James Harding's view from the valley
Butlers, internet phones and PC/TVs are keeping the Valley amused.And the real Dot Com finally stands up.
Telemarketing and the hard sell are rife in the Valley. While I enjoy the idea of an annoyingly persistent marketing executive being disturbed by early morning phone calls from telemarketers, I find it infuriating when I am repeatedly hassled at home. Not in my back room, as they say.
Typically, technology has a solution. A $50 gadget called the Phone Butler sits patiently by the phone and waits. When a telemarketer phones, all you do is switch on the Phone Butler. The virtual Jeeves politely declines the offer in a recorded message - with an English accent - and then asks that your name is removed from the company's list of sales leads.
Teach to his own
I remember the uproar in the UK when prospective school teachers were required to have passed O Level Maths before they were allowed to become Sir or Miss and do the job. But times move on, and California is now pushing through a rule that its teachers must be computer-literate.
Everyone here is talking about this great idea - online, of course - but I wonder how the scheme would be received in the UK. I imagine most of its teachers would be upset. It would mean the end of games teachers, though.
Phone rangers
If it were possible, someone could make a fortune using the fantastic idea of telephone services over the internet. The idea is that microphones connected to PCs, using the right software, could give anybody free phone calls. There has not been so much fuss over free phone calls since the craze for those British Telecom engineer tone pads.
As much as I would love to see BT suffer under the blow of less than £100 per minute profit, the idea does not work. There are too many problems. The internet struggles to carry calls without too much delay or without low-quality sound and there is not even bandwidth for everybody.
But not for long. AT&T and WorldCom/MCI are working on the idea and have invested in startups which are developing internet phones. Microsoft has done the same. The companies making the phones are making huge losses as the technology is developed, but none of the big cheeses think the idea stinks. Another company already offers clear connections if customers buy a router that directs calls to its private network at a cost of $10,000 per site. It is still winning customers because it claims it can undercut international phone rates by 40 per cent.
The compelling fact is that the telephone companies are both excited and scared by this internet telephony idea. If the lure of huge profits from such a potentially lucrative idea was not enough to get the phone companies involved, the threat of losing lots of their business should do it.
Not on your telly
OK, I'll say it - this PC/TV idea is stupid. No one is buying them and still everyone predicts they will sell millions in years to come. Rubbish.
The research figures are not impressive, even if you take into account all the people who say they are considering buying a PC/TV in the next year. The latest results say that only five per cent of respondents are thinking about buying one - and the respondents are the people who said they would buy a PC within 12 months. That is five per cent of not many people, which must be about 0.005 per cent of the population.
The main problem is simple - if you cannot watch telly and do something at the same time, you will not bother. How many times have you watched telly while working on a laptop? I'm watching Frasier as I write this, which explains quite a lot.
If that was not enough, think about kids. Games consoles are bad enough, but parents will not give up the TV to their kids so they can watch the Spice Girls and then give it up again so they can visit all the Spice Girls Websites. Get the darlings a portable telly of their own for their rooms and they can surf for porn all they like, or even do their homework, while you can still watch whatever you want in peace - like the Spice Girls on Top of the Pops.
Post with the most
To the chagrin of the Valley, a recent survey proclaims that Americans prefer normal post to email. They find it more secure and less intrusive.
But surely those technologically advanced Americans would be singing the praises of email? After all, they invented it. Sure enough, I found the answer. The survey was conducted for Pitney Bowes, the post metering company.
Com as you are Dot
Excite, the search engine company, has conducted the most ridiculous publicity stunt I have heard about for ... ooh, at least 10 or 15 days.
It has searched (geddit?) for Dot Com. A woman called Dot Com. And it found her.
She lives in California, she is 86 years old and she spells her name Dorothy Comm. Excite seemed disappointed that Dot did not know much about the internet but I thought it would give her a prize - a computer with internet access, for example. No such luck. And if you are wondering what an 86-year-old would want with a PC, you would be assuming things about her. Dot is a university professor with a PhD, who has worked all over the world.
James Harding is US editor of VNU Newswire, based in San Francisco. He can be reached at [email protected] or on 00 1 415 306 0879.