ten foot pole.

    Want to play the tracks you download in Windows Media Player?
    Or WinAmp?
    Or RealOne?
    Or MusicMatch?
    Or Media Center?

    No, no, no, no, and a thousand times, no. You got it: you can only play the Sony tracks in the ugly-ass lumbering Sony SonicStage software. And while I’m one of the four people in the world that wasn’t all that thrilled with Apple’s iTunes-software near-lock-in for iTMS downloads, there’s no comparison: iTunes is elegant and gorgeous and highly functional compared to Connect.

    And speaking of function… I couldn’t find a single feature that SonicStage offers that I can’t get out of any halfway decent music player. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough; anyone (Sony engineers?) care to enlighten me?

    Oh, and I almost forgot. Here are a few other evidences of Sony’s music service suckitude (wow, my pain trialing Connect has made me channel Beavis and Butthead… this is scary indeed!):

    – Lousy selection… worse than I’ve seen on ANY other major music service.
    – Can’t play tracks from BuyMusic. Or Napster. Or MusicMatch. Or iTunes.
    – Did I mention the hideous look and feel? Confusing arrows here and there, dropdown this, pulldown that, and a default color scheme that makes emo rock seem soothingly cheerful.

    * * *

    In case there’s even the slightest shred of doubt, I’ll be crystal clear:
    Sony’s music service is, by far, the worst I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying out. Napster offers an innovative subscription service, MusicMatch provides stellar radio options, Rhapsody offers great customer service and a very good selection of tunes, and so on. Additionally, I’ve found that I can play music I download from MusicMatch on Napster and visa versa… and using the fabulous J. Rivers Media Center software, I can actually play songs from practically EVERY online music service… except, of course, for Sony’s downloads.

    A short message to Sony (and other companies):
    Treat the customer right. And fire those who disagree.

  • The RIGHT way to AUTHOR privacy policies

    You’d think that companies would “get it” by now. Most don’t.

    Privacy policies aren’t rocket-science, but they’re absolutely critical to the long-term success of a company. Without earned trust and strong communications, firms have little hope of surviving, and thank goodness!

    So without further ado, here is my free advice to companies wanting to create or update a privacy policy:

    A privacy policy must do all of the following:
    – INFORM: Let visitors know, in accessible language, how the site collects and manages data acquired
    – REASSURE: Offer confident and truthful promises about the safeguarding and respect of this data
    – PERSUADE: Successfully invite visitors to fully utilize the site’s functions, and to provide honest data and feedback without fear
    – PROTECT: Guard the company itself against basic legal or public relations challenges that may arise from improper or incomplete disclosures

    Ideally, every company should offer both a comprehensive privacy policy (though preferably not in ‘legalese’ — whip those lawyers into speaking English, please) and also a concise one paragraph summary of what they will and won’t do with their customers’ data.

    And then — though I shouldn’t have to say this — they need stick by their promises… and they’ll then be rewarded with greater loyalty and fewer lawsuits 🙂

  • An exasperated but well-meaning note to camera reviewers

    [I posted this on a camera review forum a long time ago, and I hope you don’t mind me republishing it here 🙂 – Adam]

    I just finished reading [a particular review of a camera], and that was the last straw.

    This criticism is not specific to [the reviewer], however, nor is it intended to reflect particularly upon [a “rival” reviewer].

    Rather, I’m just fed up with these problems as I perceive them in general:

    1) Focusing more space in a ‘review’ on the technical specs of a camera than anything else. Please. I’ve already seen the specs on the manufacturer’s site. I know what the camera can do, or at least what it can supposedly do. Skip the official numbers and get right to the nitty-gritty, please. How does the camera feel in your hands? How intuitive is it? If I want just the facts, I can get that from a hundred sites other than yours. Instead, give me blunt and backed up OPINIONS based upon facts.

    2) Swallowing and regurgitating marketing-speak. The cutesy acronyms and gee-whiz adjectives from the camera manufacturers made me roll my eyes the first time I read the fluff. I don’t need to see this stuff repeated… especially uncritically!

