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The Apex DVD Player

The payoff from a $29 DVD player is the cultural capital of savvy that goes with finding a bargain. [New York Times: Technology]

To understand how powerful that urge can be, don’t think about multipacks of paper towels or huge jars of mayonnaise. Think about DVD players — specifically, Apex DVD players. Of the 31.1 million DVD players sold last year, roughly 10 percent were Apex models, according to the NPD Group, the retail tracker. That puts the brand in second place, just behind Sony, but the two companies could not be more different. Sony is a storied innovator, a name familiar to consumer-electronics buyers for decades as a technological leader. The Apex name — for those who even notice it — has been around for about five years and basically means ”bargain.”

Apex is one smart-ass company. They have about 100 employees and did about $1 Billion in sales last year. While they are based in California they outsource the tech stuff to Asia and pass the savings back to the consumers… They’ve also teamed with stores like Walmart to create “door-busters” like their feature-reduced, loss leader, $29 DVD player last Christmas.

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Disappointed with Six Apart support…

So far.. much time has passed (2 days – feels like forever) with minimal progress. I received an email or three with some pointers, but no real assistance and have been in a quiet period waiting and waiting for some true guidance. These emails came well after normal hours… starting after 11pm EST.

I have learned that my issue does not appear to be a corruption issue, but rather a post that seems to have stuck around from a previous blog (I’ve messed with a few on this installation), though I have no idea what to do to resolve my issue….

In my mind, if you choose to offer customer/technical support, you need to do more than have the head of the company reply to messages when he can. I realize Six Apart is a smaller company, but get some tech support people, if you have some customers seeking help. It’s great to have such a priority level person working on my issue… but not when he can squeeze it in.

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Google AdSense Tracker

This looks very nice…

This AdSense tracker will keep detailed logs of all impressions and clicks on AdSense ads on any website without altering the ad code itself. That information can then be used to analyze the effectiveness of the publisher’s sites, different ad sizes and styles, or even individual pages – showing the publisher exactly when, where and what ad was clicked in realtime. [Search Engine Journal]

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Psion faces opposition over Symbian

So much for a smooth transition for Nokia…

Psion’s biggest shareholder on Thursday announced its opposition to the mobile computing company’s £135.7m sale of its stake in the Symbian joint venture and urged other shareholders to vote down the proposal next week.

Phoenix Asset Management Partners, which holds 56m shares representing a 13.1 per cent stake, said the conditions for an IPO of Symbian had been met and the management of Psion should instead pursue this option aggressively.

Phoenix is the first big investor to come out against the stake sale to handset-maker Nokia, although a number of private investors have suggested a shareholder revolt on online messageboards.

[FT.com]

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Unicast TV Recycler Format Spreading

This just allows mediocre 30 second spots to live on in a medium where people are already ignoring them. Nothing like innovating or simply altering your creative message and format for the channel in which you are communicating!

Unicast’s “rich” media format, where it allows TV advertisers to recycle creative meant for the tube, continues to find acceptance among major online publishers. CondeNet joined the club, along with biggies like ABCNews, About, MSN and Tribune Interactive. AdWeek reports. [Up2Speed]

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Chameleon Card Changes Stripes

This is one of the more out there ideas. I would think it would be easier to use an electronic device like a phone or PDA than to have a master card you morph into the card you need. How do you convince merchants you are not pulling one over…

An upcoming product promises to lighten your wallet in a good way — by replacing all those credit, bank and customer-loyalty cards with a single, programmable card. [Wired News]

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How long should it take for customer service?

I sent an email to Six Apart today at 2:47 pm EST about my data corruption issue. I was given an email address to use as a paying customer for support and expected that I would hear back shortly, yet I have not even received an auto-responder stating that my message even got to someone’s mailbox.

Since you’ve made a premium-level donation of $45 or more, you are
eligible for a higher level of support. To initiate a help request,
simply email us at (withdrawn for now). Priority support requests
will be elevated to instant messaging as required, and you will receive
IM contact information in the event such support is needed.

