Surefire is surely fired.

Just a quick post – we all know that it is much easier to open and promote a business today than it was just a few years ago.  Conversely, it’s also much more difficult to hold on to an existing business due to that ease of overnight competition. So, it is always with a raised eyebrow that I find an established, well regarded business that has sub-par customer service.

Recently, I purchased a Surefire ZX2 ‘Combatlight’ (flashlight) that came with a tailcap mounted pressure switch (to remotely activate the light when mounted on a rifle).  When the switch was depressed continuously for more than a few seconds, the switch became increasingly hot – to the point that you couldn’t hold it any longer.  I tried various solutions (replaced the batteries, cheked the mounting, looked for frayed wires, etc) to no avail. Finally, I sent an email to SureFire asking for suggestions (along with two photos so they could troubleshoot a little more easily).  After a few days (longer than one would expect from ‘exceptional’ customer service, but within the realm of standard business) I received an email response that said “You are not using a SureFire factory pressure switch. We can only surmise that it is a problem with your after-market switch….Sincerely, So-and-So”……Really? That’s it? Okay, I’ll accept their (unproven, untested and wholely subjective) argument that it’s the fault of the non-factory pressure switch. However, maybe some suggestions on how to fix the problem? Maybe even a sales pitch for a different model or solution? Perhaps (and this would really be going out on a limb and doing something that sets the bar for their industry) saying “I tell you what – we don’t support non-SureFire equipment, however, we will sell you our XYZ solution for 15% off the list price, if you send us the defective after-market switch….we want you to have the right equipment and be completely satisfied”.

Do you think they’d have a customer for life if they did that? You bet your bottom dollar they would. At any rate, they did not do that, which caused me to email them back and ask “What would the correct SureFire part number be to replace the non-factory tailcap pressure switch?”. Again, a standard one-day delay, then an email with the part number. Nothing else, just the part number. “Okay”, I thought, “at least now I can order the part and see if that solves my problem. Only one little difficulty: The part number was no where to be found on their web site. So, the c/s rep provided me with a part number that didn’t exist.  Great. After a phone call to the company, I discovered that the part was ‘backordered’ and that there was no anticipated date for it to arrive. Hmmmm.  So, the part number doesn’t show on your web site, doesn’t show when (if ever) it will arrive and this is the one and only solution to my problem. Anyone else want to venture a guess what I did next?? Started looking for another vendor.

In a nutshell, anything less than ‘above and beyond’ when it comes to customer service is unacceptable. No matter who you are as a company, no matter how firm your stranglehold on your market – someone will come along and take you to task by doing it better, faster and cheaper.  If you don’t stand out, in some superlative way, then your lunch can and will be eaten by someone else.  Listen up, corporate America…

M$ to Release WM 6.1….World Yawns.

According to blink.nu, Microsoft will be releasing Windows Mobile 6.1 sometime this April. Seriously? A .1 upgrade even deserves mention? Did anyone else upgrade from WM5 to WM6 like I did, and ask themselves “this is it”? I can hardly get excited at all over 6 to 6.1.  Come talk to me at WM9 or WM10…..

Twitter? Bebo? Facebook? Seriously?!?

All that I’ve heard over the past few weeks is non-stop, inane, nattering about Twitter and the ridiculous event that was South By Southwest (SXSW).  For those of you that aren’t aware of SXSW (and that would constitute 99.999% of the world’s population), think of it as a smarmy party for people that didn’t get laid much in high school (or ever, for that matter) but now have paper net-worths in the seven digits. It’s rapidly becoming one of those events that starts attracting wannabe’s in droves, so quickly looses it’s original luster.  Think Cannes, Sundance, The White Party and Cabo.

Back to what I was saying – Update for all of you that think Twitter and it’s ilk are going to be of any social or technological value beyond thirty six months: You are nuts.  The core group of Twit’s are a small group best described as hard-core nerds. There is no value in twitter as a business tool (beyond Instant Messaging or Text Messaging now provides). The only real use of Twitter, as we saw at SXSW, is a truly childish kind of mob mentality.

