Category: product complaints

Trent Reznor is cool, Prince a sell-out

On By Rick McIn music, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

At a concert in Australia the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails urged fans to steal his music on-line because his record label refused to drop the price of their CDs Down Under. (video – YouTube)

I’ve mentioned this before:

The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).

RickMcCharles.com

In contrast, Prince is getting in bed with the TelCos, and suing YouTube.

prince.jpg

The controversial one is about as hip as the Village People these days.

Both are trying to fix the hopelessly broken music industry business model. But Prince — formerly a leader in the industry — could not be more wrong this time.

Buy Nine Inch Nails. Boycott Prince.

Year Zero

Molly Wood is a dit – Buzz Out Loud

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, product complaintsLeave a comment

My favourite audiocast these days has been Buzz Out Loud replacing TWIT which I had to drop due to a self-declared boycott of regular John C Dvorak.

Buzz Out Loud is a daily podcast about tech related subjects …

… the show stars CNET editors Tom Merritt, “the segue king,” Molly Wood, “queen of the rant,” and up until July 20th, 2007, Veronica Belmont, “the serious-comic relief.”, who left CNET to work at Mahalo …

As early as 30 March 2005 during the “pre debut” phase of the podcast, Molly and Tom discussed subjects that have grown into mainstay themes throughout the life of the podcast: patent infringement lawsuits, the Apple iPod, and DRM.

Buzz Out Loud – Wikipedia

molly_wood.jpgSadly, I may next need to cancel my subscription to Buzz Out Loud because Molly Wood is so bad. Why does anyone take this arrogant, unprepared, over-the-top tech pundit seriously?

Molly Wood should be fired.

Otherwise I need to flee as did Veronica.

why is hotmail so crappy?

On By Rick McIn product complaintsLeave a comment

Microsoft did much to try and improve hotmail, rebranding as Hotmail Live.

And it is somewhat better.

But the SPAM detection is the worst I’ve seen. (Didn’t Bill Gates promise to eliminate SPAM?)

And why are they wasting all this prime pixel space putting a small ad into a huge header?

hotmail.jpg

hotmail – Wikipedia

does sunscreen actually work?

On By Rick McIn health & fitness, product complaintsLeave a comment

… a rash of recent studies has shown that labels on several popular brands are not only misleading and confusing but, in some cases, completely false.

After testing 786 name-brand sunscreens to gauge their stated UVA protection, potential health hazards and stability in sunlight, the Environmental Working Group determined that only 17% of them provide good protection and minimal risks.

… Be sure to check out the full article (linked below) for a complete list of common misperceptions and suggestions on how to ensure you’re adequately protected.

sunscreen-jj-001.jpg

Are Most Sunscreens Really that Helpful? (TreeHugger)

And why are products of such dubious value, so poorly regulated, so expensive?

Calgary taxi service sucks

On By Rick McIn product complaintsLeave a comment

I hate taking cabs and will do a lot to avoid them.

It’s hard to blame the drivers who earn an average of only $20,000 / year in Vancouver. (Calgary and Vancouver are the toughest Canadian cities in which to hail a cab.)

But the other day I had a 7AM Sunday morning departure. Because public transit does not run I was forced to phone the entire list of local companies.

ALL WERE “BUSY”. Instead of a polite message, they ring BUSY.

I very much hate taxi companies.

Finally Checker / Yellow picked up the phone. I will call them first if I am ever forced to take a Calgary cab again.

do you hate in-text advertising?

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaintsLeave a comment

Avoid In-Line Advertising !!

Have you ever wondered what those double underlined links are?

do-not-click.jpg

A plague on the internet, I feel.

They are vaguely related contextual ads.

Under no circumstances should you use an in content advertising scheme such as Kontera or Intellitxt. These advertisements work by betraying the implicit trust between a blogger and the readers. The ads are displayed as double underline blue, easily confused with a normal link.

Stay Away from In-Text Advertising

We should boycott websites that use them. And the products advertised.

I even wrote one blogger to tell her that I was cancelling my subscription because of her in text ads. She immediately removed them.

flickr new SLIDESHOW not intuitive

On By Rick McIn photos, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Fans of flickr like myself like to blame the parent company Yahoo! when things go wrong.

But I question this new innovation from the flickr team:

We’ve launched an improved version of the Slideshow.

Here’s the feature comparison:

Old Version — sucks
New Version – rules!

You wanted bigger photos!
You wanted to see titles descriptions!
You wanted to see your photos on a black background!

Flickr Blog : Announcing Slideshow 2007

If you look at photos on flickr, here’s an important tip: During slideshow mode, if you hover your mouse over the centre of any photo, an “i” should appear. Click that and you will get a text overlay on the pictures during the slideshow.

hover-click-i1.jpg

Invisible-until-you-hover links on photos and videos are becoming quite popular. But it’s definitely not intuitive.

