Series of Tubes

Adventures In TV Buying

Or (referencing their horrible radio spots) "You don't go to B&H; you go through B&H."

Meaghan and I decided to gracefully retire my 19" CRT TV in favor of the latest and greatest, and today was the day to go get it. We are the proud new owners of a 32" Samsung Series 5 (LN32A550, see specs here ), but that's not the main focus. The focus is the store we used to acquire this lovely little gem.

New Yorkers, and in fact most A/V enthusiasts on the East Coast, are familiar with B&H. Originally a camera store, B&H has expanded its footprint to include TV and other home electronics. They often have the best prices, and (at least with cameras) highly knowledgeable staff. They are also possessed of some truly bad advertising, but that's another story. I'd never been to B&H, despite working a block away from it, so today was my first experience.

You know the famous scene in Chaplin's Modern Times, with the machines and the conveyor belts? Lucy's (Lucille Ball) experiences as a pastry factory worker? How about the recent commercials where everybody in a given commerce situation moves in perfect sync, paying with a tap of their credit card? If those three memes had a menage a trois and produced a child from that union, it would look a lot like the inside of B&H. Packed from the entrance to the (thankfully) separate exit, every movement except for consulting with the sales staff is orchestrated. There are queues that lead you to other queues, and New Yorkers aren't famous for their tolerance of line-standing. There are conveyor belts passing items overhead, and elevators bringing larger items up from the basement for handoff to patrons.

It was efficient, it was quick, but I don't think it was even remotely enjoyable. Granted, I was coughing up close to $1,000 for a TV, but that's to be expected, and I don't think that was the source of the unpleasantness. I felt like a cog in a wheel. My impression was that I was there to give money to B&H, with a lovely parting gift when it was over. Maybe if I'd needed more consultation with the salesperson it would have felt different; as it was, I walked in and selected my toy, then got processed out. The all-touchpoints customer experience, shall we say, was lacking.

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Mind you, we're happy with the new set. We calibrated it as well as we could, given that I had an old DVD copy of Avia Guide to Home Theater to work with, poor room lighting, and no way to properly analyze color balance, not had I done any serious HDTV work in close to a decade. The thing that's slowing us down is adjusting for the lag between the TV and the game consoles. (Now you know the real reason we got the new TV.)

Our current passion is Rock Band, a game that requires good timing. It's tough to achieve when there's a delay somewhere amongst the audio, the video, and what the Xbox360 thinks is correct. Just a few milliseconds makes a huge difference, and the calibration tool built in to the game is leaving us flustered. Meaghan just got done playing "Paranoid" (as made famous by Black Sabbath) multiple times, adjusting the lag slightly each time, until she found a setting we could work with.

We tried the Intertubez, and there was no helpful info. Samsung wouldn't have it, either, so we didn't even try them. Plus, it's the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, and nobody's  likely to be answering stupid questions today. We could have asked Microsoft for info, but that would be a similar situation -- compounded by the usual Microsoft consumer support "it's not a problem with our product" answer. The publisher's official site wasn't any more helpful, since its calibration tool is perfect. Yes, I know everybody's got a different TV and other peripherals to account for, but some acknowledgment of the issue beyond some unhelpful forum posts would have made me feel much less incompetent.

OK, I'm done bitching. Now it's time to play. Actually, it's time to eat, and then play. Happy Memorial Day y'all. Try to spare a thought for the dead and wounded of so many wars, whose sacrifices helped shape a world where it's possible for me to bitch about trivial matters. Or, as I put it this morning: "Remember the fallen, because they can't get up." ;-)

IT Expo: At least the steak was good ...

People have referred jokingly to Florida as God's Waiting Room. I was just there, and I'm not convinced that the office visit we're waiting on is upstairs.

Miami was a humid, foggy swamp for my day's sojourn at IT Expo, but it's not the weather that had me down. It was my hotel room. It wasn't even the hotel room itself; it was the fact it was provided to me by another hotel, one that doesn't care what I think of it.

I had booked a room for one night at the Newport Beachside Hotel and Resort, a lovely little spot with parakeets and very nice ceiling fans in the lobby. Quite lovely, really; I felt as though I was in luxury's palm from the moment I arrived. Of course, it wasn't to last. They told me, upon my arrival, that "unforeseen difficulties" meant I couldn't have the room I booked, or indeed any room at the place whatsoever. The concierge was nice enough to provide a letter of introduction (and $10 car fare) to the Ramada Marco Polo, further down the road. I was already rather far from the Miami Beach Convention Center and the new hotel would be even farther, but I saw no point in arguing. After all, the guy said they had no room, and the Ramada was "very nice, just like this place" in his words.

