Customer Love

My wife had been out of town all of last week, so when she got back on Friday, we took the chance to do something we don't do too often: watch a few movies. We went and picked up two of them from the local store, one of which was National Treasure 2. Put it into the DVD player, fired it up, and got treated to eight and a half minutes advertisements.

The best part?

There was no way to skip or fast forward through them. (Even more fun when a pillow fell off the couch an onto the remote, causing the series to reset back to zero after going about a third of the way through).

I don't understand the reasoning behind it. We chose to pay for the movie. We are then forced to watch a preview for Snow White NOW ON BLU-RAY!!!! Followed then by further re-dredges from their vault, now on a brand new format. However, if we would have viewed the movie through an alternative means, we would have watched the movie, and just the movie, and not have been subjected to a bunch of marketing tripe.

Companies whine and whine about how their distribution rights are being infringed upon, and yet, they are the very one's who can't deliver a product that people want to pay for. Is anyone surprised here?

Chrome: Shiny Enough to Make a Difference?

A recent comic at UserFriendly.org made me smile. It's something that I can totally relate to:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080906

Now that Chrome is little over a week old, I've had some time to use it. It's also been installed at home, and used by the Missus. Her initial thoughts can be summed up by the question that she asked after it had been on our system and set as the default browser for the day: "Did you really get rid of Firefox?" She then followed up with: "I want it back." I later found out that the browser had locked up on her several times, and that's why she wanted it back. Further thoughts from her are as of yet forthcoming.

My usage habits are a bit more complex. At work I use no less than two separate browsers most of the time, and sometimes as often as four due to the many online systems that I access (Firefox, IE, and occasionally Prism and Flock). How does Chrome fit in with all of that?

I've found that I much prefer Chrome's application shortcut feature to be a superior replacement to Prism (application shortcut + m.twitter.com = ROCK). As for just plain browsing (what I've used Flock for), I prefer Chrome as well. So two browsers have just been replaced with Chrome, not too bad!

What about the long term? Speaking personally, I don't think that Chrome will ever totally replace Firefox in my own use. There are just too many extensions that I rely on. For day to day browsing and non specific usage, it does a wonderful job, and is already gaining headway on my own PC here.

All of that aside, the most important aspect of Chrome is the competition that it will give both to Microsoft and Mozilla. Google's in a very good position to market and push a new browser (some may argue that they're in the best position). Competition breeds innovation and therefore a better product, consumers win all around, even those don't switch browsers.

Cutting the Fat

Verizon's email client on their cell phones is pretty much garbage, so I've abandoned using it altogether. Opting to simply forward my personal email, all of it, to my cell phone's SMS email address. Basically letting the text messaging act as an instant email notification. This had a very unexpected side effect, though. It made me very conscious about what exactly I was getting in my email.

Every email message is now sent to my phone, and I realized just how much garbage I was getting. Things that I really don't care about, that I was always a bit too lazy to opt-out of, but still didn't mind deleting on a regular basis, week after week, or month after month. Not really spam, just solicited advertising that I had been given due to my email address being in some companies database.

It certainly gave me the incentive to take the few seconds to opt out of those emails. Got me thinking, also, as to how many other people do the same thing. Legitimate email advertisements, that they don't even read, but never bother to opt out of, just deleting them over and over ad nauseam.

Convenience vs. Customization

When given the option, I'll usually choose something (usually an item or program) that will allow me a greater level of customization, rather than something that is easier to use. While initially there may be some more time setting up the highly customizable piece, in the end it's worth it to me to get the usually relativly unique functionality that I'm looking for. Miranda for IM, and an n800 for my portable device of choice.It's too bad that they're not always mutually exclusive. There are plenty of things that are both inconvienant and lack any sort of official customization options, (VZW I'm looking at *YOU*). In some cases, you can always go the unofficial route, but even so, you'll never have the device that fully fits what you're looking for when things are so locked down.

It's too bad that they're not always mutually exclusive. There are plenty of things that are both inconvienant and lack any sort of official customization options, (VZW I'm looking at *YOU*). In some cases, you can always go the unofficial route, but even so, you'll never have the device that fully fits what you're looking for when things are so locked down.

Twitter: You Either Get it or You Don't

This blog post sums it up very well:

http://www.rexblog.com/2008/02/14/17501/