How I went from loving to loathing TiVo… is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

I still *want* to love you, but you're losing me

Dear TiVo,

I read two articles recently that spurred me to write you this letter.  The first article described how at the end of July 2009 you had 3.05 million subscribers, but at the end of July 2010 you were down to 2.38 million.  Five years ago this would have surprised me, but not any more.

The second article was from your site, describing the spiffy new QWERTY TiVo remote with a sliding face and a full keyboard.  I was overjoyed by the news, as I’ve been waiting for a remote like this since I bought and activated my first TiVo back in 2002.  I read the article in great anticipation, wondering how pricey the remote would be.  Hm, $90.  Not unreachable, but seemingly a little steep, which would make it in keeping with everything else you sell.

But then I got to the last paragraph, where the last sentence read:

“The new remote will work with TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL boxes.”

No Series 1?  No Series 2 or Dual-Tuner?  Leaving us faithful early adopters behind again, are we?

Typical.  This is typical of everything I have come to expect from you over the years.  I still love TiVo-the-technical-solution, but with TiVo-the-company I have gone from love to like to not caring to being annoyed and, finally, to loathing, where I am today.

I now own and use 5 (count ‘em) TiVos, but they are all Series 2.  My disillusionment began in earnest when you released the Series3 boxes, and included things like YouTube browsing that were not made available to Series2 owners.  Now, you had a story for why this was so, which was something about Flash, I think, but I didn’t (and still don’t) buy it.  If you had wanted to make it work, you could have.   But, you chose to have those features and functions be differentiators to try and get Series2 owners to upgrade.

So close, and yet so far away

And it’s continued to be that way over the years, up through the latest insult of not letting us have the new remote (pictured at left).  You continue to add new and improved features and functions, very few of which are made available to your existing base of owners, unless they have the latest and greatest.  Now, I understand this from a business perspective, as I work in technology, so I know that it’s hard to keep the installed base happy.  It’s very easy to add new features and functions to totally new and redesigned devices, and your bean-counters are happy to see the R&D and other expenses that go into anything that will grab new customers and dollars.

I can visualize the meetings where you discussed the strategy of what to do with the installed base.  Spending money on something that will make the installed base happier is not a strategy that reaps short-term benefits, so it’s difficult for people to get behind it and make those investments.  Conversely, it’s much easier to talk about investing in the new model with the new features that will open up new markets and bring in new customers and new revenues.  *Everybody* can get behind that, and nobody gets fired for trying to grow the business.

But people do get fired for spending money on things that are difficult to quantify, like the care and feeding of existing customers.  However, the sign of a truly successful company is that they do exactly that.  It’s like flossing your teeth.  If I don’t floss today, nothing bad really happens.  If I don’t floss this month, or even this year, there may be no noticeable negative impact from my perspective. 

But if I never floss?  Eventually I’ll start losing my teeth.  And teeth, like customers, are things that, once you’ve neglected them to the point that you lose them, you never get them back.  Well TiVo, you haven’t been flossing, and you have decayed my loyalty as a customer to the point where now I hope that some viable alternative presents itself, so that I can leave you behind.

The good news, for you, is that the technology of the TiVo is awesome.  Usability is great, and you have features and functions that far outstrip anything that the cable companies offer.  However, from my cable company I can get an HD DVR for $5/month with no other out-of-pocket expense.  With you I’d have to spend $300-$500 to get the new TiVo Premiere, and then cough up another $300 for lifetime service, or $11/month for the monthly services.  Your DVR is far better than the one my cable company offers, but the three year cost for a TiVo Premiere for me would be $800, while the three year cost for my cable company’s DVR would be $180.

Not only are you more than four times more expensive, but you only have a one-year warranty, so if my TiVo has a problem in year 2 or 3 it falls to me to fix it out of my own pocket.  My cable company will send me a replacement box at no cost if their DVR has problems.

So, with TiVo I get a slicker product but at over 4 times the cost, and I also have to assume the risk of repair costs after the first year.  You’re good, but you’re not that good.  So, for the first time in eight years I am open to an alternative.  I don’t think it’s out there, yet, but if I’m ready and willing to move away from TiVo that means there are others like me who are, too.

I do hope that you figure out how to survive, and how to offer your products at a far more reasonable cost.  I know that cable companies are licensing your software to put on their set-top boxes, and I can see this being a way for you to survive.  My hope is that you are able to maintain the full feature set when provided by a cable company, because I can see them wanting you to disable or degrade certain functions so that they maintain control of their user base.  Don’t do that, please?

And I think one thing that has become clear over time is that your subscription fees are poisoning your business model.  Either make me buy the device with a huge up-front cash outlay *or* charge me a monthly fee, but don’t do both.  For a $500 up-front purchase price you should be able to provide the programming information at no additional charge.  If you don’t want to do that, then let me get the box for $10-$15/month and no up-front fee, and back it with an ongoing warranty just like my cable company does.  I’d do that in a heartbeat – get a TiVo Premiere for nothing up front and $15/month?  Sweet.  How about doing that?

But, after 8 years I feel that I know you well enough to know that you won’t do either of those things, because it appears that your corporate culture is too hide-bound to consider those alternatives.  Somebody, somewhere has decided that a monthly subscription fee needs to apply, and the huge up-front purchase price needs to apply, and that’s that.  If you have to have a monthly fee, how about making it something reasonable, like $5/month/household, and it doesn’t matter how many TiVo’s I have?

I’m rooting for you, but only a little bit.  I used to care about you, but now I don’t, because you’ve spent 8 years not caring about me.  I wish you good luck, and I hope you figure out a way to survive.  But, if you don’t, I will no longer be among those who mourn your passing, because while you had great engineering, your business side sucks.  How about listening to your engineers, who I’m sure have been trying to tell your business folks all of this all along?

But, no, conventional wisdom says that engineers don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to business.  Er, except for Google, that is.  And Microsoft.  Oh, and HP, too. 

But, what do they know?

Sincerely,

EngineerBoy

Related posts:

1. Review of Amazon Unbox for TiVo
2. Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S)
3. EngineerBoy’s Review of the Litter-Robot

EngineerBoy’s Review of the Litter-Robot is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

Open the pod bay door, Mittens

We are a pet-intensive household.  Currently we have three dogs and a cat, but we used to have two dogs and three cats.  Having three cats teaches you that maintaining a litter box is an endless, thankless, hopeless, gross, stinky, unhealthy, unending chore.  We used to use the LitterMaid, and went through three of them over the course of five years.  They worked…okay.  However, they had some significant engineering flaws, such as the fact that the rakes became caked with kitty poo, the receptacle filled up super quick when three cats were on the job, and they simply wore out after a year or so.

When we moved to our current house we decided to forego yet another LitterMaid and search for a newer, and hopefully better, solution.  The search led us to the Litter-Robot, pictured to the right.  It’s kind of space-age looking, and looks kind of big, and looks like it might freak out a cat or something, and maybe, just maybe, might refuse to open the pod bay doors.

The good news is that the Litter-Robot works, and it works extremely well.  It’s hard to describe the mechanics of it, but the large, round part on the top is simply sitting in place by virtue of gravity, it’s not attached or connected to the base in any way.  The orb has a couple of windows on the side (you can see one of them in the picture, it’s the black blotch on the side), and when in the normal position those windows are blocked by panels from the inside. 

