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Monthly Archives: November 2007

Why Amazon's Kindle will fail.

Posted on November 18, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

First, let me say I very much like Amazon, and about 90% or more of my online shopping goes through them, in virtually every category. Used books, new games, my soon-to-be-replaced 32″ Olevia LCD, baby apparel, rechargable Xbox controllers, and even Kangaroo Ribs – all from Amazon (sorry, the kangaroo meat vendor seems to have disappeared, but its hopefully temporary. tastes like chicken). But no matter how much I may like them doesn’t change my belief that their new electronic book reader device will fail, and fail terribly.

Electronic readers are one of those categories that sound really great in a boardroom. They demo great, and technologists tend to love them (yup, that includes my friends). I’m sure they even test well in focus groups, and will rapidly admit that there is *some* market for them. But that market isn’t the masses, it’s a small niche. And unfortunately, small niches are hard to sustain if you are a gadget maker.

The way I like to look at a new gadget is generally inspired by the language Pip Coburn uses in The Change Function. Is the market today “in crisis” when it comes to books? No. Next, is there a perceived pain in adopting electronic book readers? Absolutely. Now that’s not enough to completely rule out the category, but it certainly is a quick and dirty way to see why it’s not quite a slam dunk either.

In my eyes this is one of those technologies that is still searching for a problem. At $399 + $9.99 per book, it’s certainly not a cost-competitive solution to purchasing books, unless you are comparing solely against new, hardcover prints. Further, it’s not exactly a challenge to find and buy books, whether online or offline, new or used. In fact, it’s pretty hard to argue that an electronic reader will vastly improve the book discovery, purchase, and consumption experience (unlike how much an MP3 player was able to do that exact thing). The only really viable argument against physical books is they are bigger and bulkier, but that really only applies to hardcover books.

I can go on at length about all the different use-cases for why an electronic reader can’t win, but then I think this would become one of those all-too-wordy posts I tend to use. So, I’ll jump into quick bulleted list format for the rest:

  • Unlike newspapers and magazines, the content of books isn’t about timeliness, so digital versions do not offer an advantage. While those industries are in a change-or-die crisis, books aren’t.
  • Book consumption is unlike any other form of media, and cannot be compared to music, videos, news articles, blog posts, etc.
  • The “barriers” to buying a book today involve knowing where to buy a book. Anyone savvy enough to buy Kindle knows where to buy books, and it is highly unlikely they are in massive dissatisfaction with that process. Compare this to the perceived barriers about an electronic reader.
  • Most positive comments on e-readers have tons of “ifs” in them. IF it has good battery life. IF the screen looks good. IF buying books is easy. IF its very “booklike”. This isn’t a sound argument for a product, it’s instead presenting a very narrow window and how to look through it in order to see the light.
  • For the most part, consumers do not buy technology products because of technology. They buy products for the services they provide, and the experiences that go along with them. Kindle would have to literally knock it out of the park to pass this criteria, not to mention everything I’ve mentioned above. The reality is the mass market of consumes tends to resent most new technology, since it tends to be overly hyped and well-marketed, yet do little more than frustrate and fail to deliver on expectations (much like the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460N, an utter failure of a laptop).

Lastly, it’s most prudent to think about the real-world use case for reading books. How many people are really in a position where they need a mobile library of 200 books with them to choose from? Few. In my years of experience designing products for consumers, they routinely react to new device categories extremely poorly. I obviously don’t know how much money Bezos & Co is willing to throw at the Kindle, so I can’t possibly predict how long until it disappears from the catalog, but I’m definitely willing to predict it doesn’t go the distance.

UPDATE: I just read Seth Godin’s thoughts on Kindle. One of the marketing blogs I definitely enjoy, and his post on the topic is pretty good. But he mentions something that again shows me how off the mark even “industry experts” can be. He writes “The challenge that my hero Jeff Bezos has is that if he’s really really lucky, he’ll sell a million of these things in a year.” I think he’s missing about 5+ “really”s here. If he’s lucky he’ll sell 50,000 in a year, really lucky is 100,000, and really really lucky is about 200K. Moving 7 figures worth of hardware per year is VERY VERY hard! VERY hard. And that’s in an established category, let alone a speculative one.

