Am I too sensitive?….(as we say in Australia, somewhat crudely – “drink some concrete Princess and harden the f*ck up!” - see correspondence below …
The CEO of a company whose software product I signed up for as a user, recently contacted me with a LinkedIN request, and the only place he could have got my contact details from was his customer database. Do you think this is OK or not?
My concern is, regardless of the fact it was LinkedIN or that the person was the CEO, I have received a personal contact from what should be a confidential customer database.
I guess this pisses me off more because my personal strategy with LinkedIN is 90% of the time to only network with people that I have actually physically met.
This is not a small company, and I don’t like the implication behind the reply.
Or maybe I should find that concrete!
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On September 29, 2012 12:15 AM, <CEO> wrote:
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Alan,I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn
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I’m presuming that you have contacted me on LinkedIN as a new <PRODUCT> customer, since I don’t know how you would have found my details otherwise.Don’t you think it’s a little unethical to leverage your customer database for your personal contacts on LinkedIN?
Just a thought
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LinkedIn
<CEO> has sent you a message.
Date: 10/02/2012
Subject: Re: RE: Invitation to Connect
Hi Alan, LinkedIN is for business contacts, I am doing business with my customers so I don’t know how it could be construed otherwise. The contacts I have made give me valuable feedback regarding our services, if someone does not want to be connected they can easily ignore the request.If you are wondering, I am the owner of my company. If I wasn’t, then you would have a point.
As a customer myself of many services, I can tell you there have been many times I wish I could reach out to the CEO of a company. Feel free to do that with me with any concerns.
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Steve Wozniak is becoming an Australian citizen, citing one reason being the potential of the NBN, as per an article in today’s Australian Financial Review.
With recent economic slowdown, and talk in the mining industry of the end of the boom, it’s vitally important that Australia adequately plans for it’s technology future, more cohesively that the poorly organised New South Wales digital summit (see my earlier post on the NBN here).
Well then. I’ve been making a hooh-hah about the merits of the Koreans, robots and children’s candy (in a sign of the unstoppable behemoth of globalis(z)ation, I finally succumb to the American word for the Scottish “sweetie”). Read Samsung, Android and Jelly Bean.
It’s time for a new phone, the anticipated 2 year replacement. In Sydney, Samsung has adopted the Applestore Strategy, and has opened up a huge airy, light store directly opposite the large Applestore (though I do have to say that I was in Shanghai recently and YAY impressed with the view of the Applestore from the top of the Oriental Pearl tower some 250m below, with the iconic fruit clearly visible in a submerged cylinder of glass).
Applestore Shanghai over left shoulder on the glass floor at the top of the Oriental Pearl tower. Scared is not the word.
On my first visit to the Samsung store, I was blown away by Android, and by the form factor of the Galaxy Note 2. I loved the old school stylus, the bright screen, the clear browsing, the seemingly infinite customization of Android.
With the Note 2 coming out in the next month, I was resolved to drop Steve (peace be upon him) and set out on a new relationship with the Korean. I watched Samsung videos, looked up reviews, various websites, and even constructed a comparison spreadsheet of features and requirements, as all IT people should do with all affairs of the heart.
I wasn’t impressed with the specs of the iPhone 5 – despite speculation, I had hopd for something radically different. And less impressed with the tales of woe of iOS6 on existing phones (though as we speak I am currently installing on my iPhone 4 – fingers X!).
I dropped back into the Samsung store yesterday and checked out the Samsung offerings. I decided that the Note 2 was actually too large to be a real phone, and that in fact the stylus was decidedly inaccurate and gimmicky – a bit like those bloody annoying devices that couriers ask you to sign your name with in an even more illegible scrawl than your years-of-typing-not-used-to-writing handwriting.