The orb sits on the base, and the base beneath the orb is open to the drawer below.  Sensors in the unit determine when your cat has used the litter box, and seven minutes later little wheels (hidden from view underneath the orb) start turning and spin the orb counter-clockwise.  Inside the orb is a mesh grate and retaining pocket for the litter, and as the orb rotates the litter flows through the mesh grate and into the retaining pocket.  Anything a little bit bigger than a couple grains of litter can’t go through the mesh, so continue to roll along the inside of the orb as it rotates.

After the orb passes the rotation point where all the litter is contained in the pocket, the movement of the orb engages a lever that starts opening the panels that block the windows.  When the orb is fully rotated, the windows are completely unblocked allowing free access for any dropping droppings to fall into the drawer below.  After a short pause, the orb rotates back clockwise, the panels close the windows, and it eventually returns to the fully upright and locked position. 

Note that on this return turn, it over-rotates by about 15-20 degrees, then comes back to completely vertical.  This movement leaves the inside with perfectly level litter, but the first time it happens it doesn’t make sense and, if you’re like me, you might think the thing has slipped the chain and gone into rotational hell.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I guess that means a video must be worth a million, so here’s a video of what I just tried to describe:

It’s not nearly as noisy as the LitterMaids were, and there is zero, and I mean *zero*, smell of litterbox in our house.  With two cats we had to empty the drawer twice a week, with one cat we empty it once a week.  Standard garbage bags can be used as a liner for the drawer to make cleanup even easier.  And it only uses a tiny bit of litter each changing, because you only have to replace the litter that falls out clinging to the refuse.

Some caveats – the floor must be level, and it works best on a hard floor as opposed to carpeting.  Also, don’t overfill it with litter – the whole system works by sensing a cat’s weight stepping into and out of the litter box, and the whole unit rocks forward and back about a 1/2 inch during ingress/egress.  If there’s too much litter it can falsely trigger the sensors, and carpeting can dampen the rocking motion and make the unit not sense usage.

Also, the people at Litter-Robot are very nice and their support is very helpful.  When we first got ours I had a lot of trouble getting it working (due to unlevel floors and overfilling!), so I stuck it in the garage for a year.  When I pulled it back out I realized I had lost a part of it that I had loosened while tinkering, and the Litter-Robot folks were happy to replace it, free of charge, even!

Our cats took the the Litter-Robot within a couple of minutes, no hassle at all.  It takes up about as much floor space as a large litter box, but it’s about 2′ tall and requires the freedom to rotate, so you can’t smash it up against the wall or pull the drapes over it or anything.

The bottom line is that the Litter-Robot works great, it has a fabulous design, it’s easy to clean, our cats love it, there’s no smell, and it’s actually a conversation piece instead of being a sh*tbox.  What’s not to like!??

Related posts:

1. Review of the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical
2. Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S)
3. Review of CedarCide for Mosquito Control

Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S) is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

Just over a year ago we purchased a Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (Model TX-47F430S) from Best Buy.  This model is priced at the cheaper end of the spectrum, but it seemed to fit our requirements (reasonably good picture, reasonably cheap, from a trustworthy brand name).

The bottom line is that we love the picture and the features, but some of the fit, finish, and quality are lacking.  We expected this because of the lower price, and are happy (so far) with the price-performance compromise.

The Good
First, the good things.  The picture quality is excellent and sharp, and the highest resolution is 1080p, which is the highest HDTV standard resolution.  I’ve heard rumors that Westinghouse has changed to a different LCD panel for this same model number for the new sets being produced, and that the new panel isn’t quite as bright and sharp, but don’t know that for certain.

The connections are also great.  There are four HDMI connectors for HD content.  There is a PC monitor port which allows you to drive it has a super-high-resolution PC/server monitor, and also takes the sound output from the PC as well (great for PC gaming).  It has composite and component/S-video inputs as well.  You can get more technical specifications here.

We have several things hooked up to our TV, as follows:

Regular definition cable TV via TiVo: We get regular cable TV programming through a cable box, which feeds our dual-tuner TiVo, which feeds into one of the component inputs of the TV.  Movies that are broadcast in widescreen can be expanded to fill the entire screen and look really good (but not as good as true HDTV, of course).

HDTV via DirectTV: We also have DirectTV in order to get the NFL and other (selected) sports in HD.  DirectTV only goes up to 1080i, which is interlaced and not quite 1080p, but is still super sharp looking.

Computer: We have a computer hooked up which we can use with a wireless keyboard/trackball, allowing us to display anything PC-based on our television in very sharp resolution.

Wii Console: The Wii console is connected via the component interface and looks good, but not great.  This is a function of the Wii, however, not the television, as the Wii doesn’t support any native high-resolution formats nor HDTV, so it looks a little pixellated when scaled up on our 47″ TV, but still fun and playable.

Overall, the good is really good on this television.  But unfortunately it’s not all good…

The Not-So-Good
There have also been some annoyances with this set, as follows:

• The Closed-Captioning simply does not work.  It gets a few of the words/text, but it’s very jumpy and misses random parts and just doesn’t work.  We rarely used captions, but sometimes it’s nice to have the news on with the sound down and the captions up, so that you can still read what’s going on without the noise intrustion, or when watching a quiet movie that you don’t want to blast the sound way up.  This is a nagging issue, but not bad enough for us to have tried returning the unit, and we didn’t discover until about 90 days in, meaning we couldn’t just go back to Best Buy and exchange it, we would have had to have done some kind of swap with Westinghouse, and would have almost certainly gotten a refurb unit to replace our brand-spanking-new one.
• The PC input doesn’t auto-center the input.  When we switch to view our PC, the video is about 25% of the way moved to the left, leaving a fat wide black bar on the right.  We can jump into the TV’s menu and hit “Auto Adjustment” under the PC options, and it quickly centers the picture properly.  However, we have to do this EVERY SINGLE TIME WE SWITCH TO THE PC INPUT, which gets very annoying.  Again, it’s annoying but fell into the category of “to be expected at this price” for us.  Also, the audio input from the PC has a background buzz if you turn the sound up.
• The remote control doesn’t work well from 10 feet away.  You have to be really close, like 7 feet, for it to work reliably.  This tends to defeat the purpose of a big television that you sit back from to enjoy the splendiforous big picture.  It’s even worse if you’re off to the side and not dead-on center when using the remote.  Again, something to be expected on a cheaper television, but annoying.
• On the regular TV component input, the televison occasionally doesn’t sense that there is a sound channel input, and so sets the status as “no input detected” (or something like that) and won’t play the sound.  We have to switch away from the TV input and then back to get it to recognize the input correctly.  Annoying.
• The audio is two-channel stereo only, so no 5-channel surround experience.

