AT&T Online Ad Attacking Verizon Is Misleading, Justifies the “There’s a Map for That” Ads

By now, you’ve probably seen Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” TV advertisement, which is aimed at Apple’s “There’s an App for That” TV advertisements (picture to your left). As the only provider of the Apple iPhone in the United States, AT&T did what it thought of as the only thing it could to put a stop to Verizon’s damaging ads… they filed a lawsuit against Verizon, telling the judge to have the ads pulled. No dice. The judge denied AT&T’s request, but apparently, the company will get another chance in mid-December to argue its case.

Scrambling for a response to Verizon’s ad, AT&T did two things: first, it tossed Luke Wilson into a room and had him toss around some postcards that represented AT&T’s network coverage (no mention of 3G coverage—just “network coverage”), and second, it created interactive online advertisements. Good job, AT&T; attack on as many fronts as you can, within your advertising budget. However, I think AT&T’s arguments on why its service is better than Verizon’s are extremely weak and inaccurate.

Starting at the top of this list, we have Nation’s fastest 3G network. Great! Got that out of the way. Take that, Verizon! But, wait, what’s that asterisk? Oh, that would be a disclaimer stating “3G coverage not available in all areas.” This verbiage also appears in TV ads. Isn’t that what Verizon has been discussing in its recent TV ads? This first list item seems to enforce Verizon’s argument.

Second, AT&T has listed Talk and surf or download simultaneously as one of its network perks. This is true. Not much to disagree with here.

The next item on the list, Most popular smartphones, is blown way out of proportion. AT&T definitely has the most popular smartphone in the iPhone, but other than that, the wireless service provider doesn’t have a killer device; Verizon doesn’t really have one, but with the recent release of the Motorola Droid, that’s debatable. Overall, I think this line item should have read Most popular smartphone, singular.

And finally, we have the most misleading, gross misinterpretation of AT&T’s service—Access to over 100,000 apps. It’s well known that the iPhone has tons and tons of apps. However, I think it’s important to note that these 100,000+ apps are only accessible to iPhone users.

Overall, I think this ad is primarily speaking from the point of view of AT&T’s iPhone customers, which still only represents a minority of the company’s subscribers.

 

Note: I’m an AT&T customer.

Resources: Newsday: Judge rejects AT&T's bid to pull Verizon ads

A Single, Effective Way to Measure Social Media

A few days ago, a few people retweeted a blog post titled 100 Ways to Measure Social Media by David Berkowitz. After reading it, I felt inspired to use what little knowledge I have of social media to show you how I measure social media. I’m sure that others have already done this before, so feel free to apply what I’ve documented:

1. Open up an Internet browser that supports tabs and open all of the social media sites you actively use.
2. Grab a ruler and measure the distance from one tab to another. It’s ok if your tabs start disappearing because you have too many open. (NO CHEATING! I know some of you will use tabs like peopleofwalmart.com and icanhascheezburger.com. Don’t be dishonest.)
3. Take that number in inches and multiply it by how many social sites you have open in tabs.

For those that need help visualizing how I did this, I’ve posted a picture tutorial below.

Here are my numbers: 9 inches x 8 sites = a score of 72 social media measurements of complete bragging rights. Go ahead. Measure social media on your own and leave your score in a comment. Hell, post it on Twitter if you want.

*Disclaimer: Measurements may vary depending on your screen size.

Cake the man in peanut butter and let the seagulls have him

I hope Stewart Parnell, Pleader of the Fifth and President of the Peanut Corporation of America—the company responsible for the current salmonella outbreak in delicious peanut butter products—gets prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Maybe not to the extent that this ex-health and drug official in China got punished, but hopefully to the maximum extent of the U.S. law.

Justice system, don’t fail me now!

Text messaging: urgency and occasionally unnecessary. A rant.

Up until mid-2006, I never was a fan of text messaging. I had enough minutes to call somebody, so why bother with spending two minutes to type a message on a crammed keypad? Then, I went to Japan, the land of text messaging. Making phone calls is still ridiculously expensive in Japan, so most people send e-mails through their phones to their contacts. The plus is that text messaging/e-mailing from a cell phone is fairly cheap; I remember when I was on my SoftBank plan, I had unlimited text messages/e-mail and unlimited Internet for about $9 a month. That’s about three times cheaper than AT&T’s plan in the United States.

