Henry Blodget Is A Whiner: The IPhone Is A Dream To Use

I just read Henry Blodget's first impressions of the iPhone, after he switched to it from his Blackberry. While it's good to hear that he's overall happy with the phone, I pretty much disagree on everything he thought was faulty with the phone. Perhaps I'm not as sensitive as he because I'm not cybernetically linked to my mobile device 24/7/365. Here's a quick run-down of my opinions based on his:

• Battery life. It's fine. Come on, it'll last you a day, and you plug it up at night. Turn off push may help. If you run out after 5 hours maybe you should spend a portion of those 5 hours doing something other than fiddling with a phone.
• Speed. It's fine. It's fast enough. Really, do you need blazing quad proc speed to check your twitter status updates?
• Setting up email. I got all 3 accounts (including Exchange) on my first try.
• Typing. Indeed it's great. I was worried about my ramp-up and speed but both are awesome. The autocorrect is about 90% accurate for me.
• Email. No syncing? What? When I delete a mail from my iPhone it's gone from my Inbox. Not sure what problem he is having.
• Orientation. A quick turn of the wrist fixes this when it happens. If it happens.
• Video. Awesome indeed.
• Popups. Yeah these can be annoying. I've been conditioned to dismiss them quickly. But I agree on this one.

I predict Henry will get used to some of these minor problems after a week or two. After installing and playing with some great apps, he'll wonder why he didn't switch earlier.

Advertising Experiment: Results

OK, so I more or less did the (work)-week advertising experiment. What did I learn?

• I perceive a lot of ads. Radio and TV are the main sources. Print is moderate. Some billboards. Backs of cars were a surprising blip (license plate frames, bumper stickers). I rarely perceive ads on the web.
• I see or hear a lot of the same ads over and over. Same time of day, same medium (drive into work, watch the evening news).
• Most of the ads were for things I don't buy or use. So it was easy to live by the "don't buy or use it if you see it advertised" rule. I took some exceptions near the end here, though: NBC advertised 30 rock and I was not about to go sit in another room while it was on.
• Once you pay attention to ads, you realize how many you are exposed to. You also realize how many you are likely to perceive subconsciously. It's one thing to be made aware of a product or service. It's another to be inundated by relentless messaging.

Could I take this experiment forward for longer than a week? No way. I would eventually be unable to buy or use more and more things I want or need to buy or use. The critical mass started to build near the end of my week (see 30 rock) so I'm glad I stopped when I did.

Any changes moving forward? I'm going to mute the TV more often and stop looking at billboards, that's for sure.

An Advertising Experiment

I'm going to try an experiment with advertising over the next week.

• I'm going to record every advertisement that I consciously perceive.
• I'm not going to purchase any product or service advertised in the list above.

Now, the caveats:

• I'm not going to stop purchasing or using products and services I'm already using. For example, if I see a Netflix ad, I won't cancel my Netflix subscription.
• I'm not going to count advertisements that I see at the place of business. A Shell station advertising Shell gas via its signage does not count.
• I'm going to focus on perceived advertisements. Yes, I realize that the subconscious plays a part, but I'm not going to count those ads. This will be especially true in the Internet ad space.
  

Why am I doing this? Two reasons: I want to see how many advertisements I perceive over the course of a week, and I want to see how it changes my habits, if at all. I'll post updates as I go.

Conversion Of An Email Junkie

I've always been a fan of mail. I get excited when the postperson arrives and drops off letters at my house. It's a surprise of sorts: what will I get today? Sure, some of it is junk, some of it I was expecting (like bills), but some is a true unexpected delivery of news, a letter, a card, or the like.

For a long time, I've felt the same way about email. I remember when I first got an email address (through a BBS, before the web), and found it way cool that my friends and I could leave messages for each other without picking up the phone or writing a letter. I would share my email address out, which would result in more people sending me email. More letters appeared in the virtual mailbox for me to open, as a result.

As I moved from BBSes to ISP-provided email to web-based email, my virtual mailbox became much more than a way to exchange messages with friends. E-retailers used it to help me track the status of my order. Newsletters sent me digests of information. And, yes, junk mail started pouring in from faceless people I'd never met.

For a while, I put up with it, as the ratio of letters-from-friends to all of this other stuff remained high. But slowly it waned. The spam piled up, the automatically-generated news and alerts piled up, and my email address became much less personal. The email I received was broadcast at people like me, but not actually penned to me.

Like many others I started trying out social tools like Facebook and Twitter. Slowly, I found myself spending more and more time reading up on what people were doing via these tools, as well as posting and sharing what I was up to. Daily status, pictures, interesting stuff on the web, news...these are all things I used to use email for. But now, here's this web site or app that has all of the people I would email on it anyway, where I can share this stuff. And, I get the side benefit of others being able to look over my shoulders and comment on what I'm doing, which email doesn't easily allow for.

With the arrival of our little one, there was a lot of electronic communication happening last week. The sharing of pictures, status, and congrats was done either over the phone (family, some friends) or on Facebook (family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances) or Twitter (friends, coworkers). Reflecting on that event and the amount of stuff that was communicated about it, email was used very little. I rarely checked my email address during the past week. I was instead primarily using Facebook and Twitter, and occasionally our parents blog.

Truth be told, we did send two emails: one from my wife's personal email account to friends & fam, and one from my work email to coworkers. But there was a fair bit of overlap between these two emails' recipients and the Facebook/Twitter crowd above. And the reason we sent those emails is because not everyone is on Facebook or Twitter. At least, not yet.

So, I think I'm done getting my kicks from email. Sure, I'll still have email addresses to communicate with those not on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever the next social app comes around may be. But as long as my email address resembles my post box (mostly junk, occasional news, once-in-a-blue-moon letter), it's just not doing it for me.

A New Parents Blog

In case you haven't heard, we're going to be parents soon! I've heard from many that they don't necessarily like to read about changing diapers among non-parenting posts, so we decided to start a parents blog to capture our adventures on that front: The Adventures of Baby P. I'll keep this blog baby- and kid-free as a result.

+1 To Procter & Gamble For Replacing My Broken Razor

About a week ago my Gillette razor broke while I was using it: a little piece holding the razor blade to the razor gave way, rendering the razor useless. I emailed this info to Gillette via their web site contact form. 2 days later, I get a response from them, apologizing and asking me to wait to get something in the mail. Yesterday, I open a package from Procter & Gamble that contained a new razor. Thanks, P&G!

Talk about great customer service: quick reply on the complaint, quick resolution of complaint. I'm a continued customer, and I'm blogging about my positive experience which propagates P&G's investment in resolving said complaint.

Take note, other companies. If only 1/2 of you were this responsive to your customers' needs.