Overall the not-so-good parts are more annoyances than anything else, and each of them individually could be expected for the low price.  However, combined together they make us unsure if the annoyance was worth any cost savings.  However, all these annoyances could be moot because we are now having a REAL problem…

The BAD
Two weeks after our warranty expired (that’s right, two weeks), our television developed a bright green line of pixels down the left hand side, which shows on all inputs and even shows when the TV is powering up.  I have been on the phone with Westinghouse and they have confirmed that it’s a repair issue, but only after first telling me that it was “pixel memory” and making me turn the TV off and unplug it for 24 hours.  A bright green line is NOT pixel burn, but they wouldn’t proceed until I tried it.  Now I’m going to have to fight with them to see if I can get a waiver to get this repaired for goodwill or something, since the it’s out of warranty.  I don’t have high hopes.  I’ll post the results back here when all is said and done.

Related posts:

1. Review of the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical
2. Review of Amazon Unbox for TiVo
3. Review of CedarCide for Mosquito Control

Review of CedarCide for Mosquito Control is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

We recently moved from a patio home in the big city (Houston) to a cottage in a small, country town (Brenham). In Houston we didn’t really have any outdoor living space as we shared a common courtyard with neighbors, but here in Brenham we purposely bought a house that could provide a nice outdoor lifestyle. We purchased in the fall of last year and since then we’ve made improvements to the backyard, such as putting up an 8′ privacy fence and driveway gate, giving us a private, shady retreat to enjoy.

However, this being the southern half of Texas, the coming of spring and summer meant that the mosquitos ended up taking over and driving us back inside most mornings and evenings. Also, since we have two permanent dogs, and one temp dog that we’re babysitting, our backyard has a certain amount of…how to say this delicately…um…organic….err…excretions? Natural…fertilizer? Canine compost? Okay, dog poop. And with dog poop come flies. We’re excrutiatingly uninterested in policing the poop, and we feed our dogs a very high grade of dog food, so the volume isn’t huge, particuarly for the size of our dogs (80lbs, 80lbs, and 25lbs). Nevertheless, the flies were also annoying and gross, but fortunately not the biting kind.

So we started on a project of figuring out the best way to take back control of our backyard. I won’t say that money was no object, but we weren’t going to penny-pinch and were willing to spend into the low four figures for a good solution. We first looked at the wide variety of mosquito traps out there, such as the Mosquito Magnet, SkeeterVac, Mega-Catch, etc. What we found was that while the underlying concept behind these devices appears to be sound (catching mosquitoes with CO2 and other lures), the implementations were horribly unreliable and the results were spotty.

These devices almost all work by luring the mosquitos in with some set of attractants, such as CO2, lurex, octenol, lights, and/or heat, then using a fan to suction the little buggers into a holding net where they remain stuck until they die. Also, it seems that most of the mosquitos in your yard actually live in your yard, meaning if you can trap and kill the ones in your yard, you break the cycle of population and then only have to deal with ones that stray in from the surrounding area.

But for every story of success, there were three stories of device failure, with most failures occurring at the start of the second season of use when trying to get the traps to start up again after having been stored away for weeks or months. I wasn’t able to find a single personal account of anyone using one of these devices for more than one season without having issues. Also, the company that originally introduced the product and concept, American Biophysics with their Mosquito Magnet, had gone bankrupt and their acquiring company seemed to be completely disinterested in any type of customer service. This reinforced my take that while mosquito traps could work in the short term, and the scientific concepts appeared sound, the engineering has fallen short. And at $300-$1,000 per device it was a little too expensive to roll the dice and deal with a string of lemons year after year. We’re keeping our eyes peeled and will probably buy one if/when somebody proves they can make one that both works and lasts.

After ruling out these devices, the field of possible solutions became much less clear. We knew that we didn’t want to fog our yard with insecticide or any other toxins. Bug zappers seemed particularly useless. We were so desperate we even considered the SkeeterBag, which appears to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Redneck World (and, truthfully? we’re still considering it because of its simple and logical design). We also didn’t want to have to slather anything onto ourselves, even if it were natural and safe, as having to get gooped/slimed up every time we wanted to enjoy the cool of the evening just seemed like a zen-kill.

Then we came across the CedarCide site. The site itself looks kind of rough around the edges (note to the folks from CedarCide if you read this – we do web site development and would be willing to barter web services for cedar oil goods!) which made us skeptical that they were not a “real” company. But the more we read the more sense their story seemed to make. The basic concept is that the majority of bugs out there are repelled by cedar, including mosquitos and flies. The folks at CedarCide extract the oil from red Texas cedars and package it in various liquid and solid forms for consumer use.

Also compelling was the long, long, list of testimonials on their website. Now, normally, I place no stock in testimonials for products that are placed on the site selling said products, as they are handpicked and in some cases seemingly falsified, as they quote company prose as they describe the wonderfulness of their purchase. But I don’t know how to describe it, these rang true and seemed “real”, for lack of a better word.

The bottom line was we figured that we could try their products for no great cost, cedar oil couldn’t really hurt anything, and if it worked then great, if not then lesson learned for small number of dollars (compared to propane-based mosquito traps). So we ordered the YardSafe concentrate ($49.95 for a gallon, including a hose-end sprayer attachment) and the Vet’s Choice ($99.95 for a quart, but dilutes quite a bit) bath/dip.

We first tried the YardSafe by spraying our whole backyard. I included the wooden fence and the sides of the house as well as the part of the driveway the extends to the back, and I also gave the lawn furniture a light misting. That night we went outside in the late evening and encountered zero mosquitos or bites, whereas previously we would have been chased in with dozens of bites within a few minutes. We still had a few flies hanging around, but greatly reduced from the previous evening. The beneficial effects lasted for several days, then it rained for a couple of days, and on the next non-rainy evening we went out and the flies were back in increased numbers (but still less than before the treatment) but still no mosquitos. I gave area a quick refresher spraying and that chased off all but a few flies.

We’ve been using the spray now for a couple of weeks and we have only a few occasional flies, and after about a week after spraying (or two or three days of heavy rain) the mosquitoes start to return (but only a few). Our general process is to give the backyard a good spraying every weekend after mowing, and then to do quick spot sprayings as needed if the rain interferes with effectiveness.

And that process has given us back our backyard!! It’s actually amazing how quickly and effectively it chases away the mosquitoes. In fact, even if at some future date we get a propane mosquito trap, we’ll probably still use the CedarCide because it is *immediately* effective and it doesn’t take weeks like the propane traps to have an impact.

We also dipped our dogs in the Pet’s Choice and they smelled really nice. Not sure if had any effect on fleas (not sure they had any), but it didn’t hurt them and they smelled really good. Not sure the Pet’s Choice is worth money, but we’ll use up this batch and see if it has a better cumulative benefit.

All in all, we’re going to be buying a lot more YardSafe over the years. If you have a backyard plagued with mosquitoes, flies, and other bothersome pests, you may want to give it a try!

