From the category archives:

Portable Entertainment

Macworldexpologo.jpg

Twas the night before Macworld when all through the town
No MacBook was mooing nor turning brown

At Moscone, nerds were queuing with care
in hopes that Saint Steve would soon be there.

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How to beat the iPod

by Randy Stewart on September 18, 2006

in Apple, Marketing, Portable Entertainment, iPod

The Zen Vision W launched in the US today and I took a look at the specs on Creative’s website. Looks like a pretty cool product, but they’ve got some work in the marketing department. Maybe they figure this thing will market itself.

Apple has probably the best marketing team in the consumer electronics and computer world right now. Creative should consider taking a page out of their book to win in the marketplace. Below are a few examples how they might combat Apple’s marketing team.

#1. Make your product pages clear and concise.

A little bird sent me this page today:

zen-specifics.jpg

When you click “Learn More” find out more, you are taken to this page:

zen-learn-more.jpg

Um, ok, whatever.

#2. Sell the benefit, not the specs.

Ok, so it looks like the Zen will hold 15,000 songs. Cool.

zen-capacity.jpg

Except, maybe there was a misprint because one of them costs more than the other one and it has 60GBs instead of 30GBs of space.

zen capacity2.jpg

Nope, they meant to put that there. Congrats, my mom just bought the cheaper one!

So, if you can’t accomplish the other 2, at least:

#3. Try not confuse users.

Creative seems to have sent their “B” marketing team on this product. How the hell are you expecting to beat the iPod if you can’t figure out how to sell your device. For a device named the Zen, the site and the product seem awfully difficult to use.

This post is a little mean spirited, but I want the Zen to be better. Competition is the thing that drives product development and gets us better products. Maybe the Zune will bring their “A” team to the table.

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Amazon Unbox Video launched?

August 18, 2006

Methinks someone pushed the wrong button at Amazon.
Gizmodo
Kokogiak.com
Here are some pix, click for bigger images.

More in my Flickr stream.
It looks like the video will work on some portable players, will contain DRM, Mac users need not apply, and you will be able to rent as well as buy.
Check it out

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Monday Links

July 31, 2006

Microsoft Photosynth demo Wow… I never say wow about Microsoft products (unless it’s wow, that’s lame or wow, have you heard of usability?). But this is a very cool 3d photo visualization tool. [via Addicted to Digital Media]
Jeff’s Quick Guide to TV on the NetGet your fix here. Comprehensive guide to repurposed [...]

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Monday links

July 24, 2006

Mergers, wikis and movies, oh my!
AMD buys ATIAre any TLA companies starting with “A” safe from this insanity?
SocialText goes open source and JotSpot goes 2.0Two wikis enter, one wiki leaves. Will the open source wonder take down its more usable, more expensive foe?
Amazon to offer movie downloadsJobs better get their service out [...]

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Thursday Links

July 13, 2006

CinemaNow gets more funding
$20mm should help… I thought bandwidth was free?
GUBA inks deal with Sony
These guys are on a roll.
Efax: How not to treat your customers
I had a free account cancelled for overuse. Apparently, their customer service isn’t so great, either. [via Daring Fireball]
Looking back at Hotwired
Hotwired rejoins Wired so what better [...]

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Creative Zen review critique

March 29, 2006

Here’s a an email a friend I’ll call ‘iPodFan’ sent me today regarding the Creative Zen. You might remember, I played with the Zen:M back at CES and wished it didn’t suck.
——–
My review of this review… and I’m completely unbiased!! ;)
Creative ZEN Vision:M Media Player
This is the same cost as the 30GB [...]

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Google Video – now for iPods and PSPs

March 16, 2006

Need a little content for your iPod? Google has made its videos (not the ‘for pay’ videos, mind you) available for download reformatted for the PSP and iPod. Thank God, I can finally watch “Road Trip Prank,” “Shtanga,” “Indian Exotic Dance in Office 2” wherever I want!
Check it out
(Via The Unofficial [...]

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Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Video to go

February 13, 2006

Jonesing for your Swimsuit Edition in you pocket? Tomorrow morning, Apple is there to help you view SI’s bathing beauties while on that commuter flight to Des Moines. $16 gets you all the videos for your iPod so you can look less creepy in coach oogling scantily clad young girls in your spare [...]

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Engadget Mobile launches

February 13, 2006

I thought when I launched this blog that I would have coverage of all things gadget, but I realized over time that there are certain product areas that I could care less about. Mobile phones actually tracks pretty high on that list. This isn’t to say I’ll never cover mobiles on the site, [...]

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AIBO, Qualia Roadkill

January 26, 2006

Sony, in a cost cutting effort, has cut the AIBO and Qualia lines from production, according to Akihabara News. I think quite a few geeks will be sad to see the AIBO line die, but few will lament the passing of Sony’s Qualia line.

Qualia, FYI, is Sony’s ultra high end line of consumer [...]

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Beavis vs. Cartman on iTMS

January 26, 2006

The announcements keep coming from our friends over at iTunes. Here’s a short list of everything added to iTMS:

MTV – Beavis and Butthead, Jackass, Punk’d, Gauntlet 2, and more
Nickelodeon – Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, Zoey 101
Comedy Central – South Park, Drawn Together, Best of Standup

Looks like Apple must have signed a deal with [...]

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Oh, and one more thing…

January 24, 2006

Man, no sooner did this deal get done and an Disney’s newest large stockholder is already making some improvements on his investment. Wanna download some Disney shorts for your iPod? 10 new Disney shorts popped on iTMS this afternoon (maybe I should rename this blog iTMSWatch, I spend waaaay too much time there).
Gotta hand [...]

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Ebert and Roeper, Munsters join iTunes

January 24, 2006

Not the most exciting new additions to iTMS, but Apple is furthering their offerings this morning with “Ebert and Roeper” and “The Munsters”. What is interesting here is pricing. While the episodes remain at the oh-so-simple $1.99, the first season of “The Munsters” (38 episodes) will cost you a whopping $54.99 yet the [...]

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Macworld Announcements

January 10, 2006

MacBookPro – same form factor as current, but 4-5x faster. No word on battery life, but this seems to be part of the focus, so we’ll see. Gosh, I wonder what they’ll call the new iBook?
iMac iNtel – didn’t expect this one at all. Not totally sure it makes sense, but it [...]

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Creative Zen – Don’t buy me

January 7, 2006

I had a long chat with one of the Creative folks and tried really, really hard to like the Creative Zen Vision:M. I mean, how hard could it be to create a usable device that plays music and video. I mean, the iPod is nice and all, but this is easy, right?
WRONG. [...]

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