It seems there was one aspect of selling its own cell phone that Google did not take into account: Dealing with customers after you sell them a product.
Complaints are popping up all over various blogs of how the customer support for people who have purchased Google’s Nexus One phone is totally non-existent. Apparently no phone number is provided and buyers are directed to a forum where they can try to get assistance. Even once they do go to the forum, they are finding that replies from official Google employees are few and far between.
Now customers are threatening to send back what they consider to be defective phones and finding out that they will be charged a $45 restocking fee for sending the phone back.
And it isn’t just the users who have things to complain about. Application developers are apparently unhappy with the fact that no SDK (Software Development Kit) has yet shipped for the new phone, meaning that while some apps may work with the new phone, that can’t be guaranteed as the nexus One is running a new version of the Android operating system.
In short, as the first venture into hardware sales, Google is not doing well.
Up until now the company hasn’t had to do much in the way of customer service as most people found it silly to complain about products they get to use for free. However, this is a different ball game once money begins changing hands.
Even though the Nexus One is being handled though T-Mobile, and the handset is being built by HTC, this is Google’s phone all the way and all customer service is supposed to be done through them, including returns.
With Google planning at least one more hardware release of a netbook by the end of this year supposedly, it may be time for the company to get some lessons in how to deal with customer service issues. Step one? Open up a phone center, and do it immediately. The rest will come to you naturally over time.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sees his company mailing out physical DVDs for at least another 20 years.
Speaking with Peter Kafka of All Things D at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this weekend, Mr. Hastings says that he expects his company to continue to ship physical DVDs through at least 2030.
Personally we’re surprised anyone can see physical media sticking around that much longer, but it should be interesting to see if he’s correct. You can also expect Netflix to appear in another unnamed country some time this year.
iPhone and iPod Touch owners rejoice that a physical keyboard is finally coming out for your favorite device … but try to keep yourself in check until you learn the details.
Ion, a company best known for its USB devices, has announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that it is releasing a physical keyboard for the iPhone and iPod Touch, something users have been longing for since both devices first came to market. Called the iType, the device will allow you to snap your Apple product into the top of the device and type on a nearly full-size physical keyboard while your device is in landscape mode.
While this sounds exciting at first, and you may have images of catching up on your emails dancing in your head, the keyboard will only work while you’re in the iType application. You will then have to copy anything you write there and then paste it into the application you want to use it in. A definite nuisance, and one that makes you wonder if the product will be worth it once it’s released. No price has yet been announced which makes us even more suspicious that it is just not going to be worth the investment for being so limited in scope.
Netflix, Netflix, Netflix … if you buy a new Blu-ray player or television this year, odds are it will include the ability to stream content from Netflix.
Netflix has announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that it has new partnerships with Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Funai (the CE maker behind the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands in the US) according to NewTeeVee. It is Netflix’s objective to get its streaming ability into every device possible as the company is spending over $600 million a year on postage, but streaming a film only costs around $.05.
To give you an idea of just how important this is becoming to the company, it has now agreed to a 28 day delay window on offering DVD new releases from Warner Brothers. This means that for the first 28 days after a film comes out on DVD, it will not be available through Netflix. In trade for this agreement, which the studios wanted due to sagging DVD sales, Warner Brothers has agreed to add more of its older titles to the streaming service. So, basically Netflix has just said it can be bought off by the studios on the DVD side so long as the streaming portion gets something out of it. Very interesting.
Kinda makes you wonder how much longer Netflix will even bother with stocking DVDs at all.
It seems “slate” is the word du Jour amongst the tech set to describe their pending tablet devices.
At the Microsoft keynote address to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, unveiled the HP Slate which runs on Windows 7. While a vague release date was given that implied it would be out for the holiday season, and an even vaguer suggestion of a price between $500 and $700, it was obvious this was announced just to cut off the pending iSlate announcement from Apple.