Related posts:

1. Review of the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical
2. Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S)
3. Review of Amazon Unbox for TiVo

Review of Amazon Unbox for TiVo is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

If you own a TiVo there is a new service available to you from an Amazon/TiVo partnership called Unbox. Also, if you don’t yet own a TiVo GO AND GET ONE RIGHT NOW!!!!! I’ll wait…

Amazon Unbox is a service that allows you to locate movies, TV shows, and other video content on Amazon, purchase or rent them, and have them download directly to your TiVo for your viewing convenience. No schlepping down to the video store, no waiting for DVDs to arrive in the mail. Just an hour or two of download time, and it’s ready to watch. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

It is, kind of. You see, the technology is pretty good, with only a few quibbles, as follows:

• You only get the main feature, none of the DVD extras (deleted scenes, commentary, etc)
• Video quality is not nearly the same as DVD, for example, there is noticable artifacting in dark scenes
• Sound quality is simply “stereo”, not 5.1 or any other home-theater-quality sound
• No hi-def content
• You have to wait for the entire movie to finish downloading before you can start watching it
• You can’t transfer downloaded content between your TiVos or move it to a PC running TiVo Desktop

Other than that, it works pretty good – you log into Unbox with your Amazon credentials, locate a movie you like, click to purchase, tell it which TiVo of yours to download to (if you have more than one), then wait the 30-120 minutes for it to download, depending on the length of the feature and your available download bandwidth.

The big disappointment, however, is the number of titles available for download. When I heard that I would be able to download movies from Amazon directly to my TiVo, I was ecstatic – FINALLY entertainment technology that worked how I wanted it to – I figured with Amazon’s huge selection of DVDs that I would have virtually anything I wanted at my fingertips. But it ain’t so, not by a long shot. As best as I can figure, Amazon carries about 190,000 DVD titles. And how many are available for download to your TiVo? About 3,300. That’s a little less that 2% of the available DVDs. And that makes Unbox extraordinarily frustrating.

Since the service went live a few weeks ago, I’ve looked for, conservatively 150 different titles on Unbox. How many have I found that were actually available? Four. Four measly titles that I’ve wanted to get from Unbox. For this article I combined the top movies from both IMDB and the AFI to get their combined Top 20 films of all time – in other words, the twenty greatest films that have ever been produced according to IMDB and the AFI. Check the table below – one, count ‘em, one of these films is available from Unbox for TiVo:

Now come on Amazon, what the hell? If this is the best you could do, you should have delayed the launch of this new product until you had some semblance of an actual library of available films. Now, I’ll give Unbox this, it has a whole lot of recently released Hollywood crap, that’s for sure. What do I mean by crap? Glad you asked:

• Ten Adam Sandler films
• Eight “National Lampoon” movies (not counting Animal House, which they have and which was great)
• Both “Jackass” movies
• Nine films with Rob Schneider
• Six films with Martin Lawrence
• Alien? Nope. Aliens? Nope. Alien Resurrection? Yup. Alien vs. Predator? Yup.
• Truman Show? Nope. Cable Guy? Yup.
• The Matrix
• Four Michael Bay films.
• Nine Ben Stiller movies.
• Original “Godzilla”? Nope. Crappy “Godzilla” remake? Yup.
• Original “Stepford Wives”? Nope. Crappy “Stepford Wives” remake? Yup.
• Original “Swept Away”? Nope. Crappy “Swept Away” remake? Yup.
• Original “Psycho”? Yup. Crappy “Psycho” remake? Nope. (so they get some things right, so what?)
• Original “Poseidon Adventure”? Nope. Crappy “Poseidon” remake? Yup.
• Original “Alfie”? Nope. Crappy “Alfie” remake? Yup.
• Original “Village of the Damned”? Nope. Crappy “Village of the Damned” remake? Yup.
• Original “Carnival of Souls”? Nope. Crappy “Carnival of Souls” remake? Yup.
• Original “Fun With Dick and Jane”? Nope. Crappy “Fun With Dick and Jane” remake? Yup.
• Original “Manchurian Candidate”? Nope. Crappy “Manchurian Candidate” remake? Yup.
• Original “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”? Nope. Crappy “Mr. Deeds” remake? Yup.
• Original “When a Stranger Calls”? Nope. Crappy “When a Stranger Calls” remake? Yup.
• Original “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”? Nope. Crappy “Guess Who” remake? Yup.

Now, I’m a bidnessman, and I know that they’re going to focus on the films that they can a) get the rights to allow for digital downloading and b) generate the most revenues. That’s the way it works. However, today, Amazon Unbox is like the video rental counter inside your grocery store – stocked only with titles that appeal to the least-common-denominator. It appears that Amazon is expanding their available inventory by a couple of hundred titles per month, so progress is being made.

But, for now, for me, Unbox is really just a frustrating tease – a taste of the way things *should* work, but don’t yet. My fear is that Amazon is running into licensing issues with studios and other rights-holders who are either resisting making their products available for download or who are trying to be too greedy about their licensing terms. One hopes that video media rights holders will look at the example of iTunes and see that, yes, making content available digitally is a good thing to do and will both generate revenues for them while preserving their copyrights.

Related posts:

1. How I went from loving to loathing TiVo…
2. Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S)
3. Review of the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical

Bruised Apple: The iPod on Windows Experience is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

Don’t Stop the Music

I am a listen-to-music-at-work kinda person. Ever since I’ve had a job with enough autonomy and desktime to allow it, I listen to music via headphones while I work. And since I don’t like to have any extraneous apps running on my workstation (much less keep music on a corporate machine), I like to have my music on a device that is disconnected from my actual PC, so I always have something to play my music with. Also, as a former runner, I used to take stuff with me on the hoof. So, I’ve had a few MP3-playing devices in my day.

My most recent device was an iRiver — most specifically, an iRiver 400-series CD player that will play MP3s burned onto CD. (I also have some familiarity with the iRiver solid state MP3 players, having bought the G-I-R-L one for running). The iRiver has a somewhat daunting and extremely tiny interface, but it’s highly customizable once you figure it out. The CD player has limitations, though — a CD can only fit about 200 or so MP3s on it, and after having that same CD at work for a few weeks you get pretty tired of that same mix. Plus, if you buy a new CD and rip those songs into MP3s, you have to re-burn a new MP3 mix CD just to add the 1 or 2 new songs you want to add into the mix. It can be a drag.

Before that I had (and actually, prior to the iPod, still used for exercising) an ancient RCA Lyra device and it’s really unusable — MP3s have to be custom-encoded with specific software in order to get transferred onto the Flash memory through a parallel-port flash reader that’s REALLY SLOW. It’s literally a 30-minute process. You can imagine how often the songs get changed on THAT device… not much incentive to do a 30 minute session on the elliptical when you’ve got the same 15 songs you had 6 months ago waiting for you and your workout.

Under My Thumb

At Christmas, the G-I-R-L (whose Indiana parents use a Mac) came down to visit with an Apple iPod in tow. Although we often had to pry the earbuds out of her ears to get her to actually join family events, I eventually asked her for some details on the little machine and (despite myself) got intrigued. I mean… 20 GB of music right there in such a tiny package is pretty enticing. Plus, we have an auxiliary jack in our Honda Element and the iPod hooks right up to it to put tunes into the car. (The iRiver CD player can do the same thing but it’s much more cumbersome to try and stuff the CD player into the glove box and hook up a power cord, etc).

And I gotta give it to Apple, the clickwheel is a really innovative interface. It feels a bit like an Etch-a-Sketch at first, but it’s a GREAT way to turn the volume up and down, to just be able to run your thumb in a little circle. Plus, when you’ve got 20GB of songs (or even 1/4 of that), you need a FAST way to scroll up and down — something where you’d be clicking or even paging down would get very old very quickly. The fast scrolling action that you can get with the wheel is very nice.

