Not so long ago, the only people using these digital lifelines were business people and people with a little extra money to spend. However, times have drastically changed. Everyone now has access to these mini-tracking devices. In a report from 2007, cell phone penetration was above 80%. I would venture a guess that today we are over 90%. EVERYONE has a cell phone. Why not you may say? They are inexpensive and they have so many “justifiable” uses. I agree. The cell phone has altered our way of life. But, what price have we paid? As the article title implies, I’m going to talk about courtesy. Cell phones have played a major part in destroying our basic ability to show courtesy in many situations. We have become more worried about our life beyond the cell phone than we are about what is happening directly in front of us.

That’s a fairly broad statement isn’t it? Cell phones are responsible for the decay of courtesy in our lives? Let me ask you a few questions. While driving, how many people do you see on the phone whether it’s in town, in a parking lot, or on the interstate? When you are in a store, how many people do you see walking around on cell phones? When you are checking out, how many are on the phone? When you are having a conversation, how many people answer their phones while you are talking to them? When you are in a waiting room, how many people are having a private conversation, in public, on their phone? How many places do you see or hear reminders about “turning your phone off” for the benefit of everyone else? How many people are so absorbed in their cell phone life, their immediate physical life is on the back burner?

The one common theme among every one of those questions is courtesy for others. If you are involved in a cell phone conversation, you are not paying attention to your current surroundings. Those current surroundings include many other people. I will admit, I do all of the above, we all do. It’s a part of our new life with cell phones. Is it a good thing? Clearly, I think not. Our common courtesy has been undermined by the ability to bring our digital lifeline wherever we go. That lifeline has overtaken our ability to be courteous to others in a variety of ways. We fail to pay attention to those we are in contact with. We force strangers to listen to conversations in which they are not willing participants. We give people the very basic attention necessary to accomplish our immediate tasks. We annoy most everyone around us with our actions while on the phone. Everyone loses, including the cell phone user.

I ran across a small tidbit this morning that sparked this particular conversation. There was a photo online showing a small printed notice inside a Subway restaurant informing the patrons that if they were on the phone while ordering, they would be placed at the end of the line. Sounds like a fair and good idea to me. The cell phone user is not paying attention to the workers who are trying to complete his order in a timely fashion. Cell phone users in line disrupt the ordering process and delay everyone behind them. Courtesy. These situations exist everywhere around us, but this particular store decided to do something about it. Isn’t it a sad testimony about our nature when a sign such as this needs to be created? How self involved have we become?

Cell phones are very important. They give us access to our world in the case of emergencies or important issues requiring our attention. But, they are not the focal point many of us have made them to be. If it rings, it doesn’t HAVE to be answered. If there is a text, it doesn’t HAVE to be replied to at that moment. If you have access to special ringtones, you don’t HAVE to make it an annoying sound. If you have a Bluetooth headset, you don’t HAVE to wear it EVERYWHERE you go (by the way, it makes you look stupid wearing it everywhere you go). See where I’m going here? Cell phones are available for our benefit, but they are not the ONLY thing that matters when it rings, beeps, flashes, or vibrates.

I challenge everyone to start focusing on how they use their cell phone. Think about how you are impacting those around you. Are you showing them the common courtesy they deserve or are you part of the problem? Put yourself on the other end. If you were in their shoes and someone was on the phone making your life harder, would you feel as if you were being treated with respect? Stop answering the phone while you are in the middle of a conversation. Stop talking on the phone when you are talking to someone else. Stop talking on the phone while you are driving. Stop treating the cell phone as if you would cease to exist if you weren’t on it. Bring back common courtesy. It can be done.

Through the years, I have been through all the incarnations of movie rental. When I was a young kid, my family began by renting a VCR and movies from a local video store. Yes, back then, you could actually rent the player because the technology was just taking root. You could purchase memberships to local video clubs which allowed you to easily rent movies and enjoy whatever movie you wanted to watch at that time without having to own a complete library. Video stores popped up everywhere. The ability to rent a movie and bring it home was a major advance in entertainment because during that period of time, cable television was not everywhere, satellite television was in its infant stages and for the most part, people only had a few channels available to watch. Video rental was an entire new arena for home entertainment, and affordable.

Over the years, DVD took over as the format of choice for video format and rental. Laserdisc was in there but it quickly died. Thousands of “brick and mortar” stores arrived in the version of large retail chains and mom and pop stores. Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and many others appeared in most every town, sometimes two or three. Along with the physical movie rental businesses, the online movie rental business eventually appeared. Netflix and Blockbuster are two of the most well known. Wal-Mart tried to enter the arena but chose to outsource their product to one of the established online rental companies. So here we are, 25-30 years after the appearance of VHS and the business of renting movies.

