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Charles on… anything that comes along

Wednesday 4 August 2004

Filed under: — Charles @ 11:57 pm

Spamming begins at home

Silicon.com has (I surmise) noticed the article I wrote last Saturday about the economics of the underground web. It’s been obvious for ages that crims are simply using compromised PCs as units of currency; the hard thing has been getting the numbers on them.

In its leader ‘The home user attack threat’, silicon.com says that “never has a consumer issue posed a more serious threat to businesses“.

Yes, but you know what? It was businesses that sold the junk in the first place - the broadband ISPs not offering firewalls, or insisting people use products with known big security holes. Except they called it “expanding the channel” and “growing the market”. People were their last concern.

To see how these sort of marketing people think, try reading this article by some total droid, banging on about picture messaging as though people would like getting picture messaging spam.

You have to subscribe to Media Guardian if you want to read it, so here’s a taster: Will picture messaging take off? The answer is yes, but it is important that the expectations of brand managers are managed sensitively. In the past, mobile phone network operators have been found guilty of over-claiming the success of enhanced services.

Notice how there isn’t any mention of people, who own and use the phones. In the article, the only time people are mentioned - as “consumers” - is to note how peed off we all (”they”) were with previous attempts to market rubbish to us via phones.

Filed under: — Charles @ 12:32 pm

Sony completely loses the plot with “Network Walkman”

Got an excited little email the other day from a PR wonk for Sony:
Some of the UK’s most celebrated artists are all impatiently tapping their toes while they wait to receive their new Sony Hi-MD WALKMAN.
Air, Basement Jaxx, Razorlight, The Coral, The Ravonettes, MC Solaar and Armin Van Buuren are just a handful of Europe’s finest musical talent who are on the waiting list for the brand new Sony Hi-MD WALKMAN.
These artists have all joined the Hi-MD queue – not wanting to miss out on the latest sexy Sony technology. With their new Sony Hi-MD WALKMAN they will be able to record their shows live and, for the first time, they will be able to record up to 45 hours of music onto one disc. (See what sort of junk I have to read? And you think *I* write rubbish. This sort of stuff is mind-rotting.)

So, I asked, are they paying for it? And would they just happen to be Sony-signed artists? Oh, no, they’re getting them for free. And, golly gosh, they all have some sort of contract with Sony. Isn’t that remarkable?

However as Michael Gartenberg points out, Sony has gone completely boffo on this one and priced its “Network Walkman HD-1″ at $100 above the 20Gb iPod. Mad, or what? Even free downloads off nice sites on the Net won’t play on it, because they’re MP3, and it insists on ATRAC-3. Truly, Sony’s content tail is wagging the consumer electronics dog, and it’s an ugly sight.

I remember the first Walkman: it was brilliant. Being able to carry around your music and listen to it, well, it was a revolution. This is just stupid.

Perhaps the Coral et al will be able to sell theirs as collectors’ items on eBay if they don’t take them out of the box. Like Betamax stuff - they could sell it to the Science Museum.

Filed under: — Charles @ 11:02 am

Those damn premium diallers, and Apple vs Real

This week’s Network is up: Picking your PC’s pocket follows on from the piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about premium-rate diallers, with some more info gleaned on these vicious bits of software; and They just can’t stop the music, which ponders Apple vs Real, leaning heavily on Cory Doctorow’s DRM talk to Microsoft. (I’ve offered the Google search to the latter because there are so many links, it seems unfair to prefer one over the others.)

Bonus point if you can think of a better headline for the premium diallers piece. I thought it was 85 per cent there.

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