People Are Strange

But, c’mon… it’s an Apple. I wasn’t really going to seriously consider buying consumer electronics from… uh… Apple, right? Apple people are generally a different breed and, well, buying any device with the intention of using it on its non-native platform is generally a risky move. And there are several choices for large-drive MP3 players out there. However, iPod was clearly the market leader. It’s fine to be quirky and iconoclastic in fashion or other things, but in matters of things automotive or electronic, I believe in buying where the market goes and looks to be reasonably supported. That way you’re not stuck with something really random with no accessories later. Remember DIVX? (If you don’t that just proves my point).

Plus, the Apple Bastards won me over with the truly powerful weapon, the one that was actually guaranteed to get me as a consumer — the iTunes Music Store. If I can legally buy one song for $1 and put it on my iPod or burn it to CD, and they have the industry support to have a decently broad range of music I might want to buy, then I’m sold. Because I love instant gratification, and Engineerboy and I have a million songs that we love that are onsie-twosies from this artist or that. I still buy CDs and rip the whole thing, but there are just tons of songs that we want to have. And if we can buy them as one-offs then that’s exactly what we want.

It’s Your Thing

The iPods can even come engraved, which I thought was tremendously cool. The Apple store online was offering engraving for free along with free shipping. How could I resist? I was in love!

Simply Irresistible

So, I hemmed, hawed, waffled on price, hemmed some more, decided I had to have one, and bought one. I bought an orange iPod sock on eBay (I was too cheap to buy the whole pack of socks from Apple). I even talked my dad into an iPod Shuffle before I’d even bought my own iPod! I eagerly awaited the arrival of my blessed purchase! I envisioned the ability to listen at work all day without having to plug it into the charger, the ability to have our entire family music library with us wherever we drove, and the ability to [angels singing] buy a song legally here or there from the iTunes Music Store. All of this and it would run on the PC as well as the Mac!

Tainted Love

So, all the Mac-heads I’ve ever talked to have always waxed poetic about how easy it is to set up anything Mac-related. It all just works! You just turn it on! You just don’t have to worry about a thing! Well, I wasn’t expecting anything quite that wondrous — as I said, this was using the iPod on its non-native platform, so I was prepared for a little more work during the install or even a few hiccups.

Try headaches. First off, the iPod has to be formatted for either the Mac or the PC. It ships (of course) formatted for the Mac, so if you install on a PC, you have to re-format it. There’s no indication in the documentation or on the install screen itself of how long this process should take, so I didn’t really think anything of it when it took a few minutes. I got a bit curious when that stretched into 30 minutes. I was really concerned when it stretched into two hours. The Apple support site had no information on how long the PC install process or reformatting process should take (at least none that I could find with my search terms) and so Engineerboy ended up finding use-at-your-own-risk advice from someone on a newsgroup about how to shut down the hung re-format process and continue with the re-install and then go back and reformat the device. Seriously irritating — I wasted hours waiting on that stupid install.

Finally the install completed and I went about the process of loading iTunes and synching my iPod for the first time. It still didn’t go smoothly after that — at first it wouldn’t let me undock the iPod if iTunes had any songs that were on a network drive (a reboot solved that problem, as it isn’t a system issue with the iPod, so that must’ve been first install hiccups). I had to shut down my PC entirely before the iPod would even let itself be detached from the PC. The next day my iPod quit responding to any click input at all and had to be reset (that’s where you have to plug it into the wall charger and hold down two buttons at once for six seconds and all your customized settings are then lost).

After working out the network drive issue and loading up the iPod with the entire library of our music collection (and adding quite a few new ones from the iTunes Store), I proceeded to use the heck out of the iPod… in the car every morning on the way to and from work (via the auxiliary jack) and at my desk for headset motivation while working. I loved it! I had so much music at my desk — all of the songs I could possibly want! And in the car we could have any song that Scott or I could possibly want to hear — it was great! One pesky problem kept cropping up, though — the iPod would repeatedly pause in the middle of a song when we were in the car. Over. And over. And over.

We were actually in the car with the entire shipping box packed up to take back to the Apple store when we realized that the pause behavior was actually standard behavior for the when the headphones (or auxiliary cable) is removed from the device — or when it thinks it has been. Apparently the new, longer aux cable we’d bought wasn’t as snug a fit as the shorter one we already had. So the new cable’s imperceptible (to us) jiggling was triggering the iPod’s auto-pause feature when the output line is removed. The auto-pause is a nice feature in some contexts (I guess) but man I wish I could turn that off in a configuration setting. Speaking of…

Cry Me a River

The list of usability and configurability gripes on the iPod device itself is tremendously long, especially for someone coming from the ultra-customizable iRiver.

• Picture this scenario: You’re listening to your entire library of songs on random play and a song comes up by a group you like but it’s not your favorite song by that group. It reminds you of your favorite song by that band, though. You navigate out to the menu and pick the song you want to hear. You play it. And now your iPod picks the next song to play… by the same artist you just heard. The following song is ALSO by the same artist. It’s shuffling, but no longer across all songs, it’s stuck just on that one artist. That’s because you chose to navigate to the song of your choosing via the Artist name (like, duh, that’s the easiest way for me to find the song I wanted). By choosing the song I wanted that way, I inadvertantly (to me), switched to only shuffling across songs by that artist. If I had wanted to stay in shuffle mode across ALL songs on the iPod, I would need to have navigated to Ad Hoc Song of My Choosing by the list of SONGS — a much more cumbersome way to go to the song I want, in my opinion.
• Also in the above process, when I’m reminded of that other song by the band currently playing and I hit the Menu button, it doesn’t bring up the list of that artist’s songs (i.e., the Menu button isn’t context-sensitive to the song that’s playing). The Menu button simply brings up whatever place in the Menu I last was. I’d rather it take me to the list of Artist’s songs that’s currently playing so I can pick another song by that artist, or the list of songs as it was currently sorted. This was so easy to do on the iRiver (once you learned the interface) and I MISS IT on the iPod. If I’m listening to a Prince song and I hit the Menu button, I want to be taken to the list of Prince songs. Or at least let me configure the thing to have that be my choice. Now that I’ve used the iPod for a while, I sometimes like that the Menu button can take me back where it was, but often that behavior is mostly pointless. Overall, I’d prefer that it be context sensitive.
• Songs are sorted by Album underneath Artist, and you cannot change this in a configuration setting. This means when you navigate through the list of songs via Artist and drill down through the list of Artists on the device to pick a song, you are then presented with a list of “All” and then the various album titles that your MP3 files may or may not be correctly tagged under (or, if you’ve bought the songs off iTunes, whatever random album the long was listed under when you bought it). This is incredibly irritating to me. I don’t generally know or give a sh*t what album a song came off of, and it drives me crazy that the device puts one extra click menu between me and selecting the song I want.
• You can’t configure it to have crossfade between songs. If you’re going to connect your iPod to an external set of speakers and have it act as a DJ for a party, this sure would be groovy, especially given how much control they give you with Playlists. Jeez, you can do crossfade on iTunes, why can’t you do it on the iPod? I realize this is a large feat of engineering, but THIS IS A BIG ONE. I mean, this is the PERFECT device for aerobics instructors and the like. As a matter of fact, last week at my Nia class the instructor had a whole wonderful song list for us to dance to, and it was GREAT except for the 10 seconds of downtime where we were all standing there with no music to dance to, staring at ourselves in the mirror.
• There’s a neat ability to add a song to the “On The Go” playlist just by holding down the select button for a few seconds. Only you’re supposed to do this when the song is selected in the list of songs, rather than when the song is playing. Gee, when do you think you’re more likely to be reminded that the song is great and you’d want it on your On The Go playlist? I mean, adding it from the list of songs is good, but I should be able to add it when I’m listening to it, too.
• Hitting “shuffle songs” when I’m already listening to a song immediately switches me off the song I’m listening to. I hate that… some car CD players do that, too. As far as I’m concerned, “shuffle” should be a ‘mode’, not an ‘action’.
• There’s no quick key for backlighting. You can configure a setting that says at all times a button press initiates backlighting for 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, etc, but you can’t click and hold down some hot key to randomly bring up backlighting on demand should you need it. This sure would be nice… having the backlighting setting on all the time wastes battery during your brightly lit office time, but if you turn it off all the time then you don’t have the backlighting when you need it in the darkened car.

