Sponsor's Message

I refer, of course, to the Rubbish Film Fest, a competition that's being heavily promoted on TV right now.

To enter you'll need to have a Telecom video-capable phone and be a Telecom customer -- no surprises there right?

Even better, Telecom score a cool $1 for each entry, because that's how much it costs to send one of these crappy video files through Telecom's network.

The prize is a trip for two to Hollywood with a pass to Universal Studios -- not exactly a *huge* purse but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick I guess.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

Now I have no problem with competitions run by companies to promote their products or services, although I do find any form of contest like this that involves a "fee per entry" (such as contests requiring entrants to TXT their entries) to be somewhat more akin to gambling.

Now Telecom has been nice enough to put up the entries received to date so we can all have a look -- or at least that's the theory.

Unfortunately, since Telecom's marketing gurus are obviously thick as two short planks and have a beancounter grafted to each of their two working neurons, they've chosen to present the entries in Apple QuickTime format rather than Windows Media.

Now lets get this straight -- 95% of all computers sold today are shipped with WMP as part of the operating system (Windows). This means that viewing a WMV file is as simple as clicking on a link, something even the least computer-literate Net user can do.

So, instead of using WMV, Telecom chooses to use a format that requires people to download and install a piece of third-party software and one, which I might add, I'm not the least bit impressed with. (Oh, I hear the howls of protest from Apple fans already -- take it to the forums guys)

Why don't I like QuickTime? Well I paid good $$ for the full-blown version a few years ago. While it worked "okay", albeit unimpressively, the user-interface was clunky, it was very slow at encoding video and the online update system just failed to work at all, right from day one. Then, less than a month later they changed versions and asked me to pay full-price again -- no "upgrade" prices -- just full price. Stuff you Apple, I'm not paying you another cent or patronising your products if that's the way you treat paying customers.

But let's face it, Telecom have always been somewhat out of touch with their customers anyway -- why else would they have called their JetStart 128Kbps DSL offering "broadband"?

As regular readers will know full well, I'm no fan of Microsoft or their proprietary formats - but for goodness sake, if you're going to use a proprietary format, at least use the one that comes standard with the overwhelming majority of computers!

I also note that Telecom has announced the launch of a new video based T3G service obviously also designed to ramp up sales and use of its video-capable phones.

Well some years ago I bought one of those little LCD-based pocket TVs, thinking they'd be a great and useful device. I have to admit that I've probably used it no more than a dozen times, quickly discovering that a 50mm screen just isn't up to the job of displaying "useful" video images. Quite frankly I suspect that video over mobile phones will be every bit as bad and worthless to most people.

So will I be buying a flash new video-capable Telecom T3G phone so that I can enter this contest?

Hell no! Why would I buy from a company that:

1. demands all entrants are already its customers
2. charges $1 per entry
3. won't even use a convenient format for displaying the entries

Nope, sorry -- but if I'd ever contemplated switching to 027 in the past, such a choice is even more remote after seeing this competition and it's Terms & Conditions

Besides which, I honestly can't see any merit in spending good money on a phone to create, then blowing good money to send, crappy little postage-stamp video files to people who probably don't want to even receive them.

From what I've read, PXTing has been a monumental washout and I suspect that these video files will be even less attractive to the average mobile phone user.

Telecom, instead of forcing stuff we don't want down our throats, why not just give us an affordable mobile data service instead - then we'd all be happy!

Aardvark Forums
The forums are back up at: www.aardvarkforums.co.nz/forums, have your say on today's column

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!