Josh and Chris have released the first in my series of interviews from BarCampLA over at the Web 2.0 Show podcast. First is Ian Rogers with Yahoo Music.
Monthly Archive for March, 2006
Check out this great podcast episode Joe just put out with Jackie Huba and Pete Blackshaw. There are some great points on where the smart marketing is headed.
PS, snakes on a plane, mf.
37Signals wrote and sold a pdf book Getting Real containing practical advice on building web apps a couple weeks ago. I sent my pdf to my local FedExKinkos to get a proper hard copy.
A great user experience is at the core of Apple’s products. Apple controls the Mac OS and the computer hardware. Apple controls the iPod, the iTunes software, and the iTunes Music Store. For the most part (although you are locked in to the platform, DRM, etc), the user experience is great because Apple controls all aspects. Lets take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum: Sirius Satellite Radio.
First, you have Sirius Radio, the service provider of the satellite service. There is also Sirius branded hardware. The stand-alone units are also known as “plug and play,” to imply that setup is easy. You just plug it in and it works. Sirius’s branding is so ubiquitous that it has caused confusion for consumers. Some Sirius tuners available from Radio Shack may have no branding other than Sirius. So, what brand is it? Sometimes it is Sirius, other times, it is another manufacturer. A customer may know that these other stereos “work with Sirius,” so maybe it is one of them? Some car stereos are “Sirius Ready,” meaning that have the ability to control a special Sirius tuner, but the tuner must be purchased separately. This is not an easy concept for some customers to understand.
Next, you have the various manufactures of the hardware. Sometimes, you have two or three manufacturers of hardware to make one complete system work. “Sirius Ready” car stereos are available from Alpine, Kenwood, JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Clarion, Sanyo and Panasonic. Each manufacture requires its own proprietary tuner unit. To add to the confusion, within a single brand, there are sometimes specific tuners that do not work with specific car stereo models (older stereos will not work with the new tuners). When Sirius launched, each manufacturer was branding, manufacturing, and distributing its own Sirius tuner. Now, Sirius had made Directed Electronics the only manufacturer of these tuners. So, now we have no fewer than three separate entities involved that the customer may need to contact:
-Sirius, the service provider
-the manufacturer of the stereo
-the manufacturer of the Sirius tuner (Directed)
-In some cases, you can replace the supplied Sirius antenna with a Terk Sirius antenna.
When a problem occurs, whom should the customer contact? Could the customer be passed between each different party more than one time? Is there any easy way figure out where the problem exists without taking everything to a dealer or sending everything to its respective manufacturer’s service center?
Sirius support reps do not even understand the difference between the plug-and-play and a Sirius Ready car stereo. When customers call Sirius to activate their accounts, they ask for the ESN or SID (electronic serial number or Sirius ID number, lets pick a name standard) without asking if the customer has a Sirius Ready car stereo or a plug-and-play. In some cases, the customer has a Sirius Ready car stereo without the Sirius tuner, and does not understand the Sirius Ready concept.
XM Satellite Radio seems to push their plug-and-play radios more than their XM Ready radios, which I could only find a couple of on the XM website. Did they understand that the user experience is better if you don’t have to explain what “XM Ready” means? Maybe. And I say this because they have an XM tuner called the XM Direct that is compatible with most Sirius Ready car stereos. They are using Sirius’s “integrated” solution against Sirius, for yet another layer of customer confusion, thanks to XM.
The plug-and-play units can usually be used in a home or in a car. There are usually special kits that allow it to be used in each one. One expects that these accessories would be available for years to come. This is not the case. Some of these plug-and-play units are made so inexpensively that they are not repairable; some have no replacement parts. So, when a defect is discovered when it is under the warranty, it is replaced. When it is outside of the warranty, the customer is S.O.L. The least the customer could do is buy a new tuner or a new kit to work with their existing piece. But are these available over a year later? Usually not. By law, parts need to be available for a unit for seven years, but apparently this means only if spare parts are made available, and apparently this does not apply to accessories required to operate the unit. I guess Sirius (or one of their radio manufacturing partners) just wants you to buy a new one. What a great user experience.
