Charles on… anything that comes along

Over at Jupiter Research’s Microsoft Monitor there’s a great post about the horrendous mess that Microsoft keeps getting itself into over product nomenclature.

And it’s not just Microsoft. Many others mess it up too. Pointing out that Apple manages to get it right (though one could argue that’s because it’s got a smaller range), the post notes:

It’s easier building a branding campaign around Panther, iPod or Power Mac than Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Enhanced Security Technologies 64-bit Edition, Samsung YH-925GS digital audio player or Toshiba Satellite A60-S1691ST laptop.

By far, the PC market is a wicked offender. The aforementioned Satellite laptop is classic example.

Further on, he explains:

My nightmare Longhorn product name would be something like Windows eXPedition Enhanced Media Edition 2006-10 — and in six or seven versions; so something like Windows eXPedition Enhanced Media Center Edition 2006-10 or Windows eXPedition Tablet PC Enhanced Media Edition 2006-10 64-bit. I pick on eXPedition because of some blogsite rumors about that name. If I knew eXPedition to be the real name, I wouldn’t use it, just to clear that I’m not validating or spreading rumors.

The product name problem grows bigger as Microsoft’s solutions grow more complex. Right now, Microsoft and its partners have put together a compelling set of digital media products. Already, complexity makes messaging and marketing difficult, because of the large number of usage scenarios. Dumping in all those unwieldy product names makes matters worse.

I dunno - Windows eXPedition Tablet PC Enhanced Media Edition 2006-10 64-bit? Rolls off the tongue, surely.

Notable too that all those Apple product names were introduced after Steve Jobs came back, looked at the product line and said to the managers, “What the hell is the difference between all these things? Can you understand it? I can’t”, and took a very large, sharp knife to the product range, chopping it down to three: iMac, Power Mac and PowerBook. (The iBook came later.) More proof, were it needed, of Jobs’s supremely tuned marketing antennae.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Once more, with feeling: Boot Camp won't move Mac users to Windows (17 April 2006; score: 45.72%)
• Spam: the beast is in the numbers (6 March 2006; score: 41.18%)
• Fiorina's curse lives on after HP kills Apple deal to resell iPod (1 August 2005; score: 37.56%)

The blizzard of unwanted emails to newspapers continues unabated, despite the fact that nobody reads the vast majority. Faxes come in unbidden too, but those mostly just spool straight into the bin. Or else sit in memory, uncollected. (Faxes are in effect outbound-only in most newspaper offices. In fact, most offices, I would have thought.)

Now The Independent has sent out a message to correspondents giving a new email for actually contacting the news editors if you have something to file, or say.

With the missive comes the comment:

But do NOT give this address to PRs for anything - the old [DELETED]@independent.co.uk” gets about 600 dustbin emails a day.

OK? Do you believe me now? Nobody is looking at these things. Find a different way to get your stories across.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Business Week wakes up to global warming (6 August 2004; score: 35.03%)
• In the Guardian: stop this online sharing now! (25 January 2008; score: 34.14%)
• Apres nous, le deluge: Times to go tabloid from Monday (29 October 2004; score: 30.99%)

Mucho congrats to Firebox, which is the first company I’ve come across which has a RSS feed* for its press releases. Presently it’s only for the newest items, and is brief text, but thank God for having them at all. This means I’m actually likely to read stuff off Firebox, whereas zillions of press releases sit mouldering in my Gmail account.

(And to all the PR companies sending press releases to my @charlesarthur.com email address, would you please stop it??! As is made clear on the ‘Contact Me’ pages above, you can send them to my Gmail account. I have been replying individually telling people not to - well, those where email can go in as well as out; ITPR.co.uk apparently is an output-only organisation, which tells you all you need to know. But soon I’m just going to start deleting them wholesale - my spam filter spots them and blocks them all ruthlessly.)

Oh yes, the feed URL. It’s http://www.firebox.com/rss.xml. Credit to Charlie Morgan, the feisty PR lady, for making it happen. This is where it begins, everyone. Technology writers use it one year, five years later every hack does. Example: email. Example: the web. Example: Google.

BusinessWire had been going to win this race, as I was assured it would have RSS feeds for particular press releases earlier this week, but I couldn’t find them.

Anyone else doing RSS feeds for press releases in the UK? Love to know. And yes, I’m sure I’ll have lots of aggrieved email and comments saying “But we were first..”

(Style note: a RSS feed or an RSS feed?)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• OK, let's be truthful: I hate Romeike, and the future of PR is not email (20 February 2005; score: 58.2%)
• What PR people need: RSS feeds (outgoing, mostly) (17 January 2005; score: 55.8%)
• You're seeing this page because your browser is pond life (3 August 2004; score: 53.68%)