This past weekend, my wife Betsy (there you go baby) and I had restaurant food more than we should have. It all began on Saturday morning when she went out to a purveyor of fast food breakfast and returned with an order than was “not exactly” as it was ordered. It was in the same general family but wrong nonetheless.

Then the next day it was her lunch that was not quite what she requested. And finally last night, she went to get barbecue. In an effort to eat a little more healthy, she ordered turkey and instead was given the normal pork variety.

Granted all of these are food related and yes, we need to cook more. But that’s beside the point. I have many other tales and so do you about service experiences gone wrong. The point is, I encourage all of you out there to try and do whatever it is you do better than you were doing it before. Make an effort to try a little harder if for no other reason than to look yourself in the mirror and be able to say “I’m not a complete moron!”

JM

written by JM

Hello all! I’m back. Miss me?

It seems like lately I have been preoccupied with this whole television thing and where it’s all going. With the iTunes/NBC debacle still making the news and the new fall season just days away, I suppose at least it’s timely.

Just this week, NBC announced that it was going to offer free downloads of its content that would be ad supported. This is not entirely new except for the download part, and also the fact that they will apparently become unplayable in a weeks time. What does this mean for hulu? Hu knows. You see what I did there?

Last season, the major networks offered some of their hit shows on their websites for viewing that were ad supported. This was a nice thing in a pinch if you missed an episode of your favorite show. You will still have to watch these new downloads on your computer, however. In addition, as if I had to mention it, this “experiment” will be for Windows users only. Color me surprised.

There are a whole group of people for which this will be a perfectly acceptable solution. Many tech savvy consumers out there prefer to watch things this way. They don’t have time for sitting in front of a TV. This way their computer is right there in front of them so they can still get email, surf, etc., while they watch. It’s more difficult, for me, to relax sitting at a desk or with a laptop perched on my knees.

Earlier in this decade, the buzz word was “convergence”. The idea that TV and computer would become one and form a glorious entertainment portal. To some degree, this has happened with the Windows Media PCs and people finding ways of making the two devices work together. Again, mostly the tech elite have been adopters of this technology. I’m all for a connection from the computer to the TV. It is my belief that this is where we are headed with on demand entertainment. The problem has been implementation.

Anything other than media consumption is strained at best on televisions. Even with hi-def TVs, the resolutions don’t match those of most larger computer monitors and make the experience of navigating a computer GUI unpleasant. For that reason, I think it will be some time before people broadly use their computers in the den and their TV as a monitor for email and surfing.

The interesting thing is that the major broadcasters are beginning to see the value in this connection, for good or bad. They are beginning to see that consumers want this path from computer to any other device capable of playing video. Will they screw it up? Probably. The thing that concerns me most is that they could ruin it for the rest of us who are interested in creating content or consuming content from people other than the networks. The good news is, there are people that have good stories to tell and the networks will have compete with them in this space.

I for one will be watching with great interest to see how all this plays out.

JM

written by JM

Greed is not good.

A sort of reference to the 1987 film Wall Street. Michael Douglas’s character, Gordon Gecko, delivers the line, “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right; greed works.” It may “work”, but is far from good.

Today the Justice Department, in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission, said that imposing regulation on the Internet could hamper development. On the surface that sounds pretty good.

The focus of their filing was on something called “Net Neutrality”. Net Neutrality is the idea that sites on the Internet should be equally accessible to any user. That sounds pretty good too. Right? The problem is the phone and cable companies that control the infrastructure believe there should be differing levels or access of service.

DSL subscribers already get a taste of this with the different levels of speed of their Internet connections. Others might be charged more for visiting certain areas or viewing some content faster than someone else. Purveyors of this content like Google, for example, could have to foot a larger bill based on their bandwidth usage.

The J.D.’s argument of hampered development goes both ways. The content that exists on the Internet is what makes things happen. Not if the telephone and cable companies have more money in their pockets. Higher costs for everyday users and companies will put a burden on new innovations and ideas. Any enhancements to the Internet’s infrastructure will likely be paid by average consumers anyway.

I don’t know that traditional government regulation is completely the answer to the problem. The solution that everyone can live with is one that surely lies in the middle. The beauty of the Internet and the WWW is that it is a level playing field when it comes to access. If it becomes prohibitively expensive to distribute and consume content then we’ll all lose in the long run.

written by JM