Mac “security” ad banner: couldn’t they have done better?

I came across this advertisement targeted at Macintosh users while perusing Downloadsquad.com about a year ago.  It’s truly a piece of art that should be in the “I’m with stupid” museum.  I’ll let the screenshot speak for itself (cordially pointed to with arrows):

First, the written words aren’t user-friendly, and some would argue, simply don’t jive with what the ad is trying to do: (“Click Next to recommend improvements.”)… Recommend?  Shouldn’t it be something like “Click Next to see recommended improvements”?  This could be forgiven.

But making an interactive Mac advertisement look like a Windows XP interface is simply inexcusable.  It makes me wonder: what kind of a silly (read: uneducated) user would click on such a poorly-designed ad…

Here is another one, recommending Internet Explorer 6 or higher for me on a Mac running Safari 3.  The wording in this one was most likely “composed” by an exchange student (again, I’ll let the image speak for itself):

Playing around with Plaxo Pulse

I’ve been testing (more like playing around) with Plaxo Pulse – Plaxo’s social-networking/life-streaming service.  I added the Pulse feed/badge on the bottom of the left column and depending on how it goes, it might crop up to the top of the page.

Plaxo now solves one big problem: life feeds.  It takes all the web feeds of online services such as Flickr, Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Jaiku, and so many others, and consolidates them into one life feed.  This way, my friends don’t have to go to ten different web sites and services to see what I’m up to: they can just go to one.

I heard Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur talk about a similar service – Friend Feed – on Net at Night (episode 45) and I just happened to come across Plaxo Pulse before giving Friend Feed a try.  I will do so soon.  Also, Plaxo still does the thing that it does well at its core: connects you with people in your address book.  It takes this info and syncs it back to your address book on the desktop and mobile.  And it does this for other PIM data like calendars, tasks and notes.  Come to think of it, Plaxo is doing everything really correct here: it leaves an online version of the apps and gives you the ability to sync them up and down to your desktop apps while sharing all of this PIM stuff with your friends and colleages.  

In any case, this entire social networking aspect is new for Plaxo and I really like it so far.  I will be writing more about it after I explore it some more.  

Tip: International music support in iTunes smart playlists

This is a solution for those who have music in different languages in iTunes and who use smart playlists.  Almost half of my music in my iTunes library is Russian.  Since most Russian CDs are not in such directories as CDDB or Gracenote, I have to manually fill in the information about each song and album.  On top of this layer of difficulty there is another: I don’t have a keyboard with the Russian alphabet.  Thus I have a few choices when it comes to filling in album and song details for my Russian songs:

• Type the song details using Latin letters, so a song titled Незаконченный Роман would be spelled Nezakonchenniy Roman
• Type the song details in Russian letters – just as it would appear naturally: Незаконченный Роман.
  • This option was really difficult and time-consuming since I would enable the Russian keyboard layout and then enable the virtual keyboard in OS X, and then peck away with the mouse at the virtual keyboard.  But it became so much easier when my mom showed me a different Russian keyboard layout called Russian – Phonetic.  Basically, it’s a keyboard layout that maps Russian letters to their English phonetic counterparts. 

  

Automotive Electronics: a follow-up

In the last post, I posited that Microsoft’s SYNC will be the technology that brings the most differentiation to automobile electronics and that SYNC will finally unify the electronic interfaces in our vehicles.  I’d like to follow that article up with a few comments.

In the current market, navigation systems (in general) are a point of differentiation between “smart cars” and “regular cars.”  SYNC will provide this kind of differentiation, and more.  Not only will people look for cars with navigation systems in the future, but SYNC will become the technology brand name car buyers will seek out.  Just as features like airbags and all-wheel drive today are on the shopping lists of people who have a need for such features, SYNC will be on the same list of tech-conscious car shoppers.  Some shoppers might even go so far as to purchase a car they like less overall, but with SYNC, than buy a car that’s more visually appealing and attractive, but lacking SYNC.

This can be seen today by the increased demand for Ford’s products that have SYNC as an option: namely the Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury brands.  For example, customers might purchase the Ford Fusion sedan over the Honda Accord sedan just because the Ford has an option to be equipped with SYNC.  However, the Accord might be a better car overall – as can be seen in many reviews (mainly because it’s newer).  The trend here is that technology draws people to cars, and this trend is only going to accelerate as our tech becomes a bigger part of our mobile lifestyles.

Today, it’s in my and the consumers’ best interests that Microsoft license SYNC to manufacturers other than Ford and, conversely, that other manufacturers see the benefit in SYNC and decide to integrate it into their products.  (I say this is interesting for me because there is currently no Ford product that is desirable to me, even with SYNC.  That says something about Ford’s line-up more than it does about SYNC.  I’d go for a VW GTI with SYNC in a heartbeat, for example).  However, if Microsoft takes the Apple iPhone licensing route and decides to collect higher margins on Ford exclusivity, other competitors might enter the market.  I don’t see Microsoft doing this, however, since I see the company most concerned with market share and market penetration – especially in the automobile market – a segment they have been wanting to be in for a long time.