For those that didn’t hear the news, check out the Wired blog (http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/sxsw-mark-zucke.html) for a good synopsis.  If you don’t have the guts to stand up, state your name and make your case – then shut up and sit down. The ‘lynching’ that was attempted at SXSW of the reporter interviewing Mark Zuckerberg (Sarah Lacy) was inexcusable. It was immature. It was the perfect example of a bad use for a good technology.  Can you imagine giving a speech nowadays – with live streaming, the audience actively online (both the Internet and services like Twitter)? It would be impossible to give said speech, without constant interruptions and a dialog going off in a myriad of tangents.  This is NOT a good use of such a potentially powerful service. It’s enabling people with short attention spans and A.D.D. to rule the roost that the rest of us cohabitate. Kind of like giving the keys to the mental asylum to the patients.

There is a reason your mother has never heard the term “social networking”, and that’s because it is irrelevant at this point.  In fact, given it’s current trajectory, there is a significant chance that the next big, new ‘thing’ will transplant it before it ever has a chance to establish itself with any real value. In the rapidly changing and evolving web ethos, there is a very small window for applications to entrench themselves into the collective conscious. MySpace already missed theirs. Facebooks window is rapidly closing. Twitter is proving itself to be an interesting idea with a rapidly declining interest group. So, why are companies paying millions upon millions of dollars for these online enterprises? They must know something we don’t, right?  Wrong.  It’s the same phenomenon as paying tens of millions of dollars for a thirty second Superbowl ad.  Eyeballs.  Companies know that there are X number of eyeballs or uniques at a specific web site on a regular basis.  They also know that if they can market Y number of products or services for the anticipated (short) life span of that site, they can generate Z revenue.  Pretty simple, really.  So, while the tech community pats itself on the back for ‘creating’ such valuable commodities, in reality they are nothing more than glorified billboards on the tech superhighway. Only 800 more miles till Pedro’s South of the Border….

Amazon MP3….Is This iTunes Strongest Competition? Really??

Thirty second impression of Amazons new MP3 service – Average. Pros: It’s (allegedly) all DRM free. Halleluljah for that – even though everyone is hopefully already moving rapidly in that direction, it is nice to see a site that is totally DRM free AND has a large collection of music. Cons: The interface is okay…but it just ain’t no iTunes. Or even close to iTunes. Let’s face it, a large majority of iTunes success is because of its interface and its rich content. Example: Look at an album on iTunes, you can see all of the tracks and which ones are most popular. Brillant for someone like me that may be introduced to a new artist and want to hear what other people feel is the strongest tracks before I listen to the entire album. Maybe Amazon will eventually offer a more thorough experience, but for now – it’s fair to middlin, as they say.

Wanna really win me over, besides fixing the interface? Make the quality of the music available in a range from, say, average mp3 all the way up to audiophile lossless versions. Let me decide if I want to take up the extra space on my iPod for certain tracks.

Check out their site for yourself at www.amazon.com. They’re referring to it as a public beta, so consider it what you will.

R.

When HD Isn’t

By now, many of you have read the George Ou article outlining the different variations of High Definition content delivery and how many of them are calling themselves High Definition (HD) when they aren’t even close to that. If you haven’t read the article, I encourage you to do so, I’ve posted a link at the bottom of the page to his blog.

In a nutshell, the “HD” options on Vudu, AppleTV, Xbox 360 and many cable and satellite providers are nowhere near the same picture quality as “true” HD content available on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

This posits two questions: First, why are they permitted to call their content HD when it’s not truly HD? This dilutes the brand-name if you will, and it makes people lump poor quality in the same category with outstanding quality. If you listen to the “HT Guys” podcast, and I suggest you do if you are interested in home audio and video, then you may have heard them call for a different moniker such as “near-HD” or “DVD-plus” as opposed to HD. This is an excellent idea and should be called for by everyone who knows the difference. Personally, I don’t have a problem paying a premium for true HD content…but I do if I am paying for it but getting something less.

Second, with all of the recent talk about ISP’s throttling band width, how will the proliferation of these set-top delivery boxes further exacerbate an already unhealthy situation? Even with unacceptable levels of compression, the amount of data that must be pushed thru the pipeline for a single movie is large when compared with web surfing. If you wanted to deliver a real HD experience, under current bandwidth limitations, it would take all but a select few of us literally a day to download a single movie. Yikes.