Note to travelers: "very nice" means in hotel-speak just what it means in dating, dining, or any other human endeavor where you don't know what you're getting ahead of time. It means "I am lying to you; the (person, place, thing) sucks, but once you're gone it's no longer my problem."

The Ramada was to  Miami Beach resort hotels what boy bands are to modern music. While it qualified as such a place—it was in Miami Beach, within a reasonable distance of the ocean, and had rooms to stay in—it felt more like a retirement home. I always thought the elderly who lived in Miami owned homes there, but it seems I've been wrong all these years; they hang out in crappy hotels and play bridge. Yes, there was a bridge tournament being played in the basement when I arrived. The elevators had old-person smell.

(Please note that I have nothing against the elderly, and in fact I managed a few nice conversations while I was confined to this little corner of purgatory. It's just creepy when I go on a business trip and see, in great profusion, what time and gravity have in store for me.)

The hallways smelled less like old people, but only because they smelled more like an old dog that had been left outside in the rain. The room was clean, technically, but it felt old, used, second-hand. Kind of like me, actually. The air conditioner was largely non-functional (in Florida, yet) and thrummed like a farm tractor on idle. There was not enough light. There wasn't even a desk. The wireless Internet barely had enough signal to get me connected—and I couldn't without calling tech support. That was complicated by the fact that my phone couldn't call outside the building until I had it fixed. No room service. A view of the pool. Plumbing fixtures that were only minimally attached.

Now, everybody's had bad hotel experiences, myself included, so this wasn't actually the low point of my life or anything. And I know that not all accommodations are created equal (Ramada Inns being somewhat lower down in the rankings), so I can't say I resented what they provided me per se; if I'd booked the Ramada, I'd have expected less than the best. But I booked the Newport, and they smiled and apologized and sent me to the ass end of hotelry. I will not be angry with Ramada; I will save my ire for the Newport, because their backup option absolutely sucked and I have no way to set things right except by writing them this poison pen blog post.

That said, the food at the Ramada was surprisingly good, though I admit I only had one meal there. The menu was fairly limited, and the restaurant was more like a tremendous Elk Lodge with tables, but I had a perfectly-cooked 12-oz. sirloin strip, juicy, tender, lightly seasoned with cumin (possibly chili powder with an excess of cumin) and very well trimmed. It was better than some I've had at honest-to-goodness steak houses. The vegetable (broccoli, since they'd run out of mixed veg) was steamed perfectly and very tasty. That dinner surprised me so much that I regretted not being able to get my free breakfast the next morning. Alas.

IT Expo, or what I saw of it
My reason for being in Florida was to moderate a panel discussion at the aforementioned conference. I can't say for sure why I was chosen, since my topic—"Leveraging VoIP in the Contact Center"—is not one with which I have a lot of experience. Fortunately, I didn't have to have much beyond my normal level of business technology competence, as my panel was a gifted bunch. We had never laid eyes on one another until 10 minutes before the session (which was at 8 a.m., incidentally, further proof that the coordinators didn't know who they were dealing with), but the discussion went off smoothly. Thanks to panelists Brian Spraetz of NICE Systems, Rachel Wentink of Interactive Intelligence, and especially to Srinivas Mantripragada of RedShift Networks, whose slide deck got things off on the right foot and also ate up a good 15 minutes.

The big question seemed to be data security. While voice conversations have never been truly secure, what with the old-school Phone Phreaks and anybody who can get hold of a technician's butt set, they're even worse now that voice is just another kind of data. In the end, the consensus seemed to be that the war between hackers and security vendors will remain more or less at parity, and the most important places to tighten up gaps are in business processes and social exploits. Most security breaches are inside jobs, or are perpetrated by people who know how to take advantage of another person's natural inclination to be helpful.

I think I'm done venting for the moment, and I thank you for humoring me. My next post will probably back to the usual CRM goodness; I'm trying to work out a message on that topic that fits my outlook and isn't just repeating what other, smarter people have said before me, and you fine folks will be the first witnesses. My previous post was the start of that; now that this gripe-fest is out of the way, perhaps I can get back on track.

It's not my fault -- blame Warner Bros.

It's starting to seem like I spend all my time apologizing to you for not posting more often. This time, it had more to do with persistent lack of home Internet service than anything else. It was out for about 4.5 days recently, and I wasn't about to break into my office building over the New Year respite in order to add content. I like you folks, but c'mon.

