Michi Kono

So in all of the iPhone hype, it seems Microsoft has “leaked” a rumor about their new Zune. What’s great about the new Zune?

• More space
• Smaller
• Flash memory version

While that’s a step up over the iPod Nano since the Zune plays video, it’s not a step over the other competitors, which are still getting blown away by the Nano. Either way, none of this comes as a surprise.

If I had to make a guess, this was deliberate and was Microsoft’s way of saying, “Hey! Don’t forget about us when the iPhone comes out!”

There is growing market pressure for the iPod Nano to play video, and I expect Apple to respond very shortly after the iPhone’s release. For those of you wondering, the Nano’s hardware is more than capable (hacked iPod) of playing video.

It seems the makers of e-paper have seen their sales grow a thousand times this last year. Also, color is expected to come in 2008.

The article mentions “limitations” such as not being able to play video, but in my opinion, the author is missing the point. E-paper’s potential is not in displaying dynamic content, although that’d be nice. The most important features of e-paper are its flexibility and lower power consumption. Once an image is set, it stays around with little or no additional power.

Since power consumption is such a big part, power intensive applications such as movies are clearly not where the immediate future of this technology lies. This is all about mobility. While tablets are the most obvious up-coming “innovation,” I think we’ll see a lot of better implementations.

So far, there’s the phone and the price tags. There’s also potential in:

• digital handouts
• posters
• picture frames
• clock displays
• status indicators for things like stocks
• a replacement for those monitors in the DMV
• show time display boards at movie theatres
• embedded clothing
• billboards
• signs
• menus

If I had the time or money, I’d be thinking about starting a company in that sector right now… Maybe someone else can do it and let me know so I can live vicariously through them.

Phones are a utility that is required for maintaining a normal life style. You need it when apply for a job, have a medical emergency, or to order pizza. On the other hand, music players are not essential. You will always cancel your music subscription before your phone service.

Despite this very obvious reasoning, it seems Microsoft is trying to “innovate” the music player market by making the Zune subsidized.

So instead of paying $250 for a Zune, now you might pay $50 for the Zune and $20/mo for 2 years. In a time when DRM is finally being peeled away, Microsoft is still trying to figure out ways to lock their customers in. But I will accept that there is a market for “renting” music, which is exactly what that monthly subscription fee would go toward. But there is a second consequence to what Microsoft is planning to do.

By subsidizing the Zune, the brand is cheapened. Just think: would you pay full price ($200-$300) for a phone that you can get for $0 and a 2 year contract? Never. And if you were asked to sell it, would you expect to get $200 for it? Maybe you might, but to you, it’s worth something in between $0 and $200. The problem is image, and by making your product “free” or even half off, you destroy perceived value in your product.

In short, doing this would torpedo the Zune’s ability to ever fully compete with Apple. The iPod is a premium product that people save up for months to get. If they gave them away on street corners, you can most certainly guarantee that the iPods image would take a beating fast. You would likely stop seeing celebrities with them as soon as the next “exclusive” competitor was released. Right now, when you get an iPod as a gift, you know it was expensive. But if you got a Zune with a “2 year contract”, it suddenly feels cheap, even if it might cost more in the long run. Besides, only people who can’t afford the iPod get a Zune — or at least that’s how regular consumers might start to think of the situation.

Why would being more affordable hurt?

• In order for the cost of the Zune to be made up, the subscription fee would be substantial. It currently costs about $15/mo for a “to-go” subscription service. It would need to be $20 or $25 a month to repay the $250 of the Zune. At a $5/mo margin, it would take two years to pay back half a Zune.
• The product is more difficult to give as a gift. It’s sort of like receiving one of those Nokia phones for Christmas and you still have to pay the plan out of pocket. Wow, mom, you shouldn’t have.
• What happens when DRM is abolished and none of your customers can take advantage of that? This may be a reality sooner rather than later.
• When the iPhone comes out, people will be comparing the Zune monthly pass to it. Except a phone is a necessity. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t the same thing. It’s an unfair comparison, but it will happen — and the Zune will look like a crappy deal in comparison.