    3) Focusing more on laboratory tests (how many milliseconds is that shot to shot time?) than on actual real-life shooting examples, particularly under less-than-ideal shooting conditions. Let me cut to the chase: I’m gonna gag if I see another sample gallery filled with outdoor-blue-sunny-sky shots. I don’t know about you, but IT’S NOT GORGEOUSLY SUNNY HERE EVERY DAY where I live, nor am I shooting every photo outdoors or inside with one smiling subject who is posing 4 feet from me perfectly motionless.

    This last bit really gets my goat. I don’t know about you, but here are some of the things I like to have a camera for:
    – House/apartment parties where you want candid, not portrait shots
    – Wedding receptions (at your table, zoomed in to the bride, etc.)
    – Dances (ballroom, junior prom, whatever)
    – Famous museums and churches
    – Reunions or other get togethers with lots of indoor people shots

    When was the last time you saw any picture like this attached to a photo review?

    When I e-mailed one prominent reviewer, asking him to at least have ONE less-than-ideally-lit indoor person/people shot, he protested that he didn’t have anyone handy. Hello?! Go to a bowling alley. A restaurant. A museum. I don’t care. Heck, treat a neighbor or friend to a $4 latte at a local cafe and take his or her picture there.

    And beyond this issue, I’d be so much happier to hear reviewers dropping the pretenses for a moment and lugging the camera with ’em to multiple spots throughout a 24 hour period, and reporting back what their challenges were. Be creative and be thorough. Take a picture through the car window (since many of us tourists take pics through train or plane or bus windows). Go to a playground and take pictures of your squirmy kids or (with a parents’ permission in today’s paranoid climate) of other kids. If you live near a body of water, capture a water skiier. Take a shot of a tall glass skyscraper. Take some closeup (macro) pics of flowers. I know, I know, your time is not unlimited, but I’d rather see real-life shots like this instead of the countless other pages of stats and charts you work so hard on.

    In other words, take pictures like the rest of us do, dangit! I do admit it’s nice to have some consistency of photos between your reviews, but could we start seeing more pictures that approximate real life — or at least the sort of pictures more of us are taking in real life?

    And then report back, too, on your experiences in taking these pictures. Like, “Well, I had a lot of trouble auto-focusing on the youngster on the slide. I initially thought it was due to the bright reflectiveness of the slide, but soon realized that in this camera’s autofocusing was next to useless in almost all bright-sunlight conditions.” THAT is useful information.

    Instead of telling us there’s 0.31415928 barrel distortion, take a PICTURE of a friend in a doorway. Let us SEE what this barrel distortion looks like.

    To the reviewers out there who may be reading this, yes, I realize your “job” is largely thankless. Believe me, as a Webmaster AND a moderator of a popular forum on another site, I know firsthand how hard it can be to please all people.

    But please, I beseech you: Step back. Think not like a photography scientist, but as someone who wants to grab pictures of their friends, of everyday life indoors and outdoors… someone who wants to shoot moving, changing, not-always sunny Life. Then imagine that someone is plunking down $500 on a camera + accessories based upon YOUR recommendation.

    Thank you. THANK YOU! 🙂

  • Forget marketing, just gimme the darn info, please!

    After buying a cordless phone for my new apartment a while back, I learned — after the 30 day free-return period — that the stupid thing didn’t have the capability to turn the ringer off. Given that I receive junk faxes at all hours of the day and night, this is a pretty important feature that’s missing, since my phone is in my bedroom and I don’t fancy being woken up several times in the middle of the night.

    So, after an extended period of cheapness and stubbornness (just disconnecting the phone at night), I decided that it’s time for me to get a new cordless phone.

    You’d think that this would be a relatively pleasant and painless process. And you’d be wrong.

    First stop, Amazon.com, a retailer I’ve trusted and appreciated for a long time.

    Hmm… no info on whether any of their listed phones let one turn off the ringer. Adjustable volume? Check. But actually turning it off? Nope.

    So, undaunted, I found a few phones on Amazon.com that were within my price range, noted the item numbers, and then googled for the info:

    “GE cordless 25893GE3 manual”

    Lots of unrelated crap, and — for other related searches — lots of spam, including one link that redirected me to ebay. And not even the phones section of ebay, just the front page. Charming.