It's because of my ongoing connectivity woes (and the fact I'm currently able to get online) that I dedicate this post to Time Warner Cable of New York or, as I think of them, the Goniffs. For those of you not in the know, goniff is Yiddish for thief. I'd prefer shyster (one who deals unethically or unscrupulously), but that term is so associated with lawyers that I might confuse people.

I've had three, possibly four, service appointments with Time Warner since signing up for RoadRunner and cable TV, and all of them have been Internet-related. This doesn't even count the tech-support calls that were handled by phone. Each time I was told a different story about what wasn't working. First, the cable was too long and the signal was degrading over the extra distance. Then it was a splitter that was installed for no reason outside the apartment -- with nothing connected to it, so I can't even say somebody was stealing my cable. Next, my modem was bad.

This last time, I got two different stories on the same call. When I'd had enough of no Internet, I called and explained my situation. I was told, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that my router was conflicting with RoadRunner, causing some sort of mystical IP loop that left me unable to connect. I was worn down at this point, and agreed to let them bring me their own hardware which I would rent the same way I do the cable box. That was before they got to the apartment. This time, they told me (actually, they told Meaghan's sister Emily, who arrived today from North Carolina and was immediately put to work waiting for the repair truck) that I had a weak signal and I'd have to move my book cases before they could fix it.

Weak signal. AFTER cutting out 10m of extra cable. AFTER removing a pointless splitter. AFTER telling me their hardware and whatnot wasn't compatible with my Linksys router -- probably the most popular brand in the United States if not the world. AFTER walking into the apartment and discovering that the connection was, in fact, working. (It came back to life shortly after I called for service. Convenient, no?)

Can you feel the waves of heat and hate radiating off my head right now? I'm convinced Time Warner Cable trains its technicians and CSRs as completely as Friendly's restaurants train their wait staff, which is to say not at all. Except perhaps they get a course in toying with customers. Oh, they're good at that. It feels like RoadRunner is operated by Wile E. Coyote, and I'm sick of them. They get one more chance, and then it's off to DSL land. I'm not even going to play my "I'm a CRM journalist, appease me or I will crucify you in print" trump card. I will just walk away. And then crucify them in print.

Reactions from SAP, and more

Earlier this week I attended the 2007 SAP Influencers Summit, since somebody apparently confused me with a Mover and Shaker from the Coffee Generation. That's what I wished I was; the conference was packed to the eyeballs with content, so much so that I think I should have had a partner or a methamphetamine IV. Either that, or the press and analysts portion should have been two days long instead of one.

I'm partly at fault for this, no doubt. I registered late, and decided it would be easiest if I worked a full day and then took a train from New York to Boston. Long story short, I didn't get into my room until about 11 pm, and the festivities started at 7 am the next morning. Ouch. No rest for the wicked, either; all the executive Q&A sessions were held in the press room, so there was no way to get away from the constant onslaught of information, whether to write it up or to tune out and maybe get a nap. No such luck this time; my noodle was pretty well baked by the end opf the day, and then I had a train to catch. It was delayed with signal problems, so I didn't get back to my own bed until 1 am Wednesday. Happy Birthday to Me. *zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

The conference itself, though overloaded, was very informative. SAP has got a working SOA platform (NetWeaver) upon which all of its new CRM products hang. I stress working because most other vendors seem to be hedging when it comes to going full-bore SOA. Either the middleware is still in development, or the package is "Web services enabled," which is like having an HD-ready TV but no tuner; nobody has committed to saying, "we're SOA now." SAP is there, and doing it, and calling it enterprise services instead of Web. There's a significant difference, to my way of thinking: Web services are disconnected things that plug into a framework via a browser; enterprise services build and serve your enterprise. Terminology is power.

Side note: SOA is a powerful way to build infrastructure and keep the things that work. I love the idea. I even understand it a little. But it's going to be a good while before even the best SOAs are widespread enough to cause change. And they will probably never be ubiquitous. I had a great chat with Bob Stutz, SAP's senior VP of the Product and Technology group, about this. Bob's very easy to talk to, accessible, and he knows his stuff. He's also spent enough time in the IT trenches to know that not everybody can do SOA, and that SOA doesn't mean prepackaged integrations and suites have no place.