I know Microsoft is struggling to find an edge over the iPod, but this isn’t it. First they wanted to do the wi-fi sharing, but that didn’t exactly turn out as good enough, especially now that DRM is about to wash away. Then Microsoft thought about a Zune phone, but that would be a tragedy. They tried to compete on features, but then they realized style is not a feature. So they tried hip marketing, but it all just came out freaking weird:

And now they’re thinking about slashing prices like there is no tomorrow. Here’s my three suggestions:

1. Don’t add DRM to songs being shared that don’t already have DRM in them.
2. Get rid of your crazy E-induced ads and start using humans in regular, every day life doing regular things.
3. Fight the labels and either lower prices or remove DRM entirely — before Apple does (and they will).

If Microsoft wants to compete, they need to stop avoiding the real issue. Put consumers first. None of the Zune’s competitors lock in their customers for long periods of time, and introducing this plan will only back fire and further degrade the brand. Microsoft should use its considerable clout to do some hard-core negotiating. Take one to the chin for the consumers and people will recognize it.

So long as Microsoft follows Apple’s moves, they will always be perceived as another iPod-killing “me too” company. They need to lead the industry if they want people to abandon their iPods, which just crossed 100 million today.

The best part is the “memo” section.

I’ve been noticing this in own site’s ads recently: Google has been playing around with a new look and feel. The new image based (or is it?) ”Ads by Google” should go a long way in protecting visitors from misleading ads (the ones that are cleverly disguised to look like regular links).

This couldn’t come at a better time. Right now, everybody is copying Google. Not just in terms of business models, but in visual look. These days, it’s increasingly less obvious when you see an embedded Google Ad versus a competitor. They’ve all copied the same look and feel.

This in turn creates major ad blindness. While the folks in the Google blog say that:

After extensive testing and research, we’ve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers.

But in reality, any new look and feel would perform better. Ad blindness is the single biggest threat to online advertising. As a user becomes more blind to ads, short sighted publishers will dump on more ads (think Myspace). This in turn fuels further ad blindness and the cycle repeats. Worse yet, because Google Ads appear across many sites, this ad blindness follows a user around across their daily Internet Journey ™.

For you AdSense users, here’s a cool article on how to fight ad blindness (official instructions). Google would be wiser to automate this type of color rotation into their ads.

Edit: Yep, it works… Notice how my ads change as you refresh.

So Firefox is going social. The idea is to integrate data streams from social networks directly in your browser. In concept, it sounds neat, but I doubt it will ever grow out of a tiny niche. In fact, I think the idea is dumb all together. I think these exact features belong on existing chat clients.

While consolidating social networking data is for the best, Firefox is not where we need to see this feature. I see a few problems.

1. Bloat.
2. Firefox is a minority browser. Users who will use this feature will be a minority of that subset, making the social aspect limited in its usefulness.
3. Browsers are often used in work environments where social networking is not exactly encouraged.

Social network integration belongs in social applications such as AIM. It would be far more useful and obvious if a chat service piggy backed on the existing chat based social network with meta data from Myspace, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Flickr, etc. It makes no sense pushing social aspects in an application that is not always used for social purposes, especially at the added cost of bloat.

If anybody wants to move to consolidate social networks, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and AOL have their chance now by releasing a client that integrates with all of the top networks. Perhaps they could even build an API. If I had the time or money, I’d certainly invest in a chat client that supported this.

Just imagine if I could set up an away message and it changed my headline on Myspace or updated my status on Facebook. Or if sharing pictures with friends was as easy as telling them to right click on my username and select “See Flicker pictures.” Or what if when I try to send a message to somebody who is offline, it just sends the message through Facebook instead? The point is that the social networking features could be harnessed to do things not supported by regular chat clients.

The possibilities are endless and the field is wide open.

I wondered a few days ago about why the UK eBay prices for the PS3 were ridiculously low; I speculated that demand wasn’t nearly as high as the media was reporting. My conclusion was based on the eBay prices in Asia and America in the weeks following their respective launches (+100% markups), and then noticing the huge margin deflation often UK eBay prices (+20% markups). It seem reality has caught up to Europe’s PS3 market. Sales dropped over 80% this week. That has to be some kind of record.

This makes sense after Gigio (see prediction comment #3) pointed out that Europe has much more restrictive return policies. A cooling reseller market would be far riskier than in the US, and nearly guarantee plummeting prices due to the flood of supply as people try to get rid of them before the console loses even more demand. This also explains the pages and pages of auctions that were below retail price.