At this point, renting movies is a commodity and there is very little profit margin in renting a movie. The brick and mortar stores have long since been under pressure and their ability to turn profits has basically been disappearing. The mom and pop video rental stores have long since disappeared and left only the large rental chain companies. Even the large chains have realized their time is limited. Renting a movie has become far too simple and easy and there are limited additional services they can provide outside of renting movies from their stores. People still want to rent movies though, the question is, how are they going to do it?

With the internet reaching almost every household and high-speed internet reaching more and more of our society, eventually rentals of movies will take place via the internet and delivered via bits and bytes to the persons home and stored on a hard drive for viewing. We are currently in a transition. We still need the physical disk rental sites in the meantime to allow for home entertainment. Storage may not even be an option in the future as streaming video may be the rental of choice. But, that’s the future, where are we now? This is where the RedBox comes into play. People are creatures of habit and they are always looking for ways to save time. What happens if we place a kiosk of newly released movies at business sites where people frequent on a regular basis? On top of that, make the price appealing and create a product with ease of use in mind. That is the RedBox.

Most people may notice the RedBox kiosks at their local McDonald’s. However, Wal-Mart has recently signed an agreement to place these kiosks in nearly every one of their stores. Wal-Mart and McDonald’s are two of the most trafficked businesses in our communities. That is a great target for their product. No longer do you have to have a membership to a store or make a special trip to the video store. No longer do you have to wonder if the video is available because you can check and rent online. The process is so simple and easy. While you are out and about eating or shopping, stop by the kiosk, pick out a few movies, swipe your card and off you go. You can’t get any simpler than that.

Well, the online rental companies seem to be easier don’t they? Maybe easier in the fact that the movies show up in your mail, but not as cheap. I was a member of the online rental companies for a while and overall, it was a great experience. However, there was no way I could rent enough movies to make the price of the movie $1 plus 6-10 cents in tax over the month due to the membership fees. At the RedBox, EVERY movie is $1 whether you rent 1 or 30. The RedBox has the ease of use of online rental plus the fact that it’s cheaper. How can you beat that? If the online company cannot beat that model, how can the brick and mortar companies beat it? They have to pay costs ranging from employee salaries to building leases to utility bills. How can any competing movie rental business possibly compete with the RedBox model?

They can’t. Over the near future, the brick and mortar video rental companies will have to alter their business plans and you have seen some of them already doing so. They have a brand name established so that’s a plus. These companies need to find new services to offer which will replace their losses in store video rental and membership fees. To quote some numbers from VideoBusiness.com, for the 12 month period starting in June 2006, 11 million movies were rented from RedBox locations. With the arrival of thousands more RedBox kiosks throughout the country, that number has been far exceeded now. The simplistic nature of the kiosk has completely revamped how physical video rental is done at this time. Of course, it will eventually be replaced by other forms of delivery removing the physical nature, but currently, it is the best video rental business model available.

I’m sure there are other product lines where new business models can effectively change their entire market. Can you think of any potential methodology changes resulting in cheaper prices and also create time savings for the consumers involved? Think about where people spend the majority of their time and I’m sure there is something in that model that can be changed to become more efficient. How do you think most service companies get off the ground? They find an issue in a consumer’s life and exploit the issue by saving the consumer time and effectively charging less. Valvoline anyone?

I’m going to write about a product today that I ran across while surfing this morning. It doesn’t appear to be a “brand spanking new” product like the release of the 3G Apple iPhone today, but it seems to have reappeared for whatever reason. I’m even going to throw in an image, how do you like that? What is it? It’s a coffee cup with a locking plug in the side of it. The cup has been designed for the office worker who tends to have his or her coffee cup stolen/borrowed by other people. Having the “lock-cup” at work renders the cup useless for most people and thus ensures your cup will be available for use the next time you are in need of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate at the office. How awesome of an invention is that? (sarcasm)

Novelty items are all around us and some are funny and some are actually useful. While I’m sure there are office workers who are thanking their lucky stars because they now have a theft deterrent built into their coffee cup, the rest of normal society is looking at this product in wonderment. Has society regressed to the point where we need a key to “open” our coffee cup? We have locks on our houses, safes inside our houses, our computers, our gas caps, our hub caps, our cars, and now we can have locks on our coffee cup! Since when did a coffee cup become of such value, the hardened office criminals have began to devise clandestine plans to illegally appropriate someone else’s valuable mug property? I will hope for the sake of sanity this product is a novelty item only and not meant to be purchased as a means to end a “serious” office issue.

Seriously though, our lives are beginning to reach the point where we are trying to “lock up” everything we own out of fear of losing it. Over time, our society is continuing down the path of “castle mentality.” What I mean by “castle mentality” is that we are trying to build walls to keep everyone out of our lives and possession. These walls can be physical, mental, or just theoretical walls we put in place. Even electronic walls fit this mindset. Our country began as a nation of immigrants. Our nation was based upon open minds and diverse nationalities being welcomed into our melting pot. Society in the past featured communities where no door was locked and people were welcomed with open arms as if they were family. People were trusted as being honorable and trustworthy until proven different. How far has our country gone from the open mentality of those in the past generations? We are currently at the polar opposite.

