Hot Collectible Toys and Scalping
I’m tired of it and I really don’t much tolerate it anymore. I’m a memorabilia collector, specifically film franchises and video games. Yet, what I find continually frustrating is the hoarders and scalpers. You know, you go to the store looking for something to be there, but there’s nothing there. But, then you find that collectible on eBay or Amazon in droves marked up to at least twice the price. I’m sick of this. Let’s explore.
Collectibles
Star Wars The Force Awakens is right around the corner (December 18th) and the toys and other collectibles are now hitting the store shelves. Yet, you’ll be lucky to find much of it due to hoarders / scalpers. In the 70s, scalping was limited to concert tickets. Since Kenner introduce Star Wars toys, these same folks have now jumped from ticket scalping to collectible scalping. A practice of which I do not approve. I realize what it is. People want to make a few bucks on something. I get it. But, it’s not exactly fair to those of us who actually want to find the item in the store and buy it at retail price. We don’t want to have to resort to shopping on eBay from some would-be scalper at hugely inflated prices.
I really dislike heading over to eBay and finding page after page after page of that item marked up by 50% or more. It would be great if stores could do something about this. I’m glad to see that at least one store is doing something about this. Enter Toys R Us. While it may not be the perfect answer, it’s at least a step in the right direction.
Skylanders Superchargers
Many stores are now releasing exclusives for the Skylanders franchise. For example, Toys R Us tends to get Legendary exclusives. The Legendary Skylanders are typically painted navy blue and gold. Target gets the Nitro series. This series also looks like the Legendary series, dark blue and gold. Sometimes the stores get individual characters, sometimes they get combo packs and sometimes they get play sets. For example some Supercharger exclusives this year include:
- Target => Nitro Stealth Stinger Vehicle
- Best Buy => Steel Plated Smash Hit
- Toys R Us
- Legendary Hurricane Jet-Vac
- Legendary Sky Racing Pack (includes Legendary Astroblast, Legendary Sun Runner and Sky Trophy)
I don’t think Walmart has ordered any Superchargers exclusives yet, but I could be wrong. Though, it is guaranteed there will be more store exclusives in the coming months.
Star Wars The Force Awakens
Since Disney has now taken this franchise and plans on reviving it with at least three new films over the next several years, we will see all sorts of Star Wars merchandise and toys hitting the store shelves, including exclusives at the Disney store. Yes, the Disney store has its own line of exclusives. Specifically, a line of die cast 6.5 inch figures labeled Elite Series (see Phasma above).
Again, you’ll be lucky to find these Elite Series at the Disney store or online. In general, heading into any of these retailers, you’re not likely to easily find these exclusives. Why?
Scalpers and Collectibles
The primary problem is that stores order far too little stock for the number of people who want to buy them. Secondarily, scalpers make off with at least half, if not 3/4 of the limited stock fully intending to place the items onto eBay or Amazon at well inflated prices. Likely only 25-50% of the stock (perhaps even less) actually makes it into actual collector’s hands at retail price. The rest of that stock makes its way onto eBay, Amazon, Craigslist or into comic book shops on consignment at sometimes double the retail price.
Scalping isn’t the intent of these collectibles. The intent is to get the collectibles into the hands of collectors who will actually appreciate the toys and who want to display them, open them and enjoy them. Not into the hands of scalpers who don’t care about the item and whose only motive is to make some quick cash from selling the item.
Let’s understand, though, speculating that a toy will make you any money is about as risky as taking your money to Vegas and playing the slots. You might get something, you might not. You might end up keeping those toys as worthless. What may seem scarce today may end up being the peg warmer tomorrow after the mass shipments arrive. Of course, if you return the item to the retailer before the return period expires, you can get your money back from the store. But, that holds stock back from those who were looking for it. As a scalper, you should be careful about returns. Excessive returns could flag your credit card.
Countering the Scalpers
Because stores can’t know purchasing intent of any individual, they must sell the item to the person with the cash. So, there’s really no way to know if a person is a scalper or if they are a legitimate collector. However, there are other ways to counter this problem and Toys R Us has found the perfect way to do it… by opening an eBay store.
For example, Toys R Us’s Legendary Sky Racing Pack (mentioned above) is available exclusively on eBay from Toys R Us at retail price ($35.99). In among the listings for this pack, you’ll see a lot of eBayers with their scalped packs marked at $50, $60 and even $70 plus shipping. You may or may not find this pack in the Toys R Us stores and it is definitely not on their web store. It seems to be exclusively available in the eBay store. For collectors, this is the perfect counter to would-be scalpers. As long as Toys R Us continues to operate an eBay store putting ‘hot toys’ up at retail prices, this will undermine the excessive pricing of those attempting to scalp on eBay. This means those other sellers may have to pull their listing down and will hopefully discourage future scalping attempts.
I wholeheartedly applaud Toys R Us taking this action. It’s not only ingenious selling, it’s the perfect way to stop this problem. I wish even more stores would do this to thwart retail scalping at its source. By not placing that stock onto their web site and instead placing these ‘hot items’ into their eBay store at retail prices, this means is that would-be scalpers have to either drop their prices to match Toys R Us, thus not making any money, or they must eat the toy purchase (or otherwise return it to the store to get their money back).
Excessive Returns
If I were Toys R Us, and when these returns start rolling in, I’d place the people who are returning these ‘hot’ items on a watch list. If they exhibit this same behavior of returning ‘hot collectible toys’, especially in larger quantities, I’d place those people onto a do not sell list across the entire chain. Deny their credit card purchase for future sales of hot collectibles. It’s very easy to tag what’s a hot collectible, so it’s also easy to identify those trying to scalp through returns and then deny sales of future items to these individuals. For those of us collectors who never return our items, this whole issue would never affect us. It would only affect scalpers intent on scalping and returning when ‘things don’t work out’.
Countering unnecessary high prices
Of course, Toys R Us could run out of stock at some point and force people to contemplate a higher priced alternative. As long as Toys R Us keeps the item in stock, those scalper listings won’t ever sell.
I would love to see the Disney Store, Target, Walmart, Gamestop and other retailers exacting this same selling strategy for their exclusive or hot selling items. Pull the items out of the store and put the stock on eBay and Amazon at retail pricing. Make sure you have well enough stock on hand to keep this store stocked continually. Would-be scalpers would need to think twice about using these outlets to perform their scalping efforts going forward. To Toys R Us, I say, “Bravo”… in attempting to counter this problem at its source. You should expand this concept and do this in more places where scalpers sell. I’d personally like to see the toy and collector scalper market shut down entirely for first run retail collectibles.
When do ‘collectibles’ become actual Collectibles?
Of course, once the stores have discontinued selling the item, the item is no longer available and the items can no longer be returned to the retailer (past the return period), this fully opens up the collectible sales market. However, until first run retail stock is discontinued and depleted and the item is no longer carried by the retailer, I don’t considered it a collectible in the sense that it should command a higher than retail price tag. Though, mistakes and variants have their place as unique, these can command whatever price someone is willing to pay. But, for non-special retail items, it is not a collectible as long as it is carried in the store.
As a collector, I don’t believe any item deserves to be opened up to the collector’s market until the item reaches 10 years in age past first run. But, I do understand that people want to rush their collectible to market to “sell it now”. I just don’t believe that any item should command the true collector price tag until after it reaches the 10 year mark. Though, some collectors rush to complete their collections at all costs. It doesn’t help that some buyers are willing to shell out nearly any amount of cash for something that could be had at a retail store for retail prices. These buyers are just feeding into the scalping frenzy which only serves to keep this cycle going. I’m quite happy to see Toys R Us is taking steps to help shut this market down, at least for the toys and collectibles that they sell. Well done Toys R Us.
Gallery
How to stop Mac dock icon bouncing
When an application starts up in MacOS X Yosemite, it bounces the application dock icon a few times, then stops bouncing once the application has started. For me, this is perfectly fine because at least there’s a positive response. Positive response is never a bad thing in operating system design.
Unfortunately, Apple decided to overloaded this same bouncing behavior for notifications to get your attention by bouncing a dock icon. For me, this is definitely not wanted. Not only is it extremely annoying, it never stops until you go touch that icon. It also performs this bouncing way too frequently. There are much better ways to get user attention than by bouncing the dock icon. Thankfully, there’s a way to stop this annoying and unwanted UI behavior. Let’s explore.
Defaults Database
Apple has what’s known as the user defaults database. It is a database of settings not unlike the old UNIX .files system, but much more extended. Unfortunately, most developers don’t document which settings can go into the defaults database and many of the settings may be hidden. However, you can easily find them by reading the values by opening terminal.app and then typing:
$ defaults read com.apple.dock | more |
This command will spew out a lot of stuff, so you’ll want to pipe it to more to page through it. Each app has its own namespace similar in format to com.apple.dock that you can review. Not all apps support changing settings this way. For other apps, simply replace com.apple.dock with the appropriate application namespace and you can read up the settings for that application. If you decide to change any of the values, you may have to kill and restart the application or log out and log back in.
In short, there is a way to stop the bouncing using the defaults command. To do this, you will need to update the defaults database for com.apple.dock with the correct setting to stop it.
Stop the Bouncing
To stop the bouncing of dock icons, open a terminal shell and at a command prompt, type the following:
$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE |
|
$ killall Dock |
Keep in mind that this is a global setting. This stops the dock icon bouncing for every application on your system for all notifications. The launch icon bouncing is not controlled by this setting. For that, you should visit the preferences area.
You can always reenable the bouncing at any time by opening terminal and then typing:
$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool FALSE |
|
$ killall Dock |
Note that the defaults database is stored locally in each user account. So, if you log into several different accounts on your Mac, you’ll need to do this for each of your accounts.
Please leave me a comment below if this doesn’t work for you.
Elon Musk: Brilliant or Snake Oil salesman?
I’ve read a number of comments that people consider Elon Musk and his Tesla empire as brilliance at work. But, is this really brilliance at work? Let’s explore.
Brilliance is in the eye of the beholder
Oh, Elon Musk is definitely a brilliant man, no doubt. But not for the reasons most people think. Like many entrepreneurs who head to Silicon Valley to set up an empire, Elon is yet another in a long line of them.
Most people think he’s brilliant because of his Tesla electric cars. I would be the first to consider him brilliant with electric cars had he been the first to come up with the idea or a significantly better battery technology. Unfortunately, he missed the invention boat by just slightly less than 200 years. Also, no substantial new battery technologies have emerged from Tesla. Most certainly, he’s taken this nearly 200 year old idea and capitalized on it and modernized it. Unfortunately, his push to drive mainstream electric vehicle infrastructure has been a snail’s pace journey. Though, it is farther along in part due to Tesla.
So then, where is his brilliance?
Salesman Extraordinaire
Like many people before him and many more to come, he has capitalized on the phrase ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’. This is his brilliance. This is what makes his name in the world of automobiles.