Thanks George.

music – Weird Al Yankovic getting screwed?

On By Rick McIn economics, music, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Lets say you love Weird Al Yankovic and want to make sure he gets as much money as possible from your legal purchase of his music.

How best to do that?

From Weird Al’s website:

Tim Sloane of Ijamsville, MD asks:

Al, which of these purchasing methods should I use in order to make sure the most profit gets to you: Buying one of your albums on CD, or buying one of your albums on iTunes?

Weird Al:

I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED… I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads.

This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure.

So, buy a CD if you want to put your cash in Weird Al’s pocket. Or, better, buy directly from his website.

BUT … What percentage of your CD purchase does Al and his band actually bank?

That’s a convoluted and confusing topic. I believe Al’s cut to be 15% or less of suggested retail on CDs.

My complaint is the oligopoly of music companies that keep (possibly) 85% of the dollar I want to pay Al.

To me it’s almost worth downloading illegally, ripping off Al (who deserves the money) in order to stiff Volcano (Sony BMG), who I hate. (Why I hate Sony BMG.)

Obviously in future the artist needs to sell directly to the consumer, cutting out Sony BMG and that ilk as much as possible. Illegal downloads will hopefully speed that evolution.

But if you, like Weird Al, want to continue shoveling money into Sony BMG — buy Al’s most recent great album — Straight Outta Lynwood — through Amazon and I’ll take a 4% cut, as well. (Out of Al’s percentage, I imagine.)

Straight Outta Lynwood

(via Weird Al and a Messed Up iTunes Deal » Another Blogger and the digital music blog)

iPhone review – Engadget

On By Rick McIn Apple, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Engadget is the #1 site for technical reviews. They posted a massively detailed review of the iPhone so far.

Here’s the summary:

It’s easy to see the device is extraordinarily simple to use for such a full-featured phone and media player.

Apple makes creating the spartan, simplified UI look oh so easy — but we know it’s not, and the devil’s always in the details when it comes to portables. To date no one’s made a phone that does so much with so little, and despite the numerous foibles of the iPhone’s gesture-based touchscreen interface, the learning curve is surprisingly low.

It’s totally clear that with the iPhone, Apple raised the bar not only for the cellphone, but for portable media players and multifunction convergence devices in general.

But getting things done with the iPhone isn’t easy, and anyone looking for a productivity device will probably need to look on. Its browser falls pretty short of the “internet in your pocket” claims Apple’s made, and even though it’s still easily the most advanced mobile browser on the market, its constant crashing doesn’t exactly seal the deal.

The iPhone’s Mail app — from its myriad missing features to its un-integrated POP mail experience to its obsolete method of accessing your Gmail — makes email on the iPhone a huge chore at best.

For us, the most interesting thing about the iPhone is its genesis and position in the market. Apple somehow managed to convince one of the most conservative wireless carriers in the world, AT&T (then Cingular), not only to buy into its device sight-unseen, but to readjust its whole philosophy of how a device and carrier should work together (as evidenced by the radically modernized and personalized activation process).

Only a few days after launch it’s easy to see June 29th as a watershed moment that crystalized the fact that consumers will pay more for a device that does more — and treats them like a human being, not a cellphone engineer. Imagine that.

But is the iPhone worth the two year contract with the oft-maligned AT&T and its steep price of admission?

Hopefully we gave you enough information about the iPhone’s every detail to make an informed decision — despite the iPhone’s many shortcomings, we suspect the answer for countless consumers will be a resounding yes.

iPhone review, part 3: Apps and settings, camera, iTunes, wrap-up – Engadget

My answer … WAIT.

IAC more admired than Google?

On By Rick McIn Google, gymnastics, internet, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I heard an audiocast interview with celebrity CEO Barry Diller.

He was being interviewed because his firm — IAC/InterActiveCorp — had been named America’s #1 Most Admired Company in the Internet Services and Retailing Industry by Fortune Magazine.

admired-2007.jpg
I’m supposed to be following what’s happening on the internet. And I’d never even heard of IAC.

Some of their websites are familiar:

* Bloglines.com
* Excite.com
* Ticketmaster.com
* Match.com

And, of course, their Ask.com search engine:

ask.jpg

It’s “pretty“. But search results are TERRIBLE compared with Google. (Try it yourself on a search term you know well.)

Google search for “gymnastics coaching”

Ask search for “gymnastics coaching”

So far as I can see, Google continues to draw away from the rest of the field when it comes to search. (Thought Microsoft has improved from worst-of-all to 3rd best.)

IAC is getting good press as Google’s up-and-coming rival.

Competition is good. Go IAC!

But Google is my most admired brand when it comes to search.

You will save a lot of time if you use Google to search over any other engine, especially Ask.