Tag: samsung

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Talking Apple versus Samsung on 2SER’s “The Wire”

I ended up talking about Apple versus Samsung on Radio 2SER’s current affairs program The Wire as well, syndicated via community radio stations around Australia.

The journalist was Tawar Razaghi, and their website introduces the story like this:

Apple wants Samsung to take eight mobile models off the market after it won a landmark patent case against Samsung over the design of its mobile phones. Apple was awarded $1.5 billion in damages and now has the exclusive rights to pinch-and-zoom gestures on their touch-screen technologies.

Patent law is intended to reward innovation but with companies engaged in patent turf wars this case highlights how patents may inhibit innovation instead.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.1MB)

The audio is ©2012 2SER-FM 107.3, and you can download a podcast of the entire episode once that section of their website is back up after the current maintenance work.

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Talking Apple versus Samsung on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

The billion-dollar legal penalty that a US court imposed on Samsung for allegedly copying Apple was the topic for my spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio on 28 August 2012.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:38 — 6.6MB)

You can of course hear us talk live every Tuesday night from 7pm AEST on Sydney’s FM 99.3 Northside Radio.

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Weekly Wrap 116: Porn, planes and presentations

Here’s my week Monday 20 to Sunday 26 August 2012. Once more it’s nothing but the facts, ma’am, because I’m so far behind in these posts.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the launch party for the Samsung Experience Store in Sydney, where of course they provided food and drink.
  • On Thursday through Saturday I attended Consilium at the Palmer Coolum Resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The Centre for Independent Studies covered by flight from Sydney to Sunshine Coast, accommodation, food and drink, a limousine from the resort to Brisbane airport, and a flight back to Sydney — but I wasn’t paid for my appearance at the event.
  • On Sunday I flew from Sydney via Los Angeles to San Francisco to attend the VMworld event at VMware’s expense. I’ll list all of the freebies from that event on the next Weekly Wrap.

[Photo: View from Millers Point, taken from my room at The Sebel Pier One Hotel in Sydney. On the left is Pier 2/3, and across Sydney Harbour is Harry Seidler’s controversial Blues Point Tower.]

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Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone first impressions

Three days ago I finally got around to setting up the Samsung Galaxy S III review unit that I’d been given. Here are my initial impressions after a few hours of playing around on the long weekend.

These comments should be read in light of what I wrote for Technology Spectator in terms of this new smartphone being a shot across the bows for Apple. But bear in mind that I’ve never used an Apple iPhone, so I can’t make direct comparisons.

I’m also upgrading from a very bashed-around two-year-old HTC Desire, as seen in the photo above. That means a jump from Android version 2.3 to 4.0, and I’m not making clear distinctions between Android improvements and Samsung-specific features — but then I don’t think average users do either.

In other words, this is definitely not a proper review. “First impressions”, I said.

Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone first impressions”

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Weekly Wrap 98: Logies, lawyers and largesse

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 16 to Sunday 22 April 2012.

No photo again this week because camera-dearth.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 134, “Avoiding your own Logies leak moment”. Web developer Dave Hall, principal engineer at Technocrat, explains how the Herald Sun might have used the robots exclusion standard to stop the world seeing its embargoed story about Gold Logie winner Hamish Blake — but read the first comment on the story for important additional information.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday night Samsung launched their new Smart TV range at Blue Hotel, Woolloomooloo. Apart from food and drink, we all got a goodie bag containing a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Cool Harvest 2011 Pinot Grigio (which was lovely); a Blu-Ray copy of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a double pass to see King of Devil’s Island at the cinema next weekend (when I’m in Perth), a 2-for-1 voucher to see Wish You Were Here at the cinema, all of which I’m giving to Richard Chirgwin; two 330ml cartons of Kokomo coconut water (do they mean “juice”? it tasted like juice), which is “powered by nature” (ugh!) and which I drank; three chocolates from Fardoulis Chocolates, which I ate in about 11 seconds; a 50ml thing of Schwarzkopf [3D]Mension hair and body shampoo (that’s what it says, apparently “body shampoo” is a thing); a 50ml can of Avène Thermal Spring Water, which “smooths and softens sensitive skin” (which sounds like quite a lot of bullshit to me), which I’ll investigate further with Science; and a voucher for Chi Spa at the Shangri-La Hotel to get a 90-minute “treatment” for the price of a 60-minute one, as long as it’s on a weekday, which I threw away because it’s bullshit.
  • On Wednesday afternoon LG launched their own Cinema 3D range of smart TVs at Sydney’s newly-renovated Museum of Contemporary Art. Apart from food and drink, there was also a goodie bag — though I ended up not taking one because I was too busy gossiping with Paul Wallbank. Nevertheless, I came away with a voucher to get 40% off buying one of said TVs. Not that I will.

The Week Ahead

Busy. Monday morning you’ll see articles at ABC The Drum and CSO Online that I’ll have written overnight, as well as the Patch Monday podcast.

Then I’ll continue work on the feature story I’m writing for ZDNet Australia and my presentation that’ll be delivered at DigitalMe in Perth on Friday. You’ll be able to hear a preview of that on ABC 720 Perth on Thursday afternoon some time. And while in Perth I’ll be recording the following week’s Patch Monday podcast. Whew!

In terms of my movements, the new plan is that I’ll be in Sydney until I fly to Perth on Thursday, and then in Sydney overnight Sunday night upon my return.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

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Samsung’s website survey arsehattery

This week’s Golden Cow Award for Corporate Arsehattery goes to Samsung for this piece of meaningless bullshit in a survey asking about my experience using their website.

Now as background, I was after the technical specifications of the Samsung Slate Series 7 tablet PC, but couldn’t find them. There was no section or link labelled “specifications”. That’s a fail, I reckon. So I decided I would do the survey.

Like all such surveys, it asked the kind of questions that market research companies think are important, such as how soon I was thinking of buying, what competing brands I was looking at, and my demographic details. But this question caused me, literally, to laugh out loud.

Thinking of today’s website experience, how successful has the Samsung website been in conveying the following concepts of the Samsung brand?

And the concepts listed? Fresh, clean, inspiring, unique, interesting, elegant, contemporary, intelligent, engaging, bright, simple, relevant, upbeat, forward-thinking, charismatic, chic, unexpected, visionary.

WTF? Who the heck thinks in those terms when visiting a website? “Oh, I couldn’t find the technical specifications. This website just doesn’t convey the charismatic or chic brand values.”

I’d like to find whoever was responsible for this idiocy and ask them to define, in concrete web development terms, the three key differences between a brand experience that’s “fresh” rather than “clean” or “simple”.

And then I’d like to bury them in a ditch.