“I’m not a mathematician”
Obviously.
Hear a Verizon customer attempt to explain to customer representatives the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Angie is a Bit Nutty Today
A while back I was investigating Angie’s List to see what it was all about. I made the mistake of providing the site my email address before realizing it was a pay site. I promptly withdrew from the inquiry and committed to nothing.
That should have been it. But oh no….
From Subject Size Received
Angie’s List Thanks For Visiting Angie’s List 10 KB 4:41 PM
Angie’s List Thanks For Visiting Angie’s List 10 KB 4:34 PM
Angie’s List Thanks For Visiting Angie’s List 10 KB 4:33 PM
Angie’s List Thanks For Visiting Angie’s List 10 KB 4:25 PM
Angie’s List Thanks For Visiting Angie’s List 10 KB 4:04 PM
This afternoon I’ve received 20 emails from Angie. She’s apparently concerned that I didn’t choose to sign up and wanted to explain why the fees are necessary. OK, I’m fine with Angie wanting to make her pitch. But 20 times? Oh wait, there’s another one coming in …
That’s simply too much….
Fortunately, Angie was kind enough to leave her toll free number. And one of her assistants explained that their IT server is acting up this afternoon. No, I was assured, this was not woman’s vendetta against me deciding against giving her my money. Apparently I’m not alone in seeing my email server filled up with pleas from Angie this afternoon.
I’ll forgive for now… but I do hope it ends soon.
-Steve Lackmeyer, Business Writer
Breaking the “news” embargo
TechCrunch, one of the leading tech news and information Web sites, is fed up with the way news is distributed by public relations firms representing technology companies. Competition among the legion of sites covering the tech scene is keen, and some reporters “break” news by ignoring embargoes placed on the public release of information. (PR companies regularly issue news with a scheduled release date that all reporters are supposed to comply with.)
However, those embargoes are regularly broken and offenders not only don’t get punished, they frequently are rewarded with increase readership for having “broken” the “news.” Fed up with process, TechCrunch has decided to ignore embargoes.
We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo. We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that. We may break an embargo by one minute or three days. We’ll choose at random.
Some firms will stop talking to us (yeah! less email), but we’ll find other ways to get the news. Others, who haven’t read this post because they don’t read TechCrunch, will be unpleasantly surprised. Maybe if we cause enough pain then PR firms will start to take action against those publications who break the rules.
I’ve never broken an embargo, and I have been burned when competitors did without penalty. I understand the frustration. I’m just not sure I would handle it the same way, although I’ve not found a better method.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Fake Steve Jobs blogger shuts down blog — again
The wonderful Secret Diary of Steve Jobs had a brief, but delightful run before business journalist Dan Lyons was unmasked as the perpetrator. Then Lyons launched his own blog and later took a job at technology columnist with Newsweek. After Newsweek pulled some of his pithier posts, Lyons shut down that blog as well.
Things happen quickly in the blogosphere.
Don Mecoy
Business News
Onion: Apple vs. Windows
Leave it to The Onion to break down the competition between two computer operating systems that don’t even exist yet.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Information overload
Ah, data.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
The best 99 cents you ever spent
PC World reports on a new iPhone app that solves a age-old problem — how to escape endless, irrelevant, time-wasting meetings:
Have you ever been talking to someone and hoped your cell phone would ring so that you would have an excuse to leave? Well, start up company Magic Tap has developed an iPhone application that lets you do just that.
Click here to purchase the application (by clicking, you will open the iPhone app store.)
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
New kid on the (wireless) block
The impending entrance into the Oklahoma City wireless market by Verizon Wireless has been trumped by Cox Communications.
The long-time cable television, Internet and wireline phone provider in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets said Monday that it will launch its own branded wireless telephone service next year, even going to far as to build its own 3G network.
I spoke to Cox spokeswoman Jill Ullman in Atlanta, and she was mum on what Cox will call the service or any other details such as a launch date or what it will cost subscribers. That will come later, she said.
Cox withdrew in April from a joint venture with three other cable providers and Sprint that lasted only a year. That was the Pivot service that it launched in Spring 2007 to much fanfare.
“The dynamics of a joint venture had some constraints, and we believe that by going at this on our own we won’t have any of those experiences,” Ullman said. “We know that we learned a lot through our relationship with Pivot and the biggest learning from that relationship is that our customers want us to control the entire customer experience.”
I asked telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan in Atlanta for his views on the new Cox wireless service, and here’s what he told me:
“If done right I think they can compete and be successful. They have to market correctly. They have to have products that are part of a bundle and stand alone wireless, as well. Many of the questions about Cox’s potential success come from the mis-steps from the last attempt by the cable television industry to enter wireless over the last couple years. If the lessons were learned, Cox could be successful. I think a section of the marketplace would like that to happen.”
Ah, bundles. No one is bigger on bundles than Cox, which claims to have invented the concept.
“Sixty-four percent of our customers nationwide already take more than one service from us,” Ullman said. “We see that as a great opportunity. Our initial success will be in this base of satisfied customers. With more than 64 percent of our customers already subscribing to the Cox bundle, that is going present a great opportunity for wireless.”
Business Writer
Phishing: don’t get caught
Commoncraft.com has produced an easy-to-understand video that explains what Phishing is, how to avoid being a victim of this scam and what to do if you think you might have provided sensitive personal information to a scammer.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Foolish Forecasters Missed It on iPhone
In case you missed it, Apple said it has sold more than 10 million iPhones this year. That beat its stated goal of 10 million iPhones for all of 2008, two months ahead of schedule. In fact, Apple sold 6.9 million of the phones in the latest quarter, which topped sales of RIM’s Blackberry at 6.1 million.
More than that, the success of the iPhone made some prognosticators who poo-pooed the phone look absolutely foolish. Thanks to the MacDailyNews blog, here are some of the worst of the forecasts of failure for the iPhone:
[iPhone] just doesn’t matter anymore. There are now alternatives to the iPhone, which has been introduced everywhere else in the world. It’s no longer a novelty.” – Eamon Hoey, Hoey and Associates, April 30, 2008
“We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008
Microsoft, with Windows Mobile/ActiveSync, Nokia with Intellisync, and Motorola with Good Technology have all fared poorly in the enterprise. We have no reason to expect otherwise from Apple.” – Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams analyst, March 07, 2008
“What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” – Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007
“The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.” – Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, April 02, 2007
“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007
“Even if [the iPhone] is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment.” – Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, March 14, 2007
“I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007
“The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple.” – Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, January 18, 2007
“The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007
“I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007
“The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006
“Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006
Jim Stafford
Business Writer
