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| Friday, September 22, 2000 |
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Hm.
This guy just de-lurked on Cluetrain's Topica list, to share a concern about how your cell phone is apparently subject to a privacy-be-damned Law Enforcement Wish List. Here's the relevant link
The whole Cat
A story in the San Jose Mercury News, under the headline "CueCat lets privacy out of the bag," contains the following quote from the parent company's S-1 filing with the SEC:
We intend to use our :C.R.Q. and :Cue:C.A.T. technology to develop and maintain a substantial database of consumer demographic information that our customers can use with our permission to conduct advertising campaigns.
I thought what followed was also significant:
In particular, we intend to require each user of our technology to provide basic individual information in order to register and activate our :C.R.Q. software application. Under our privacy policy, individual user information will not be made available to outside parties and will be used internally by us only if a user gives express permission for such use. Some summary demographic data, however, may be made available to outside parties.
The CueCat creeps me out. What constitutes "permission?"
By the way, the link to the story in the SJMN will be dead tomorrow, I believe. Certainly by next week. I hate that.
Found
I think I finally made this site searchable.
So maybe Circuit City goes the way of Commercial TV
Just got this from my friend Dan, via our mutual friend Jerry's egroup list (which may or may not be exposed on the Web... not sure):
It all started with the Tivo/Replay discussion surrounding Michael Lewis's column (I'm surprised you didn't chime in). My defining moment was the day I decided I "had to have Tivo", went to Circuit City and then Good Guys and couldn't get a sales rep to explain to me what it was, what the benefit is, how you pay for it, why you have to pay for equipment and service separately but you can lump them together if you want to pay in perpetuity.
Then I couldn't figure out how many people have their telephone jacks right next to their televisions (I mean this isn't 20th century England, where you lease your TV from the Post Office). This isn't the end of national branding efforts, it's the return of the virtual blimp.
Go figure...
Well, I didn't chime in because I get, like, 35,000 emails a day.
Anyway, the best line from Michael Lewis's outstanding piece is this one:
But that isn't the worst news that TiVo and Replay have for the television networks. The worst news is that no one watches commercials anymore. Eighty-eight percent -- 88 percent! -- of the advertisements in the programs seen by viewers on their black boxes went unwatched. If no one watches commercials, then there is no commercial television.
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