And so to the Samsung phone. I played with Jelly Bean on the Galaxy S4 and couldn’t see a massive difference over the previous version – the “smoothness of scrolling” of Project Butter did not really impress me, as a new user. However, not a bad looking device – nice and bright, with a major selling point being an actual changeable battery, like every device other than an iPhone!
iPhone 5 and Galaxy Note
I thought I’d better give the iPhone a lookin, and popped into the glass Mecca opposite. A hive of activity – though noticeably not as much as you’d expect on the weekend of the release of the device. I got my hands on an iPhone and wasn’t massively impressed with the extra row of icons of real estate. It was blisteringly fast (on Apple’s in-store Wi-Fi of course) and the screen was, for want of a better word, retina-clear. No idea what the headphone jack is doing on the bottom, and I shudder to think where following the ex-Google maps app might take me, from all accounts.
But what struck me was the design of the thing and the lightness of it. Okay, the user interface now looks pretty dated (the static row of icons versus the bright animated backgrounds of Android) but hey the thing “just works” I thought.
Major language warning for the below video courtesy of The Onion – Sony releases a new and challenging product….
And I remembered that’s what brought me to Apple in the first place and the core (boom boom) value proposition of the company. An OS based on Unix, hardware and software made and jealously guarded by the company means control, but also means less glitches. I remember years of pissing around with PC hardware at work, with various compatability problems, drivers etc. and just wanting to come home to a computer that actually did stuff without more interrupt conflicts! A bit like a chef coming home and putting a microwave meal in the oven. And even then (2000 or so) without the full compatability with Windows, I’d pay a premium for that assurance.
And so it is with iPhone. I’ve bought into the Apple iCloud ecosystem – I know the lock-in of the game, but honestly, the iCloud and iPhone are an extension of my Mac. They just work. Some might call that lazy pig headedness, an ostrich mentality, but I’ve done my time with bleeding edge and patchwork solutions.
Locked in to the core
A friend of mine, a long-time Apple fanboy, finally switched to an Android (in part I’m sure to an awesome promo with a pair of Beats headphones!). His first impressions – the key ones – are that the whole OS just isn’t as slick, intuitive or integrated an experience as iOS. Furthermore, he noticed several glitches, and more importantly mentioned a key issue that he said “no Android fanboy tends to talk about”.
Just as a combination of hardware, OS and apps brings you a Windows experience, a combination of hardware, carrier, OS and apps brings you your Android experience. On the Google Play app store he found a frustrating amount of apps which upon selecting “install” gave the message “sorry – this application is not compatable with your device”. Furthermore, he needs to wait for his handset provider and carrier to get their act together to fine tune Android Jelly Bean for his device before he can download it.
Similar compatability issues were apparent in the Samsung store. Asking about the Galaxy 4G the assistant apologetically mentioned that only one network supported 4G right now, the others requiring “configurations” to work with Galaxy handsets.
That is not a good experience.
I am very much of the JFW (“just flippin’ work”) school when it comes to technology. Ironically, I find iOS to be very “corporate” against the fun and youthful Android phones, especially Samsung – a point they make in their cheeky anti-iPhone campaigns with the hip kids keeping place in line for their parents at the iPhone launch (55secs in):
But it got me questioning what I really want with a phone, the one device that you take EVERYWHERE with you …. a point not lost on Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ives, as he hammers home in the well-scripted website ad (read: argument!) for iPhone 5. I thought:
Compact and lightweight – iPhone 5 cuts this big time – I don’t know what I was thinking about with the Galaxy Note. I was walking along typing with one hand on my iPhone 4 this morning, and did notice this – no chance on a larger device (another subliminal plant from the iPhone 5 video!).
Durability – I want something solid that I’m confident I can knock around a bit! The Samsung is cheap and plastic feeling compared to the solid iPhone
One stop shop – handles ALL your comms, entertainment needs on the move – some people have a phone and an iPod Touch – why?!
Just bloody work – proven with iOS for me. I don’t need a gazillion different configuration options, and there’s only so much you can do with the form factor of a small mobile device. Some things are best done on the desktop, and that’s OK!