I don’t know of many people who could have actually put a distortion field around a vehicle with a top distance of approximately 250 miles and suggest charging ~$100,000 (or more) for it.
What exactly is a car designed to do?
A car is designed to take you from point A to point B offering reasonably long distance before needing to refuel. That’s a car’s primary goal. The second goal is to be able to find fuel for the vehicle readily and fill it rapidly so you can continue performing your car’s primary goal ad infinitum. We have this infrastructure in place for gas engine vehicles already. Attempting to bring cars to market without building this infrastructure first is a problem.
Yet, Elon hasn’t even really solved the first goal. While 250 miles is respectable for a commuter vehicle, it’s not so great for cross country traveling. The second goal has not at all been solved by Elon; though, it’s not for lack of trying. For someone like Elon, that has to be extremely frustrating especially considering that in order to sell boatloads of vehicles to the masses you need goals 1 and 2 solved. What makes this even harder is when consumers can go buy a gas or hybrid vehicle and get much better distance and similar amenities for far less money.
Note, I do acknowledge that there are car buyers who buy cars to drive for pleasure and recreation. This driver profile is significantly different than those who drive for transportation. However, most people in the US buy vehicles for transportation, not recreation.
So, the car makes the distance, then what?
For electric vehicles, let’s keep in mind that this part is all hypothetical. Electric infrastructure is not yet close to being satisfied. However, what’s left after the goals are satisfied is car amenities. Oh, the Tesla cars are most definitely chock full of amenities, like a 17″ touch screen display, lots of cool looking LEDs and a bunch of pick-up when you mash the accelerator. Though, pretty much any electric vehicle will offer lots of torque just because of the drive train of electric motors.
It’s gets worse still. While you’re driving that Tesla around, you quickly realize you’re passing gas station after gas station. You might pridefully think, “Wow, I never have to use another one of those again”. Instead, the thought you should be thinking is, “What happens if I run out of power?” When you do run out of power, that fleeting and mildly prideful thought quickly turns to sheer terror when you realize that you are stranded. It’s not just any old version of stranded either. You’re now stranded and you need a tow truck. In fact, you’ll pretty much wish you could push your $100k Tesla over to that gas station, fill it up and be back on the road in 5 minutes. Nope. Expect your Tesla to be towed a very long distance to the next charging station. A charging station where you’ll be stuck for the next several hours. If you want a full charge, that could be 4-6 hours. Of course, if you’re close to home, you might get away with 30 minutes or an hour to get just enough charge to get home. I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish the thought of sitting in my car for several hours waiting for the battery to charge up.
Don’t expect AAA to carry around a portable generator to ‘fill up’ your Tesla. That’s not gonna happen. Though, AAA might be willing to drag your car to the next charging station. Although, that might be a lot farther distance than you expect. Depending on your AAA plan, it might or might not cover the towing distance. So, you should definitely opt for the longest distance roadside assistance plans that Tesla offers, especially if you plan on traveling.
Let’s not even discuss the shame of riding shotgun in that tow truck with your Tesla dragging behind you. For those of us continuing on our journeys in our gas or hybrid vehicle watching that Tesla in tow, be thankful you are still using the existing infrastructure that’s available.
Where is that infrastructure? (aka. the Apple syndrome)
While it’s easy to find gas stations, it can be almost impossible to find workable charging stations.
Like Apple, Elon is heavily trusting that infrastructure can be built timely. Elon is relying on the same idea as Apple. When Apple introduces a new technology that no one else is using, Apple hopes other manufacturers will quickly adopt and use it within 1-2 years. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Though, technology transitions every 12 months in computers. So, it’s feasible that manufacturers could transition to include that new technology reasonably quickly.
For Elon, relying on this concept is a bad idea. Fuel station infrastructure is no where near this nimble. It might take 10-20 years before a vision of charging stations all across the country is realized. Let’s understand why. The Tesla cars (and many other electric vehicles) require 240v to charge in any reasonable time frame (4-6 hours). To set up a charging station requires digging up the pavement, running cabling, installing charging stations and tapping into the mains (which also, of course, requires power usage metering and approvals by the local power company). It probably even requires building permits by the city and county. It may even by subject to zoning or approvals by the county or city.
Here’s where Elon’s vision (and brilliance) fails. Yes, I know that he’s been desperately trying to build infrastructure to support his business model, but that’s been an extremely tough row to hoe. Trying to get the tried and true gasoline industry to do anything around or for electric vehicles is like trying to ask McDonald’s to advertise for Burger King. Not gonna happen. I’ve yet to drive into a single gas station and find a charging station. Yet, it makes perfect sense to marry these two refill stations if for nothing other than standardization. People would naturally expect to find fuel of all types, including electric charging stations at the corner ‘gas’ station. But, nope. These charging stations are, instead, popping up on shopping center parking lots and on corporate business parking lots.
This means you either need a map to find them or you just have to already know where they are. Worse, it means leaving your expensive Tesla sitting in an empty parking lot where it can be broken into or, worse, stolen.
Having Elon’s company take that fight to Washington is not going to be much more successful either. The government has no incentive to help Elon realize a vision of electric vehicle infrastructure. Why? Because electric vehicles are no more clean than gas vehicles. Instead of exhaust coming out of that catalytic convertor tailpipe attached to your vehicle, it’s now coming out of stacks of coal or natural gas power plants that have no catalytic converter. Electric vehicles just push those emissions somewhere else. This short-sightedness is what will ultimately doom the electric vehicle supply chain. Of course, that’s a problem that isn’t of much concern to Elon. His concern is making sure people continue to buy his expensive short distance cars. After all, $100k for a vehicle is not exactly chump change.
Snake Oil
Back in the day, salesmen would ride into town attempting to sell a concoction of ingredients that would “fix your ailments”. While those days are mostly long past, with the exception of ‘As Seen On TV infomercials’, Elon’s Teslas are at once a bit cool and a bit snake oil. Selling his $100k vehicles with the idea that you can drive long distances is almost certainly a form of snake oil. He’s more than happy to go right ahead and pull that wool right over your eyes in hopes you forget all about those pesky infrastructure problems while traveling.
Unfortunately, you’ll learn the hard way when your car runs out of power in the middle of an interstate or worse, in some rural back road with no cell service. Good luck in finding a power charger in the middle of nowhere on someone’s farm. Thinking about visiting Burning Man in your new Tesla? You might want to think again or you should consider dragging a diesel power generator along, because you’re not going to find any access to a power grid in the middle of the Nevada desert (or in any place close to Burning Man). Though, if your car does run out of power at Burning Man, you might find some kind person willing to let you charge your vehicle off their generator, for a fee. Or, you might not.
What about Fuel Cell vehicles?
Fuel cells are a great concept. Unfortunately, they have several significant failings including fuel and the infrastructure to obtain that fuel (same problem as electric vehicles). Fuel cells require hydrogen. Not only is it next to impossible to find hydrogen fuel anywhere, it’s expensive. Why? Like electricity creation, the extraction of hydrogen requires burning fossil fuels. Perhaps using even more than in electricity creation.
For all of the same reasons as listed above for electric infrastructure, hydrogen fuel will suffer the same fate. On top of that, fuel cells are heavy. Placing this entire battery infrastructure in a vehicle forces the vehicle to weigh a lot more than a gas or electric powered vehicle. The heavy weight limits maximum speed, limits how much you can carry and makes the vehicle more dangerous in a wreck (both from weight and from the hydrogen perspective… think of the fiery Hindenburg). Wrecking a fuel cell vehicle could lead to a rapid and intense fire that quickly consumes the entire vehicle.
At this juncture in our transition towards alternative fuel vehicles, those vehicles that make the most sense offer gas powered generators to recharge along the way. These vehicles make the most logistical sense for anyone considering cross-country travel. At least with a gas powered generator, with a little gas from AAA, you can get back on your way in a few minutes. With electric only, expect your car to be towed. Let’s not even discuss AAA and fuel cells.
Salesman of the Decade
Suffice it to say that Elon’s claim to fame should be as a salesman. A very good salesman at that. How many other salesmen could possibly build a car that has no infrastructure, offer a 250 mile maximum distance and still rake in over $100k for a car? Not many.
I’m not saying that the Tesla vehicles aren’t well made. In fact, it seems that they are very well made. It’s not the quality of the vehicle that matters here. What matters is the ultimate convenience to use the vehicle. If the primary two goals are not being met, then it is very difficult to justify buying this car. For example, many apartment complexes offer no charging stations at all and have no intention of installing any. This means that if you want to own an electric vehicle and you live in apartment, you’re forced to charge it in some parking lot somewhere away from where you live. This also means you need transportation to and from your car. If your complex has garages, you might be able to get away with charging with 110v, but that might take two days to fully charge. Again, not feasible.
Elon’s task should have been infrastructure first, then cars. Instead, he chose the opposite path. Build the cars, sell them and hope the infrastructure follows. So far, that’s been more of a pipe dream than reality. Yes, more and more charging stations are appearing, but at no where near the rate it should be to fully support an electric vehicle future. But, one thing is perfectly clear, Elon epitomizes the perfect salesman and should probably be named Salesman of the Decade.
Power Grid
Finally, it’s definitely wise to discuss the aging power grid. As more and more vehicles transition to sucking their power from the grid, that means more load on the grid. We’re talking 240v loads. Just how many of these cars can the local grid actually support? We might need to talk to the owl. Hopefully, it’s more than 3. Eventually, the grid infrastructure may become overloaded and not be capable of handling that load. I’d expect to see a lot of grid growing pains as electric vehicles become more commonplace. As gas cars become replaced by electrics, that’s ever more load on the grid. We do not yet know the ramifications of or the peak of that load. Though, one thing is certain. When we do find that peak on the grid, we’ll start seeing blackouts, burnouts and exploding transformers until the power company can get it back under control. Power companies are almost never proactive in adding capacity. Capacity costs money and until that capacity is reached, it is not deemed a problem.
There is a lot of old infrastructure out there built long ago that handles the grid. Yet, putting more and more heavy device users onto the grid, such as a Tesla, could mean failing grids. Failing grids from which the power companies are not willing to touch until they’re forced to. Old gear is almost never replaced until it fails. I’d expect power companies to remain complacent until this whole issue comes riding back to bite them in the ass. And, bite them hard it will.
These are all things that Elon is not considering when he is selling his vehicles on the market. He just wants to sell vehicles, not worry about whether the grid can support the number of vehicles he wants to sell this year or whether there’s enough chargers around the country to support cross country travel. Yes, he puts up the pretense that he’s looking into the battery swap program, but what is the status of that program? I’d also like to know how Tesla plans to personally handle stranded motorists when one of their cars runs out of power.
There are far too many questions unanswered here to really call Elon a brilliant visionary. Instead, I’ll stick to the term salesman extraordinaire. Like most salesman, it’s about making the sale. Not about actually delivering on the promises you made to the customer during the sales process. In answer to the question whether he’s selling snake oil or selling brilliance, I’ll end by saying he’s a little of both, but only as far as sales.