While the rumors of the Apple tablet, tentatively named the iSlate, are still just rumors, it is looking pretty definite that it will be announced in the last week of this month for delivery in March. While the HP Slate may have gotten the first announcement out, considering the biggest things they demoed was the ability to play the 1980′s game Frogger and using the Amazon Kindle PC reader, we can’t say we’re exactly awe struck by the device. Of course, we’re still trying to figure out the whole point of these tablets, but that’s a thought for another day.
Check out this very brief introduction video of the product.
It seems that one of the big trends at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year is turning your TV into a full on Internet device.
Yesterday we brought you the news that Skype was launching services for TVs that would turn them into communications devices, and today brings us the news that DivX, a leader in video encoding, is launching DivX TV to bring even more content to your television set.
The new software will allow you to browse through various entertainment sources from TV shows and major films, to content from your favorite Internet video sites. Also, it isn’t limited to just TVs, the software will also be appearing in Blu-ray players, cell phones and other devices, allowing you to hop between devices and watch what you want, when you want.
The first companies to be announced as worikng with DivX include:
ADB (Advanced Digital Broadcast)
Bluestreak
Brightcove
Broadcom Corporation
Innovative DTV Solutions
Iomega
LG Electronics
Viewsonic Corporation
And content providers include:
Associated Press
blip.tv
Break
CNET
Roxio CinemaNow
Dailymotion
Diggnation
Pandora
Picasa
Revision 3
Rhapsody
TED
Tekzilla
The Street.com
Twitter
VBS.TV
The problem, as I see it, is the same with the Skype TV system: Your TV has to be near your Internet connection. It’s wonderful that all of this additional content is coming to TVs, but unless you want to run cables all over your house, are you really going to be able to take advantage of it? Luckily I do have Internet near my TV, but how many people really do?
The service still sounds quite exciting, and you can see a demo video below.
Video calls just got a bit more interesting with the announcement that you will now be able to place them over your television set.
Skype announced today that it has partnered with LG Electronics and Panasonic to embed Skype technology into Internet enabled televisions to be launched this year. This means that in conjunction with an HD webcam (sold separately), you will be able to make video calls right from the comfort of your living room.
Of course this means your TV will need to be within reach of an Ethernet cable so that you can plug it in to your home network, but considering the possible benefits of such technology, it’ll be worth it.
The television sets will be available in the spring of this year, and no pricing has been announced at this time. We are certainly not suggesting that you run out and buy a new TV just for this technology, but if you do happen to find yourself in the market for a new TV set, we would certainly think you would want to include this factor in your purchasing decision.
You can learn more about the news in the video below or by visiting the Skype On Your TV page.
Securing your name online can be as important as finding a physical location for a business, luckily TweExchange is aiming to help you out.
While there have been services out there for ages now that will help you with locating an unclaimed domain name, and there have also been a few to check for unusued Twitter names, no one has merged the two into one service before. TweExchange is a new direction for a site that used to auction off desirable Twitter usernames (much to Twitter’s chagrin), but now they are all about helping you choose your online identity while you are still in the brainstorming phase.
The site is amazingly handy when you’re trying to decide on a name for your new online site. Where you only used to have to worry about the domain name, now you also want a name that you can secure on the social networking site Twitter. The site starts working almost immediately as you type each letter, showing you possible variations for both domains and Twitter names as you go. Once you find one you like, you can register the domain via the built in link to the GoDaddy domain name service, and you can also click the link to go to Twitter and register the user name. (click the image below for a larger view of what the results look like)
The site is simple, straight forward and a breeze to use. If you want to start fresh with another search, just make sure to click the “Clear results” link below the “Search” button or else you get a jumbling of your previous search results along with the new ones. As someone who dreams up a lot of sites, but doesn’t always get around to launching them, this site is going to be extremely useful to me. If you want to launch a totally new online presence, this site should be invaluable to you, so make sure to bookmark it.
