There’s something in the air. In fact, look closely and you can see it. Up there, white and fluffy, and apparently full of exciting new technology. You see, all the best new technologies are moving to the cloud, and if you haven’t moved your data to the cloud yet… well, heaven forfend.
I’ve just deleted filed two press releases in the space of two minutes that sell themselves on the back of cloud computing. The first was from respected backup specialists EMC: “EMC has today announced its first major step into cloud computing as EMC Mozy and Lenovo will now offer unlimited online backup for SMBs” to quote the first line - head to Lenovo’s Protect My Data site for details.
PC Pro inboxes see their fair share of press releases that are full of rubbish about the ‘user experience’ and providing customers ’solutions’ to problems that really don’t exist.
It seems to have reached a new zenith this week: in a presentation from a major IT company - regarding a relatively sedate new offering - I saw some of the worst examples of marketing-speak that have ever darkened my inbox.
I had the pleasure of popping into PC World on Saturday and, once there, I was handed a leaflet detailing some of the store’s current special offers. I didn’t think anything of it - I even shoved it in my pocket as I went to buy some BD-R discs - but I was in for a surprise when I had a look at the brochure after a couple of minutes.
That’s because it wasn’t actually a leaflet at all. The hapless employee had handed me an internal memo that described the ‘Weekend Top Deals’, how they’d been promoted in a variety of national media, how they’re being advertised in-store and, most intriguingly, the reasons why the chain of shops - one of the UK’s biggest, actually - is putting its marketing money behind these particular products.
Take the Sharp 46X20E 46″ digital LCD TV, for instance. Wander into the store and you may be led to believe that it’s a superb product and that it’ll provide many hours of viewing pleasure for your family.
A closer look, though, reveals that there must be a surplus in a very large warehouse somewhere. “This stock must go!” demands the brochure, following on to specify that the salespeople must “sell through all boxed stock, and your display model.” I just hope that they tell the unlucky bloke who’s bought an ex-display TV that it’s been prodded and poked by dozens of prospective buyers and offer him a suitable discount.
Even more revealing is the tale of the HP TouchSmart IQ500 - a product that’s currently sitting in the Labs and is making quite an impression at PC Pro thanks to an intuitive touchscreen interface and some stylish design. Is that why it’s on sale for such a good price?
Not entirely, according to the leaflet. It’s available for a price that, apparently, “makes great margin!”, ensuring a healthy profit on every unit sold. I’m sure that every store emphasises its most profitable products, but it’s not often that we’re given evidence of such blatant profiteering, even if it is by accident.
The worst thing, though? It’s the fact that this particular national chain spells ‘back to school’ as ‘bak2skl’. Oh dear.
Sun, which has spent the past decade constantly moaning about the worst excesses of Microsoft’s behaviour, is clearly not averse to employing underhand tactics of its own.
Having spent the past couple of days wilfully ignoring the Java update nagging away in my System Tray, I finally relented and installed the latest version, only to be confronted with the following screen:
Admittedly, Sun was only trying to force the OpenOffice installer on me, rather than automatically downloading the hundreds of megabytes that comprise the full suite. But after the furore caused when Apple automatically ticked the Safari installation with iTunes updatesearlier this year, it’s amazing that companies are still resorting to such cheap tricks.
If you haven’t tried it yet, Cuil is supposed to be the next hot search engine. So I tried it while fixing a problem with a Domino server, expecting a much quicker search experience than was the case with dear old Google. Here, “Quicker” means less junk results and more useful technical snippets - something I find one can get, generally, by using more than three search terms.
So imagine my surprise at following cuil’s first match result to my search : A page solely concerned with showing you that the guy writing it can’t diagnose the source of his problems, no matter which bit of software he’s looking at. It has some random and unsubstantiated comments about mail rules: it contains no examples, no code, no fixes - just a raft of inaccurate statements about fossil versions of the product that nobody uses any more.
Why, one wonders, does Cuil rank this page higher than the tens of thousands of pages retreivable from IBM’s documentation and support forums? On one machine I tried this search with, all I got back from Cuil was 2 results - the Computer Gripes one, and another one from openntf (which is at least apposite, if not well chosen). Only by turning off the safe-surf filter, did I get any of the other common resources for Notes agents, rules & security information.
Credibility in search technology is a perennial problem, as the googlewatch people will tell you: but this strikes me as a repeatable example of downright odd results.
Looks like the Summer Season has well and truly landed at Microsoft: one client has been battling to download some licences from eopen for two days. This is not the first time the lights have been out at the software licencing pickup point - just as well it’s not a drive-thru (ugh).
But what takes the biscuit is their reply to his email asking when he can have his licences: oh sorry… would you like some CDs with the keys stuck on the back? Should be with you in…
(any guesses?)
…four weeks!
Adopting strictly limited software licencing systems tied tightly to the physical machine and the software install process looks good, for exactly as long as you can be bothered to stay responsive when people ask for new licences. A major cause of unease amongst my clients is the idea that one day, their right to get into their own files will be removed: having it taken away because you haven’t paid is pretty bad (if you thought you’d stopped paying). Having it taken away because someone is asleep at the wheel, or penny-pinching, or deliberately turning their back on the stream of customer-service requests… that’s far more worrying.
I renewed my TV licence online last night, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the option to receive my new licence via email. That must surely qualify for a discount, I thought to myself, having saved the TV Licensing people the postage and printing costs, only to have my dreams of a 50p discount crushed when arriving at the payment screen.
And just to prove TV Licensing really haven’t got a handle on this interweb thingy, I got the following message after I’d stumped up my £139.50:
“Once your transaction has been processed and accepted a new TV Licence will be emailed to you within 3 working days”
I’ve ordered TVs online that have arrived faster than that.
Like several other members of the PC Pro team, when the original 7in Eee PC arrived on the scene I was a huge fan. I wanted one, I debated ordering one, but I saw the huge waiting times others were experiencing and decided instead to hold fire. And I’m glad I did.
Since then the number of “netbooks” has multiplied, the original has got bigger and better, and there are still more on the horizon. Rumours of Lenovo (now confirmed - Ed) and Sony joining the fray may turn out to be unfounded, but it’s clear even the most sceptical of manufacturers has been forced to admit the little things have taken off in a way no one predicted.
But with each new model, each new name, the prices have been slowly creeping in the wrong direction, to the extent that what was once a pocket-money investment is now a slightly more laptop-sized dent in your wallet. (more…)
Like Napster and every other file sharing service since, BitTorrent has altered (some would say scarred) the digital landscape immensely. I’m not going to go into the legalities here - we all know people who use it, a noble few for genuine legal file sharing, vastly more for getting the latest Coldplay album without having to shell out for it (I’ve heard it, I can sympathise).
It’s part cause and part by-product of the fact that the Internet has hugely magnified the hype and speculation around new albums, movies and games, to the extent where we often know far more than we need to about something before we experience it.
Simon over at fanboy site Den Of Geek makes the point well here, with even seemingly innocent Facebook walls proving a minefield before a much anticipated film release. I can understand this to a certain extent - I read previews and speculate about films more than is really healthy. But I stop there.
The people I simply won’t ever understand are those seemingly intent on deliberately ruining their own enjoyment of the thing they’re so desperate to get hold of. (more…)
A new search engine launched this week, prompting a surprisingly huge response online. To be honest, I was just as guilty of getting excited as anyone else.
Whether it was the David-versus-Goliath appeal of a tiny startup going up against a company that can boast to be both a household name and a verb, or whether it was the pure controversy - several Cuil engineers have come directly from Google, after all - I don’t know. But one thing looks certain; we want the search monopoly to be toppled.