In contrast, the Wii is pretty much unavailable world-wide almost five months after its release.

I feel sorry for Sony, but they really brought them onto themselves. Bundling Blu-Ray was the dumbest thing they ever did. They could have taken this generation by storm had they kept the Blu-Ray off of the PS3 and drop the price $200 as a result.

The splash of the day is that Google is now doing trials of TV ads. It seems their grand plan is to use the cable box to track what you watch to determine what sort of ads are most effective to you.

People should note that this is a stark difference from search ads where you have direct access to what the visitor wants. On TV, people might settle and watch something that doesn’t interest them. Also, there are often multiple viewers at a time. Sometimes, there’s just nothing good on. Other times, you just leave the TV on while you fall asleep. Most importantly, how does all of this factor in services like TiVo that allow time shifting? Time will tell.

So what sort of potential does this all hold? Well, initially, I was poking holes in the concept when I was trying to equate how one would automatically figure out what ads to place after a person finished watching Hannibal. But in reality, many TV shows have predominant themes. Lost and the tropics, 24 and gadgets, or American Idol and pop culture. The point is that such a system won’t be as easy as online text ads, but it’s possible.

Imagine if you were watching a show on the top 20 hottest celebrities and the ads were only about fashion items such as clothes, iPods, sunglasses, and watches. Or during a commercial break from the evening news, you see products directly related to things you just saw in the news. I mean, it has potential. For pre-filmed content such as movies and long running TV series, this sort of optimization is done by humans. But for near-live content, human ad placement can only work off of general assumptions about what the show will likely contain.

Another interesting prospect is that ads can be clustered near the highest point of relevancy within a time slot. So Dell might want to buy placement in CSI, but the ad would come up in the point when someone mentions buying a computer. Again, you can see just how difficult such video parsing would be. But if Google is serious about TV ads, there’s no other direction to go except there. Anything else can be replicated by humans, probably more efficiently and accurately too.

Of course, the coolest part is that this is all web driven. Google’s ultimately goal is to create a single interface that lets a company publicize their product across every known medium to man. As their ad services becomes more mature and unified, Google will become increasingly more attractive to “lazy” advertisers. Should be an interesting few years.

That said, what’s going on with those radio ads? It’s been a long time since they closed that radio ad company purchase and yet we have yet to see a any real impact to their bottom line. That doesn’t sound like particularly good news, does it?

I know many of you have noticed that my feed burner counts go up and down a lot. On Friday it was at 227, 186 on Saturday, 198 on Sunday, and 247.

Feed Burner can’t know for sure how many people are subscribed because people turn off their computers or don’t visit their homepages that have my RSS feed. The point is, they can only count the people that are pulling down my RSS feed to their computer. As you might expect, weekends are low points since the most computer usage happens at work.

So my RSS feeds regularly dip on the weekends. On that note, I have gained something between 2 and 15 new readers this week! Hurray!

Expect another update later today. Normally I collect articles throughout the day and then I post my entry before I go to bed. But tonight I got back from work at 2:00AM after working for a day straight, so that wasn’t my first priority getting home.

Although posting this update was…

While it’s true that the vast majority of stories on Digg come from an “elite” few, the truth is that they know how to submit a story in an eye-catching, informative, and interesting manner. I am going to teach you this skill. As an added bonus, this happens to be an important skill in crafting good emails, blog posts, and anything else that has a title or subject.

1) Submit titles that are clear, concise, informative, and yet, leave more to be desired. In short, spend 80% of your submission time thinking about the title because 95% of the time, it will be the only thing a person will use to judge if the rest of your submission is worth reading. This means:

1. Don’t ask questions as a title. Make statements in question form (How to mow lawns, Why I rock, etc)
2. Don’t be long winded with multiple sub-clauses. One clause.
3. Don’t use passive voice. Use passive voice and present tense.
4. Don’t leave out the critical information. The keywords you use are extremely crucial.
5. Don’t use URLs as a submission title. Ever.
6. Don’t just copy the title because sometimes the article title sucks.

Here’s the story title that made the front page on the DRM/EMI topic:

Press Release: EMI Music launches DRM-free downloads.

