Tuesday, January 31, 2006

V cast - useless and expensive


Let me preface this entry with a disclaimer: I just turned 30, so my understanding of technology is beginning its slow and inevitable decline.
That having been said, I can not believe how useless V casts' music download service is. We're in the midst of a media revolution which is allowing people to acquire music (M) without leaving the house (iTunes, Napster, etc.) and videos (V) without leaving the house (netflix, iTunes, Google, etc.) and now Verizon is giving us the 'privelege' of being able to download M&V on our phone so that we can in fact get M&V outside of our homes again because presumably it was an inconvenience to be able to obtain M&V at home. I must be getting old, but to me it seems awfully nice to not get up off my duff ("duff" is an older variation of butt for you youngsters) to get M&V. Back in the real old days, we actually had to go to a store to buy "CDs" or a Blockbuster to rent videos, so old-fashioned me thinks it's great to have M&V download access at home.

Alright enough of the self-depracating "old" talk. Let's cut to the chase which is that Verizon's got a loser on it's hand with V cast. First of all, the commercials promoting the merit of V cast's music-on-demand are laughable.
Exhibit A: commercial showing pre-game locker room of a hockey team getting psyched-up for their game because one of the kids downloaded a song and played it on their phone. Is this phone really loud enough to pump up a hockey team? I don't think it could pump up a ballet troupe. Strike 1

Exhibit B: commercial showing a girlfriend angrily rushing away from a boyfriend and rushing to get away in a taxi. The boyfriend whips out his V cast and downloads a smooth R&B track, plays it and soothes the girl making her feel better.
Ha Ha Ha. How long does it take to download a song? by the time the song is downloaded, the girl would be gone. Strike 2 What angry girl can be soothed by a song being played through a phone speaker? Please send me her number. Strike 3

Alright. So since when have commercials made accurate claims about their prodcuts? But in watching these commercials the sad thing is that these were among the more plausible uses for V cast...

So how much will all this uselessness set you back? $15 / month + $1.99 / song.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

R.I.P. Dell DJ


In September '05 I wrote:
"...Since apple is selling their iPods at a higher volume than all their competitors...they could really put the smack down on competitors by selling iPods at a discount and absolutely flatten the competition...Apple could move millions of units at a thinner margin which would force Rio, Creative, and Dell into a very tight spot; letting them choose between moving hundreds of thousands of units at razor-thin margins or maintaining pricing while watching unit sales slide towards zero.
... Apple has now lowered the boom on the competition with the nano. Look at the competitions' products at $199 or $249. Sony and the others have to be sweating bullets. Their products at those price points are very simply, a cut below."

Since I wrote that, Apple sold 14 million iPods in about 3 months. All their competitors combined sold (by my estimation) sold around 5 million units. There had to be casualties. Rio has apparently exited the mp3 player market and Dell has suddenly and unceremoniously apparently stopped selling DJs.