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Buzzrolling Ace journalist, PR scourge, buzzmaven and fellow blogger Deborah Branscum has drawn a pile of pointers to her Newsweek piece on the Blog Phenom. She also points to a nice piece by Jon Carroll that speaks for all of us on whom press releases are, pro forma, wasted. To wit: Press releases are written to be ignored. Everyone understands that. We play the game; we dance the dance; no one gets hurt except the trees killed for the paper. By the way, the best commencement speech I've ever heard was the one Jon Carroll gave to my daughter's graduating class of English majors at Berkeley ten years ago. I'd like to say it was memorable, but... I don't remember it. A triumph of senescence over brilliance. And chill that branding iron while you're at it Got this email today: Dear Gateway: I am a satisfied Gateway customer. I have bought or have recommended the purchase of many Gateway systems. In general, I'm quite happy with Gateway's products and particularily Gateway's excellent customer service. I am not happy, however, with Gateway's insistance on making me decide whether I'm shopping for "Home or Home Office", "Small and Mid-Side Businesses", etc. I don't give a damn about those classifications! I want a notebook! And I want a notebook with a certain feature set specific to my needs. And my needs most definitely cross home/business/education boundries. I resent the notion thate Gateway somehow has a better handle on what sort of system I might need than I do. Ridiculous. Put the consumer in charge and just show us what you got! It's absurd to me that you would actively hide direct links to "Notebooks", "Desktops", etc. behind 'channels' like "Home", "Business", etc. It's insulting. At minimum, provide a link for those of us with brains who know what we want and don't need to be led like stupid animals to the machine that you think would be best for us based on how we'll use it. Some of us already KNOW what machine would be best for us. We don't need you guys to tell us. There is an excellent editorial by Doc Searls (which mentions Gateway at length) on page 22 of the March edition of Linux Journal which specifically addresses my concern. Please understand that I was already miffed by your marketing approach well in advance of this editorial. The editorial simply serves as vindication. I like your products and your company. No question. I wish Gateway continued success. Persuant this success, I think it is essential that Gateway should provide access to it's products DIRECTLY, not based upon artificial categories like "Home", "Office", etc. Perhaps you can do both! Give the consumer the option of browsing your products be feature/funtion or gaining access to them by "Home", "Office", etc. Give us the choice. Don't assume we're all ignorant and need to be lead to what you think is the best machine for our use. The idea that PCs are consumer electronics is a fatal flaw in both companies' strategies. Another worm Apple has been issued a patent, US6188399, for Multiple theme engine graphical user interface architecture. Details: Systems and methods for providing a user with increased flexibility and control over the appearance and behavior of objects on a user interface are described. Sets of objects can be grouped into themes to provide a user with a distinct overall impression of the interface. These themes can be invoked by calling a corresponding theme engine. Theme engines can be hard-coded or data-driven.
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