CRM 2007 was on display and, though I wasn't able to catch any of the demos, I must say it looks very good. The SAP GUI is gone, replaced with a clean (even sparse) and manageable look. Everything is configurable to the user's preferences, subject to what the organization is willing to allow. They used an old concept that I thought had been discredited--CRM is innovation layered on top of ERP--but it makes sense in the SOA concept. Ironically, SAP is trying to get rid of three-letter acronyms as a way of describing a technology, but rather use it to describe a function within the overall enterprise.

Nobody would talk specifics about Business Objects, which ain't surprising. SAP says the new acquisition will bring in some new capabilities in user-centric, unstructured and ad-hoc applications, whatever that means. Looks like we'll have to wait for the movie.

Modern identity

Reading through Metafilter while playing around on Facebook and shopping at various e-commerce sites put me in mind of a fundamental problem with the evolution of CRM. It's currently impossible to have a complete view of the customer, or even to know who you're having that fabled two-way conversation with.

We aren't one person online, but a multitude of profiles. It's possible to link these fragmented identities, but the result isn't complete, consistent, or easy to maintain. Basically, businesses are faced with a world full of unmedicated sufferers of multiple personality disorder. Maybe we could start a public awareness campaign with Sally Field as spokesperson, and call it Sybil 2.0?

(Note: this is a reference to Ms. Field's famous role, not a suggestion that she's any more mentally damaged than the typical person—a dubious distinction, but one that needs to be made. We like her; we really, really like her.)

Some people and companies (IBM is a good example of the latter) have taken inspiration from Second Life and are playing with the idea of persistent avatars. IBM is actually working with Linden Lab (SL's developer) to make the idea more than a novelty, and this article touches on the concept as well. Rather than a profile on every site, and with every business, we craft an online representation of self and use it everywhere. As long as there are boundaries (and at the moment Facebook is having some boundary issues—boo!), and suitable controls, this is an ideal solution.

I know none of this is particularly new. But that's part of the problem, isn't it? An idea with great merit is creeping forward when it should be supercruising. We've barely got XYZ 2.0 in a workable form, and already somebody's slapping a 3.0 tag on this. Is it really such a big deal for some propeller-head to create a site/service (opt-in only, of course) that takes our disparate identities and applies some code magic to make them work as one? If I could do it, I'd have done it already and be blogging about how nice it is to be filthy rich.

Speaking of rich, I took Meaghan and her sister Emily to Artisanal last night for dinner. Actually, it worked out more like they took me, but semantics can get boring. Cheese makes me happier than Wallace, and the other food didn't suck either. Here's hoping my avatar can maintain its shape better than I can.

ca.gov pr0n -- who are they kidding?

I just got this story about the GSA taking California's entire ca.gov Web domain offline because part of one county's site (Marin County Transportation Authority) had been hijacked and redirected to a porn site. A handful of other sites had been compromised as well with drug and porn links—I call that serving the community, but then again I want to write an updated-for-today Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as soon as I can find somebody to come along and be my lawyer.

Apparently, the Marin Transportation Authority had received warnings that something was amiss as early as September, but they ignored the warnings because they looked like phishing attempts. Does anybody else see the irony?

In all seriousness, I understand and support the GSA's decision to take down the domain so that the damage could be contained and neutralized. But this quote concerning said action tweaked my puzzler:

"We apologize for any inconvenience to the citizens of California. ... The potential exposure of pornographic material to the citizens -- and tens of thousands of children -- in California was a primary motivator for GSA to request immediate corrective action," the agency said in a statement.

My emphasis is in bold. Oh yeah, you just know that the children of California are spending their free time on a govenment-operated Web site devoted to transportation. All those little future commuters are doing their civic duty, getting well informed of road conditions and the sort of issues facing truck drivers. 'Coz that's what kids do. "Mommy, do ladies drive 18-wheelers? And do they do things like that to goats when they do? I wanna be just like her!"

This "Think of the children!" crap has got to stop. It's enough to say the site is compromised and must go offline to be repaired. Suggesting that kids are at imminent risk of corruption from a site they will never ever visit is absurd. Yeah, and all that reading they do about Haight-Ashbury is going to make them gay communist hippies.

Screw you, Roaming Gnome

I like Travelocity for booking my travel plans, whether for business or for personal reasons. Their system works well, and has never caused me any problems. I also happen to really dig their Roaming Gnome mascot, despite the title of this post. He's cute, funny, short, and chubby—not unlike some ale-happy bloggers I could name.

