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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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Thanks mainly to the sagging NZ dollar, Sky TV is bleeding red ink and hurriedly
looking for some way to wring more cash out of its assets.
Now it seems they've decided it would be really cool to offer their customers
the ability to
send and receive email
through their satellite TV systems -- but are they deluding themselves?
Quite frankly, I think they'll be disappointed.
First up -- they simply don't have a clue about the Net -- as witnessed by
their appalling comprehension of the very basics.
Not only can't they manage something as simple as replying to an email
in an intelligible manner but they also spammed me,
which was obviously a complete waste of time -- why bother -- I'm
already a Sky digital subscriber???
I'm afraid that if SkyTV rush into adding email to their digital TV product
without some expert advice (and I don't mean hiring people who simply call
themselves experts) then they're going to end up even worse off than they are
now. Remember SkyTV -- if you get it wrong the first time then you are going
to find it extraordinarily difficult to convince people that you've got it
right the second time.
Then of course there's the whole issue of dual-use.
Unless you're single without any kids, using the family TV and subscription
TV service to send and receive emails is going to be a real pain in the backside
for the rest of the family.
How are the kids going to respond when mom or dad want to check their email
or send a message right in the middle of their favourite SkyTV program?
The idea of sharing the family TV with a Playstation rarely works and is
usually little more than a catalyst for disputes -- using the family TV
for email is likely to be far worse. Unfortunately, you won't be able to rush
down to the bedroom and do it because the Sky decoder won't be there will it?
Then there's the issue of tying up the family phone line -- yes, you'll
still need to use the phone line when sending emails and if someone happens
to be chatting at the time then they'll get mighty ticked off.
However, perhaps the biggest problem from Sky's own perspective is...
Since their proposed email system doesn't handle attachments (such as
MS Word documents) -- how are users of the service going to read any
emails that Sky might send them?
Bad-News Monday
It looks as if some of our websites are having a little trouble this morning.
Can you spot the error on
this page?
And then NZoom's webserver has been a naughty boy and has had its
permission revoked
to run an important script.
Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using
the RSS format. More details can be found
here.
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