TheGarage Tech Blog

The Chron’s Business correspondent Loren Steffy seems to think there is no way for the X-Box marketing strategy to succeed. I tend to agree.

What’s the big deal with the new X-Box 360? Is the technology improvement such a leap that even those who are merely occasional game players must have one as soon as possible else cease to exist? Or is it that the time of year is that of giving and many folks would like to give one of the technological marvels to a loved one?

I read an article in the paper on Saturday that a Circuit City in an upscale area of Houston had quickly sold out of their initial shipment of twenty systems. First I thought that must be a misprint. Only twenty new X-Box 360 systems to a single store. The manager of the store was noncommittal but did say she was expecting at least one more shipment before Christmas–which will likely be the real shipment of 300 systems arriving a week or two, or three late.

On the other hand, there are plenty of accessories available which are reportedly being snapped up. Probably on fears that the accessories will soon be sold out as well.

First and foremost my comment is that it is a monumental blunder not to have these gizmos readily available on the shelf for the Christmas buying season. However, having said that…

Microsoft has not quashed its competition over years by accident. To me it seems that some marketing geniuses in Redmond turned a failure to meet production quotas into a mastermind marketing campaign to lock in consumers to the X-Box 360 even when there are no X-Box 360 systems actually available.

First, spread the available systems thinly in the upscale urban markets where they will be missed the most. Be sure the press knows there is a limited supply of systems and is on hand for the Black Friday onslaught of overwrought computer gamers.

Second, be sure to have plenty of X-Box accessories on hand for those who are looking to buy the X-Box system as a Christmas gift for someone else.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

After someone has invested a hundred or so dollars in games, rumble packs, memory sticks, or whatever comes on an X-Box 360, they will be very unlikely to buy a competing product even if they have to wait until the first week of January to get the actual system.

Earlier this year Microsoft hired Ray Ozzie, the inventor of Lotus Notes, and now they have hired Burton Smith, the head scientist at super-computer maker Cray. I wonder what evil trickery Gates is up to now.

Ozzie was named Chief Technology Officer, but there has been no word yet on what Burton Smith’s duties will be. Color me intrigued. I would expect something very powerful and very innovative.

Read this Forbes article for a glimpse at what Ozzie has in mind for Microsft and the obstacles he faces to achieve his goals.

I heard on the radio yeaterday that NTB was giving away free Blackberries with the purchase of a complete set of tires. After the commercial, the DJ’s were talking about what they paid for their blackberries: about $300.

So I am wondering how can a set of tires installed with all the bells and whistles that will cost about three hundred bucks, or less, offset the cost of giving away a free blackberry? Then the small print at the end of the ad (or would that be small talk?). One year subscription to blackberry service required… or something like that.

So it seems we are about to see the same model that made the cellular phone ubiquitous do the same for wireless PDAs. Once about a gazillion blackberries are dropped on the market behind this promotion, others will follow suit. Marketers are like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Almost worse than lawyers.

Let’s face it. With the miniturization and convergence of technology happening at such an astonishing rate, in five years we will be wearing the equivalent of a small computer room on a wristband.

EvilWhiteGuy points out that you can also get a free blackberry with a pizza order. He also noticed the NTB give away.

And you can get free iTunes with a Fruit & Salad purchase

The dot com bust in 2001 had nothing to do with the Internet revolution that everyone used to rave about. It is still coming. Most everybody just had it wrong in the nineties.

(Thanks to Basil for the open trackback)

A Dell “Super Computer”

Dell Super Computer with Eight 20 inch Flat Screen Ultra Sharp Monitors with 1600 x 1200 Resolution and 5.1 Cambridge SoundWorks Speakers with Bass Cube. Windows XP Pro Operating System. The Computer items were purchased new from Dell in 03/2004. The Computer is a Precision Workstation 450 with Two 3.20 GHz Xeon Processors with 2MB L3 Cache 533FSB, 4GB 266 MHz Double Data Rate SDram , Two 146GB SCSI U320 10K RPM Hard Drives, 8X DVD+RW/+R and 16X DVD, Two Colorgraphic Xentera GT 4 Video Cards to run the 8 Screens, Cordless Mouse, Cordless Keypad, Dell 3 in 1 Printer/Fax/Scanner, 3 Ergotron Adjustable Monitor Stands, Surge Protectors, 3 Sets of Smaller Speakers for watching TV or Security System on Individual Monitors. The Monitors can be arranged in any configuration. Over $20,000 Invested. Works Perfect. Great for Photos, Charts, Graphs, Trading Stocks, Security System. I should have all the original boxes for shipping.

Bid on it or you can buy it now for ony $10,500.

Way back in the early to mid-eighties, when PC’s first began to take off on a massive scale, I worked at a local computer store in the small town where I atteneded university. Ten to twelve grand is about what one would pay for a fully souped IBM PC or Apple II. Half the price of an Apple Lisa II was for the ProFile II 5 or 10 meg hard disk subsystem, which was a huge box bigger than an entire PC is today.

Didn’t sell too many of those. Most systems still came in at three to five thousand dollars, though. Ahh, those were the days…

I wonder why the automobile has not become a commodity-type product like the computer? I think such a transition may already be under way, but it wont come full circle until the unions are all bankrupt, which foriegn competition will bring about eventually. When there is very little distinction between products, price determines the purchase. When price is the only deciding factor, a company will not be able to compete paying inflated wages due to strongarm union tactics.

Unions have more to do with sweatshops and outsourcing than cheap labor overseas.

[How do you start daydreaming about super computers then end bitching about unions? -Ed]

Seems there is still a problem with the foam debris falling off the shuttle.