Give Me One Reason

Okay, enough bitching. It does have some pretty cool features:

• Once you go through the work of tagging all your files (and learn how it needs them to be tagged), the Playlists are pretty groovy. They’re primitive — you can’t use any OR’s in your selection logic, so my files have tortured grouping names like “BothMarie” or “BothScottMarie” to make sure that it will appear on the both a playlist that’s acceptable to both Engineerboy and me, and a playlist that’s just for me to listen to at work. But when you’ve got them grouped and star’ed appropriately (including the new stuff that you buy) you then have an auto-updating list that you barely have to manage at all (I check the limit length every couple days to make sure that it only includes files of a high rating, expanding the limit whenever we’ve added more songs to the library).
• It truly is cool to have iTunes to buy their songs whenever you feel like it. It’s an expensive habit, even at $.99 a song, but boy is it awesome! Random songs from your college days, stuff you hear on the radio that you like, classic Funk that you love but never bothered to buy the CD, all of that you can add to your iPod if you feel like it and it’s available on iTunes. Engineerboy even got a wild hair to download the entire new Joe Cocker album and *bam* we had it within 10 minutes for our next car ride. Too cool!
• It is really fast to update. One of the things I hated most about my iRiver was being stuck listening to the same 200 MP3s for weeks on end because I was too lazy to burn a new CD of songs. And even if I got one new MP3 from a CD I bought or something, I had to rip the MP3 and then burn a new mix CD of MP3s. Total pain. Updating the iPod is relatively pain-free and very fast (not as fast for me since I keep my files on a network drive and use Super G wireless, but still pretty snappy).
• It’s very easy to rate a song while you’re listening to it, which is convenient if you haven’t rated all your songs through the iTunes UI. (I wish it would show you the rating on the iPod UI without you having to push another button first, but oh well).

Well Well Well

Overall, I like it. I’m glad I bought it and I listen to it every day at work and every time we’re in the car. It’s not a perfect experience. The install was painful and it still needs to be reset every so often, which is kind of a drag because my prefs get lost (the annoying click is turned back on, my backlighting preference is lost, etc). I do wish it were more configurable. Maybe it’s my UNIX bias, but I find the Apple “our-design-team-will-decide-how-your-interface-should-work” design paradigm frustrating. But overall it’s great and I love having it and it helps me work, having all the music I love right at my fingertips.

And it’s even let Engineerboy (not near the music-head I am) enjoy music more, since all of his music is now with us in the car — he drives the iPod when we’re in the car, playing Funk DJ. We even hear Weird Al not too infrequently. I still like the iPod.

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Review of the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

We purchased the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical Trainer (aka CX995 or NTE1392) recently, directly from the NordicTrack website. The online experience was smooth, and the product was delivered within the promised time frame. Here are our impressions of the unit, so far:

If I Were Already Hercules, I Wouldn’t Need This Thing!

Please note that their delivery company only delivers curb-side, and will not bring the unit inside. They clearly state this in the shipping section, but the full impact does not hit home until the delivery guy leaves you with a 260 lb. cardboard box, secured with straps, sitting on a wooden pallet in your garage. You can take about ¼ of the weight out of the box by schlepping in the smaller bits and pieces, but the main unit, with the attached elliptical ramps, is all in one piece. In our case we were installing the unit in our upstairs bedroom, and getting it upstairs was quite a challenging chore. Be sure you have two strong, competent, affable people to wrangle the thing, because it’s pretty frustrating.

Some Assembly Required, Some More Assembly Required, More and More Assembly Required…!

Assembly is also a bit of a chore, but if you’ve ever bought a complicated piece of furniture from IKEA or some other put-it-together-yourself place, you can probably handle it. Keep in mind that assembly is definitely a two-person activity, as there are several cases where things have to be held in place and aligned, while other things are assembled/inserted/etc. Again, the directions clearly state that two people are needed, so believe it. It took us about 90 minutes to get the thing together.

Oh Baby, That’s Smooth

Once assembled, the first ride was very positive. The machine is extremely solidly built, and the movements are quiet and sure as you ellipse. The machine also comes with a wireless chest pulse sensor, that you wear around your torso, and you can track your heart rate on the console as you work out. There are also heart-rate monitors built into the handgrips if you don’t want to use the wireless one. The handgrip sensors will also measure your body fat percentage (damn them).

The footpads on this model are spaced apart such that the movement feels very natural. We had tried some of the other NordicTrack ellipticals in various sporting goods stores, and the foot pedals were widely spaced, meaning that you were doing a weird sort of bowlegged shuffle instead of a normal-feeling running motion.

The incline of the ramp adjusts electronically, so as you go through your exercise program the unit will hum and you will suddenly be “running” uphill. The motion on this unit is very smooth, and it feels very natural, like running but without the pounding.

This Unit Are Smart

The console provides around 20 different workout programs. They offer such things as hilly terrain, where the slope changes as you run, fat burning, strength training, etc. My favorites are the ones that let you target your heart rate and then the unit automatically varies the workout (and prompts you to speed up/slow down) to keep you near your target heart rate. There’s also a fan in the center of the console, which you can turn on and have it blow on your torso or face, as it is adjustable. One minor complaint is that if you tilt the fan down far enough to blow on your body, it will slowly scooch it’s way back to the point where it’s blowing on your face. In other words, it doesn’t stay where you point it.

The Fatal Flaw

OK, we really do love this machine. It is solidly built, has lots of very useful features, and works like a dream. When you use it you can feel how well engineered it is, and you can tell that the designers went to great lengths to make it smooth and quiet. It being quiet is very important to us, because we use this in our bedroom, and often one is using it while the other is sleeping. The unit is quiet enough for that, except for one thing.

YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE BEEPING OF THE CONSOLE!!! It can’t be muted or even turned down. All of the exercise programs emit periodic beeps to tell you about your progress or alert you to various things that are happening in your program. There are places where it will beep every minute…and not just one beep, but a series of beeps, counting down. BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I contacted NordicTrack and they told me that was the way it was, and there was nothing to be done. Eventually, if we don’t become immune to it, I’ll probably end up disassembling the console and snipping the speaker wires. But I don’t want to ruin the unit, or void the warranty just yet. Still, this issue seems like an incredibly stupid oversight by the folks at NordicTrack. Can you imagine being one of the engineers, who worked and slaved to shave off every decibel of noise that you possibly could, and then having some electronics geek stupidly put an incessantly beeping console on your beautiful machine? As a geek-engineer myself, it breaks my heart to see the near-perfection of this unit ruined by something so pedestrian as yet-another-annoying-beeping-electronic-device.

But We Still Recommend It

All that being said, the unit’s positives outweigh that one glaring negative. If you’re looking for a solid, feature-rich, sub-$1,000 elliptical, take a good look at this one. If you can live with the beeping, it will probably fit the bill.

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Can You Save Your Technology Career? is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

Dude, You’re Getting a Career!

Through dumb-luck, I fell ass-backwards into a computer career when I aced my first college computer class back in the dark ages, where I learned Fortran programming using punched cards. I promptly changed my major from Business to Computer Science, and never looked back. When I hit the job market in the early 80′s it was just in time for the blossoming of the Personal Computer (PC) market, which was the Boston Tea Party of the Technological Revolution, and kicked off one of the most explosive periods of technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution.

I rode the first swells of this wave throughout the 80′s, never fearing for my career prospects, and worried only about being able to work with the really cool emerging technologies instead of the old, stale, well-known ones. But as good as I (and my compatriots) had it in the 80′s, nothing could have prepared us for the 90′s, when the rising tide of technology turned into a tidal wave, sweeping over everything else in the business world, drowning some, lifting others, but moving everybody and everything with tremendous, irresistible force.

Those of us who learned to surf this monster had a lot of fun. And after those first violent upheavals, where only the skilled could stay afloat, the wave smoothed out enough that any motivated dork with a boogie board could ride it, too, as long as they stayed in one spot and didn’t try to do anything fancy. The problem with this is that the wave became crowded with neophytes and one-trick ponies who were only surfing the wave because it was trendy and cool, and who made it impossible for truly dedicated riders to enjoy the curl.

But now the wave is getting smaller. Oh, it’s not disappearing, but it’s moving into deeper waters, and becoming a more integrated part of the ocean of business. This is analogous to the Industrial Revolution in America, where the rise of factories and mills created a class of workers who were always in demand, had freedom of movement because there was work everywhere, and could be proud of what they did because it was nothing short of world-changing. The rise of labor unions helped preserve and protect the way of life of a factory worker, and extended this period of economic prosperity for the American working man.

But as heavy industry evolved, it started to develop economies of scale, and to realize that there were skilled workers all over the world, and most, if not all, of them were cheaper than Americans. Also, as technology advanced they found out that automation could be used to reduce the need for human labor, reducing the number of available jobs even more. So industry and labor waged a pitched battle for years, with industry wanting to automate industrial jobs or move them offshore, and labor fighting tooth and nail to preserve the jobs of their members (and therefore keep money in the union’s coffers). But the path was inevitable, because if US businesses didn’t adapt then their newer, cheaper foreign competitors would come along and steal their customers anyway.

Rosie the Riveter, meet Dakota the Developer

Well, we in the tech job market are experiencing almost this exact same evolution. We all rode a wave of ever-increasing salaries, benefits, bonuses, and foosball tables without giving it a second thought, because, dammit, we deserved it, being the harbingers of the future, and all. But, just as our industrial forbearers, we are now faced with a shrinking job market, reduced relevance, and the offshoring of our livelihoods.

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the movement of tech jobs offshore. Some groups are calling for legislation to outlaw it, and others are exploring the idea of unionizing tech jobs to provide better bargaining positions. The truth of the matter is that, in my opinion, both of those strategies are doomed to failure, as they really have no place in today’s world. First of all, if you use legislation to try to force companies not to move jobs offshore, that doesn’t mean the jobs will still exist, or will exist with the same compensation. It’s the inevitability of the law of supply and demand, and you can’t legislate that, as our now-defunct, former-archenemy Communist brethren proved so clearly.

And adding unions into the mix would just be ridiculous, given the nature of tech jobs. Oh, unions might be able to maintain the status quo for a few more years, but take a look at US heavy industry today to see what awaits you as a worker if you go down that path. Is that really what you want out of your career?

OK, So Now What, Smart Guy??

So we in the tech job market are drowning, and so far all I’ve done is describe the water. The next logical question is, how do we save ourselves? Well, the truth of the matter is that as our ship sinks, we are finding that there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. That is a very sad, but true, fact. And that means that one harsh reality is that some of the people in the tech job market will simply have to face a career change. In some cases these will be excellent, well-qualified people who just happened to get caught in a terrible set of circumstances. But in most cases it will be the folks who got into technology simply because it was a cool, high-profile, well-paying career, but who really couldn’t care less about technology and weren’t true geeks-at-heart to begin with. These are the folks that learned one or two things, then rode them as far as they could, never taking the time, nor having the inclination, to expand their experiences and skill-sets.

Diversify

Also, even some uber-geeks never took the time to develop interpersonal skills, because their technological skills were in such high demand that employers tolerated their porcupininess. Well, this is no longer the case, as employers have their pick of the lot when filling an open position, or even when looking to refill an already-filled position. If you are a committed iconoclast, and refuse to change your ways, then I applaud you for your lack of hypocrisy. However, I also foresee career difficulties ahead for you.

Employers also want employees who can contribute to the bottom line, and this means understanding the business. If you’re a coder, and expect people to open your door, feed you technical specifications, and wait for you to excrete exquisite, optimized code, well, that’s just not enough today. Your competitors offshore can do exactly that, perhaps even more exquisitely, and definitely more cheaply. No, you need to be involved in, and understand, the business. You need to be able to interact with the business owners, ask questions about the specifications, see relationships to other parts of the business, and understand the entire lifecycle of your company’s business in order to adapt and survive in today’s world. You need to be the business analyst, the application architect, and the coder. If you can’t, or won’t, do that, then the sad fact is that somebody cheaper will come along and take your job. Period.

Recognize the Inevitable

Then there are those of you who have known all along that you weren’t technology people. You’ve sort of been faking it, standing in the back row, mouthing the words without singing, watching the others for the right steps and hand movements, and just sort of pantomiming your way along, hoping never to get exposed as a technological dilettante. Well, here comes the microscope. Perhaps it would be better if you proactively made a career change. That way you could at least control the timing, and it’s much easier to find work when you have work. I’m not trying to intentionally sound mean or cruel, it’s just that you are in a mean and cruel position and it will be easier for you to get out of it if you aren’t trying to start a new career while unemployed.

Also inevitable is the normalization of salaries and benefits. It’s a buyer’s market right now, so be prepared. Not only is it possible that you won’t get a raise, but it’s entirely possible that you will be asked to take a pay cut. That isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s better than being replaced outright and then hitting the bricks to try and find a job in today’s market.