The new faceless corporate – Google carrying the hammer?
A second comparison of the iPhone 5 with the Samsung Galaxy S3 and I guess Android for that matter, leads me to a different conclusion – Android looks like a childish sibling. OK the thing is attractive to look at, but iPhone hits all the points on the app grunt work, and is pretty much guaranteed to work seamlessly. This is ironic since Apple always marketed itself on the “youth” aspect, and the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad poked fun at the boring, sensible world of the PC. Apple seizes this mantle over it’s more fun cousins now.
But it just bloody works. From 90% Samsung, I’ve swung back to 90% iPhone.
Now there’s the question of why I actually need a $1000 phone over iPhone 4 and iOS6…. and it’s just installed, seems OK …. let’s consider some opportunity cost….
Argh! Will people stop confusing me with the chief economics editor of the Australian Financial Review who shares the same name as me! Another random email today…
Years ago, whilst working for a fund manager, I was on a conference call with the US, and a new senior equities researcher who had just joined the firm came into my office and sat quietly waiting whilst I finished the call.
He earnestly shook my hand and told me that he just wanted to say that he highly respected my work and that he looked forward to collaborating with me on his latest research ideas. When I pointed out that I could knock up an enterprise trading system for him quicker than I could determine an economic indicator in a valuation model, he left the IT guy like a rat out of trap!
So this is the other Alan Mitchell, considerably older than me as my MBA economics lecturer pointed out, much to his amusement (Prof. Tom Valentine is a good friend of “the other guy”). Besides, I wouldn’t dress as informally as the laddie. You can find Big Al’s Australian Financial Review editorial here, which will be infinitely more entertaining than my scribblings … but probably not as accurate!
Australia is a pretty big place, with a low population, and is really quite a nice place to live!
How about an influx of startups, tempted away from the Valley and other hubs, to enjoy state-of-the-art infrastructure in Australia, top weather, the best sharks (and not talking about the Venture Capitalists) and a choice of where to base yourselves for an awesome alternative lifestyle to the usual tech crowd.
Amazon drops in a cloud data centre into Alice Springs in the centre of Australia, buried underground with cooling systems driven by huge solar panels in one of the sunniest places on Earth.
Boosted by tax revenues, the Australian Government invests in entrepreneurial startup businesses with various incentive schemes, and lowers Australian company tax. Knock-on effect of stimulating the economy – building local infrastructure to support these distributed tech communities – and making Australia a more attractive hub in which to base regional businesses.
Planes get faster. The great Australian trade-off – seeing your homeland once every two years if you’re lucky – is less of an issue.
Roll on NBN, the New Australian Economy - The Great Silicon Beach!
Impressed with Sony’s Dick Tracey watch released this week… this MUST be the ultimate form factor … converging smartphone and timepiece … and components and technology must make the kick arse version 2 possible soon…
Siri dictation that actually works, two way camera, dialling etc. on a stylish device on your wrist… perhaps coming with a couple of Bluetooth headsets (actually, most probably optional extras) – tiny one for calls, stereo one for music.. delicious!
Sony’s version is apparently pretty buggy, and badly designed (remember the Sony Clie anyone?), and past attempts at this have been less than elegant. But looks like there’s a market for this – perhaps it’s time for Apple to clear up here … but then, they’ve probably got this in production right now!
Right … so this will be the effect of mass uptake of iPhone 4s/iPad 3 voice control (branded “Siri”) – we’ll all be talking to ourselves AND talking like robots!
I'm a Technologist currently based in Sydney. Originally from Scotland, I've lived and worked in London, San Francisco and Tokyo and backpacked pretty extensively. I'd like to think I have a decent world view on STUFF.
The opinions I present in my blog are solely my own and do not reflect those of any company I currently work for, or have ever worked for.
- see correspondence below …
Posted by amitchell1 