Can the Xbox One catch up to the PS4 this year?
We all know that Sony’s PS4 has outsold the Xbox One fairly substantially. However, will moving into this holiday season help or hurt the Xbox One? Let’s explore.
Halo 5
In October, we will see the next installment of Halo 5 released. This is unusual in that this title usually releases in November. I’m assuming that Microsoft is attempting to gain an early head start in console sales. I’m also certain that Microsoft is hoping that Halo 5 (an exclusive Xbox One title) will push consoles off the shelves. The problem is, however, UltraHD 4K.
4K TVs and Consoles
With HDTVs rapidly dropping in price and especially 4K TVs (there are several sub $1000 models), this spells a big problem for console manufacturers. I’m sure it wasn’t expected to see prices of 4K TVs dropping this rapidly this soon. None of the Xbox One, PS4 or Wii U currently support 4K content or 4K TVs. This is shaping into a much bigger problem and is especially a problem for Microsoft and Sony. Without the ability to deliver 4K content to these sub $1000 4K TVs, many people are going to be hard pressed to justify the investment in a $500 console that doesn’t support 4K. So, not even Halo 5 may be able to budge many of those consoles off the shelves, at least not to existing Xbox One owners.
Personally, I’m not planning on investing in any new console systems until there’s 4K support. When Sony and Microsoft can finally get off their collective butts and release a 4K HDMI 2.0 or HDMI 2.2 console version, I will definitely consider replacing my existing consoles, but not until that happens.
Of course, I already own a PS4 and Xbox One. I got both day one, but I’ve recently bought a 4K TV. Barring Netflix and Amazon, there’s effectively no 4K content. Still, it does make my 1080p content look amazingly clear without all that annoying pixelation so common in 1080p TVs.
Console Purchasing and the Holidays
Because 4K TVs are now becoming more commonplace and because 1080p TVs will likely be mostly a distant memory in even just 2 years, it’s hard to justify a $500 expense only to replace it in 6 months or a year. It’s not worth it. Additionally, you can buy a video game at any time after it’s released, but it doesn’t have to be on day one. You can just as easily play Halo 5 in spring of 2016 as you can in the fall of 2015. Yes, there are a lot of day-oners out there (must have it the moment it’s released), but because of the deluge of titles in the fall, it’s easy to pick and choose which ones to leave for later. This means you can delay that console purchase or buying that game until the 4K version arrives.
Yes, Halo 5 will push some consoles off the shelves. But, those looking for a 4K version will likely wait. I’m definitely waiting for the console refresh from Sony and Microsoft. For whatever reason, both of these companies are taking their sweet time to provide this refresh. In fact, Sony should have pushed out this refresh as part of the fall game launch. Sony being at the forefront of the 4K revolution makes it ever more important for Sony to finally get this refresh out the door. It’s even more important to get this refresh out for holiday purchases even if we can’t take advantage of the 4K content yet. Though, I know that Sony’s video on demand services for use with the Sony 4K UltraHD Media Player already offers a very large number of 4K movies. There’s no reason not to get this technology into the PS4 and widen that audience. Not only will it widen the audience for their movie services, it also immediately widens their game playing audience. In this case, were Sony to release this 4K refresh faster than Microsoft, Sony would have tremendous advantage both in sales and in gaming.
Sales Advantage
It’s clear, which ever company gets out their 4K refresh faster, they will have a sales advantage. As I said, considering Sony’s involvement in 4K, it makes perfect sense for Sony to get this refresh out now.
I don’t believe even Halo 5 sales could argue with a Sony 4K hardware refresh. People would think twice about buying an Xbox One until Microsoft also provided a 4K Xbox One refresh themselves. Should Sony release first, it would push Sony’s PS4 much higher in sales numbers because many existing PS4 owners would immediately replace their existing PS4. I know I would. So, that means double sales. Sales to everyone who already has a PS4 and to those who don’t. Of course, this would happen with the Xbox One as well once their 4K refresh is available.
Though, should the Xbox One and PS4 4K edition release together, I would still buy the PS4 version first unless Microsoft released the Xbox One 4K version with a 4K 60Hz playable version of Halo 5. There is currently no franchise title that Sony owns that is that compelling. But, were Black Ops III or Fallout 4 to support 4K, I’d be hard pressed not to consider a 4K PS4.
I personally believe that Sony is currently more likely to release a 4K refresh sooner than Xbox One. Microsoft doesn’t embrace new technologies quickly, especially when Sony is one of the primary proponents of that new technology.
Ultra HD 4K Content
Today, there’s not much 4K content. The drought of 4K content is about as severe as California’s rainfall levels. This can all change with a console refresh. Consoles are quickly becoming the ubiquitous media outlet for the home, especially for children. With a console refresh from Sony, that immediately picks up a relatively large number of 4K movies. With the addition of developers taking advantage of 4K gaming, that opens up a huge new door (literally pixel-wise). While that number of pixels is immense, it offers a brand new immersive level of gaming that hasn’t yet been achieved. Yes, it requires producing much bigger content, but the games will be spectacular, the environments breathtaking and the realism levels achieved would be astounding.
The problem today is that most developers can’t even grasp 1080p. So, I do not expect 4K gaming any time soon. Perhaps from the Call of Duty brand and possibly from Microsoft’s Halo (if 343 can figure it out). But, smaller companies like Atlus and even larger ones like Bethesda struggle with high def gaming. If we can get one HD title out of a developer per year, I consider that a win. With Ultra HD 4K content, I’d expect it might even take 2 years per title. That would suck at not having a new game every year, but 4K is where we’re going and Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix and the rest would do best to take heed. Not only does gaming want 4K, we need it to move forward. In fact, it should have been included in the original PS4 as Sony already had a 4K TV available at the time the PS4 was released. If Sony had had the foresight to create the PS4 with 4K, I wouldn’t even be writing this article.
Ultra HD’s Time Has Come
Sony, release your 4K refresh with the Ultra HD blu-ray spec. Microsoft, release your refresh with a 4K Halo 5. Because these two consoles are on the cusp of 4K, I’m anxiously awaiting their release. I won’t consider a new console purchase until these are out. Because they are so close, I would suggest you wait also. I would love to see any 4K console refresh for this holiday season. I’d love to see Halo 5 running in 4K. In fact, I’d love to play pretty much any of this holiday’s season games including Fallout 4, Halo 5, Black Ops III, Just Cause 3 and Star Wars in 60hz 4K. That would be an amazing holiday gift this season.
How not to run a business (Part 10.2) — Case Study: Trust
A business is as good as the trust it practices. Trust is a crucial element in gaining new business. If prospects cannot trust you or what you offer, trust that your business is genuinely there to help your customer, trust that you will provide a high quality service, your business will not succeed. Trust is mission critical to business success. Let’s explore.
Kickstarter
Recently, you may have heard about the H+ Holus project on Kickstarter. Its premise is to create a display device that can provide a wide variety of viewing angles. Some words used to describe the device include ‘holographic’, ‘holographic experience’ and ‘3D’. From the link above, the description states,
Holus provides a blend between the digital and real world by converting any digital content into a 3D holographic experience
To visually get the point across, H+ uploaded some CG representations of what the finished product might look like… including this video….
By Day 3 of this Kickstarter project, the project had already been funded the amount of $200k CAD. So here’s where things get a little dicey with both this project and Kickstarter when complaints begin to roll in. At the end, the Holus project raised $297,790 CAD. Some sites are already asking if the Holus is the most expensive scam in Kickstarter history. Reddit readers state these grievances of the Holus device.
Kickstarter’s rules are clear on misrepresentation. In the above video, it is clearly shown that as the camera moves, so does the 3D of the imagery. With Pepper’s Ghost and a flat screen, this is not possible which misrepresents the capabilities of this device. In other words, Kickstarter doesn’t allow realistic 3D rendered concept photos or videos as part of the project. Including photos of the prototype or drawings of the concept is perfectly fine. However, 3D realistic images depicting a concept are not acceptable and Kickstarter’s rules prohibit the use of such imagery.
3D Displays
We all know what these are. They’re basically your flat screen TV with shutter glasses. They’re cumbersome to use, give you headaches and, in general, are mostly a novelty. Yet, this is the state of 3D displays in 2015. No, we do not yet have floating displays such as what’s shown in Minority Report or Avatar. These displays, if even possible, are years away from becoming reality. Yet, here we are on Kickstarter with a small company claiming they’re about to produce a 3D Holographic display. Frankly, it’s not possible. What Holus offers is no better than Pepper’s Ghost.
Pepper’s Ghost is a technology that dates back to 1862 and is named after John Henry Pepper who discovered the illusion. A Pepper’s Ghost display has no relationship to holograms or holography, further misrepresenting the display. What Holus offers is a flat screen reflected off of a transparent surface. Because the screen located in the roof of the cabinet is flat, it’s definitely not 3D (without using glasses). Worse, there are already devices like this available on Amazon right now for the iPhone for $10.99. Visit Amazon and compare.
Holus Deception
Whether the H+ folks intended to deceive or were naïve about what they could show on Kickstarter, it doesn’t really matter from a fraud management perspective. The listing violated Kickstarter’s rules. Yet, Kickstarter did nothing to stop or prevent this listing from continuing. In fact, it seems that Kickstarter even awarded the Holus Kickstarter Project as a staff pick at some point. When this listing was brought to Kickstarter’s attention for misrepresentation, they ignored the warnings and allowed the project to fund anyway.
Trust
As a CEO, it is important to maintain trust with all of your customers. If you don’t attempt to maintain that trust, your business is hopelessly lost. Case in point… Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler leaves a comment on Joanie Lemercier’s ‘covering up a scam’ blog article after she and several others unsuccessfully attempt to bring this misrepresented project to the attention of Kickstarter. Strickler’s comment is defensive and deflecting. Here’s what Strickler has to say (full comment below):
Hi Joanie —
Yancey from Kickstarter here.
I’m responding, in part, to thank you for the attention you’ve paid to the Holus project. We’ve seen a lot of debate and strong feelings around the project, and we’ve heard a lot of questions about our policies and how we enforce them. I’d love to clear up a few things about how we did so in this case.
Part of the issue we’ve seen with this project revolves around words like “hologram,” “holographic,” and “holographic experience,” which people have come to use in so many different colloquial ways. Some of our most-discussed “holograms” — Tupac Shakur’s appearance at Coachella, CNN’s election-night guests — aren’t holograms at all. Even Microsoft bills its HoloLens as a holographic product. There’s an odd lack of clarity involved in what many people mean and understand when they say the words.
So in this case, our approach was to focus in on how Holus actually worked. We asked the Holus team to post an update that demonstrated, clearly and openly, exactly what they were working on. They responded with a public update that outlined the technique they use. That update was emailed to backers of the project, to help make sure everyone involved was fully clear on what they were supporting and what they could expect.