    Pressing on, I decided to go to GE’s Web site.
    Which led me to Thomson Electronics site.
    Whereupon I had to download a PDF manual.
    Which didn’t say anything whatsoever about being able to turn the ringer off.

    This was now turning into an unstoppable quest. I WAS going to find this information, dangit, because I had nothing more important to do on a Friday afternoon, like my laundry, or job searching, or my taxes, or answering my backlog of a few thousand e-mails, and so on.

    —

    So I called up GE.
    After navigating through a deliriously long menu, I found that — surprise — they offered assistance for everything — TVs, VCRs, Camcorders — except for their cordless phones. I pressed “4” for audio anyway. Hey, a phone has audio, right?

    After waiting on hold for a few moments, I was transferred to someone who insisted I had to register to ask any questions. She needed my name, address, telephone number, and…

    “Whoa, whoa… I just have a simple question!” I protested. “I don’t own this phone. I don’t need to be on file for a warranty. I just need info!”

    Clearly reading from her script, the teledroid apologized, but insisted that she had to enter this information in her computer in order to access the information I requested. I had fun coming up with fake info for her, but not enough fun that I forgot I was spending my time and long distance money on this stupid endeavor.

    —

    She then asked me — three times — whether I was a business or a consumer, and also what the serial number was on the item I needed info for. “I… DON’T… HAVE…A… SERIAL… NUMBER!” I said, not quite shouting, but certainly emphatically. I explained, once again, that I didn’t own this phone [and, I wanted to add, at this rate, would likely never, ever, ever think of buying it], so I couldn’t possibly have a serial number [unless she wanted me to make that up, too].

    Finally, the moment I had been waiting for. I was cleared to ask my oh-so-detailed question — “Does cordless phone model 25893GE3 have an option to turn off the ringer?”

    Then she put me on hold. For ten minutes.

    “Sir…?” she came back with, tentatively, “I’m sorry, but I’m not able to obtain that information. The phone is either too new or too old, and I don’t have access to the manual.”

    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

    —

    The moral of this story, because of course, every good blog entry should have a moral, is DON’T FRIGGIN’ BUY GE PHONES!

    No, no, wait, that’s not quite it. I bet I’d get a similar runaround from other cordless phone manufacturers.

    The moral, actually, is one that I wish to pound home to all the consumer electronic companies out there:

    Take a fraction of the money you’re now spending making shiny happy neato packaging and the cash you’re spending on cutesy and gee-whiz advertising, and put it towards making information about your products more accessible.

    Oh yeah, and revising your horrid pre-sales service.

    Maybe there aren’t enough people like me who actually care about what we’re gonna be spending $60-$150 on, but I’d like to hope that others might appreciate knowing a bit more about their purchases before they plunk down their hard-earned cash.

  • What was Disney thinking?

    As you may have heard by now, Disney has begun field-testing its “EZ-D” DVDs that self-destruct after 48 hours.

    Understandably, environmentalists are up in arms. But while I share in their disdain for this wasteful format, I have a different question to ask: What bozo set the price for these discs at $7 each?!

    For about $7, I can go see a matinee on a BIG screen.
    For about $8 on average, including shipping and handling, I can buy DVDs from a DVD club (via their intro package).
    For about $10, I can actually buy single used DVDs (without any quality degredation), or — on sale — often new DVDs.
    Via many online services, I can rent a DVD, complete with free postage-paid mailer, for about $3.

    $7 for a disposable time-limited piece of plastic? It’s not just an animated character that’s Goofy, that’s for sure.

  • On selfishness, obsolescence, and jubilant consumers

    Several organizations are throwing up (their arms) in wild fear of their job sectors going the way of the dodo.

    For instance, unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few months, you probably already know about the new federal program which will block around 80% of telemarketing calls for those who sign up on the free national Do Not Call list.

    The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is livid. They cry that their revenues will plummet… and — surprise! — they plan to sue the government.

    Of course, the charming DMA has also been dragging its feet on spam-reform, typically complaining that bills which limit spam are violating the rights of businesses and harming first amendment issues. Besides, they argue indirectly, some people may really want, nay, NEED to know about the latest cable descrambler or debt reduction miracle!