Why is it becoming so acceptable to totally throw proper etiquette out the window just because things are done on the Internet?
As someone who writes for numerous blogs, I get a ton of press releases each day. Some interest me, most don’t, but one of the quickest ways to lose my interests is to start off an email to me in one of the following ways:
“Sean …”
“Dear Sean …”
“Hey Sean …”
Let me give you a hint folks, until such time as we have a familiar working relationship, or you give me permission to do otherwise, I will address you as “Mr.” or “Ms.” followed by your last name. I will never call someone by their first name in an initial contact email with someone I hope to have a working relationship with. This is an old business rule, and one that is still followed in most parts of the business world … it’s just the Internet that seems to think it is to “hip” for it any more.
This was all brought back to my attention this week when a press agent contacted me about doing them a sort of favor, and even though we had never talked before, nor been formally introduced, they called me “Sean” in their very first email to me. After our business dealing was over, I e-mailed them and let them know what I thought of their practice of doing such.
I have had it.
I have worked in many industries over the years, and I continue to work with Japanese companies extensively. If I was to ever demonstrate such a lackadaisical attitude in my dealings with them, I wouldn’t so much as get a rejection letter informing me of how disrespectful I was.
And in other industries I am associated with, people still expect to be addressed by their last name until such time as they say otherwise. This is just how business is done, but yet, if you work on the Internet, somehow you are beyond all this.
Well, newsflash folks, I’m not. And from here on out, I’m calling people on it. I’m tired of it, it’s rude and it is disrespectful of the traditions of business. I show you the respect of addressing you properly, I would ask you do the same for me. I will probably give you permission to call me “Sean” soon enough, just don’t assume you may from step one. Is that so much to ask?
Have you ever wished you could rent eleven books at a time through the mail? Well, now you can … and we’re still trying to figure out why you would.
The concept of BookSwim is exactly like that of Netflix in that you pick a plan for the number of books you would like to check out at any given time. You can choose 1 book, 3 books, 5 books, 7 books and 11 books, and all of them offer free shipping both directions except for the one book at a time plan. If you find you really enjoyed a book, and would like to keep it, you do have the option of purchasing the book without having to send it back.
While we understand the lure of Netflix, and have a subscription here at the office that we love, your average movie is two hours in length, you can quickly turn over your rentals to get the most out of your subscription. Unless you are a speed reader, getting the maximum return on investment out of your subscription would be difficult at best. There are advantages in instances where you are in situations like being a student and you need a certain book (BookSwim also offers textbook rentals via a partnership with Chegg.com), you live in a small town with no library, you are shut in for some reason and so on. Even at this though, the monthly memberships range from $9.95 a month to $59.95 a month, so it still seems hard to believe that very many people will ever be able to use this service enough to get their monies worth out of it.
With the explosion of e-readers that allow for instantaneous book delivery, and even some allowing for you to loan books to friends, as well as huge collections of free books you can read, this service is just a bit lost on us. We see a lot of value in the textbook rental service for college students, but as we said, that is done with a partnership with Chegg.com, so you can just go through them directly.
If you love BookSwim, and find it useful, more power to you, but we have to say we don’t picture this site having an extremely long life.
It seems there was one aspect of selling its own cell phone that Google did not take into account: Dealing with customers after you sell them a product.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sees his company mailing out physical DVDs for at least another 20 years.
iPhone and iPod Touch owners rejoice that a physical keyboard is finally coming out for your favorite device … but try to keep yourself in check until you learn the details.
It seems that one of the big trends at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year is turning your TV into a full on Internet device.
Video calls just got a bit more interesting with the announcement that you will now be able to place them over your television set.
Securing your name online can be as important as finding a physical location for a business, luckily TweExchange is aiming to help you out.
Why is it becoming so acceptable to totally throw proper etiquette out the window just because things are done on the Internet?
Have you ever wished you could rent eleven books at a time through the mail? Well, now you can … and we’re still trying to figure out why you would.