Then there’s the question of our rules for hardware projects. First, we require creators to show prototypes of their work. Second, we prohibit them from using photorealistic renderings.
Holus satisfied the first rule, posting a number of demo videos and documentation showing working prototypes. But when the project originally launched, it included CGI renderings. We informed them that this was strictly prohibited; they promptly removed the material. They also emailed backers to clarify their process, including a video demonstrating their iterative prototypes.
And last, there’s the question of the staff pick. Holus was originally selected as one, until we spotted and received reports about CGI renderings. We immediately removed the staff pick status, and asked the Holus team to remove the badge they’d added to their project image. (Staff pick badges aren’t a part of our system; we don’t create them or provide them. Actually, we strongly advise creators not to use them at all.) They promptly did so.
In other words, the project conformed to our stated rules, added more information on request, and made a transparent, good-faith effort to thoroughly inform backers about the nature of their work. Based on that, we continued to monitor it, but allowed it to remain on the site. The question then became: were people interested in backing it?
And this is the part where you — and the broader Kickstarter community watching these projects — become invaluable. One of the reasons Kickstarter uses all-or-nothing funding is because it gives everyone involved in a project time to really research what the creators are doing, discuss it with others, and come to a collective decision about whether it’s still worth supporting. Ultimately, it’s backers who decide what gets funding, not us.
That’s why we’re always grateful to anyone who joins in the public debate about projects, asks tough questions about the claims they’re hearing, and shares their expertise with other backers. That kind of discussion is crucial, especially when it comes to new technology. It helps our Integrity team monitor projects for problems or violations of our rules — as we did throughout the Holus campaign. It helps backers vet ideas and make the most informed decisions possible. It holds creators to a high standard, and helps them build stronger communities. It does all these things no matter what action Kickstarter winds up needing to take, and whether projects succeed or fail.
And that’s why I’d like to thank you — and to say that, if you’ve chosen not to get involved in any more projects, we’re sad to hear it. The role you played in this one is incredibly important. Members like you are welcome in this community any time: you make things better for everyone involved.
Cheers
Yancey
This is not the type of diatribe I expect to hear from a CEO. CEO’s are the top agent of the company. They are the person who investigates wrongdoing and the person who puts a stop to it. No where above did Yancey even mention investigation, taking the strictest action or in doing anything to prevent such an occurrence in the future. Sure, they requested the prohibited content removal, but only after the project was already mostly funded. Kickstarter also didn’t apparently require full disclosure of this content removal to the backers.
Instead, he defends the project and states that it is the backer’s responsibility to post meaningful discussions, debate the project and then choose or not choose to back based on these comments. That’s all well and good until Joanie points out in a later blog post that in among other behaviors by Kickstarter to ignore the project and let it proceed, Kickstarter also
…DELETED the embarrassing questions asked in the project comments (see screenshots).
When Kickstarter deletes comments that could help backers make informed decisions, that ultimately means that Kickstarter no longer respects the backers and is in it to make sure the project succeeds whether it’s a real project or not. This also means that Kickstarter is in it for the money they will get from the project rather than protecting backers from fraud. This is a serious breach of trust and one that should resonate to every backer who has ever backed a project at Kickstarter.
In fact, Joanie points out all of the trust related issues around this Kickstarter project:
– YOU DID NOT REPLY to the official ‘reports’ made from day 1 (except email auto-replies).
– YOU DID NOT LISTEN to the experts: Jason Sapan has been making real holograms in NYC for over 40 years, he warned you about the fraud.
– YOU DIDN’T CARE TO COMMENT the 3 in-depth articles (1 – 2 – 3) written by Raphaël de Courville about his investigations on the scam.
– YOU DELETED the embarrassing questions asked in the project comments (see screenshots).
– YOU DID NOT MODERATE messages from suspicious accounts (1 – 2) and Holus partner comments (1) who broke another rule.
– BACKERS WERE NEVER INFORMED about the replacement of prohibited CGI and removal of staff pick status.
There were probably even more behaviors not documented here, but these are enough to show that even though Kickstarter was made aware of the project early in its life, Kickstarter ignored it all and even colluded in making sure the project appeared to be legitimate.
Even Yancey’s comment to Joanie attempts to justify the above actions in an obtuse fashion.
Business Don’t — Don’t allow fraud on your service
This is probably one of the biggest business don’ts I’ve ever documented in this series. You don’t do what Kickstarter did. If you establish rules by which the community must follow, then you need to ensure they are enforced regardless of outcome. Even if you stand to lose 20% of that 200k or whatever Kickstarter’s commission is, that is chump change compared to the trust you’ve lost from your community and the possible legal ramifications you face (which I guarantee will cost you more money than any commission you’d make from the fraud). Your community keeps you in business. For this reason, this trust case is worth studying. It’s worth realizing what not to do when running your business.
In Kickstarter’s case, the appropriate action would have been to delist and refund all backers before the project closed. Then, request the project owner to relist the project using drawings or other imagery that doesn’t violate Kickstarter’s terms… instead of silently requesting the images be removed without letting the existing backers know… instead of removing key discussions from the project to inform backers of what this project really is… instead of ignoring emails ultimately saying that the project is fraudulent.
Fraud is a very real possibility anywhere and everywhere, especially with crowdfunded projects. Fraud is intentional misrepresentation of something. It’s against the law in the US and the US government investigates and takes legal action against those who commit fraud against buyers. Allowing fraud to exist on your own web service and then doing nothing about it once you become aware is collusion and makes your business as much liable as the person who set up the fraudulent listing in the first place. The one thing you cannot know is intent and intent is the difference between innocent misrepresentation and outright fraud. However, to the government, intent doesn’t matter, only the outcome. As a business, you must error on the side of caution and assume the intent is intentional misrepresentation, which means taking the strictest action possible and forcibly removing the offensive content from your site. If your business cannot protect its own customer, then no one will and you’ve lost your customer’s trust. They trust you to be their advocate against thieves, scams and fraud when they are using your service. When you fail at protecting your customer from fraud, your company has failed.
Were someone to bring legal action against Kickstarter and H+ for the alleged fraud of this project, there is definitely enough evidence that Kickstarter could be held liable and culpable in this activity.
Enforcing Business Rules
Once you establish business rules by which your clients must abide, you need to absolutely enforce those rules by the strictest of actions in every case. If you allow even one client to slide by the rules, your business could end up in court. If you are on the other end of a Kickstarter project and you choose not to deliver on your backer rewards, the US Government will come after you. Fraud is a federal crime and can lead your business into a lot of federal legal problems. Ed Nash found this out the hard way when his company, Altius Management, failed to deliver the $25k Kickstarted funded Asylum card game in 2012.
Failure to provide the necessary level of trust through enforcement of your rules could lead your business into bankruptcy. In this case, Kickstarter’s woes are just starting. How this all ends for Kickstarter is yet to be known, but it’s probably not going to end well. How this ends for H+ and the Holus device is yet to be seen, but delivering a Pepper’s Ghost to backers will likely lead to outrage.
← Part 10 | Chapter Index | Part 11 →
How to pair your PS4 controller wirelessly
We all know the drill. You’ve just run out and spent $65 for that new and oh-so-cool Limited Edition DUALSHOCK 4 controller. Well, now you’ve got to go through that hassle of pairing it with your console. Check out this article if you need to do this on the PS5. But, can I pair my controller wirelessly? Most definitely. Let’s explore.
USB Pairing
The Sony recommended procedure of pairing your new controller to your PS4 is by plugging it into the console with the Sony USB cable and powering the PS4 with the power button. While that’s all well and good (or at least so Sony thinks), it’s a complete and utter hassle… especially when you have other controllers already working. If this is your only DS4 controller (i.e., no others working), you have two choices:
- Pair your new controller with a cable
- Pair it using flat screen’s remote control using HDMI-CEC (jump to CEC)
If you don’t have a flat screen with CEC or CEC is not enabled, you better go find that USB cable.
However, if you have more than one working controller, you can skip this hassle and go to …
… wait for it …
Wireless Pairing
PS4 DUALSHOCK 4 controllers are bluetooth devices and like all bluetooth devices you can pair them wirelessly. Of course, you can’t pair the device if it is the only device (see above), but if you happen to have other working devices to control your PS4 (like another controller or a media remote), you’re good to go to with wireless pairing.
Before you start this process, go to the PS4’s Settings => Devices => Bluetooth Devices area and leave it on this screen. On this screen you’ll see all your paired devices and this is also where all new unpaired devices will appear. Unpaired devices will have no grey or green dot next to them.
How to begin? Press and hold the PS button and the sharing button simultaneously. The sharing button is the small black oval button to the upper left of the touch pad labeled creatively enough SHARE. Press and hold the PS and sharing buttons until the lightbar begins to strobe quickly (approximately 3-5 seconds). While it’s quickly double strobing, it’s in the pairing state like any other bluetooth device. If the strobe is a slow on and off, then the controller is trying to connect to your PS4 or PC. This isn’t what you want. If it’s slow strobing, then you’ll need to wait until it stops to try again. Pressing the PS button before the share button could lead you into slow strobing. So, I would suggest pressing and holding the share button slightly before you press and hold the PS button to avoid triggering the slow strobe.
Once it’s double strobing, look at your screen under Bluetooth Devices and look for the DUALSHOCK 4 that has no dot (probably at the bottom of the PS4 screen). Using a working controller or remote, select the new controller and complete the pairing on the next screen.
If you don’t see your DUALSHOCK 4 device in the list, check to make sure the device is still in pairing mode. If not, put it in pairing mode. If it’s still in pairing mode, back out of that screen and then go back into it. This will force a search refresh for new devices. Hopefully it will appear now. If not, move closer to the PS4 with the new controller. If this all fails, use the USB pairing method above… again, time to go dig out that cable.
Once paired, you can now use the controller normally.
Don’t have access to your PS4?
I’ve had a number of comments on this article regarding corruption or rebuilding of a PS4 after a new hard drive insertion. Before you lose access to your PS4 entirely either because you failed to power off the unit properly, because the hard drive failed or because you replaced the hard drive, you should make sure you have some alternative form of PS4 XMB menu control. You have to remember to set this up while you still have a working PS4. You won’t be able to easily do some of these steps after you lose access and cannot find or do not have a proper microUSB pairing cable.
Note, if you are replacing the PS4’s hard drive, setting anything up in advance probably won’t work as the new hard drive will need to be reinstalled with a new operating system. So, any settings will be lost on hard drive replacement… skip down to Wired Controller below or be prepared with a PS4 compatible micro USB cable.
HDMI-CEC (control your PS4 with TV remote control)
Many flat screens today support control of the PS4 through the HDMI cable using your TV’s remote control. This is called HDMI-CEC or simply CEC. You must enable this on both your TV and on the PS4 while you have a controller that works. To enable this on your PS4, go to Settings=>General=>HDMI link and check this box. Now, go to your TV and enable CEC / HDMI Link to control the connected PS4 with your TV’s remote. Not all TV manufacturers call it CEC, some call it something with the word ‘Link’ in the name, but the protocol is standard. Once enabled, reboot your PS4 and then turn your TV off and then on.
