The Way To Beat Scrabulous Is Not With Lawsuits Or Crappy Versions Of Scrabble

from the keep-trying dept

In the ongoing saga of Scrabulous, the unauthorized online version of Scrabble that has found many fans on Facebook but has upset Mattel and Hasbro (who own the rights to Scrabble), it appears that RealNetworks and Mattel have finally put out an official version of Scrabble for Facebook -- but the problem is that it's terrible. As the NY Times reports, "Facebook Scrabble takes a long time to load, does not always quickly update to show recent moves, and the words the game will accept do not reflect standard Scrabble dictionaries, or even the English language." While it's nice to see that Scrabulous still hasn't been forced offline, it seems odd that the authorized version is so terrible. It still probably would have made the most sense to just do a deal with the brothers who created Scrabulous (and there are still rumors that a deal has been discussed, but without a decent resolution), but if that doesn't work, the way to compete is with a better product. Putting out a product that's not very good isn't likely to win over many fans.

Filed Under: online games, quality, scrabble
Companies: facebook, hasbro, mattel, realnetworks

Lou Reed Upset By MP3 Quality; Has He Ever Listened To Velvet Underground Recordings?

from the it's-not-about-audio-quality dept

Since when is Lou Reed an audiophile? Down at SXSW Reed gave a talk where he complained about the sound quality of MP3 technology and the fact that people didn't realize how awful they sounded. This is a complaint made by quite a few other people as well, who seem to ignore the fact that for most people and most music, MP3 technology is perfectly good enough, and the convenience of being able to carry around more, is a lot more important than a barely (if at all) noticeable change in audio quality. In the meantime, has Lou Reed listened to any of his early Velvet Underground recordings? I don't recall "audio quality" being one of the key characteristics of those songs...

Filed Under: lou reed, mp3, music, quality, velvet underground

Your Company Will Be In Trouble If You Don't Focus On Product Quality

from the better-products-needed dept

One of the biggest signs that a business has trouble ahead is when it seems to be focusing on everything except the quality of its products. Back in the dot-com boom it was common to see a bunch of MBAs get together and draw up plans for a technology company, raise a bunch of funding, throw a lavish launch party, buy a Super Bowl ad, and then hire some programmers to implement the product almost as an afterthought. Most of them aren't around any more. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I think I would be worried about the rumors going around that "an aggressive acceleration of the company's investment in its data center network" will be "one of the cornerstones" of Microsoft's online strategy. Obviously, Microsoft is going to need more and better data centers to compete effectively with Google. But ultimately, success in the online marketplace is the result of having great products, not great data centers. If you've got such a great product that demand is outstripping your server capacity, it's not that hard to buy additional infrastructure. But if your core products suck, a lot of servers and disk space isn't going to do you any good. Indeed, I suspect that it doesn't even make sense to build "data centers" in the abstract. It's hard to know exactly what mix of hardware will be needed and how it should be set up without a specific suite of applications in mind. So it seems like it would make sense for Microsoft to focus its resources on developing and marketing great products (like this one, perhaps) and upgrade their data centers as demand warrants. Treating data centers as a "cornerstone" of their strategy seems like they're putting the cart before the horse.

Techcrunch points us to an even more egregious example of focusing on the wrong things: AOL has been touting the number of new sites it plans to launch in the coming year. It's hard to think of a more meaningless statistic than the number of websites your company owns. AOL says it plans to roll out 30 websites by the end of 2008, but one good website will generate more traffic than 30 bad ones. Google, for example launches new sites all the time, but you don't see them bragging about the number of new sites they're launching. They understand that what their customers care about is what their sites can do, not how many there are. Of course, this is probably an outgrowth of AOL's misguided idea that it's in the advertising business rather than the online content business. When your company focus is on advertisers, then websites probably seem like interchangeable places to sell ads. The problem is that if the content isn't any good, you'll have fewer and fewer eyeballs to sell to those advertisers—even if the number of websites you own keeps going up.

Filed Under: customers, data centers, quality
Companies: microsoft

Blaming MP3s And iPods For Ruining Music

from the gotta-love-the-audiophiles dept

It seems that with every new generation of music delivery, there are going to be people who complain that the quality just isn't up to par with what came before. Remember when CDs first came out, there were quite a few upturned noses who insisted the sound quality just couldn't compete with vinyl LPs. And now that mp3s are becoming the standard, folks are complaining that the quality simply can't live up to CDs. This has certainly gone on for a while, as we've noted there are even online stores that cater to audiophiles who believe that compressed mp3s just aren't worth listening to. However, now it's going even further, as the WSJ claims that some audio engineers are saying that the popularity of mp3s and iPods is ruining music. The theory is that audio engineers are using iPods and mp3s as the lowest common denominator for recordings. Since they know that so many people are going to end up hearing the song just through the cheap white earbuds of an iPod, that they don't bother to make a high quality recording that would sound better on high end stereo equipment. Thus, the claim goes, pretty much all music is sounding somewhat crappy, and it's turning people off from the latest crop of new songs. In other words, music is less popular today, because the songs are engineered to sound like crap. This seems silly. It's certainly a different argument than the industry's typical claim that downloads are killing the music business -- but it's equally ridiculous. Sure, there may be some engineers who are doing a cruddy job in engineering the music, but as one audio engineer in the story notes, there's no reason to ever engineer a song "down" to mp3 levels. Instead, you should just engineer it to a higher level and it'll sound fine on a CD as well on an iPod. However, to put the whole thing in perspective: songs compressed to mp3 level certainly do lose some quality at the margin, but there's only a small group of audiophiles who really care or will notice on a regular basis. At the same time, compare that to how much more music is being produced today thanks to cheaper production tools and easier distribution of music through the internet, and I think you could make the case that the mp3 and the iPod has done a lot more to improve music than to hurt it.

Filed Under: audiophiles, ipods, mp3s, music, quality