This last point does not have to do with control of the hardware/service combination, but just another pain point that a customer may have as a result of the manufacturer not putting the user experience first.
Sirius, fix your problems, seriously. There is competition from every angle: iPod and iTMS, subscription services like Yahoo Music, Napster, Rhapsody, and free music licensed under CC featured in podcasts. These all use an open standard that will never be discontinued: audio output to audio input connection. They do not rely on satellite reception. They all allow for a wider choice of music.
Update 8/2/206:
Apparently this example has been written about in a book that compares XM’s and Sirius’s strategies. More here.
As reported by BoingBoing, Tom Evslin’s blog Jason Kottke’s blog, and by John himself, Penguin Group, who publishes John Battelle’s book, The Search, a book about the rise of Google, is suing Google over the Google BookSearch program, and doing it against John’s will. The irony!
This makes me wonder; are any book publishers positioning themselves as Google BookSearch-friendly to prospective authors who agree with the program? I would have thought Wiley would be down with this since they publish a lot of new media-savvy books, but they are on the list of the publishers suing Google, part of the Authors Guild. Of course, there are the O’Rilley books on Google Book Search. But what about books on topics other than programming books?
I think Cory Doctorow may have selected a publisher for his books, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC as a publisher that would allow the authors to have the freedom to do what they want with their books, since Cory has released several books under Creative Commons.
So day two of BarCampLA was when things really got interesting. My day started with Chris Holland’s presentation on microformats and sip protocol. Then the Ask a Ninja crew talked about how to produce, host, market, and then eventually sell your video podcast, all for free. Then, Travis Kalanick great presentation on his company RedSwoosh. It is like BitTorrent but for hosting files for a web page. I interviewed Travis for the Web 2.0 Show podcast.
Then, I listened to Heathervencet and Mistress Chi Chi (aka Carmen De Jesus), Ben Christen, and Jon Bishkie talk about Getting Things Done. It is a pretty simple yet effective concept. As that was going on, I recorded Chris Messina taking about whats new with Flock.
I interviewed Debi Jones, Jason Roberts (nothing here yet, but when the service launches, it will be here), Lucas Gonze, and Travis Kalanick. I think we will release one interview each day, and possibly some of the presentations on the Web 2.0 Show podcast. Ian Roger’s presentation was very good, and the sound came out pretty decently.
It was nice to connect with people who were as enthusiastic about new media as I am. Very mentally stimulating.
I really wish I would have been able to attend all of the talks, but there were three going on at any given time. Next time, I’d like to have three recording systems going on at the same time, and assign someone to record and place a wireless mic on the presenters.
I did a couple interviews tonight for the Web 2.0 Show Podcast at BarCampLosAngeles tonight.
The first one was with Isaac Garcia with Centraldesktop.com, a really cool team collaboration service. If you think the 37 Signals “less is more” mantra is over rated, check out Isaac’s app. It has a ton of cool features.
Jon Bischke with LearningOutLoud answered some questions about learning through audio books. He says with the ubiquity of iPods and mobile phones, spoken word audio will go main stream.
Lastly, I spoke with Ian Rogers who is part of the Yahoo Music team. Yahoo Music is the only company moving toward an open standard that will eventually lead to the end of frustrations consumers have in being locked into specific platform. They know customers hate DRM, and are making moves to end it, and improve the user experience miles beyond its competitors.
I also met fellow Long Beach resident Patrick Neeman who is working on a super secret stealth project.
I saw some demos of Flock, Goowy, Preezo, CentralDesktop, and Yahoo Go TV, all of which blew me away. I think Goowy is the company that Fox Interactive purchased the other day. If Goowy was integrated with MySpace along with their new mobile service, we are going to see some major disruption in the social space that will cement MySpace there for some time to come.
BarCampLA need more hackers and coders. So if you are one, and are considering coming, I think you will have fun.
Looking forward to day 2 of BarCampLA.
In association with Josh Owens and Chris Saylor with The Web 2.0 Show podcast, I’ll be approaching/allowing people to approach me to be interviewed for an upcoming Web 2.0 Show episode on BarCampLosAngeles. So if you are going to be there and want to be on the show, hit me up.
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