CEC control has changed in a recent PS4 system update. When you have CEC enabled, the remote is now considered a controller. Once you flip over to the PS4’s HDMI port on your TV, the PS4 should turn on. Once booted up, the remote control should present as a controller (see screenshot to the right). The screen should show your login ID. Press your ENTER or OK key on the remote to enter into the XMB menu. Apparently, Sony realized this intrinsic problem with CEC and updated the PS4 to now allow the remote control to be recognized as an XMB controller on the bootup screen. What this all means is that you can now fully control your PS4 with your TV’s remote control without needing a DS4 controller at all. With CEC, you can now pair your controller using your TV’s remote through settings. Though, I wouldn’t recommend trying to play games using your TV’s controller.
If the PS4’s screen does not show the login ID panel and simply has the words “Press the PS button to use the controller” in the middle of the screen, the PS4 has not recognized a controller. This can be for several reasons. If you powered the PS4 on before flipping to it via HDMI, the PS4 doesn’t see the TV as the controller. The device that powers the PS4 on is the device presented on the boot up screen. When you use a DS4 to power it on, the DS4 will show as the controller on the boot screen. When you use the the TV to switch to and power on the PS4, the TV’s controller becomes the default on this screen. If you can’t get the TV’s controller to show up at all, then you will need to skip down to the next section for pairing with a USB cable.
As mentioned above, you will need to set CEC up on your TV and the PS4 in advance to use this feature. If you have no functional gamepad controllers, your TV doesn’t support CEC or you haven’t set CEC up in advance, skip to USB pairing.
MicroUSB pairing cable
If you’re looking for something right away, you can stop by a store (or order online) and purchase a microUSB pairing cable. Sony offers an official cable that costs around $10. You can get a cable from the following places:
Wired Controller
If you’ve completely lost control to your PS4 through your Dual Shock 4 and you don’t have any other way to activate a PS button and you can’t seem to get your DS4 controllers paired with a cable, you will need to use a wired controller. There are only a few PS4 wired controllers on the market, but Hori makes a couple of gamepad versions.
While these gamepads are not as full featured as a Sony Dual Shock 4 (i.e., no light bar, no rumble, no speaker, no headset jack, etc), they will at least let you control your PS4 when nothing else will. Amazon also offers a few PS4 wired arcade-style stick controllers that may work. Make sure they have a PS button to launch the PS4’s XMB menu. Also, you will need to double-check that they are, in fact, wired controllers. While most third party controllers are wired, you’ll definitely want to read through the product description in the listings carefully to make sure it doesn’t use a wireless dongle. Though, a wireless dongle may work for controlling the PS4 for a short period of time, they may not work for long gaming sessions as they have tendencies to time out forcing the controller to be reconnected often.
Hori Pad FPS Pro Gamepad
I recently picked up a Hori Pad FPS Plus. This is a very nice controller with the exception of two things. First, the shoulder buttons take getting used to because they are pressure sensitive in a different way from the DS4’s trigger shoulder buttons. Because it takes a different amount of pressure to activate them, it feels different from the trigger controllers on the DS4. Once you get used to the pressure needed for these shoulder buttons, everything else is pretty much spot on including the touch pad. And, I like the reversed placement of the D-Pad and the left joystick (like the Xbox controller). This game pad is also well made and quite light in weight because it doesn’t have the lightbar, rumble or battery. I also like that I can continue to play without worry of running out of battery. The second issue, it won’t turn on the PS4 with the press of the PS button when the PS4 is off. For me, this is only a small problem because I have CEC enabled. Simply switching to the PS4’s HDMI port turns the PS4 on. Otherwise, you’ll need to get up and touch the power button or use a DS4 to turn it on and then use PS button on the Hori to get into the menu (the DS4 controller will automatically turn off when the Hori Pad logs in).
Note that there are other things the Hori Pad doesn’t have, like a headphone jack or a speaker. While I do like the speaker on the DS4, for me it doesn’t ruin the game without it. Yes, it is kind of cool when GTA5’s phone comes out of the DS4’s speaker, but it’s mostly a gimmick.
Dualshock 4 and Computers
Note, you can use this same pairing approach to pair this controller to other operating systems. For example, a Mac or Windows. The trouble, while the DS4 does pair, you still need a driver to map the buttons to make the controller useful. For this reason, it’s not that useful on a Mac yet, but you might try Joystick Mapper. I know the Joystick Mapper devs were working on an update to drive the DS4 controller on a Mac. For Windows, there’s InputMapper that does work.
As for pairing and using it on iOS or Android, it might pair but won’t be useful. Yes, some have managed to pair it, but it doesn’t seem to have any kind of drivers or support. I’d like to see Sony create a PS Vita gaming tablet that fully supports the DS4. That would be the best of all worlds. Skip iOS and Android and go right for a full out Sony gaming tablet. But, Sony definitely needs to get more gaming devs on board to bring the blockbuster titles. But, that’s another topic entirely.
Documentation
While I understand Sony’s reluctance to document a wireless pairing guide like this due to the need for an already working controller, I really don’t like having to locate that special Sony microUSB cable for this process. Not all microUSB cables are equal. If you don’t have the correct Sony PS4 (or compatible) cable, the pairing process above won’t work. Because this cable looks like all other black microUSB cables, you can easily mix them up or lose them. For that $65, I don’t understand why Sony can’t include a 3′ compatible cable in the box with the controller since the PS4 is so finicky about which cable will work.
I also don’t typically leave dangling cables hanging from my console for a variety of reasons including safety. So, locating this special pairing cable is not always quick in my house. I mean, one black cable looks like any other. Sony doesn’t specifically mark the cable well, so digging through a ton of microUSB cables trying to find that special Sony cable isn’t something I want to spend my time doing… especially when I already have a working controller.
When you have at least some kind of a functional controller, wireless pairing is a perfectly acceptable (and more efficient) alternative. Yet, Sony’s site mentions nothing of this process. That’s the reason I document it here.
If this article helped you, please leave a comment below. If you had difficulties pairing your device, please let me know that too.
Rant Time: Google+ is finally dead
All things must come to an end, some sooner than others. Google+ is now officially dead and being withdrawn from Google’s product suites one at a time starting with YouTube. To Google I say, thank you.
Good riddance to bad rubbish
I’m not saying that Google+ wasn’t well conceived, it just wasn’t well designed. As with a lot of Google’s products, they are created with the best of intentions, but the actual deployment of the idea leaves a lot to be desired. Google+ was definitely one that falls into the leaving-lots-to-be-desired category. It’s sad too because had Google done it right, they could have overtaken Facebook.
Instead of turning Google+ into a system that was actually useful, they used it as a back end single-signon product. Meaning, instead of being actually usable as a social platform to meet and discuss cool things with people you didn’t know, it ended up being just another single-signon tool. Yet another profile to be managed in thousands of other profiles. Not only that, they tied it into every product in the Google chain. This meant that in order to use any other Google product, you were forced to sign up for a Google+ account whether you used it or not.
The Real Problem? YouTube
Google+’s main bane was YouTube. Once Google got it into their heads that this was the end-all-be-all platform, they integrated it into YouTube in a way that made YouTube practically impossible to have discussions any longer. So, you would watch a video and then try to comment. In some cases you could, in other cases you couldn’t. The Reply link was sometimes there and sometimes not. I realize the reason why. It had to do with Google+ permissions. If the user didn’t allow people outside the ‘circles’ to comment, their thread was closed. This made it almost impossible to have decent conversations with people. Additionally, all of the old YouTube comments prior to the Google+ integration were entirely closed. You couldn’t comment on these at all (even if they were a month old). Frustrating.
A Social Platform?
Hardly. While Facebook isn’t the best at being a social platform, it is still a whole lot better than Google+ ever was. In fact, Google+ was so convoluted, you’d sometimes get comments from YouTube, sometime from Google+ and sometimes from both in your inbox. There was no rhyme or reason as to why it was this way. It just was.
I know what Google was trying to do here, they just didn’t do it well. Their version of a social platform was so all-over-the-place that it just wasn’t fun to use. It was even harder to find people on it, though they tried to make it easy through the Google contacts and circles. But, it just wasn’t easy or fun to use.
Google’s overreaching TOS
Worse, violating Google+’s terms and conditions could get your Google account closed, no ifs, ands or buts about it. If you valued your Google account, you really didn’t want to muck with Google+ for fear of writing the wrong thing and triggering the wrath of Google down on your account. With Facebook, no problem. If your Facebook account is closed (not likely), it wouldn’t affect your email accounts or any thing else in Google’s network. With Twitter, also no problem. If either of these social accounts are closed, it’s an inconvenience. If your email account closes, that’s a major problem.
Tying this supposed social platform to all of Google’s terms meant you were very limited in what you could say or do without accidentally triggering the wrath of the Google admins. If you did manage to trigger the wrath of the Google admins and they closed your account, there was no easy appeals process. It was simply better to play it safe than endanger your email account. It was far easier to participate in Twitter and Facebook and not worry about that problem.
Distractions
At best, Google+ was an unnecessary idea that didn’t need to be realized. In fact, for far too long Google has been distracted. Distracted with Android, distracted with Google+, distracted with Gmail, distracted with Google Apps, distracted with Postini, distracted with Blogger and distracted with Ad Words. It’s not that these other platforms aren’t worth it to the people who use them, it’s just that Google’s bread and butter is still Search. But, what of Search? When was the last time Google really made any innovations around search or in making searching better? Not recently. The last innovation to Search was Ad Words and that was less about innovation and more about monetizing it. That was also a very long time ago.
It’s time for Google to shed many of these silly distractions and get back to their core business… Search. Let’s get rid of these unnecessary distractions like Google+ and shed the baggage that has been encumbering Google as of late. Until Google can really focus on its core products, it will continue to flounder with these dead and dying products like Google+.
It’s long overdue for Google to kill off some of these useless unnecessary products and I’m glad to see that Google+ is the first to go. Perhaps Google is now on its way to recovering from this string of recent bad decisions it has been making. Though to see this, we will have to wait as only time will tell.
For now, I say with passion, “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Goodbye Google+.”
How not to run a business (Part 10.1) — Case Study: Startup Funding
Note, for this case study article, I have abandoned the Don’t phraseology to allow studying this topic in detail.
A few months back, I was thinking how I had previously used GetSatisfaction to, of all things, try to get some satisfaction from would-be shyster companies. It wasn’t that I was in need of that type of service by the time as there were plenty of other functional and more effective complaint sites (i.e., Twitter, Ripoff Report, Consumerist), but I was interested in checking in on what’s up with some of those forums where I used to post.