With an unlimited text messaging plan, I didn’t mind getting pointless e-mails because they wouldn’t count towards a limit. But, after I returned to the United States, I knew that I wouldn’t use anywhere near 500+ text messages, so why bother paying $10+ alone for text messaging? I’m on a 200 text messages plan, and I use those for sending people casual notes. I don’t start conversations because if I wanted to talk to someone, I would just call them. I don’t see the point in engaging in a one-hour conversation through text messages that I could have in five minutes through voice calling.

And, seriously people, chain text messages? You don’t need to validate our relationship—as family or friends—with a pointless message that says “Little Sandy is sad. Text this to all your friends, and with the tracking number at the bottom, Sandy will see how many people made her day happier.” Hello~?! “Little Sandy” was probably just a bored intern who thought up “little Sandy” as a marketing technique… 15 years ago. Also, didn’t chain e-mails go out of style, oh, I don’t know, around the same time AOL did back in 2001?

Along the same lines, take advantage of the 160-character count in text messages. Texting back “ok” is fine if you know the person has unlimited text messaging, but when you know the person has a limited amount and gets charged for going over, be considerate. “ok” is not worth 15¢. And, jeez, combine messages if you have to. If someone asks “How’s it going? Did you make it home last night without getting lost?” Don’t reply with “I’m doing fine” and follow it up with a new message that says “yeah, I made it home.”

I’m laying down the law for those who text message me, even if it’s inadvertently. Beware, I will use the blacklist function on my phone.

Making the gradual transition back to Firefox

As you may have read on one of my recent Twitter updates, I’m having difficulty with Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2. When I open a new tab, it loads slowly even when I’m just opening a new tab for the heck of it. Also, IE8 Beta 2 crashes regardless of how many tabs I have open or how intensive the page loading is. Below is a picture of when I tried to open a single tab for Facebook and then tried to close it. It’s difficult to tell, but the popup menu window at the bottom is frozen on the screen. Bummer…

Lately, I found out that my friends and family are having the same issues with IE8 Beta 2. Quite frustrating, especially for those who aren’t computer savvy and don’t know that there are other Internet-browsing options such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

I hope the IE team at Microsoft has gotten word of this issue. I’d really rather use IE8 than Firefox 3, but if Firefox consistently gives me a better experience, I might end up sticking with it. In turn, that might make me abandon the Microsoft Silverlight components of my Web site, since Firefox 3 and Silverlight aren’t playing nicely. Oh, if only I could get those development hours back… I suppose learning Adobe Flash a little more in depth wouldn’t be so bad, seeing as how probably 90 percent of Web sites choose that as the platform for delivering an interactive Web experience.

Anybody else out there having trouble with IE8 Beta 2? Is moving to Firefox 3 a bad idea? Comments welcome!

Tectonic happenings in Southeast Asia

What's up with all these significant earthquakes in the Southeast Asia region? The region has been hit by 6+ magnitude earthquakes twice in the past week in addition to many smaller quakes.

I haven't found much information that backs up the polar shift theory that many believe is occurring right now, but it seems like the most plausible reason.

Any thoughts on why this and so many other recent global natural disasters are happening lately?

Public records don't seem so effective after they've been confidential for 50 years

Public records are now available regarding a pilot who was ordered to take out a UFO during the Cold War era. Here's my theory on the UFO phenomena and the lack of mainstream publicity it has yet to receive.

There were a ton of UFO sightings during World War II and the Cold War era. High-ranking military officers and government figures weren't as aware of UFOs, so they probably thought that the sightings were the results of overactive imaginations of the general public. But, as airplanes became more common, particularly during those two times of constant air patrolling, UFO sightings became increasingly common among military officers. The officers were probably required on a case-by-case basis to deny the sightings to the public or to completely disregard it or suffer the consequences by the government and military.

Well, now, most of these pilots are older and don't have much to lose if they proclaim that what they saw or were told by the government was, in fact, true. The first military figure that comes to mind is Philip Corso. He published his accounts of what happened during the Roswell incident in a book titled "The Day After Roswell." The next year, he died. I really wouldn't be surprised to see more military officers confessing their encounters with UFOs during the mid-1900s.

I think the idea that "the public is ill prepared to come to the realization that we are not the only beings in the universe" is a gross assumption. And, even if we aren't prepared to know that there are other beings out there, I think being educated about it would be more effective than discovering the facts by an incident or incidents that would cause worldwide panic.