    And these spokespeople are still able to sleep at night, or at least write their laughable press releases with a straight face? Perhaps they went to the same PR training school as Hilary Rosen of the RIAA.

    —

    What’s particularly ironic, of course, is that organizations like the DMA and RIAA aren’t just working against consumers (which is obvious), they’re counterproductively styming progress and profits in their own industries.

    Napster wasn’t the first RIAA target, you know. This same organization screamed that CD’s were going to kill off cassette tapes (well, true) and devastate the record industry. Just like the movie industry likened the VCR to the Boston Strangler and filed lawsuits to prevent the destruction of the entertainment world (yeah, right!).

    —

    So here we have the DMA wringing its hands about a program which is going to result in them learning which consumers do not wish to be solicited on the phone. In other words, the DMA is upset that they’re going to be unable to contact non-prospects! Excuse me? Shouldn’t this be a blessing for them? The federal government has created and implemented an infrastructure — at relatively little cost to the DMA — that will enable the DMA member companies to focus their time on those mutants, er, citizens who are so lonely that they WANT to be sold stuff via the telephone.

    Pre-qualified customers. What could be better?!?

    —

    Even if the DMA is right and this law reduces sales in the short term, I have two things to say to that:
    1) Diversity your marketing.
    2) I’m so sorry you’re not going to be able to make money at the expense of interrupting my dinner.

    Sponsor a ballet. Create an affiliate program. Give away freebies. Or — here’s a radical idea — go the route of the original once-scrappy Google and actually create a product or service of such quality and usefulness that no marketing is required. That’s right… think about it. Did you ever see an ad for Google’s search tool? No, you didn’t, because Google grew to 250 million queries PER DAY purely based upon word of mouth. There’s a lesson to be learned here, though I fear the DMA may be too dense to grasp it.

    —

    Of course, other industries are running scared, too. Tax preparers might have to wait tables if we ever got someone in high office bold and savvy enough to REALLY reform and simplify taxes. Gee, I wonder which lobbying organizations have been thwarting true tax reform in Washington?

    Search engine optimization folks (the people who claim to get your site listed higher in the search engines) are increasingly screaming that Google’s populist yet secretive algorithms are harming their bottom lines. Some have (gee, imagine this) filed suit against Google.

    Boo hoo, I say. Would anyone really miss the telemarketers, the tax preparers, the search engine optimization folks? At the end of the day, do they inherently make our world a better or even more useful place?

    And most importantly, isn’t it time that laws and society tilted towards the consumers’ interests and needs instead of the frantic and often misguided demands of selfish career interest groups?

  • Affiliate programs… offline? Yes!

    In the previous entry, I mentioned the hard-sell tactics that my gym uses when trying to strong arm potential members into becoming paying members.

    I’d like to suggest that my gym — and many other “non-online” entities — could greatly benefit by replacing traditional (and often annoying) selling techniques with affiliate programs.

    Yes, I’m talking about that system popularized by Amazon.com in which current members are incented to recruit new or additional business for a company in exchange for commissions. Amazon was, of course, far from the first to offer such incentives, but it has done so successfully on such a mind-boggling scale –engaging literally millions of affiliates — that it should be apparent to other companies that this strategy is worth trying out.

    After all, who is better qualified to get my friends interested in a gym membership: some slickster who lies about “last day!” opportunities (every month) and uses arguments unsurprisingly ill-received by my friends… or me — a three-year-member who enthusiastically attends gym classes at multiple locations and gets greeted like “Norm!” on Cheers… and who *gasp* knows my friends.

    In case you weren’t absolutely certain, the correct answer to the above mini-quiz is ME. Yes, yours truly. And in a larger sense, any long-time or otherwise loyal member.

    Yet, I’m given no incentives to sign up friends at my gym. 24 Hour Fitness instead turns my visiting friends off by often making them endure hard-sell “orientation” sessions when my friends and I simply want to make it on time to a particular kickboxing class.

    Believe me, if the gym just left them alone and let the gym sell itself, they’d piss off fewer people (members AND their friends) and they’d likely get more members.

    * * *

    How about this for a poster in my gym?

    You love this gym. Spread the love, get up to $500 in FitnessCash.