Interestingly, the site had drastically changed. No longer was the once familiar interface there. Instead, the site was now closed. No, no in the sense that they were out of business, but more that when you visited the home page, consumers could no longer start or post to individual company complaint sites. Now it was designed to be used by companies to direct their own customers to getsatsifaction.com when the customer had a comment. Indeed, it was no longer the same GetSatisfaction that I knew. I also knew something was up, but I didn’t know what. Let’s explore.
GetSatisfaction sold to Sprinklr
In April of 2015, GetSatisfaction was bought by Sprinklr for an undisclosed sum of money, apparently on a fire sale. What this meant was that the new owners likely wanted some parts of GetSatisfaction for their own purpose, but not to keep it whole or intact. That’s quite obvious merely visiting the new www.getsatisfaction.com today.
In that sale, the founders of the site (some had been pushed out as early as 2010), received nothing from the sale. Indeed, according to Lane Becker (one of the co-founders), the company was sold to Sprinklr for less than the amount the company had received in initial rounds of funding (~$16 million). Additionally, the original founders also apparently didn’t receive a dime from the sale, but that’s kind of to be expected since they were no longer at the company at the time.
A Case Study
According to Lane Becker, the two initial rounds of funding accepted by the executives at the time led them astray from the beginning. He also states that it wasn’t so much the $6 million in Series A funding, but it was the additional $10 million they also accepted far too early in company’s lifecycle.
So let’s understand the problem in this scenario. While Lane doesn’t elaborate on the above statements, I take them to mean that for the $6 million, they likely signed over at least 20-30% equity in the company. With the extra $10 million, considering the company valuation was $50 million, they were likely required to sign over another 20-30% (pushing them into the high 40s percentage range for equity ownership given over to investors. Once you’ve given over that much of your company to early investors, your company is no longer safe from outside influences. Indeed, for that money that you’ve just accepted, you’ve just paid the highest price of all: loss of control.
This is what I assume happened at GetSatisfaction and why the founders were ousted from the company. After all, when you give over that much equity to investors and when your company doesn’t perform as the investors expected, out you go.
Be Honest with Yourself
What lesson does this teach small business owners? It teaches to not only be shrewd about your business, but you have to be honest about your goals, what you want out of your business and why you are in business in the first place. If you can’t be honest with yourself and your co-founders, you will fall into traps that can end your business before you get started.
In other words, asking for funding doesn’t come without strings attached. In fact, once you pull the trigger on funding, your world as a small business owner is effectively over. Not only do you now need to worry about becoming profitable, you need to do it on someone else’s agenda, not yours. It also means that the outside investors will steer your company, sometimes whether you like the direction or not.
For all of these reasons, you’ll need to be brutally honest with yourself about what you expect in return from your business. Meaning, if you open a business to create and sell lollipops, investors might step in and want you to expand your business into areas where you don’t belong. Such as not only making lollipops, but also taking in contracting business to create lollipops for other candy companies. They might even have you move your manufacturing to China or Asia to ‘save costs’. Worse, they could steer your company into producing t-shirts or electronics or some direction that makes no sense. Mind you, you just wanted to make and sell lollipops. Investors want a much bigger return, so they’re going to hire and find people who will achieve their agendas, not yours.
Investors Gone Bad
Courting investors to your business isn’t a bad thing as long as you know what you’re getting into and you know how to deal with an investor who isn’t the right fit for your business. In other words, don’t accept any offer that comes along because, as GetSatisfaction is a clear example, your company may cease to exist under the wrong investor. Additionally, don’t immediately dip into investor capital to satisfy business needs. You should sit on that cash and wait until you really need it. This gives you time to pay out the investor and take your equity back if the investor becomes overbearing in their demands on your business.
Not all investors are good for your business. As the saying goes, “Nothing comes for free”. If the investor offer seems too good to be true, it likely is. So, you shouldn’t be willing to accept all offers that come along. You need to not only haggle the equity far lower than what they are asking, you also need to dictate just how much and how far the investor has input into the business. This all needs to be put in writing, so you need to have a good attorney on retainer to help you craft such documents. This also gives you the ammo you need to tell the investor to back off.
Protecting Your Business
When you open your new business, you need to understand that it’s a matter of thirds. One third of your time goes to producing your product and keeping it functional. One third of your time goes to managing your business finances, marketing, employees and protecting your business through legal contracts. One third of your time is spent trying to finding outside funding to help you grow your business. Each of these thirds being equally important.
If you fail to devote enough time to any one of these thirds, your business will suffer. So, while it’s important to produce a functional product that users need, you need to be able to protect your business plan from people looking to take advantage of you. Such attacks on your business can come from anywhere. These risks include:
- Technical attacks (DDoS, hacks, breaches, etc)
- Social engineering
- People sending fake invoices to be paid
- People calling asking to pay for fake yellow pages ads
- People sending toner and expecting you to pay
- Legal attacks
- Lawsuits
- Patents and/or Copyright ownership disputes
- Ex-employee
- Contractual breaches
- Unpaid invoices
- Investors attacks over
- Revenues
- Management
- Budget Allocation
- Direction of Company
These above are just a short list of the kinds of attacks that can be levied against your business. These are risks that you can mitigate if you think ahead and plan for each step of your business. For example, you probably shouldn’t accept rounds of funding unless you already have money in the bank. Basically, even though you may not need the money from the investor, having money in the bank means that the extra investment capital may allow you to take your business to the next level even if you don’t dip into the money right away.
On the other hand, if you accept investment capital because you actually need to use it immediately, your business is vulnerable. Unscrupulous investors will swoop in and take advantage of that predicament. They will then be able to scoop up more equity in your company than they are really due. If you’re in such a desperate predicament, you’re not at liberty to haggle with them over this. If you haggle, they walk and your business may fail. This leads to…
Failing Business
If your business is close to failure, this is the wrong time to be looking for investors. Instead, you should be looking for buyers to buy out your business. The right time to look for investors is when your business is just getting started and still has enough funds to stay afloat. The wrong time is when you’re desperate for a cash infusion or else the doors close.
Successful Business
If your business is in a good place financially, then you can shop around for investors. Again, you don’t want to take VC investment just because you can. If your business is doing well on its own, then you can haggle with investors. If an investor is unwilling to budge on the equity requirements, tell them to take a hike. There are other investors for whom you can seek to fit with your business needs.
Unscrupulous investors are everywhere. Sometimes they’re loan sharks, other times they’re just sharks. So, you need to get your business to a place where you have the ability to haggle and walk away if it isn’t the deal you want. Keep in mind that while the investor is doing you a favor by offering you money, you are doing them an even bigger favor by allowing them to invest. If your company succeeds, they will make a huge windfall from that investment. A windfall, I might add, that you can’t put back into your company coffers. You will be required to pay that investor off. So, for every dollar made, for each percentage of equity, you’ll need to compensate each investor. In other words, with a VC, you might as well consider it a loan with a super high interest rate and open ended payback terms.
What those terms mean is that as soon as your business has the cash to pay off the investor, expect for them to ask for it. This could be an inopportune moment for your business.
Business Loans
You should consider bank loans before considering VC money because with bank loans, the only thing due back to the bank is your payment. No equity is involved. Bank loans are typically for lower amounts than what some VCs offer, but it doesn’t have nearly the strings attached.
Crowd funding?
Sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo are great for raising funding. But, there’s no free meal ticket here either. Not only does your project need to be accepted by the crowd funding site, you have to be willing to offer something to each investor for investing in your project. While that may not be equity in your company, it is usually something tangible (shirt, trip, book, product, etc). Don’t expect to receive millions in crowd funding, either. In fact, if you get $100k out of the deal, you’re doing well. Though, most projects end up getting far lower amounts. So, while crowd funding might help you get a product out the door, it’s not going be enough capital to run your business.
The Takeaway
You must treat your business as the most important thing. You should always put any money you receive towards your business… not towards house payments, car payments, boats, amenities, personal trips or other frivolous personal agendas. I’ve seen too many startups waste money on silly things like purchasing a company limo, or spending for outrageous parties or other wasteful uses… even so far as sending the CEOs kids to college. As a startup, wasteful spending will only lead your business down the tubes. Oh, and don’t expect the investors to stop you in that. They won’t. Though, they will let you spend your way down to nothing and then take your business away from you to liquidate it. I’ve seen this directly happen at least 5 times in my career and twice were companies where I directly worked.
Being a business owner is tough. But, it’s even tougher to make common sense and rational business decisions, especially early on. If you happen to have an up-and-coming star company that’s winning awards and being touted as the ‘next big thing’, don’t assume that means your business is shielded from bankruptcy or will make it big. No. It means that you’ve worked hard to get to that point and you need to work even harder to get to the next level. Again, I’ve personally seen co-founders wildly and lavishly spend on stupid things instead of investing that money back into the company. Or, more specifically, in finding a way to become profitable faster.
The fastest way to kill your startup is by taking excessive capital, giving away too much equity, wasteful spending and seeing all of those dollars as free loot to do with as you please. This is a recipe for failure. This was also the mentality of so many startups in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. This thinking is even somewhat prevalent today. Yet, I don’t see many of those co-founders in jail. Stealing millions of dollars to ‘play’ would land you in jail in any other place. However, in Silicon Valley, startup founders seem to be able to get away with this behavior.
When Lane Becker claims he got nothing from GetSatisfaction’s sale, that’s deceptive. He got to start a business in Silicon Valley. He got to operate that business for several years. He got to control millions of dollars in capital. He took home a salary. If he and his co-founders made the wrong decisions for the company, that was his fault and no one else’s. If he didn’t get anything from that business after having been ousted, then he should have made better decisions. GetSatsifaction’s sale to Sprinklr should be taken as a learning experience. Even though Lane may be somewhat bitter about the whole deal, he and his colleagues made the early decisions. We all have to live with our decisions in life. If those decision led to an outcome where he made no money from a company he founded, he has only one person to blame.. himself.
The ultimate takeaway is to educate yourself. Learn how businesses operate. Learn how venture capitalists operate. Learn how angel investors operate. Understand what equity is and how it can affect your business. This is all education. If you don’t educate yourself, you can’t possibly see when a decision is bad or good. If you feel you can’t learn every aspect of your business, then hire people who do understand it. If you don’t understand venture capital, then hire a CFO that does and who can help protect your business from unscrupulous investors and wasteful spending. As I said above, one third if your time should be spent protecting your business.
← Part 10 | Chapter Index | Part 11 →
Rant Time: Google should stop producing Chrome
I’m all for browser competition, but only if the organization that chooses to produce such a browser actually takes it seriously. Enter Google. Google’s initial motivation for producing the Chrome browser was all wrong. Instead of wanting to produce a browser because they wanted something technologically better, Google’s reason for producing Chrome was to facilitate their advertising initiatives and agendas. Google should stop producing Chrome. Let’s explore.
What is a browser for?
