Gone with wind editorial

I’ve received great feedback for column published last week on hardware e-zine “Hardware Base” regarding the issues in IT world of journalists, so I’ve decided to post it here as well. I’d like to hear your opinions on this one.

“It has been a while since it became known that marketing is more important than the final product, yet many ignore its power. Those who are aware of its power use their knowledge to uncover the real truth, but considering today’s media, truth can have several faces. Prestige in being an editor in some printed or online magazine is long gone, considering the pressure coming from the management, not to talk about the market. Many will say that there is no room for error, and only the best stay in business.

The story starts with the 3 letters that mean everything: NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). For a good while now within IT field, leading hardware and software manufacturers, gamble with such deals. The deals are backed up by journalists of course. The prime rule of journalism is that exclusive information is worth its weight in gold, and the one that goes live with it, is the winner. That is the beginning of a myth called NDA. Journalists are split between those that respect such agreements, since breaking it would most likely end in a law suit, or even worse, the end of partnership between publication and the manufacturer. Fear of the consequences makes most publishers respect the agreements made, though some, like TheInquirer, have developed their own brand based on not making these kinds of deals, but always publishing information before everyone else. And as I mentioned earlier, having the information first, makes you the winner, and the winner always have superb information sources.

Taking into consideration that all major hardware and software presentations have been marked with traditional leaks of information before the NDA deadline, the question appears when will those journalists become hostages of these companies that bond them on signing those deals? The fact stands that every chain has its weak link, and don’t come tell me that you don’t believe the information leaked from within. I don’t intend on going into the reasons that result into the information leaks before the deadline, but the fact is such leaks were in abundance through whole last year (and examples are more numerous that I would even bother listing them), and considering the launch of 2 major consoles, Microsoft’s new operating system, quad core processors and what not, even now we can understand what will become. Let us do our jobs, please.

*****

The proof that NDA deals aren’t the only problem got confirmed by discovery of nVidia’s deals with a company called Arbuthnot Entertainment Group (AEG) which makes its living by polling consumer opinion. Anyway, this wasn’t confirmed in some public announcement, but it surfaced as accusations on some weird forum messages. Thing was that nVidia gave away gifts to some enthusiasts which helped in promotion and spreading the information about company’s new products. This was of course denied by nVidia, but the situation was too weird that it could be easily forgotten. Numerous journalists have sounded their opinions on the subject, so I suggest that you take a look at those articles. This case shows what kind of pressure we journalists have to cope with when getting in touch with a new danger that’s almost impossible to spot.

But, the duty of every professional journalist is to write the truth, because sooner or later, the community will understand when a journalist or the whole organization have been victimized by marketing, or rather some 3rd party. Just take a look what happened with once most popular hardware site, Tom’s Hardware. No matter how large the number of sites that offer different information and advice, the truthful information about products become more and more important. You have the right to know the truth about a product since journalists are paid to tell you the truth, with exception of those that are on manufacturer’s pay rolls.

It would be wrong to put all the guilt on the manufacturers, because they make use of departments that work on selling a product, just like some newspapers make use of renowned journalists, which with their reputation and writing style, bring new readers. But the line has to be drawn. Now! Why, you ask?

LegitReviews.com, one of the most popular hardware sites, have published an article yesterday in which the site editor let Corsair, a known memory manufacturer, a chance to publish their opinion on usefulness of heat spreaders used on their RAM modules. On first sight this looked innocent enough, but you have to ask the question about why a journalist would let one of the manufacturers publish testing results on a site that lives off publishing impartial hardware reviews? Isn’t the whole point of such sites to deliver test results, done by 3rd party testers that have no connection with the manufacturers, to prove which product is the best one?

The engineer from Corsair (codenamed: journalist) published his in-depth research on the subject, which showed that heat spreaders on RAM modules made no difference. I can consider that as a truthful article, but the writer also used considerable space on writing about a solution used by OCZ, an American RAM manufacturer, that is a direct competitor to Corsair. The journalist concluded that neither solution offered any advantage, and that the whole thing was one big marketing trick. But, wait a bit, a spokesperson of one company presenting all of this on a site that is supposed to be objective, and taking real good time to write about the competition too, how convenient is that?

As expected, OCZ answered that such analysis is of no interests, but I am still shocked about the fact that LegitReviews.com went ahead and published such partial article. I am sure that editor in question will come with elaborate explanation and reasons behind this decision, but what has been done is wrong, very wrong. I might be mistaken, but this could be a start of a trend where friendly manufacturers would supply already written articles, and even test results on request, and all we would have to do is to publish them. To some it may sound as a vacation, a solution to drop all the hard work that they put into this unforgiving profession, but to me it sounds like a start of the end of free and professional journalism. The question now is how to stop this from happening. If it has already become impossible to influence the journalists and their superiors, then the power lies with you, the community, to recognize the people that write the truth, because it is the only way to save professionalism, and with that, this profession. Support the truth!”