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Posted in Convergence, Gadgets | 26 Comments |

Any (specific) tips on a new flat-panel TV?

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

The time has come to replace my Syntax Olevia 32″ LCD.  My decisions so far:

  • I’ll either get a 42″ plasma or a 45-47″ LCD.  My rationale is that the room I’m currently in could fit below 50″ reasonably, anything else would be awkwardly big.  No reason to go smaller than 42.
  • I’m open to either a plasma or LCD, as neither provide a conclusively better picture than the other for the content I watch (HD from my DVR, some SD hockey games, and Xbox).
  • My budget is under $2000, as I have seen enough screens in person to state, without a doubt in my mind, that anything more than that is a waste of money.  The marginal returns on the more expensive set are exactly that: marginal.
  • I will not buy a Sony, specifically due to the poor experience I had with the Vaio VGN-SZ460N, the worst laptop I’ve ever used.  Incidentally, I apologize for leaving this out of so many recent posts, I don’t know what came over me.
  • I’d prefer to buy a model that’s been on the market for less than 6 months, since I anticipate a less-than-one-year cycle until it’s outdated.
  • On the techie side, I want 2+ HDMI inputs and 1080p max resolution.  I don’t need any other inputs than those since my Pioneer receiver handles video crossover itself.  And while I know there’s virtually no content available at 1080p today, it seems silly to save a few hundred bucks and not be more future-ready (since future-proof isn’t possible, I’d at least like to be close).

I was at Best buy yesterday taking a look at a few sets in person.  The ones I liked were a 46″ Sharp Aquos LCD, a 47″ Samsung LCD, and a 42″ Panasonic Plasma.

It really amazes me the challenge it is to make such a decision.  I’ve researched and it appears there’s two types of advice: outdated (even worse) and/or too much irrelevant details.  I tried getting help from CNET, but they categorized into 44-57 inches, which didn’t help me much (although they otherwise have great advice on the topic).  I’m browsing through Amazon’s search results, but I literally need to weed through 120 sets that technically meet my needs since they don’t offer quite enough criteria.  The other site I like for this is Wize, which I’m still browsing.

So if anyone has any specific advice to help eliminate a few units or consider more, would love to hear them.  I’m also debating between buying online vs Costco, as online is convenient, but Costco has amazing return policies…

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Posted in Video/Music/Media | 20 Comments |

HP, please, just give me the darn drivers!

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

My MacBook came along with an HP Photosmart C4280 printer/scanner/copier/hot water maker. Seems like a nice device, especially for free. Setup was fine, until I had to actually install software that accompanied the printer. Here’s the stuff that got installed:

hpinstall_screenshot.png
I understand that for 90% of the customers, this is desirable. The “HP Scan Pro” helps get you up and running with a scanner. HP Photosmart Edit is a nifty little tool for photo manipulation. Ink monitors help me… well, ok, they help HP sell more ink. But I get it, and again, for the majority of users, this is the absolute correct product decision.

However, it would take NO additional work for the company to include the drivers as a standalone file on the CD, or downloadable from the Web site.  This option is not available.  Granted, life is better than on Windows where I’d be scared to uninstall anything for fear of missing DLLs and whatnot.  I have a hunch the thinking went like this:

We are HP, we make a lot of money selling ink. We should, therefore, include tools to help sell ink. How about an ink monitor?  It’ll tell the user when they need ink.

Sounds good.  Ship it.  But wait, what if the user doesn’t want the application?

Doesn’t matter. Gotta sell the ink.

It’s the same kind of logic that had early-stage Internet portals debating whether or not they should link out.  Of course they should make it easy to get ink, but the more they empower me and give me overall product satisfaction, the longer they’ll have me as a customer.  When designing your product and experience, remember that short term wins are just that: short.

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Posted in That's Janky | 4 Comments |

Must-see-TV: Lessig talks about our pathetic copyright laws.

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

New gadgets are neat.  Social networking is neat.  Congress passing terrible laws into place that arbitrarily restrict consumer rights is not neat.  It’s a big deal, and the more passively we as society treat the topic, the worse the world we will live in.

It’s nineteen minutes long, and worth every second.  You don’t even have to “watch” just make sure you hear.  Actually, make sure you listen.  It’s important.  More important than Facebook’s ad platform.  More important than Leopard.  More important than Android. Much much much more important than social graphs, grafts, and starfishes (gah!).