The solution to all of this has yet to present itself. Currently, the work around is what we are experiencing – highly compressed poor quality delivery. What we absolutely do NOT want to do is become complacent and accept this pale imitation as true HD, much like we do now for .mp3’s. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I listen to iTunes purchased music piped through my home stereo or even car stereo, it sounds average, at best. Some might even say “flat”, too much midrange and that’s about it. I can certainly hear it when I play a lossless format followed by an .mp3, and I’m no audiophile. We’ve traded the convenience of having the music be portable for the audio quality. That’s fine for schlepping around in my iPod, but not on my stereo. Same for video codecs – if I’m watching it on my iPhone, I’m willing to accept more compression and less quality because portability is the primary issue. It’s not useful to me if I can’t fit it on my device. A set-top box, however, is usually equipped with a hard drive and a processor, all hooked up to a HD capable video display. Therefore, I should, and do, expect excellent HD quality when that’s what I buy.

So, from now on – tell everyone that you know that this is NOT true HD but what amounts to a first generation attempt at delivering as good a quality experience as possible under current limitations. But not HD.

R

George Ou’s blogpost: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=959

HTGuys: www.htguys.com

Going Back To Windows Mobile After The iPhone….Painful

I mentioned in a previous post that WM6 was now available for the Samsung Blackjack, which so happens to be the Windows Mobile device I was using previous to purchasing the iPhone. I pulled my Blackjack out of mothballs in my desk, powered it up and upgraded the software. Right from the start, I began to have that old feeling of dealing with a windows-based device. For anyone that hasn’t experienced a firmware upgrade on one of these WM-basedsmartphones , you’re in for a treat. Backup the device (no instructions on how), download a zipped series of files. Go into Device Manager, check your .COM ports, make sure this is pointing to that and so forth. Verify again. Power down the device, connect the (proprietary)USB cable. Power up the device and execute the setup file. Screen shows command line code and a progress bar. Three steps. Ten minutes. The device will restart by itself and display a welcome screen. If not, call tech support at this number.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

After going through this technical, arduous process – I finally had WM6. Yippee! Of course, it wiped my device clean, which the backup didn’t seem to really back up much at all. Every one of my previous settings, from screen preferences, ringing preferences, even software – was gone. Okay, not a problem – this is a good upgrade, so it’s worth the little bit of aggravation….right?

Well, I’m not going to do a review of WM6, since it’s been out for (seemingly) forever, but suffice it to say after using my Blackjack for two days – it’s going back into its box and resuming it’s roll as backup phone. I feel bad for my Blackjack. Its not a bad phone at all, it does 3G, it has amicroSD slot, it has a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s a good overall smartphone. It’s just not the iPhone. Imagine Tom Brady’s backup on the Patriots. He may be a good QB. Maybe even a really good QB. He’s just playing behind a great QB, so he’s not going anywhere.

Maybe someday Windows Mobile will get it’s act together, stop trying to behave like a mini-Windows OS and realize that pull down menus and nested options are not the way to go. My guess, however, is that WM is at least two generations behind the iPhone interface. Maybe even more. So, for the time being, I’ll take my iPhone with its slower data connection and all….because, for now at least, it’s head and shoulders above any other options.

R.

Tech, The Police And Your Rights (Getting Trampled As We Speak)

As we move farther, faster than ever before (see my previous post entitled: “Is Tech Really Getting Us Ahead?”) with technology, we are beginning to see how the overburdened, arduous and ponderous legal system is having a hard time keeping up. We’ve spent literally hundreds of years establishing basic rights like freedom of speech, right to privacy and right to unreasonable search and seizure. Anyone that lived through the O.J. trial remembers the whole brooha about the police entering O.J.’s property because they found blood outside and had an “exigent circumstance” in their minds. That wasn’t a legal concept invented that day. It was a concept developed and honed over many, many years of case law. Now, it seems that the police and the prosecutors are applying their own interpretations to our laws as they think they pertain to technology.

The latest affront to our legal system was recently mentioned on Gizmodo (link below). The idea is that (a) if the police stop you for an “arrestable” offense, and (b) that offense happens to be a traffic stop for a violation that MAY be arrestable, then (c) the police have a right to search you, your vehicle and any personal data that may be contained in your cell phone,PDA, digital camera, etc.

