Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Welcome to this week’s “Who’s on Crack” where we pick apart the stories from the past week that refuse to have any relation to reality.  With announcements just around the corner to fill up the holidays, things are getting zany, even silly.  Clearly, more than a few companies appear to to be on crack.

This week’s winners:

• Microsoft sees black
• Way too many eReaders
• Twitter business model to fail
• FLO TV bringing Personal TVs?

Microsoft sees the world differently

This week, Microsoft apologized for photoshopping out a black man and replacing him with a white man.  Our Sue Walsh posted this about it: “It was glaringly obvious because the designer forgot to change the man’s hands, resulting in a white man with a black man’s hands.  It’s not clear why Microsoft felt the need for the sloppy race change, but they promise they are looking into the incident and have yanked the ad.”

The image has turned into one of the back cover of Boys’ Life where you try to find hidden images.  In the Microsoft ad, you can find a Mac (whoops), and a computer monitor that is connected to nothing.  Silly props.

Going back to the people in the room, I find the black man’s head looking just as preposterous as the white mans.  Take a look at that melon!  He looks like a JibJab stop motion singing head.  So who was really sitting there?  Perhaps a Native American?  A Latino?  An Aussie?  Something tells me this secret is guarded better than who shot JFK.

How many eReaders will you use?

Our Editor, Iyaz was one of the talking heads on TechVi rattling on about Sony’s new eReaders.  I’ll probably regret saying this, but he was the more rational ones in the room.  The reason?  It’s one thing to build a nice piece of hardware, something Sony is great at; it’s another thing to drive customers to your product.

The problems with eReaders are two fold: cost and confidence.  $299/$399 is a steep price for replacing something I get for $5 at my local library (I factor in late costs with every book I borrow, I am a realist).  Cost is a very real issue to win this market over. 

The second is replacing ink and paper.  Everyone understands how a book works, we’ve been hooked on paper for hundreds of years.  There is no menu to memorize and no batteries to worry about.  This is a bigger issue than most folks think.

The other talking head on this edition of TechVi was from PC Mag and he was completely sold on the Sony book, saying he was going to get the $299 version that required a connection to a laptop to download new books.  Good gosh man, you’re a tech guy, chip in for some wireless.  While all his pals are partying, I can see him chilling at home download more books for his trip the next morning.

Do we, as Americans, really read this much?  Are they gearing up for overseas readers?  Are we building a ladder to the moon with eReaders?  That or it’s a freakin’ fantastic domino set.

Twitter business model doomed

Everyone’s tried to guess how Twitter will monetize.  Its solution was presented as this: “Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced Thursday that the popular micro-blogging service plans to offer paid accounts to businesses by the end of the year.  Users of the accounts will have access to stats and analytics not available to regular users, and quite possibly a new commercial API.”

So, company execs can Twitter freely but to do it under the @megacorporation there will be a fee.  Um, OK.  Really?  This is how you are going to put bread on your plate?  I can see some bites for this, but not many and not nearly enough to keep the site stable. 

Here is a study I ran at the local Odd Lot: I put out a bubble gum machine.  Day one, I marked it “free.”  Darn thing was emptied in an hour.  The next day, I made it “free*” and hung out charging folks in suits $1.  You know what happened, Biz?  The folks in suits laughed at me and didn’t buy my bubble gum.

Now, sure, I didn’t do that.  But if I did, I expect the same results.  Putting a price on something you give out for free to some makes those that have to pay kinda angry at you.  Making the sell to a bunch of angry folks is rather tough.  But hey, I didn’t invent this cool train, so maybe Biz knows best.

FLO didn’t get the memo?

To round out my tech gear, I need a personal TV.  After all the 4 foot long boom box, Sony Walkman Sports cassette player, car phone and computer that’s as big as a sofa, are together not enough to keep me happy.  I need a personal TV.

Oh, wait.  This isn’t the 80s and I no longer sport an afro.

Our Robert Nelson tells us about FLOs plans: “But more importantly, I also learned that Audiovox was currently in the process of building a mobile television device for FLO TV, which I suppose could be known as a Personal Television.  The details that I have are pretty light, but I was told that it was going to be designed as a rear seat entertainment device for the car and that it was initially going to be sold as an aftermarket device with hopes that it would later become an optional accessory from the dealer.”

I can’t find anything to watch on 130 channels, so how are 20 channels going to improve that for my kids who happen to be pickier than me.  How is this better than SlingPlayer, you know that stuff I’ve already decided I want them to watch?  And yet another screen to lug around?  I am utterly mystified.

This seems like a giant step backwards in time.  Maybe there are secrets hidden that will reveal themselves.  Like maybe they’ve found a time machine.