Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 16 April 2008, 1:15 PM
The Eee 900 vs Harry Potter
I like Asus, but they sometimes have a truly surreal way of getting their point across. Try this on for size:
Because, clearly, what better way can there be to demonstrate the lightness of your subnotebook than to compare it with a Harry Potter novel?
0.99kg vs 1.153kg, by the way, to stop you having to squint.
The same Powerpoint presentation where I found that gem also reiterated Asus's desire to target the Eee at "Housewives & Office Ladies" ("On-line shopping! Fashion engaging anywhere!"). This should help boost the company's Giant Lion strategy (oh yes) to get to the number 3 spot in laptop manufacturing.
I do not mock - actually, I appreciate this linguistic approach. It is certainly heart touching.
Check out our review of the Eee 900 here. Looks good!
Tuesday 15 April 2008, 12:49 PM
iPhone to be £100 cheaper
Reports suggest that O2 is about to cut the price of an iPhone from £269 to £169 (not as much as T-Mobile Germany's cut from £315 to £78, mind you).
And why would they do that? Couldn't be because there's a 3G iPhone on the way, could it?
Tuesday 15 April 2008, 10:30 AM
PROTD: More branding insanity
It's been a while since I did a Press Release Of The Day, particularly one with such asinine branding in it (see here for a golden example from a year ago). But here's a good one:
LexisNexis, the UK's leading provider of information and services to legal, tax and corporate professionals, announced today that Grindeys has awarded it a new contract for its Axxia dna* product to be used by all of Grindeys' 240 fee-earners and support staff.
Not much to say really, other than to point out that any brand name that requires at least three points of spelling, capitalisation and/or random insertion of keyboard characters to be explained every time it's used, probably sucks as a brand name.
Monday 14 April 2008, 9:57 AM
BBC's digital supremo quits
Ashley Highfield, champion Birtspeaker and outgoing (now in multiple ways) chief of "future media and technology" for the Beeb, is heading off to the realms of Project Kangaroo.
Kangaroo is basically an aggregated platform for programmes from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 et al - in other words, it'll be like proper channel-hopping TV on your laptop screen. If anything spells the death of traditional telly in the UK, it's this project.
Of course, Kangaroo will also continue and exacerbate the scarily rapid impact of services like the iPlayer on the nation's broadband infrastructure (or, more accurately, the nation's broadband pricing models). Highfield has recently been at the forefront of the net neutrality flamefest between Auntie and the ISPs (notably Tiscali), so there's a red-hot baton waiting for his as-yet-unidentified successor.
Without wanting to sound too melodramatic about it, the BBC's future depends - at least in part - on how that successor navigates the net neutrality line. Trial by fire, indeed.
Friday 11 April 2008, 3:18 PM
Nokia squares up to Apple
Much buzz on the tubes right now about the, er, Tube. This would be the Nokia 5800, Espoo's first touchscreen phone (yes, I know, I shook my head in disbelief at that for a moment too, but it's true).
Although it's really a prototype, it's being touted by the blogerati as an iPhone-killer... isn't anything with a big touchscreen these days? Anyways...
TV-out socket. Haptic blah-blahs. Wi-Fi. HSDPA. A decent camera (probably). A proper 3.5mm headphone socket. All of these come with the "allegedly" proviso, because Nokia won't talk about it on the record (but that's their standard line for anything they haven't officially launched yet).
Pics here at Gizmodo.
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