Huh? Search my PDA? For what, a record of my driving history? A list of my plans to drive poorly in the city limits? Or are they simply attempting to use the pretense of a traffic stop to go on a fishing expedition for something either I or someone else, did? That sounds a little closer to the mark, if you ask me.

We seem to be taking one step forward and one step back. Recently, a court upheld a defendants assertion that he needn’t divulge his password to encrypted files (under the protection of self-incrimination, I would imagine). That’s a good thing. Then,
along comes this. My hope is that any Judge worth his weight in salt would see right through this and not be led astray simply because the medium upon which information is kept happens to be electronic.

Oh, and for all of you that made the simplistic argument “well, if you have nothing to hide, why would you be afraid?” – you need to be aware that if you provided unfettered access to your life, there is a very real possibility that you did something that was a no-no and that you could face legal consequences for. Even unfounded charges if brought, can ruin your life. They don’t need a conviction in a court room to convict you in the court of public opinion…you don’t want to go down that road if you can avoid it.

Gizmodo link: http://gizmodo.com/347915/cops-can-search-youand-your-phones-memory

R.

Schools’ MySpace Page Links To Porn! Or, “How Little People Understand the Internet”

Well, it was bound to happen – a schools Myspace page was found linking to a porn site for adults. So how did this happen??

Everything was done correctly. Everything was locked down the way it should be. No one went in an modified the site or posted a fake link or anything of the sort. What happened was the school allowed people to be “friends”. The school checked the initial “friends” site, approved it and went on its merry way. The problem is that in this day and age of everything being within 7 degrees of separation , there is no such thing as a “safe” link that links anywhere else. The school found this out the hard way when it was discovered that one of the “friends” had a friend that had a link to a porn site. So, indirectly at best, you could make the argument that the school therefore had a link to a porn site. Yikes….is that insane or what?

The really terrifying thing about this is that parents were complaining and an investigation was launched as if someone in charge were storing kiddie porn on the schools web site. If there are officers of the court and/or police that do not understand computers and how the web works, it terrifies me that they may hold a school (or principal, or staff or SRO) responsible. I can tell you one thing: I would never accept the responsibility in such a circumstance to be responsible for a schools web site without some sort of a clear contract limiting my liability.

Does anyone out there think there is a way around this? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts, as would about a million other people – especially educators.

R.

Update The school and the School Resource Officer (SRO) in question were cleared of any wrong doing, after it was correctly determined that there was no knowledge of such a link, to the best of their ability. The investigators  discovered that the only way for such a person to be certain that such a link did not exist would be to check every linked page, every da, along with their links and so on. Simply impossible.  As an added bonus, it was determined that this is still a valuable tool to interact with students, despite the potential occasional problem.  Chalk one up for common sense…..

How To Update To WM6 on Samsung BlackJack SGH-i607

Okay, since neither AT&T nor Samsung seem to be shouting this from the rooftops, here is the link to update your original Blackjack to WM6:

http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/SW/200801/20080125082512656_SGH_I607_BlackJack_WM6_Upgrade.pdf

Personally,if this was done, oh….say 8 months ago, I would’ve been happy. Maybe even would have prevented me from buying an iPhone when I did. Fortunately, neither AT&T nor Samsung found it fit to do so for whatever ridiculous reasons. As a result, I’ve gotten to spend more time with the iPhone and less time worrying about how craptastic WM5 is/was.

So, if I HATE WM soooo much, why am I upgrading my Blackjack that’s been sitting in its original box lo these many months? Simple: I’m a sucker for ‘new’ tech. Even if it is lukewarm software on old hardware. I’m a Windows guy deep down, so I keep holding out hope that somehow they’re going to get this thing right and usable and I’ll fall in love with it. One can wish, right?

So, if you have the original Blackjack – have at it. The process went smoothly for me, taking about fifteen minutes or so. Also, if you installed the last firmware update for the device released several months ago, it installed the Modem drivers already so you shouldn’t have to. Just make sure to follow the instructions on how to verify that the drivers are indeed installed in Device Manager.

If anyone has a wonderful new experience using WM6 on the Blackjack, feel free to let me know. Until then, the SIM card in my iPhone is staying firmly put.