Why the inflammatory title? Because I have had it up to here (picture a suitably high place on my 5'3" corpus as the indicated point) with their brainless "targeted" emails. They're giving perfectly good technology a bad rep, and I wouldn't be surprised if it cost them some business.

Here's the scenario: I travel a few times a year for business, and maybe once or twice for vacation or family obligations. So I log into Travelocity.com to book a flight, and usually nothing else (my hotel rooms are generally seen to by the vendor whose event I'm attending, and there's no need to rent a car.) I make it a point to not fiddle around with the parts of the reservation system I don't wish to take advantage of, buy my ticket, and go along my merry way. Sometimes there are interstitials or pop-ups suggesting hotels, rentals, or entertainment at my destination, but I don't mind these; it makes sense for a company to make offers like that.

So I get my confirmation email. And my ticket information. And reminders about my upcoming trip. A little bit much, but not too abusive of my patience. No, what grinds my gears (thanks, Peter Griffin) is the torrent of Special Flight Deals!!! and Last-Minute Offers!!! and Book This Hotel Or You're Lame!!! emails flooding my inbox, before, during, and after the trip. I have already indicated that I do not want your crap. Leave me alone.

On top of these, the Travelocity CRM system assumes that, because I fly a few times a year, I must be a real jet-setter who will pick up and go at the slightest provocation—that provocation being another email or three from bloody Travelocity, natch. Does anybody really do that? And if they do, are they using Travelocity? I'm thinking no.

It's not like I forgot to opt out of these messages, either—I'm pretty stingy with my eyeball-time, and offers I know I'll never take advantage of don't get the green light from me. It saves money, time, and precious electrons. So clearly there's something horribly wrong with Travelocity's terms of service, for assuming that grumpy dudes like me would look on these cross-sell and upsell opportunities with anything but loathing.

But at least I've figured out why I like the Roaming Gnome, in addition to the reasons stated above. The tortures inflicted on the little schlimazel are cathartic, and prevent me from seeking to visit the same upon customer service reps and the people who compose the emails. Good job, little guy.

Spam and Eggs

Originally, I was thinking of summing up my recent trip to Chicago for the Sage Summit (referenced in my last post). I'm not going to do that, except to say that Sage, like the Yankees, is in for a "rebuilding year," and they're being very open about the need to fix what's not working and to continue to have real conversations with partners and customers. Kudos for that—I'm a sucker for honesty. Also, there weren't a whole lot of announcements, so I have no material.

One other thing: Chris Gardner (the guy who wrote The Pursuit of Happyness, and was Sunday's guest address) is a highly engaging speaker, seems like a great guy with lots of wry humor, and had it even harder than it looked in the Will Smith movie. For starters, his son wasn't Jaden Smith's age at the time, but a toddler. Holy shit. There's more, but you should read the book instead of my blog. Wait. You should read the book after you read my blog.

What caught me as the kernel for today's topic was an email from Jason Brown, a business development executive from a company called Optinlists. I'll quote:

Hi Marshall !

I understand that you are the person responsible for prospecting initiatives and lead generation’s program? Optinlists provides online marketing solutions, which can aid you and your customers in their marketing initiatives. To discuss Mailing List Subscription service for the year 2007 -which can get you targeted mailing lists every quarter or every month.

I had a chance to look your website and I thought there might be a need for us to have a quick chat regarding your marketing initiatives and lead generation processes.

...

Please test our email append service by sending 100 sample records with contact name, company name, mailing address and telephone number. We will append missing email and or any other missing data at no cost. Test results will be sent within 48 hours with a match rate analysis report.

OK, it's clear that Jason (if there is such a person) has no idea who I am, is lying about having ever seen my Web site—actually, my employer's site, as this was sent to my destinationCRM address—and is tempting me with a baldfaced request to give him more poorly-qualified leads so he can do this to 100 more people. And these jokers want to have a chat with *me* about *my* lead generation and marketing?

Spam exists. Spam will always exist. But I'm feeling peevish. One of my new missions in life is to serve as an agent of corporate Darwinism. By sending crap like this to a business and social media journo, Jason and his company have demonstrated their unfitness to survive in business. So I will collect and publicize any such things that come my way in the hopes that I can hasten the corporate deaths of the senders.

Also, Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner service sucks. Its unreliability has made it nearly impossible to work from home, and I'm paying a lot of money for an Internet connection that doesn't work. I'll be looking to resolve this dispute, but I've got to say it really grinds my gears how Verizon and TWC slam each other in their ad campaigns when neither of them can get the job done. I'm tempted to go with dialup at this point.