A browser’s number one reason to exist is to render web sites. That’s the single solitary reason a browser exists. Everything else is just bells and whistles. But you might say, “Well, Chrome does that.”. In fact, it doesn’t. There are many sites I’ve recently visited in Chrome 43 that don’t render. I have no idea why and I really don’t care the reason behind its failure. I just want to know that when I visit a web site that the browser will render it. For example, the same web site that produces a white page in Google Chrome produces a rendered page in Firefox. It’s clear, Google doesn’t care whether or not Chrome works.
Does Google Care?
It’s clear, if you visit the bug reports pages for Google Chrome, there are ‘low hanging fruit’ bugs that haven’t been touched for years. Google doesn’t care. They don’t care if the browser is half-assed. They don’t care that pages don’t render. They don’t care that when the pages begin to render, they show all manner of ugly gobbledygook just prior to applying the CSS… and, in some cases, even fail to apply the CSS.
Oh, Chrome didn’t start out this way. No. It started out as a fast browser with independent sandboxed processes. What it has devolved into is nothing short of a dictatorial memory hog of disaster.
“Automatic Updates are nice”, you say.
Yes, they are, until you realize you still have to restart the whole browser. Whatever happened to the initiative of incremental component updates that didn’t require a browser restart? Well, that clearly never materialized. Worse, when the three line menu bar starts to turn colors (green, then yellow, then orange, then red), that’s just the kiss of death for Chrome. The point at which the bar starts turning color, you might as well restart it. If you don’t, Chrome’s developers intentionally and randomly begin breaking web sites until you do. So, until you update, you can expect that some sites won’t load at all, won’t load correctly, or won’t work once loaded. And, this is intentional. It’s a gentle nudge (albeit, stupid) by the developers to force you to update your browser.
Worse, and as the color begins to change, the frequency of the breakage increases. I just don’t get this one at all. Why would you intentionally hobble the user’s browsing experience? But then, not actually just ask the user to update? Seriously, if you want the user to update, just present a notification panel that says, “The browser requires an update, restart” and force the user to restart. Don’t randomly stop parts of the rendering code from working and assume the user will take the hint. Just force the restart on the user… it’s a much more sane experience.
Broken renderer
And the crux of this whole thing is Google’s lack of seriousness (and experience) in producing this browser. As long as Google’s sites work, that’s all that matters to the Google. If you visit some other random site and it doesn’t work, Google doesn’t really care. They might or might not fix it if you report it. Oh, sure, they offer a place to report it, but it’s clear. No one really looks at these. There are bugs outstanding that haven’t been touched for years. So, don’t expect your bug report thrown into the ether to actually be touched in any timely fashion, if ever. Which comes to…
The Wrong Motivation
Netscape was formed to produce a browser. That was the reason for Netscape’s existence. Their commitment was in producing the best browser possible. However, Google’s motivation to produce Chrome was not from the goal of producing the best most compatible browser. No. Google’s motivation was to produce the best experience for displaying its own advertising and search content. If showing Google sites is the only metric by which to assess success of Chrome, then I guess it is a success. But, the rest of the browser experience is a failure.
Failures such as being unable to properly play flash content, failure to play Silverlight content at all, restrictive and unnecessary security ‘features’ and overreaching and heavy handed security tactics. Chrome is not about producing the best browsing experience, it’s about producing a browsing experience that Google mandates on you. In other words, if Google doesn’t approve of the site, then you can’t visit it. That’s not for the browser creator to decide.
A browser creator should remain entirely site neutral. If the user wants to visit a so-called malicious site, that’s their choice. If a user wants to visit any site, Chrome should dutifully render it regardless. Google’s involvement in the Chrome browser should be to produce a browser that ‘just works’. Not a browser that ‘chooses to work’ at some Google employee’s whim.
Technology Enhancements?
As lofty as Google’s initial engineering goals were for Chrome, that whole pretense has been completely dropped today. There have been effectively no browsing experience improvements to Chrome since its first year of existence. Yes, the version number has increased to 43, but there has been little change with each successive update. Oh, they’ve improved the extension system, but not to the point that enough developers take advantage of it. Yes, there are quite a number of extensions that exist, but still no where near the number that exist for Firefox. But, extensions aren’t the reason to use a browser. Sure, they’re niceties, but the reason a browser exists is to view the web. If a browser can’t even fulfill that basic function, what use are extensions?
Technologically, Chrome has also gotten worse over time. The whole browser is predicated on memory use (and lots of it). So, if you want to open 50 tabs, expect your browser to consume 12G of memory or more (depending on the sites you visit). With Firefox, this browser might consume 1-2G of RAM or less. I have no idea what Chrome is doing internally here, but whatever is going on is not right. There is no reason a browser should consume 12G of RAM under any circumstances. Effectively, the only relevant tab is the one that’s visible. This is the ONLY tab that should consume any active RAM (or any tab playing music). The rest of the tabs should be paged out of RAM freeing that memory. Which leads to the horrible tab system…
Tabs?
The tab system in Chrome is not only antiquated, it’s one of the worst implementations of tabs I’ve seen. At this point, I’d even call it broken. Not only do the tabs get progressively smaller as more are opened, there’s a tiny X on every tab to close it. Again, the only tab that’s relevant is the tab that’s visible. All other tabs are there for recall only. This means that the tiny X should not be visible on any tab but the active tab. If the tab is not actively focused, then the X should disappear. Removal of the X means no accidental way to close a tab on activation which does happen in practice far too often. The X should only reappear only when the tab comes into focus, but after the tab has been clicked.
Worse than the usability issues I just mentioned, there is no way to search through the active tabs that are opened. When the tabs get so small you cannot even see the icon, then you don’t even know what’s in the tab. So, the only way to find what tabs you have open is to search. Yet, Chrome provides nothing here. Firefox is at least aware of what tabs you have opened. So in Firefox, if you attempt to open a site that already exists in an open tab, Firefox will at least go to that tab. In Chrome, there’s nothing. Chrome happily lets you open yet another tab for a page you already have open, consuming yet more memory.
Chrome and its Future
It’s clear, Google is not serious about making Chrome better or more usable. Instead, it’s worried about making certain security obsolete to its own detriment. For example, Chrome developers removed certain key SDK features preventing Silverlight from working. Oh, I’m sure those software engineers would argue, that’s our right. Oh, I’m sure that it is. But, removing a key SDK feature that also eliminates a necessary browsing experience is not smart. It’s especially not smart for a browser that needs these features to stay relevant in an ever competitive browser market. I’d call this self-obsolescence.
When other browsers continue to feature this functionality and Chrome doesn’t supply an alternative, this is just stupid engineering design. It’s one thing to replace an SDK feature with a new one that’s compatible. It’s entirely different to remove SDK features that render certain features unavailable.
For example, because Amazon relies on Silverlight for its Prime TV experience, Google’s removal of the key SDK feature that allowed Silverlight to work means no more Prime TV on Chrome. This effectively says Chrome is no longer useful at Amazon. Meaning, if you want to use Amazon, you might as well switch back to Firefox. I ask Chrome developers, “Is it really a good idea to force users away from your browser?” Are the developers really stupid enough to believe that Prime users will ‘live without’ watching Prime TV and Movies and still continue to use Chrome?
Nails in the Coffin
It’s these stupid decisions by Chrome developers that really make no sense. Is it really the wisest of decisions to lock out web sites because your engineering team says this is what should happen? No. It isn’t. It also isn’t for your engineering team to decide. A browser is desgined to be flexible and expandable, not to offer limited browsing experiences. Chrome shouldn’t dictate which sites are ‘allowed’ by making wholesale changes that prevent sites from loading. Instead, Chrome needs to become open and flexible, not closed and unusable.
This software should let the user decide his/her browsing experience. If that leads the user into a trap that gets their computer infected, that’s not the browser’s fault. You can only prevent the user from their own folly for so long. But, the browser should remain neutral at all times. It should offer and allow all commonly used features, tools and protocols (whether they are good, bad, old or new). Who cares that SSL3 is old? Taking it out of the browser entirely will break user experience. It should never be taken out, but it can be set as a user preference to allow or disallow usage. If the user chooses to disable that protocol, that’s the user’s choice. It should never be a blanket choice dictated by the Google engineers.
It’s these stupid global wholesale decisions by the Google engineers that will make Google Chrome a thing of the past. Eventually, Google will become so constrained and so impossible to use that everyone will have to switch back to another browser. We’re quickly approaching that crux point… especially with removal of ‘insecure SDK’ features that remove key features like Silverlight.
No, I am not necessarily a fan of Silverlight, but I do want to be able to use it when sites need it. If Chrome simply can’t even support this most basic of uses, then what’s the point in using Chrome?
Chrome’s Dictatorship
It’s really surprising to me that Chrome’s developers are just pretentious enough to think they can dictate exactly how sites should be built. Meaning, when Chrome engineers remove SSL3 and other ‘weak protocols’ from browser support that these engineers think that sites will be forced to update the outdated protocols on their sites for Chrome. That’s a double edged sword. Chrome doesn’t yet wield enough power as a browser to make that unilateral decision. Oh, the Chrome engineers think that Chrome’s brand is that powerful, but I’m here to tell you it isn’t.
Chrome cannot and should not attempt to dictate what is ‘acceptable’ browser standards. That’s for the W3C to state. If a site chooses to use SSL3, that’s their choice, not Chrome’s. The only thing that removing these ‘features’ from Chrome will accomplish is to make Chrome itself less relevant. In other words, the more of these items that are removed from Chrome, the less reason there is to use Chrome. Sites have no obligation to support Chrome’s browser standards, especially when they become overbearing and unnecessary.
Overall
I am quickly coming to the conclusion that Chrome has outlived its usefulness as a browser. On my notebook where RAM is limited, I’ve already moved back to Firefox which consumes far less memory. On my home system where memory is a little more abundant, I’m still using Chrome. But, there are times where I want to watch Prime TV on Amazon and have to switch to Firefox. Because I’m tired of running multiple browsers and dealing with Chrome’s dictatorial approach to browser engineering, I’m about done with Chrome.
Eventually, more and more users will wake up to Chrome’s lack of basic features, such as viewing Silverlight content. I’m surprised that Chrome developers haven’t stopped Flash from working. That’s probably coming. That would be the ultimate nail in Chrome’s coffin. Once that’s done, Chrome is all but a thing of the past. For me, that day is already here. Bye Chrome.
Amazon Echo: What is it?
What is Amazon Echo?
It’s an approximately 10″ flat black cylinder with reasonable quality speakers, an led ring around the top, a voice recognition system and a remote. While that may seem a little simple, these are the fundamental pieces that matter.
If you’ve ever used a Roku, a smart TV, Amazon Fire TV or an Apple TV, then you pretty much know what Amazon Echo is (minus the speakers). Except, Amazon Echo is intended to be used with audio programs (i.e., news radio, podcasts, music, prime music, weather radio, audiobooks, speech synthesis for reading articles, etc). Anything you can imagine with audio, the Amazon Echo would be the perfect companion. What Apple TV is to movies, Amazon Echo is to audio programs.