    That’s right. We appreciate your enthusiasm and loyalty of our valued members and know that it’s people like you who help make 24 Hour Fitness welcoming and successful. Therefore, we’d like to offer you five free day passes to give to any of your friends that live in the Bay Area. No hard-sell, only a short liability form for them to sign. We’re confident that after you show them around, they’ll love this gym as much as you do.

    And when one of your friends signs up for a two year contract, we’ll give you $50 to spend on anything at 24 Hour Fitness that you’d like. Massages, supplements, any service or product sold here. You can get up to $500 per year!.

    Our members make the difference. So share in the rewards — you’ve earned it!

    Two year memberships cost at least $500. That’s a 10% or smaller acquisition cost (actually much less, since the money’s getting plugged back into the gym). And probably considerably less than what the member acquisition cost is when paying the in-house sales folks. 😉

  • We’re already bombarded by too much marketing, right? But…

    Ads on buses, ads in school gyms, ads on urinals nowadays, for goodness sakes. Isn’t all the marketing and advertising a bit much sometimes?

    Yes. But yesterday, I was nonetheless thinking of missed cross-promotional opportunities. See what an MBA does?! 🙂

    Within half-a-block of one of the gyms I frequent, there’s a Jamba Juice. For those in the un-know, this is a chain that offers delightfully quick, healthy, refreshing, and yummy drinks… fruit and yogurt smoothies and the like… for about $4 each. Perfect for after a tough workout. And no, they didn’t just pay me to write that 🙂

    So anyway, as I was enjoying a particularly delicious peanut butter / banana / chocolate / yogurt / fiber smoothie (can you tell I’m hungry tonight!?) after the gym at Jamba Juice yesterday, I wondered why I didn’t see more fellow gym folks there.

    And that’s when something clicked. Wouldn’t it make sense for my gym (“24 Hour Fitness”) to do cross-promotions with Jamba Juice? Heck, one of the 24 Hour Fitness locations already has a Jamba Juice in-house; why haven’t the others made the connection?

    * * *

    At any gym, after all, you have a lot of rather health-conscious and thirsty people. At Jamba Juice, I’m sure one’d find lots of generally health-conscious folks who also like to (or at least tend to) exercise.

    And yet, I see most of the 24 Hour Fitness branches dumbly trying to go about cross-selling other stuff directly. Buy this overpriced supplement here at the gym. Check out this paltry selection of (similarly overpriced) clothing, along with a rack of stuff we’ve had to discount because it’s collected dust for 18 months.

    Wouldn’t it be smarter for my gym to offer $1 coupons to the Jamba Juice one block away, and a 10% coupon for the Nutrition/Vitamin store down the street? Heck, why not a Healthy Discounts card for members… get 10% off shoes, Powerbars, mineral water, etc…? Or, to keep it simpler, why not just cross-promote with a nearby store like Jamba Juice? Why try to (unsuccessfully) supply all of members’ needs directly in-house?

    In return in my scenario, the stores featured in the discounts would then feature corresponding marketing initiatives inviting people to check out 24 Hour Fitness. Buying some new cross-trainers at Footlocker? Wear ’em in at some great kickboxing classes at 24 Hour Fitness with this free day pass and $50 off your initiation fee. Purchasing a smoothie? Now that you’ve fueled up, clock some miles on the bikes or relax in the hot tub at the 24 Hour Fitness down the block!

    With such targeted cross-promotions, many folks would come out ahead, and of course, both 24 Hour Fitness and the participating partners would acquire quite a bit of awareness and likely new customers.

    * * *

    In contrast with the above-described cross-promotional ideas, intrusive marketing and advertising is annoying and often fruitless. All the damn mortgage telemarketing calls I regularly receive (during dinner hour, of course) are of no use to me, since I rent. And spamwise, my female roommate does NOT need a larger penis. Really.

    Unfortunately, it’s crap like this that gives the rest of marketing and advertising a bad name, even when it’s creative, innovative, and thoughtfully targeted and executed… perhaps giving some large chains like 24 Hour Fitness cold-feet when it comes to extended marketing initiatives.

    And that’s a shame. I’d much rather my gym throw some coupons at me than sic their uber-annoying sales droids at any guest I happen to bring through the door.