R.

Global Warming’s New Tech Frontier

How about that Global Warming debate? On one side, a bunch of scientists that say one thing, and on the other side a bunch that say something else. Doesn’t matter what side you are on, the point is that they both have credible scientific evidence to back up their positions. One would think that in this day and age of wonderful technology and advancements across the board in every area of scientific research, things would be more ‘cut and dried’. Not a chance. Why?

If you look at any debate in any part of the world during any point of history, you will see varying degrees of acrimonious disagreement. Copernicus, Galileo. Gothic, Romantic. Both sides always have points in their favor, and points where they fall short. The common denominator is greed in one form or another. Let me explain.

Getting back to the current Global Warming debate – I mentioned that both sides have credible evidence on their side. Scientific research (at least on a large scale) does not come cheap. This isn’t one guy with a telescope jotting down some notes anymore, folks. So, who pays for this ‘research’? Well, in most cases, it is NOT philanthropic, altruistic, blind-trusts. It’s companies with deep pockets that have a financial stake in the outcome. It may be as simple as having a large stake in the home heating futures market, or perhaps more direct such as being a company that manufactures pollution cleaning systems for carbon-polluting factories. The bottom line is that you have a very real economic interest in the outcome.

So, how does this relate to you and I? This sort of ‘dis-information’ in the guise of ‘information’ pervades the electronics market to a degree unseen in other industries. How are home theater receivers ‘rated”? THD? Watts per channel? So, a stereo with a lower THD and a greater watts per channel is better? Not necessarily. How about cell phones. Is there any sort of standard to measure call quality or reception ability? Nope. Would kinda makes sense, right? It does not serve the interests of cellular phone manufacturers, otherwise they’d be shouting stats from the rooftops, right? How about television sets. They have contrast ratio settings advertised all the time…however, every company seems to calculate the values differently so it’s now to the point that it is as meaningless a number as Volume setting 11.

It all boils down to this: Despite the fact that technology today is light years ahead of technology twenty years ago (or even ten years ago), we still have to rely on our own sensory inputs and gut instincts to tell us what is right, what is exaggeration and what is plain ol’ flat out lies. I have an HDTV now that I’m itching to replace. Not because there is anything ‘wrong’ with it, or because there is something I want it to do that it can’t do, but because I’m a gadget freak and buy into the marketing hype. I keep hearing that rear-projection LCD’s (which I currently own) have ‘hot-spots’, that they don’t look good off-angle and that they’re yesterday’s technology. The only problem is, I can’t find any of those problems exhibited on my particular TV. Okay, well, it’s ‘only’ 720p and it isn’t 24fps nor 120hz. I’ve seen TV’s that meet higher specs, and truth be told, they do look amazing. In particular, if you get a chance, check out the 60″ Pioneer Kuro Elite running either blu-ray or HD-DVD. The blacks, the detail, the motion are all incredible. What they don’t mention in their literature, though, is that 95% of what most people watch is crappy, compressed video signal provided by their cable or satellite provider. The standard def stuff (that is 99% of all content out there, in toto) looks oftentimes worse than my old analog TV. The HD stuff is barely 720p and is often so compressed it will have pixelization and dropouts. Kinda takes the ’shine’ off spending $6,000 on a TV, doesn’t it? I sure am glad I decided not to buy that 150″ display…if my 42″ TV doesn’t look spectacular, imagine the same content blown up ten-fold at the same resolution. Yikes.

So, the next time you are considering a particular piece of electronics gear, remember this: The stat’s don’t matter. What matters is what (a) you want it to do for you and (b) how it performs those functions. I can’t tell you how many pieces of electronics equipment I’ve returned over the years because I simply wasn’t satisfied. Some of it was my own fault – buying a less capable device because of price then realizing it wasn’t much of a bargain if it didn’t do what I wanted it to do in the first place. I’ve also paid my share of ‘restocking fees’. Sure, it may cost me 15%, but again, I feel that’s okay if I end up with what I really want and it serves me well.

The next time I’m home with friends over and they say how good my HDTV looks then proceed to ask me all kinds of questions on specs, I’m just going to smile and answer with “what do you think”? Because, in the end, perception IS reality….isn’t it?

R.