Sony’s shindig last Thursday stands as a testament to modern public relations when it comes to new technology. There were the usual champagne glasses and hired help in miniskirts to show you the latest on the PS3. ”I’m sorry, I don’t really know what this thing does, but it can play music and show your holiday snaps at the same time," was one such comment.

Does it matter? Not really. In the end, most people were gathered to have a look at the new technology and have some fun while doing it. No supermodel in a mini skirt is going to take that away from me.

The race has now officially started in New Zealand and, although a little delayed, the public can now look forward to the battle of the consoles. Granted, the Playstation 2 is still the best selling console in the world, and we will have to wait until Christmas this year until we really start seeing a hike in the sales numbers. Pre sales are reportedly high in this country, albeit we can probably put that down to marketing and hype.

Posted by March 26, 2007 10:31 AM | Comments (22)

I'm in the market for a new low-cost, no-frills laptop from a respectable brand. So on Saturday I got down to a little online research and stumbled over what looked like a real bargain.

According to its website, Dick Smith Electronics was offering an Acer Aspire 3623WXCi notebook. The specification wasn't exactly exciting, but the $498 price tag was.

By any standards it was a good deal, yet buying the machine proved a good deal harder than you might expect.

DSE warned this was a clearance product with limited stock. To be more specific, the site stated only three stores had the computer and, as of 2.00pm on Saturday, each of the three stores had only two or less computers in stock. It helpfully suggested phoning to check availability before making the trip to buy the laptop.

All this is perfectly fair. Dick Smith certainly wasn't making promises it couldn't keep.

It wasn't quite 3.00pm, so my chances should have been good. The store nearest me was Wyndham Street in central Auckland. I checked my bank account and gave the store a call. No answer, the voice mail told me it was outside business hours. I checked the web site, Saturday hours are 10.00 to 5.00, so I called again and again and again. According to my phone, I rang the number 18 times on Saturday -- no reply, no option to leave a message. Not good.

Sunday morning I started ringing at 10.00. The site still displayed the same availability message -- it hadn't been updated. After an hour I gave up and tried to buy it directly from the website. This was a convoluted process, that involved registering with DSE and providing an email address -- no doubt I'll start getting spammed any day now.

According to the web site, I would get a confirmation email telling my about delivery and payment options. It's now 9.00 am on Monday, nothing has arrived.

Dick Smith is a respectable business, this wasn't a scam. The price wasn't a misprint, it appeared in numerous different places on the web site. I've no reason to believe Dickies hadn't sold all the cheap Acers on a first come, first served basis. I'm disappointed, but I'm not grumbling about missing out.

My point here is there's a massive disconnect between parts of the organisation. Why tell customers to ring if you've no intention of answering the phone? Does head office even know the Wyndham Street branch doesn't answer its phones? Sure, it was the weekend, but there's no excuse if a store chooses to open at that time. Likewise, why promise confirmation emails if you don't intend to send them.

What makes this even more disappointing is that the overall Dick Smith experience it larger BETTER than with other large scale retaillers. If this is an above average performance, what do the others look like?

Posted by Bill Bennett March 26, 2007 9:48 AM | Comments (0)

Logitech’s recent foray into the New Zealand gaming community, by sponsoring a local online gaming team, is a positive sign both for the market and for other companies looking to tap into this fairly lucrative market.

The gaming market has for years been a hard market to break into for larger corporations. Smaller, more specialised organisations like Alienware, Voodoo PC and to an extent, Auckland based Playtech has put their focus towards it with great success.

The gaming community in a small country like New Zealand is inherently hard to reach. Most of the communication is based around the web, with an emphasis on discussion groups and of course the game themselves.

When it comes to the actual games, there are several successful developers out there like Electronic Arts and Take2. Unfortunately, it is a crowded market and games companies going bust has become a daily news source. The margins in the games themselves are quite low, but can be circumvented with add on services like monthly subscriptions (as with some massive multiplayer online games), or the addition of ‘expansion packs’ that are based on the same source code and 3d engine, with new content.

This brings us to the hardware market and in particular system assemblers. Alienware and Voodoo PC were both champions in this market, and both have recently been bought by massive IT organisations Dell and Hewlett Packard. The companies have obviously spotted a new market where high end performance parts are key, and acted on that. Commodore, the company made famous for its C64 and Amiga machines in the 1980’s has announced that it will enter the high end gaming market and is showcasing its models at CeBit later this year The problem with the assembly of high end computers is that the margins are, again, quite small. It therefore becomes a volume game where if you are not in the top three, there is little hope.

In parts of Asia, computer gaming has reached a professional level where competitors work full time and get paid thereafter. There is little hope that gaming will ever reach this level here. Competitions like X-LAN are doing theirs to promote gaming by arranging LAN parties with prizes to the winners, but so far there has been little corporate backing of such events. Getting ones name out there is the first step in capturing a market that is on the cutting edge of hardware and serving as a suitable demographic (mostly young males).

Logitech has gone about this in a good way, by letting the gaming community itself be the advertising vehicle for the company’s products. It is, as said earlier, a small step. But it is a step in the right direction.

Posted by March 8, 2007 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

I could write a book* about some of the dumb things I've seen from the public relations industry, but today let's focus on just one piece of idiocy.

Today Reseller News received a press release from an Australian public relations agency about a Canadian company that is now doing business in Australia (and presumably hopes its Australian partners will sell some of its products in New Zealand).

At the top of the press release text the dateline reads: New Zealand, February 28, 2007.

Forgive me for using newspaper jargon. Here's a link to various definitions of the word dateline.

Remember the story was written overseas by overseas people about overseas people. In this case the dateline provided by the PR company in question is a downright lie. Which does little for the company's credibility. Now that I know the dateline is dishonest, how can I trust anything else in the press release or, for that matter, any other material from the company in question?

*Though be fair I've seen some smart stuff too and I'm certain there are PR people out there who could write books about dumb things certain journalists do.

Posted by Bill Bennett March 2, 2007 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

Choice isn't always a good thing. This morning Telecom Xtra customers will have noticed their ISP's crappy old portal has been replaced by two crappy new portals.

Here's what was on display earlier today at xtra.co.nz:

Clicking on either button takes you to one of two uninspiring replacement portals.

Of course everyone who knows anything about the web knows portals are not as important as they were. MSN New Zealand and XtraYahoo have spent a lot of time and money demonstrating just how irrelevant they now are.

Both show some local news stories -- at the time of writing both lead with NZPA material. The MSN site acts as a gateway to Microsoft's lacklustre Hotmail service, the XtraYahoo site allows Xtra customers to get a web version of their ISP's email service. Earlier today there was also a large, in-your-face advertisement for Yahoo Mail (which is better than Hotmail but not as good as Google's Gmail).

Based on a quick first look, the XtraYahoo site has better content and more useful links than the MSN site. But that's not saying much.

No doubt both portals will get traffic because they are default settings, either for Microsoft Internet Explorer or for Xtra users.

Of course anyone who knows what they are doing online will have long ago set their browser's home page to something specific and useful, like reseller.co.nz or non-specific and useful like Google.

Hopefully competition will see the two portals improve. Don't hold your breath though.

Posted by Bill Bennett March 1, 2007 1:02 PM | Comments (1)