Here’s a list of stories that did not make the front page on the same topic:

• Deal or no deal: EMI and Apple’s DRM-free premium music? (question format)
• EMI Music Launches DRM-Free Superior Sound Quality Downloads (wordy)
• Times Onlines take on EMI Dropping DRM (huh? Onlines? What?)
• EMI unlocks their music! (didn’t mention “DRM”)

Focus your attention here. A bad title is pretty much a torpedo to your submission, no matter how great the content is.

2) The description usually doesn’t matter, but if you do include one, a bad one can actually hurt. The best and most recent example I know if this post (thanks for submitting though!!). Descriptions:

• Should be short and sweet. But this is only the case when the title is very informative.
• Don’t paste the first paragraph of the story. Paste the most interesting and juiciest piece.
• Piece together the best parts if no one sentence stands out as exceptional.

In short, if you write a bad description, people may actually become deterred from reading the rest. If the article has nothing juicy, keep your description to a minimum to avoid making potential readers bored before they even click. Then again, if the article is that dry, it is probably not worth submitting at all. An example for this article would be to piece together the first two or three bolded points. Alternatives would be to paste just one item in the list that you found to be counter intuitive or exceptionally interesting. As I previously implied, most of the time, people won’t even look at the description before deciding if the article is good or not.

3) Use power words. Words that make your audience feel special or privileged are the most effective. Examples:

• The secret to the stock market
• How to avoid Internet scams (“avoid” and “how to”)
• The easiest cheat to winning at everything
• Why rainbows are circular
• Five reasons you should know about Kung Fu
• Top reasons to stay in school

4) Use lists. Your audience is often working people, and everybody loves to save time by reading bullet points and lists. Thus, titles that imply that type of content also fair well (as well as content with lots of lists). Any type of list with a quantifiable amount is already ahead of the game:

1. Top 10 most expensive Google Ad keywords
2. The 5 most popular brands of cookies
3. 7 things to know about traveling to Vietnam

Note very similar lists without the numbers, and see how much less “presence” they have:

1. The most lucrative Google keywords
2. The most popular brands of soda
3. Things to know about traveling to China

It’s a subtle but powerful difference.

4) Submitting without friends is suicide. If you really want to get stuff to the front page, you need at least one or two Digg friends, minimum. Well, I’d say the true minimum is 10 or 15, but the point is that without some other people to get the ball rolling, many times your submission will die with one or two Diggs. This is how the big fish get their stories on the front page over and over. If you have friends that read Digg, get them to register, and get them to befriend you. If you Digg solo, you have no chance. By the way, my user name is DiggMichi. I haven’t gotten anything Dugg on that account though.

5) The time of day matters. Don’t submit it at 2AM. Submit it during regular hours to ensure regular readers see the article. But at the same time, don’t submit during the peak morning hours (9AM PST) because you will have intense competition. From my observation, the best time to submit is around noon, PST.

6) Submit technical stuff to Reddit at the same time. Reddit has a much more technical crowd. If you find yourself submitting articles from this site that are technical in nature, submit it to Reddit first. This is because the site is far less competitive and has many dual users with Digg. A user from Reddit that likes your story might vote it up on Reddit, thus getting more users to come, as well as Digg the story. But keep in mind that Reddit is a much more technical crowd, and submitting anything else might not go as far.

How I would Digg This

As a closing example, I thought I would present a few options in how I would name this story, if I were submitting it to Digg:

1. 6 easy secrets to getting Your stories Dugg
2. 6 must-know tips to avoid getting buried
3. 6 Do’s and Don’ts of submitting to Digg
4. The 6 obvious reasons why 99% of Digg submissions are junk

I only spent a minute thinking about this: you can do better. I try to keep my blog titles from being too cliche, which is why I don’t follow my own advice all the time (but look back, and you’ll see I do it on some articles). But this is another reason why I emphasize you not simply copy-and-paste titles of articles. Authors have different audiences in mind when writing their content. For example, I cater to technically versed readers, whereas Digg is a “general” news site. In summary, think about your audience when crafting your submissions.

Happy submitting!

P.S. Thanks to anybody that’s ever submitted my articles anywhere, even the guy that pasted the URL as the title.