In addition to the Alexa audio assistant (like Siri), with a web, tablet or phone app, you can completely control your Echo with the Echo companion app. There is so much that is required by the app, you really can’t get along without it. In fact, you need the app to hook up the Echo to the WiFi which also asks a series of questions about how it will be used. So, if you don’t have a phone, tablet or computer browser, good luck setting up your Echo.
And no, you don’t need to own an Amazon tablet. You can use an iPhone, iPad or any other Android tablet or phone. In fact, you can even use your computer’s browser. Because the Amazon Echo is hooked to the Amazon eco-system, you will also need an Amazon login and password. But, you likely already have this since you purchased the Echo with it. But, if you’re planning on giving it as a gift, the person you are giving it to will also be required to have all of the above. So, Amazon Echo is probably not the best gift idea for those who are not computer savvy or those who choose not to be connected. Remember that this is first and foremost a cloud player device. The faster the speed of the internet connection, the better Echo will work.
Is the Amazon Echo useful?
That’s a good question. If you’re someone who listens to radio programs or other audio programs like podcasts, then perhaps. Though, keep in mind there are some severe limitations in what you can do with the Amazon Echo. For example, the partners Amazon has chosen for its ‘audio channels’ are limited to Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Audible. So, like Apple TV has limited video channels, Amazon Echo also has severely limited audio channels. Because of the audio partner limits, you really get a very small selection of content. For example, if Amazon had partnered with Sirius radio, there would be a whole lot more programming choices. Or, for that matter, partnering with Muzak, Soundcloud, Rhapsody, YouTube audio, Last.fm or other audio partners, I would say there would be much more choices in audio. Until then, Echo is nice but somewhat a novelty.
Alexa vs Siri
Alexa clearly has a better voice than Siri. But, other than the voice choice, the functionality is about the same. Like Siri, Alexa has easter eggs, knows what she knows, but what she knows is very very limited. So, don’t expect to be able to ask Alexa complex questions. To activate Alexa, you simply say the key word ‘Alexa’, suffixed quickly by what you want her to do. For example, ‘Alexa, set volume to 5’. Alexa is always listening for the keyword. Once you say the keyword, Alexa will begin listening for your command.
Wording matters with your sentences or Alexa gets quickly confused as to what you’re asking. For example, there’s a difference between asking ‘Alexa, play Frank Sinatra Songs for Swingin Lovers’ or ‘Alexa, play Songs for Swingin Lovers by Frank Sinatra’ or ‘Alexa, play the album Songs for Swingin Lovers by Frank Sinatra’. The shorter you tend to phrase your request, the more likely Alexa is to do the wrong thing or become confused and do nothing. Echo sometimes hears a phantom keyword and activates.
There are many times when you ask Alexa to do something that instead of responding with ‘Okay’ or some affirmative voice response, the led ring at the top flashes in a ‘special way’. So, we’re left to try and decode the R2D2 led responses from the Echo. Instead, I personally believe Alexa should affirmatively or negatively respond to every voice command. Unfortunately, she doesn’t.
Oh, and no, there is not yet a way to change the voice to a male or some other alternative voice. Though, you can change the wake-up word. So, it doesn’t have to be ‘Alexa’.
Alarms, ToDo Lists and Shopping
It is to be expected that you can shop for music through the Echo. So, if you ask Echo to play something that leads to samples, you can buy the song that’s playing. This will then be put into your library for future playback.
You can set up to 1 alarm and up to 1 timer. This means you can set an alarm for wakeup, but you can’t have two alarms. So, if you have a spouse or partner, you can’t have your own alarm and they have one set for a separate time. That won’t work, yet. If you want to time down two different things (important while cooking), you can’t do this either. It supports only one timer.
When the alarm or timer goes off, the audio noise it makes is limited to an internal sound only. Even though you have access to Prime music and radio, you cannot set the timer to use one of those audio sources. So… limited. There are also other limits.
There is a ToDo and Shopping list that you can ask Alexa to manage. You can say, ‘Alexa, add bananas to my shopping list’. When you open the Echo app, you will have your shopping list with you in the store. You can also remote control the Echo app as long as you have Internet on your phone. So, if you have a cat and you like to leave music playing, you can set up playlists, turn the volume up or down, change the music or shut it off.
Music
This is probably where the Echo shines its brightest. With its two speaker system, the audio is bright and vibrant. Not quite as nice as the Bose Soundlink Mini, but the sound is acceptably full and rich for the cylinder design. Unfortunately, it also has no stereo and it needs it. Amazon needs to offer a companion cylinder connected by bluetooth to offer full rich stereo sound. In fact, it could offer several BT connected cylinders to offer 5.1 or 7.1.
Beyond the sound quality issues, having access to Prime music is a necessity here. If you aren’t a Prime member, you really can’t take advantage of what Echo offers. If you do have Prime, then you get access to not only whatever you’ve purchased or uploaded to Amazon’s cloud player, you also get access to the full Prime music library. Still, Amazon’s Prime library is limited. It seems to have a lot of classic rock choices, but not all of it. So, while it has Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, it doesn’t have Supertramp, for example.
Though, Autorip is your friend with Echo. If you buy a CD with Autorip, it automatically becomes available on the Echo as soon as you’ve paid. However, if you purchase a CD at Target and rip it, you’re limited to 250 uploaded songs unless you pay Amazon an additional $25 a year for 250,000 song uploads.
Audiobooks
If you are a big Audible.com consumer, then you have a distinct advantage with the Echo. You can listen to all of your audio books right on the Echo. If your library is vast, you’ll immediately have a lot of content available to you. In hindsight, I should have been buying audio books when offered with my Kindle purchases, but I never really had any way to play them. With Echo, that’s changed. I will definitely consider audio books in the future.
Kindle Support?
In short, no. There is no support for Alexa to read back Kindle book content using Alexa. Alexa would be the perfect companion to the Kindles that do not offer audio voice playback. Considering this is an Amazon product and would be the perfect companion for the Kindle, the integration between Kindle and Echo is non-existent.
Audiophile Quality?
Definitely not. You’re playing streaming music here, in mono no less. So, while the Echo is great for podcasts, news and incidental background music, don’t give up your audiophile gear. Much of the music streamed from Amazon prime has the telltale mpeg haziness. Echo never skips or stutters while playing Prime or library music, so its streaming IO seems quite robust, but it just doesn’t sound high quality. This is definitely not to be considered an HD quality device as it clearly isn’t. So, don’t go into an Amazon Echo thinking you’ll be getting a high quality music experience. The music does sound decent, but it’s not anywhere near perfect.
Though, for news, podcasts and other spoken word programs, the Amazon Echo is perfect for this use.
Speech Synthesis and Browsing
The voice for Alexa sounds great most of the time. However, when reading back a synopsis Wikipedia article, she doesn’t always do a great job. While music is Echo’s strongest area, the article reading is easily one of Echo’s weakest. Instead, of becoming an audio web browser (which is what Echo should become), Alexa only offers page snippets of articles and then encourages you to crack open a browser or tablet and finish reading there. If Echo is going to do this, why bother using Alexa at all? If I can get better results by reading it myself, then Alexa is pointless for this purpose.
Instead, Alexa should provide full 100% article reading. Read me news, wiki articles or, indeed, any other page on the web. If I ask Alexa to browse to Yahoo News, Alexa needs to be able to read article headlines and let me choose which article to read back. Literally, Echo should become an audio based web browser. Echo should set the standard for audio web browsing so much so that Yahoo and Google optimize their pages for audio browsers much like they are now doing for mobile devices.
Kitchen Use?
Echo would be the perfect companion in the kitchen. Tablets and other touch devices are no where near the perfect device in the kitchen. They get dirty and must be touched by dirty or wet hands. Echo, on the other hand, is the perfect hands-free kitchen companion. ‘Alexa, how do I make Beef Stroganoff’. Seems like a simple recipe request, but no. Alexa has no knowledge of cooking, recipes or anything else to do with kitchen chores. This seems like a no-brainer, but Amazon made no effort here.
Problems and Crashing
After having unboxed Amazon Echo, it had already crashed within 10 minutes of using it. Not the app, but the actual Echo. The app lost connectivity to the Echo until it had rebooted. Though, I have also had the app crash. So, this first incarnation of the Echo is a little beta still. I’m guessing that’s why they cut the 50% off deal with those who were invited to pick them up for testing. Though, when the Echo works, it does work well.
Improvements
The Amazon Echo could benefit from a number of improvements including:
- Battery backup
- Full audio web browsing
- Games (i.e., chess, checkers, etc)
- Better interactive integration between Echo and its companion app
- Satellite interfaces (to use Echo in every room)
- Stereo audio / Multichannel audio (using multiple cylinders)
- Audio playback to stereo BT devices (i.e., headphones and speakers)
- Speakerphone
- Remote control of Amazon devices
- Check status of Amazon orders
- Recipes and general kitchen helper
- Alexa reading Kindle books
- More audio channels such as:
- Sirius Radio
- Police Scanners
- Custom podcast URLs
- SoundCloud and similar sites
- YouTube Audio
- Last.fm
- Spotify
- MySpace Music
- Amie Street
- A much bigger selection of Internet radio stations
- Archives of pre-recorded news broadcasts
Limitations
This first incarnation of Amazon Echo is quite limited. Echo has about 1/10th of the feature set you would expect to offer a complete experience. For example, it should become an audio web browser. Audio is the next evolution in browsers. Sitting at a computer watching a screen is time consuming. But, using an audio web browser, you could browse the web and work on other things. It’s easy to listen and still focus on other tasks. We do it all the time.
In fact, Alexa needs to be imported into every Amazon device including the Fire phone, Fire tablet line and every other interactive device it makes. While Alexa needs to be on every Amazon device, the use case of Echo and all of the audio channels should still be limited to the Echo.
So, while Alexa exists and works as well as Siri, Alexa is simply the input and output device on the Echo out of necessity. The functionality of the Echo needs to firmly focus on all aspects of audio communication including podcasts, dictation, news programs, web browsing, audio books, cooking, music and more. Alexa shouldn’t be overlooked as the home helper, but not strictly on the Echo. I know that Amazon is planning on expanding the Echo to supporting home automation through such phrases as ‘Alexa, turn on the light’. But, that requires a home automation system that interfaces with the Echo. There are probably other uses just waiting to be explored.
In fact, if Amazon were to put Alexa on every device, you could have a unified Alexa system throughout your home. So, each device could learn the types of things you do regularly and share that among all of the Alexa systems. So, if you frequently ask for a specific type of music, Alexa could offer recommendations for new playlists.
Overall, it’s currently an okay device. Out of 10 stars, I’d give it 4 stars. Amazon compromised just a little too much in all aspects of this device to make it truly outstanding. In fact, Alexa should have had white LED lights on the unit so that it could illuminate the room. It also needs a battery backup so you can still use some of Alexa’s basic functions, like the alarm clock, if the power goes out. The next incarnation of the Echo will likely make up for its current shortcomings.
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
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