Then go buy (and read) Free Culture.

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Posted in Video/Music/Media | Leave a comment |

Flickr bug provides cause for thoughts

Posted on November 6, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Was just looking at some of my photos and watched them practically disappear before my eyes. After a mini panic attack, I found out I was not alone. I’m assuming it’s just a bug, and the photos themselves are a-okay.  But it did make me think a bit about my personal reliance on Flickr.  I use it as…

  • a backup for all my photos
  • a way to share with friends and family
  • a host for photos for all of my blogses (4 of em)

Regarding losing the backup – not a big deal, since I have TRIPLE backups of my photos (portable HDD in my laptop bag, Drobo in my office, Maxtor NAS in my home).  There’s no question that multiple backups of digital photos are essential.  If you don’t have a backup solution that has some form of offsite redundancy, find one immediately – it’s much more important than debating opensocial and facebook.

Regarding losing the sharing – not a terribly big deal, since I can easily re-upload elsewhere.  I would be a bit annoyed at having to re-tag things that I’ve organized, but I’d assume the entire process would be less than a day’s work.
Regarding the hosting part – this is actually the biggest pain.  Sure I can reupload, but I’d then have to go back to literally every single blog post I’ve written and redirect the links.  This would be so time-consuming I can say right now – I ain’t doing it.

In the time it’s taken me to discover the problem and write the post, the Flickr guys have fixed the bug.  But in a way I’m glad it’s happened as it gives me a bit of perspective on how much I should rely on any single technology/platform/service.

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Posted in Web/Internet | Leave a comment |

BUG product pix now online

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I try to keep my clients’ work out of this blog (yet another reason for me starting a personal blog), but since this falls into gadgetland, I figured it’s okay to do so. In case that’s not abundantly obvious… Disclaimer: Bug Labs is a paying client.

BUGbaseThis evening we put up a new version of the Bug Labs web site which incorporates real pictures of the BUG hardware platform. I’ve been working with the company since Winter of ’06, but I’m especially excited for the rest of the team, especially Peter, the founder. I vividly remember the first time I saw a production-quality Slingbox, and even back when the Denon NS-100 prototypes came out. All were extremely uplifting, proud moments. I didn’t play a part in designing the BUG, but I still have a great feeling about seeing the vision become a reality.

You can see all the pictures of the BUGbase and first four modules here, and the products page was updated as well. For more editorial opinion on the company, here’s coverage from Engadget, Gizmodo (ooh, video), Popular Science, Crunchgear, MAKE Magazine, and TechCrunch.

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Posted in Gadgets | 1 Comment |

Me, a malware host? I think not.

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I received an email (well, 6 emails to be precise) last night with the subject line “Malware notification regarding livedigitally.com.” My first assumption was that it was my old friend Samuel Eze up to his crazy hijinks, but alas, it was from Google.  The letter continues…

We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be
infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page
to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.
Below are some example URLs on your site which can cause users to be
infected (space inserted to prevent accidental clicking in case your
mail client auto-links URLs):

http://www.livedigitally .com/
http://www.livedigitally .com/category/gaming/
http://www.livedigitally .com/category/convergence/

Here is a link to a sample warning page:
http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http%3A//www.livedigitally.com/

…

It proceeds to tell me how I can apply to get my site restored, via a site called StopBadware.org.   I’ve gone through all the HTML and links in the site, all looks pretty darn safe.  Here’s part of the automated response I got upon submission of the form:

Thank you for contacting StopBadware.org.  We are currently re-reviewing a number of websites via our request for review process, and we have added your site to that testing queue.

I must say, while it’s good there’s a way to apply to get out here, it’s pretty frustrating that I was not given more specific information as to the problem.  Feels very… witchhuntish.  Is that a word?   Considering I still believe Google is singlehandedly responsible for the growing amount of spam and fake Web sites, I hope this is a sign of good things to come.  Somehow, I doubt it, since most of the “bad” sites are contributing directly to Google’s soaring market cap.

I guess it comes down to whether or not they are “maybe just a teensy bit evil” or not…

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Posted in Web/Internet | Leave a comment |

About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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