Think Critically

Those of us who remain in the technology industry (and I hope to count myself among them (fingers crossed)) would be well-served to put our focus firmly on the bottom-line. Not on what would pad out our resumes. Not on what geeks us out. Not on the product from the vendor who takes us golfing. But we also don’t need to become ostriches with our heads in the sand, sticking only with what we already know. We need to keep current on not only what’s new, but what’s new that works, and understand how the new stuff that works might help our bottom-line.

The Y2K phenomenon was the last great binge for a while. Every company in the world threw money at the problem like they were newly minted rock stars throwing money at strippers. And in the morning they woke up and realized that, even after spending all that money, all that happened was that they got f—ed. So now all companies are pinching pennies, and nobody is throwing around money like the old days. But companies will continue to spend money on things that help them grow and feed the bottom line. The trick, for those of us who want to stay in our technology-related jobs, is to figure out how to do that consistently.

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An Open Letter to Palm, Inc. is brought to you by CleverDonkey.com - ...Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel!

Way back in the dark ages, I bought my first Palm device – the PalmPilot Pro. It immediately became as indispensable to me as my cell phone, as it enabled me to view, edit, change, and delete calendar appointments, contacts, and tasks while I was out and about, and then synchronize them when I got back to my computer. I used the heck out of it until I lost it, and immediately bought a replacement (used, same make/model) for about 25% of what I originally paid. I used the replacement for several years, then lost it, too. Palm had just announced the forthcoming Palm V, so I waited a couple of months for it to be released before purchasing it.

The Palm V was sleek and small, with a stylish metallic case, sharper graphics, and more memory. I once again used the heck out of it for a couple of years, and then (as you may have guessed, given the pattern so far) eventually lost it. I very badly wanted to replace it immediately, but rumors had begun circulating about a new wireless Palm (the i705, not the Sputnik-sized Palm VII), so I vowed to wait until the release of the new model before making my purchasing decision.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. For almost a year. Palm-less, writing things on sticky-notes, having to *remember* commitments and tasks. It was not fun. Finally Palm announced the upcoming i705. It looked pretty good, bigger than the Palm V, but smaller than the Palm VII, which seemed about right. Integrated, internal antennae, as opposed to the Palm VII’s flip-out, plastic, auto-breaking one. So I weighed my options, between the new color Palms and the wireless, non-color i705, and finally decided that the convenience of wireless won out. I placed my advance order and got my i705 the day after it was released.

It was love at first sight, let me tell you. I activated the wireless service, synched up my information, took it out for a test spin, got my first pro-active, wireless email notification and knew I could never go back to non-wireless. *This* is what a PDA was supposed to do. And I used the heck out of it. *And* we got one for my wife.

And then I began to notice some little, nagging problems. I had to recalibrate my screen every couple of days, because the place I would touch on the screen would be translated by the device to a place near where I touched, but not exactly. And over time it would drift further askew, until it was impossible to do anything. But, recalibration was a 30 second chore, so I figured I could live with it. Also, the gray case was just painted plastic, not metal, and the paint started to flake off almost immediately. This made the device look old and cheap. Eventually the case cracked, right along the edge of the media card slot, which Palm had illogically place directly behind the power button, so that the card slot was compressed every time the device was powered on or off.

Eventually the warranty expired, and the screen was so bad that I was having to recalibrate several times a day. I don’t think I recalibrated all my previous Palms, in total, more than 10 times. But the wireless convenience still made it worth it.

But then things started to go sour for Palm, from my perspective. Out of the blue I got a Certified letter from Palm telling me that they were changing the pricing of the wireless service and eliminating the Unlimited plan, to which I had been subscribing since I activated. Instead all usage would be metered, and Palm was nice enough to calculate what my bill would probably be, based on my previous usage. It would have effectively tripled my monthly charges. Also, they were giving me only one month’s notice.

Now, I’m a businessman, and I understand that things change, and that Palm really has the right to do whatever they need to do keep their business afloat. I didn’t appreciate these changes, as they were inconvenient to me, personally, but I understood that it was just business. Also, I received a letter from Palm saying that all Palm i705 users would be getting a nice, steep discount on the upcoming new wireless Palm, the Tungsten W. This sounded like a nice piece of customer maintenance news, and I was mildly hopeful.

Still, I couldn’t justify continuing my Palm wireless service at the new rates, so I called Palm to explore options. The customer representative could not have cared less about my previous purchases of 4 new (and registered!) Palms, my years as a loyal Palm customer, or my desire to remain a paying Palm customer. There was simply nothing that could be done. I said that left me no choice but to cancel my wireless service. His response was interesting, in that it did not include *any* of the normal ploys used by companies to keep their paying customers. What he did was very quickly and helpfully assisted me in performing the cancellation within about a minute. No attempt to talk me out of it. No attempt at an up-sell. No attempt to address my concerns. No transferring me to some other department for the cancellation, hoping I would hang up. Nothing but a quick, clean cancellation of a recurring, subscription revenue customer. Actually, *two* paying customers, since we also cancelled my wife’s service. Unheard of.

And then it dawned on me…they *wanted* people to cancel. That’s the reason the entire episode was handled so poorly…they were actually trying to get rid of their i705 customers. A little research showed that the probable cause was that Palm’s contract with their wireless service provider had expired, and the new agreement was pricier and didn’t allow Palm the flexibility to offer an unlimited usage plan. Also, their new wireless Palm (Tungsten W) used a completely different wireless network, so their incentive to add people to the old network was very small, and their incentive to get people off of it was very large.

Okay, so they were dealing with a very sticky issue. They sure seemed to handle it poorly, but the promise of a steep discount on the Tungsten W soothed my crotchety-ness. However, when the supposed “discount” arrived, it was nothing more than reduction of up-front cost if you chose a more expensive wireless plan. Either way Palm would get your money, it just might take 12 months or so. Also, this great “discount” was being offered to anyone, not just i705 owners. So much for doing right by their i705 customers.

If I might speculate a bit, I think a better explanation may be that Palm rushed the i705 to market in order to try to head off the tidal wave of BlackBerry and other related devices. This explanation perfectly fits the facts, in that the unit was cheaply made, it plugged into the Palm.net network, the prices fell quickly and dramatically after release, and Palm very quickly abandoned the platform with virtually no hesitation about alienating the i705′s user base. It feels, to me, that Palm designed this product as a stopgap, and their only real purpose was to delay people from purchasing competitor’s products until they could get their *real* product (Tungsten W) out the door. Time will tell if this was an intelligent strategy for Palm.

And so now I use my crappy, cheap looking, plastic, cracked, jittery-screened i705 without wireless service. Palm gets nothing from me, and they won’t get anything from me in the future, as I’ve bought my last Palm product. Once this one fails or gets lost, I’m getting something else. Palm had every opportunity to do right by their i705 owners, to admit the product was poorly conceived, to admit they got screwed on their wireless contract renegotiation, to offer a *real* discount to get us to their new, preferred platform. To prove they valued us as customers.

They didn’t. That is their choice, and I’m sure it was hard for them, but oh well. After a decade as a happy Palm owner, they lost me. Me, who loved their products, sang the praises of their devices, convinced dozens of customers (and thus thousands of end users) to purchase Palm products, and gave their products as gifts. All that goodwill and all those real dollars, thrown away. How’s that business plan working out for you, Palm?

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