The Power of Buzz, or What to learn from the iPhone launch

Waiting for the Latest in Wizardry – New York Times

I don’t really care too much about the iPhone, but the buzz around it is truely stuff of ledgend.  All the secrecy, all the hype… the rate plan announcement made headlines.  THE RATE PLAN!!!  Companies would kill for this kind of buzz (so might Cheney but that’s a different story).

At the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, the first in line are already camped out. Sightings of the device already in the possession of a privileged few were being reported, even photographed and posted on the Internet. Rumors have it that shipments are arriving in the dark of night, accompanied by armed guards.

“It’s masterful when you really think about it,” said Jeremy Horwitz, the editor in chief of iLounge, a popular online publication read by iPod and iTunes users. “Ask yourself how many companies can announce a product six months in advance and not just sustain public interest but even build the frenzy. It’s staggering to me.”

Pre-introduction product hype and hysteria is not new, of course. Just ask any 12-year-old Harry Potter fan or middle-age Star Wars cultist. Last year, video game addicts slept on sidewalks outside Sony stores to be the first to buy the PlayStation 3. But ever since Apple first let the world know about the Macintosh computer in 1984, with its Super Bowl commercial, the company has become the standard-bearer in drum roll marketing for consumer electronics.

Pentagon to Put Computers Offline

Slashdot | Crackers Cause Pentagon to Put Computers Offline The most interesting part of this to me is that Gates doesn’t use email.  What?  get with it.  I saw the following comment and was confused.

Gates calling himself low tech is most likely an attempt to deflect further questions. It was well known in his time at Texas A&M that he would personally respond to many emails from students, and as he was leaving the university he made it known that he frequented a popular aggie message board.

Your Printer is Lying to You

Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves This was an interesting test I thought.  It would have been interesting to see how long they could keep printing after the printer says “out of ink” before the printer stops or else they notice a problem.   In some respects, this is like penalizing a car’s fuel efficiency because the low fuel warning light comes on.  I don’t swap the cartridge until I notice a problem.  I think I get about 50% extra use out of it. (I have a canon)

The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon’s printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak’s Easyhare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.