Seems in theory that the system is there — but so far zippo from Six Apart. I expect prompt service as a paying customer (since it seems most people are not and simply rely on the P2P methods within the support forum), am I being unreasonable? The whole reason I decided to pay was for the support…

UPDATE – 11:11 pm …Just got an email from Ben at Six Apart. The help begins!

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Thank you Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings!

Sure the real reason is to get confidence cooking in the company, but I am just glad they are seemingly going to produce this. I really enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia books as a kid and would welcome a live action version. I’ve recall seeing an animated version a long time ago and have heard a cool spoof on the radio during a winter episode of the Prairie Home Companion.

The Burbank, Calif., entertainment company’s Walt Disney Studios unit took out color ads scheduled to appear in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among others, announcing a deal to co-finance and distribute a live-action film based on C.S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy classics, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Such announcement ads typically are limited to Hollywood trade newspapers like Daily Variety.

The effort to show Disney’s commitment to a big new fantasy franchise comes as Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Eisner faces one of the biggest tests of his career. After a fierce three-month campaign led by former board members Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold, at least 30% of shareholders are expected to withhold support for Mr. Eisner at Wednesday’s annual meeting.

Monday, state pension funds in Ohio and Florida joined others in California and elsewhere in announcing they would withhold support from the longtime Disney boss, while the pension fund of New York City said it would support him.

The showdown comes after Mr. Eisner and the Disney board last month rejected an unsolicited takeover offer from cable company Comcast Corp. In a bid to appease shareholders, Disney board members have been talking to Mr. Eisner about the possibility of curbing his powers by removing his chairman title, according to people familiar with the matter.

Detailing its latest project, the studio said it hopes to make several movies from the novels written by Mr. Lewis, who was an English professor and Christian writer — in much the same vein as “The Lord of the Rings” and the “Harry Potter” series. The announcement came a day after “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” swept the Academy Awards, winning 11, and followed the huge box-office success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It also came after talks broke down to extend a lucrative and long-running distribution deal for Pixar Animation Studios’ computer-animated films.

Disney’s partner on “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Walden Media, bought the film rights to the seven-book epic in late 2001. The production company announced a year later that Andrew Adamson, director of the computer-animated hit “Shrek,” would direct the first film. [WSJ.com]

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Samsung Preparing i530 Palm OS Smart Phone

Samsung has announced a new addition to its collection of Palm OS smart phones. [Brighthand]

According to this site, it will run Palm OS Garnet 5.2. Its processor isn’t known at this time, but the i500 uses a 300 MHz Intel processor. The i530 will have 32 MB of RAM and an SD/MMC slot for extra storage.

The i530 will supposedly have a 324-by-352-pixel, 16-bit, TFT, touchscreen as its primary display. It will also include a smaller 96-by-128-pixel, full-color, OLED display on its exterior to display time- and phone-related information.

This will be a tri-band GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900) device. It won’t support EDGE but its current data capabilities will allow users to send and receive emails and SMS and MMS messages. It will also allow web surfing and WAP.

Reportedly, the i530 won’t have built-in Bluetooth short-range wireless networking.

The smart phone will, of course, run most Palm OS applications and it will support playback of MPEG-4 and MP3 files.

The resolution of its built-in camera is not yet known, but it is expected to be better than that offered by the i500.

The Samsung SGH-i530 will be available in late spring or early summer. The company plans to give one of these to over 22,000 VIPs, athletes, and officials at the Olympic games in Athens, Greece this summer.

Sounds like a great device though I wonder why no bluetooth… An interesting way to seed these as well by giving them away to the Olympics crowd. I guess we can expect to see quite a bit of Samsung advertising this summer.

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Eat at Subway, be a loser?

So the new Subway campaign seems to imply that you are a loser (as in dork, not in the contest) when they say (in paraphrase)

They were losers but Subway taught them to win (referring to the team getting off a bus)
With over 8 million winning cards there are no losers… no losing cards anyway

I don’t get what’s going on in the sub wars… first rat-wiches and now customers as losers??