Social and New Media Strategies for a Connected Age
Today’s show is all about cell phones. I have recently been in the market for a new cell phone and I want a smart phone. I look at Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian. Which one will I go with?
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Finally some good news after all the bitching I have been doing. Time Warner is readying a new service that will allow customers to download and burn to DVD first run movies the same day the DVD comes out in stores. Hopefully this will be the full DVD resolution and with all the extras. This is great and I would totally use this service, especially if the price is a few bucks less. One other question is, how many burns do you get? I bet on one.
I hate to bash on Tivo again, but they keep doing annoying things. The latest ploy is to insert ads at the end of recorded programs. A still screen will also provide an option to watch the video component. Raising rates, inserting ads, and what do we the consumer get for it? Not much by my estimation. The basic features of the Series 2 Tivo hasn’t changed much. A desperate move by a desperate company.
Competition is usually a good thing, especially for consumers, but both these companies are pretty much the same anyway. I have XM now and I love it, but what the hell, give me the best of both worlds. I do think XM is a way better name, so hopefully they keep that one.
Another one of my favorite companies is stumbling again. First is was Tivo and their raising of prices, and now Palm takes a hit for not being able to ship the latest Treo 750 for the US market on time. They also had a mess up that delayed the Treo 680 by a full week, missing “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving rush. Many other phone vendors, like HTC, crank out phones at an alarming rate. I don’t know why Palm is so slow. If Windows Mobile were just better, I’d say forget it and just get one of those.
Companies like Palm and Tivo, they succeed despite themselves. Where is the Linux-based Palm that has taken over two years to develop? Can it be that hard?
I have always been such a big fan of Tivo. They invented the PVR revolution and till this
day they do it better than anyone. Tivo has been struggling to survive the past few years as cable and satelite vendors come out with their own PVR devices. Now Tivo is raising prices on the monthly service and eliminating the lifetime subscription. Further, their latest Series 3 model is priced at a whopping $799. I think they are crazy and I’m very down on the company lately. They haven’t innovated nearly as quickly as they should and they’re just not that much better than the competition to warrant the higher prices. I can get a Dish Network PVR for only $5.95 a month vs. Tivo at $19.99, and that’s a duel tuner model, something Tivo can’t even do. See you later Tivo, it was nice while it lasted.
Dell has scheduled a press announcement in the virtual world Second Life. At least one journalist was quite put off by having to create an account in SL just to view the announcement and forwarded a scoop to Tech Crunch. I’d say, like it or not, Second Life is news in the tech world and more news is being made there as well. Any tech journalist not in Second Life already is way behind the curve.
As to the news, it appears that Dell will have it’s own island where they will sell virtual and
real computers. That makes sense, but I hope, with an entire island, it’s more interesting than that. There are plenty of brand opportunities available to Dell that I hope they will take advantage of. Maybe a gaming and entertainment theme for the island.
Cynical comments on the Tech Crunch article and the article itself suggest Dell should stick to making better computers than messing about in Second Life. Second Life is a marketing opportunity which is a completely different department from engineering, so I don’t see the point. Dell is smart for hopping on a hot trend and trying something new. The only thing I don’t quite get is buying a virtual computer for your Second Life home or office. I think Second Life is cool, but sometimes it seems all a bit silly.
Google is going all out in the cell phone space with the release of AdWords for Google mobile search service. In fact, because of increased advertising, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Reuters “your mobile phone should be free”. Would you want a free phone if it came with lots of advertising? Or do we want to continue to pay and have limited or no ads? It’s a real question because I don’t know that I want my cell phone cluttered with ads and mobile spam.
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