NASA officials said today it would ground future space shuttle flights because foam debris that brought down Columbia is still a risk.

A sizable chunk of foam insulation that came flying off the shuttle Discovery’s fuel tank during Tuesday’s liftoff did not hit the orbiter and does not pose a risk to the seven astronauts.

But it is a problem NASA thought had been fixed, and represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2½ years trying to rise from the ashes of Columbia.

Here is what I think. Foam debris has always been a problem. The first flight shed foam debris on take-off. The second flight shed foam debris on take-off. Every subsequent flight shed foam debris on take-off. No one was ever aware of the problem until a piece of foam debris knocked a small hole in the orbiter’s outer protective coating causing the thing to burn on reentry.

The force required to lift that much weight into the air and accelerate it to 15,000 mph is tremendous. Of course stuff falls off it all the time. Any owner of a Harley-Davidson will immediately understand this.

Maybe NASA should look at lubricants or superconductivity instead of shielding as the primary method of protecting the shuttle from heat on reentry.

And return on investment is certainly the better metric when compared to measuring IT value by the dollar amount saved on resources. After all, what is more important: the cost of the project? Or the ultimate value (as measured by ROI) of the project?

The best talent doesn’t usually come cheap. The best, most successful projects are not usually completed by low-cost, inexperienced IT drones.

If a company is not getting a good return on investment (ROI) from technology, perhaps all the money saved through purchasing the cheapest IT resouces is actually a huge opportunity cost.

For example, what if CSX Corp had not chosen to implement its wireless dispatch system? Sure, they would have saved $400,000, but the cost of not doing the project would have been in the millions. A cost that would repeat itself every year until it converts to a missed opportunity as a competitor eventually gets it done.

JULY 11, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) – One year after spending $400,000 on a wireless project designed to speed up communications with 450 independent truck drivers and cut costs, CSX Corp. reported last week that it may have hit a bonanza.

Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX said the wireless notification application from Air2Web Inc. in Atlanta has cut the number of phone calls truckers make to the CSX Intermodal call center from 20,000 a week to 11,000, said John Dugan, technical director for intermodal applications at CSX Technology Inc.

And because drivers can now send short text messages and e-mail via Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry devices, they each save about an hour per day that they once spent waiting for a dispatcher, Dugan said. That alone improved driver productivity by 400 hours per day — a major reason why driver turnover dropped from 80% to 50% in the past year, he said.

Holding off on investment in IT projects are likely costing corporations far more money than they may be saving by not doing innovative new projects. Failed projects cost even more.

The good news is–as illustrated b the CSX project– that other trucking companies who utilize independant operaters will have to come up with some ways to accumulate a corresponding amount of value into their products in order to stay competivie with CSX.

One company’s innovation is the rest of the market’s inspiration. The lesson being: Keep up with technology advance, of die on the vine.

…but are still higher than they were last year

In its latest quarterly job-cut survey of the telecommunications, computer, electronics and e-commerce sectors, the New York-based company reported 39,720 lost jobs for the quarter that ended June 30. That’s down 33% from the 59,537 jobs lost in the first quarter, which ended March 31.

The job cuts for the second quarter, however, were still 16% more than the 34,213 cuts announced in the same quarter a year ago, the company said. For the first six months of the year, Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported 99,257 tech job cuts; That’s up 56% over the 63,726 cuts recorded in the first half of 2004.

So… basically the tech job market still sucks, it just doesn’t suck as bad this quarter as it did last quarter. But the market still stucks much worse this year than it did last year. To someone who has been in the tech industry for twenty years, this is a far cry from a feel-good story.

“The economy is growing and many sectors are adding workers at a steady pace, but the technology sector has been conspicuously absent from this job creation,” Rick Cobb, executive vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement. “Some blame high oil prices — as one industry insider recently told USA Today, ‘Every dollar that goes into the fuel tank is a dollar that is not going to Best Buy.’”

“The other problem affecting the computer and electronics industries is that corporate customers have accumulated a large reserve of cash, but instead of investing it in new technology, they seem content to just hold on to it,” Cobb said. “The good news is that we had a significant drop in tech-sector job cuts last quarter, which could signal a return of better times.”

That is some pretty shaky “good news”. Relative to the past few years though, I guess some optimism in the market is some good knews.

From a column called “Help Line” in the Houston Chronicle:

Q: I somehow ended up with an annoying downloaded file/program/pop-up, Aurora. I tried to delete it using Add/Remove programs on Control Panel. It takes me to the Web site www.mypctuneup.com and says that I have to download the uninstall program from them to get rid of it. It looks like they want you to take down your firewall and anti-virus first, so I’m naturally concerned. Is this safe to do?

A: The makers of spyware and adware are making it more and more difficult and involved to remove their parasitic malware.
I have seen required steps that involve having to fill out questionnaires and/or enter specific key codes all the way to what you are seeing, a need to download and execute a third-party uninstall application.

I don’t like this at all. I have used it, as it seems to be the most effective way to remove this particular piece of spyware.
I would not disable any firewalls or deactivate your anti-virus right off the bat. Try using it with those tools still enabled and see how it goes.

Lets see. We have an unauthorized, malicious piece of software on the PC. The maker of said software wants you to disable your firewall and anti-virus to remove it. Yeah, right! Do they think you are some kind of schmuck like Jay Lee of the Chronicle’s Help Line?

I would definitely classify that as some bad advice.

Finally, something NASA can excel at:

PASADENA, CALIF. – NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft completed a flawless journey to oblivion early Monday, slamming into an onrushing comet to vaporize itself in an Independence Day blaze of glory.

When it comes to building a device that is supposed to fly in to space and then destroy itself, NASA should have no peer.