The Acer Guy

Sooner or later someone was going to put it this way. Didn’t think I would find it so comical. Or disturbing….

Coding Sanity has an article up about how he, well, upgraded to XP.

I hope this doesn’t go beyond 15 Diggs…

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This is the first I’ve heard of this story. I wonder how long it’ll take to reach my desk…

Hopefully not too long.

http://eeepc.net/acer-going-to-launch-one-more-competitor-of-eee/

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Once again credit to Jeremiah for this.

You either love them or hate them.

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Read an interesting post over on Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy blog.

Jeremiah argues that “a successful blog is a dialog between more than two people” and that you can see how you’re doing on the social scale doing by simply looking at your blog’s conversation rate (comments divided by posts)

OK, Jeremiah is a little above my level and his blog has a conversation rate of just over 7 (1,697 posts and 12,159 comments) but I couldn’t resist. Despite no guests appearances on social web panels or being invited to talk to Oprah about how I brought social fever to Acer (yeah right), and despite the fact that I live in the wrong continent for real 2.0 networking, this blog has a healthy rate of just over 4 (228 posts and 956 comments). Sure, nowhere near as impressive as Jeremiah or many others but at least there’s a conversation going on, even if it is in a whisper.

Another important point Jeremiah focused on was the quantity and quality of both information and insight brought to the surface by the various replies. Or in other words: it’s fascinating to see what makes you “tick” and trying to get my words to “tock” in rhythm.

I know most visitors to this blog come here looking for tech support because Simone’s just soooo damned good (and cheap too!) but as the guy entrusted with the words that go into Acer’s brand and product identities, your replies and observations are at times total eye openers.

This blog has been live for nearly a year and a half now and I’ve long forgotten what it’s like to live behind a smokescreen. I’ll even admit to having occasional problems devising “mass messages for mass markets” now that my conversation is firmly entrenched here but it’s still the bread and butter of what I do.

And if you think about it, that’s the way it should be. “Meatballs” Seth Godin calls them and he’s absolutely 100% spot on. Those messages will continue to thrive as long as the product stays the same. As long as Acer notebooks continue to appear on BestBuy, Amazon or your local electronics outlet (see ad box below), Acer is making and selling nothing more than high-tech meatballs.

The urge to change (and it is a big one) depends on Acer creating a separate sundae. A new product, technology or story we can mould into a conversation worth having. There’s an awful lot in the pipeline now there are three of us and plenty of opportunities to start something new.

Change happens. Products come out of nowhere (look at the iPod) and transform the public’s perception of a business and the same could also be said about the Acer Gemstone. Up until the 5920 hit the streets, Acer’s notebooks were, if we’re honest, just a little bit on the safe side.

The “dependability-doesn’t-come-in-fancy-dress” ethic really took a hit from the Gemstone concept and the overwhelming success of that single model not only brought Acer’s dreary consumer line back into the limelight but finally gave the company and its customers something sizzling to talk about.

That’s a sundae.

Check out the energy in the replies to this post to see what I mean.

There’s a story to tell here and I hope to be able to continue it when the next line of products are announced.

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What better way to end the week-end than with the thought that everything is just as you need it to be.

I’m not talking about life and family although last week’s trip to the hospital left me with a flickering warning light inside my mind.

No I’m talking about technology. Having everything just the way you want it is the golden promise of technology, although in my experience, just as you’re getting where you think you want to be, some new innovation comes along and derails your plans.

Our lives are getting more and more complex and technology should simplify them. Yet as technology advances and the choices become seemingly infinite, doesn’t it seem to you like we’ve lost track of the meaning of “simplify”?

Simplify used to mean maximum output with minimum effort. Now it seems like hard work just keeping up with the names of all those social networks where business contacts, friends and customers hang out. On top of that, there are countless blogs, RSS feeds and forums to follow and participate in (thank goodness for Newsgator). I for one I get more than a thousand posts and articles a day automatically placed in my inbox… And you wonder why I sometimes don’t write for days?

Sometimes it feels like the only way to simplify my life would be to add more hours to the 24 we were given to get everything done by.

So where did I go wrong?

Actually I’m not sure I have. I’m reading Seth Godin’s latest book Meatball Sundae and I can confirm that I’m in the meatball business. You’ll have to read it yourself if you want to know what he means by that but the concept is clear: this medium and in fact anything associated directly or indirectly with the “2.0″ tag is out of sync with my 9-to-5 (wish I had those hours!). This is a place for conversation. In my day job I seldom get beyond the message. Both can co-habit in marketing, but whereas before 2.0 the message gave a company and its products a public identity; nowadays, attention is becoming a very important asset.

Simplicity is going to be big. We need a new way of seeing, understanding and appreciating the value in simplicity. We’ve done the technology race thing and the last time I looked, no-one actually won. Not customers anyway.

Now we have things, places and activities (and for some, realities, responsibilities and careers) we perform regularly online that have totally changed the way we interact, communicate and collaborate with one another, with ongoing conversations between creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user that have opened up the floodgates to an existence that was unthinkable before the web came along.

Example? Home banking. The best thing to happen to technology since floppies went out of style. The ultimate in getting the middleman out of the way. Pure simplicity (if the bank has an online banking page that thinks like its users).

Another? I live in Italy. I’m a copywriter. Don’t have much of a voice outside this blog and another one, yet my Twitter feed is being followed from all over the planet by people I’ve never met physically but whose names resonate through their personal online worlds.

My daughter is nearly 11. She’s at that age where technology is, like her life before her, something she’s starting to discover. On her tenth birthday I bought her a notebook and for almost a year I’ve been trying to get her into the habit of writing electronically by sending her friends and relatives email. She writes about three a month. Last week-end I installed Messenger and since then her computer has been on 24 hours a day. As far as she’s concerned, email is dead and buried. Messenger fits her needs like a glove and she’s evangelizing the beauty of IM among her friends at school who in turn are getting their parents to sign them up.

I accept she represents a small demographic but in one swoop she and her friends bypass all the usual subjects and hook up with what is the start of all social networks. Not too difficult to see where she’ll go next. Facebook? MySpace…?

So rather than looking at technological advances as a pure and, let’s face it, rather dull science, we really need to be looking at the services, instruments and, opportunities provided by technology that make things simpler, allowing me to be more productive at work, and have more fun at home.

This medium may be out of sync with what I do but that doesn’t imply one is right while the other isn’t. It simply means that the web and it’s myriad of social changes has shifted our collective goal posts onto another playing field entirely and my 9-to-5 needs to refocus or miss out completely.

Right now everything is where I need it to be. I have a message (great product) and I have a dialogue (online interaction). Now all I have to do is create harmony between the two. Simple!

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