One player to rule them all

With all the fuss and so called leaks about new Apple iPod player coming next Tuesday, I’ve decided to post something I wrote to Microsoft’s Robert Scoble few weeks ago. Hate to say, but it seems I had a point regarding the PDAs – just look what are all those iPod leaks about.

“For quite some time, magazines and e-zines have been reporting about Microsoft’s interest in releasing a product that would compete with Apple’s iPod. I believe it is safe to say that there have been such reports ever since Apple released first generation of iPod player and after tremendous sales analysts used their logic and proposed that Microsoft (among other companies) would jump into market and take away the crown of evil company called Apple in this case. Well, many tried, no one had much success, not even Creative. But hey, people have right to express their opinion.

Anyway, rumors are back again. Apple released Apple Video player (after saying they wouldn’t do so) and Apple released brand new line of computers based on Intel’s chips (after saying they would never…) so it looks Apple is on the move again. Q4 sales was really, really good, stocks are up and everything is going really well, so someone has to write a new conspiracy theory because you can’t just let them do their thing too good, right? So, to make conclusion, Apple is evil there, they have monopoly and they are using Intel’s chips, but before they get crusaded, let’s add someone else in the mix.

How about Sony? Yeah, that’s sounds too good even for Spanish TV novel, but it’s IT. After being company no 1. with CD players for years, Sony never managed to produce decent mp3 player. However, they did other things right. Yeah, I’m talking about PlayStation here. 100 millions of PS2 consoles speak pretty much for itself, but they didn’t stop there and they’ve released a handheld console, PlayStation Portable (PSP), and attacked Nintendo’s long time basement. Press was excited. Excitement didn’t last long (if we don’t count famous firmware updates).

Finally, we reach for winning card. Microsoft! (press gets crazy) In the mix we already have long time “enemies” of the Microsoft, known as Apple and Sony. OK, people will say that Microsoft already answered to Sony by producing Xbox and to Apple by making Windows Vista (which “brings it all”) but that’s far from enough, since both of “other” companies have other stuff where they do well and press just thinks that Microsoft can’t watch it. Well, it is true that every big company wants to be on market where it can earn more money (nothing wrong about that), but is Microsoft going to attack iPod and PSP’s market?

Some time ago, I remember Mr. Gates saying that Microsoft had no plans or whatsoever of producing the handheld console. If I’m not mistaken, he could’ve said it in interview he gave for you Robert. When press finally gave up on evil conspiracy theory, BusinessWeek published article and quoted Moore saying “It can’t just be our version of the iPod”! Argh, here we go again. I just think Microsoft shouldn’t do it because from this point it looks almost impossible to make unique device and I’ll tell you why I think so.

Handheld market exists and it is almost too crowded with Nintendo and Sony being leaders there. People are already offered devices that can play video and mp3s along with modern games, but it comes in a big size (PSP or DS), so you have Micro and other GameBoy versions for people who want true “pocket gaming” but without great graphics and other features. So, I believe our new device has to be small. How small? Small like a cell phone. Hey, it should be a cell phone! If you want to make some distance between competition, you have to add something. So let’s you have cell phone and great features there (e.g. screen quality, 3D graphics and sound effects), but doesn’t this sound familiar?

Yes, it does. Nokia, world’s largest manufacturer of cell phones, already tried exact approach with Ngage and it didn’t work. Sony-Ericsson made something similar with their Walkman series of cell phones and it is going pretty well, except it doesn’t have games (someone said Java?). You could add a service for buying music, videos and games, but guess what, Apple already offered something similar in cooperation with Motorola. So tell me, where is the space for innovation right there?

I just don’t see it there, meaning, Microsoft could go just one way and produce a device that is ultimately Xbox Portable (hm, gotta admit it sounds cool to refer it as XP). Why? Because when you offer great graphics, people just want bigger screen. If you add GSM features, no one is going to use it since the device itself would be too big. You’ll get chance to play Xbox games, share music and other stuff trough wireless, play music and videos and definitely have better cooperation with Windows operating system, but does it really differ from iPod and PSP? It doesn’t and it can’t. That’s why I believe it would be too much of risk even to Microsoft to gamble on a new market that would bring it all-in-one since end-users are simply too picky.

If Microsoft decides to go “other way”, it will end up producing the product that’ll be better then others in terms of performance and probably features, but it won’t be unique. Any solution? Well, I see only one product in mind – PDA: loaded with some Windows “Multimedia” OS and with possibility to play “Xbox games”, watch videos and listen to music with ease. Is this something that we want? I’d certainly like to have some Xbox-like games on my PDA (HP hx4700) but do we really need whole new platform for that? I’d just release new Windows OS for PDAs and bring Xbox games to the table since hardware inside newest PDAs isn’t being used by current applications anyway. And yes, PDAs already have the most you’d ask for: their size is acceptable, there are models with GSM integration, they have hardware, they have applications, integrated WiFi, BlueTooth, cards for storage etc.”