Our nation is worried about closing our borders for various reasons. Our citizens are under constant pressure trying to protect the rights given to us by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our government continually tries to filter those rights for the so-called “greater good.” These are forms of walls. Does the definition of freedom have any reference to walls or limitations? The castle can be in various forms. Our government is a castle which those in power try their utmost to protect and grow its borders. Our house is our own personal castle which we are forced to protect. Our private lives are also our castle which we protect from those around us. Our electronic data is another castle we continually build walls to protect. Now, we even have our castle at our office. Not just the office desk, but even the coffee cup. Our nation has turned into something akin to what our forefathers sailed the seas away from.

We build our castle walls everywhere in an effort to protect our supposed freedom within. It is a constant effort to keep the walls from closing in and thus we see products such as the “lock-cup” created. Even if it is a joke, or novelty item, it is a product from the symptoms of castle mentality within our society. Now, I’m not saying there should be no locks, or there should be no government, or there should be no laws that we must abide by. I am saying rather than being forced to live in a protectionist society, we should be focusing on living in a society which was established over 230 years ago, a free one. We are the world’s beacon for a free society and we are slowly allowing our own freedom to be closed by various forms of castle building. How many walls do you have in your life protecting your freedom within? Are you continually maintaining them in an effort to keep the intruders out? Are you building new ones every day in an effort to expand your footprint of personal freedom? Who and what are you keeping out? Do you have a wall around your property? Do you have a wall around your office? Everywhere you go, there can be a wall. We choose to do this because we are afraid if we don’t build our walls, we will lose something of value.

We may lose possessions which are valuable. We may lose precious territory that “belongs” to us. We may be afraid to let people into our lives where we are in fear of being hurt or rejected. Our mentality of castle building affects everything we do. In a free society, where did this mentality creep in? It has crept into our society’s mind because over time, our freedoms have slowly been taken away from us in various ways. We have moved from a sharing society to a society of me. Our walls protect our selfish desires of what we want or feel we deserve. Rather than a community focus, we are focused on where we will be as an individual. If our country had the same mentality when our forefathers took the leap of faith proclaiming independence, I don’t believe the United States of America would exist today.

If we are going to build something, we should focus on extending the rights and freedoms of our country, not building walls to limit them. Removing the castle mentality from society cannot be done overnight or by one individual. It is something that would probably take generations to change just as it has taken generations to create. But, if we can stop the momentum and even reverse the trend, we can make an immediate impact in our current generation’s lives. Rather than building that next wall, choose to use your efforts in building something else. We have come a long way from a coffee cup lock to discussing a free society but I like thinking metaphorically. The “lock-cup” is a metaphor for someone’s castle wall and the walls of our society.

In my experience, I have found that the Internet is most valuable in two areas. The first is learning about things outside of visiting your library or looking through books at a bookstore. And the second is doing valuable product research. Yes, there are many, many other things the Internet allows us to do as individuals, but the power in these two areas cannot be defined. You have the power of millions at your fingertips. All you have to do is spend time searching, reading, and learning. What I am getting around to is a new product becoming available as we speak. It has already hit some store shelves and is soon to be in a variety of stores. This product type may not be known to some people out there depending on how technically advanced you care to be. It’s a new, cheaper blu-ray player. It is made to be an entry level player to help people begin migrating to a new format for movies. Remember DVD as it came out and everyone had their VHS players? Same thing here, blu-ray is trying to replace DVD as the standard for home movies.

There is nothing at all wrong with that. Blu-ray is a better technology as it offers more space for additional features, higher quality sound, and high-definition movie playback. It also includes the ability to connect to the Internet for content in the future (several current blu-ray players lack this function as does this current product). This leads me to the crux of this article. Funai is a Japanese company that has manufacturing plants in China. They currently build over half of the DVD players in our country. Needless to say, they know how to manufacture this product. Great, they have the capacity and know how to do it, guess we won’t have to worry about inventory being a problem. That’s not the issue either. The issue is that this company builds the product for many different brands. Brand x has the product with their label on it. Brand y has the exact same product with their label on it. They may be different colors are arranged a little nicer or have fancy boxing and maybe some other little differentiating tricks. However, the product inside is the EXACT same thing, just a different skin on it.

Still, there is nothing to worry about here. That is until you see what the stores are doing with the product. Store x has the product from brand x available for $298. Store y has the product from brand y available for $350. Store z has it available for yet another price at $325 for brand z. Why the discrepancy for the exact same product with just a different name on it? No, you aren’t buying brand name here, you are paying profit margin here. These stores know that the consumers aren’t informed and will purchase the product because it’s the cheapest blu-ray player available (cheapest other is $399). Consumers are starting to hear about blu-ray and high definition movies and now that there are a lot of high definition televisions in the households of Americans, there is a new push for blu-ray to enter the audio/video equation. Customer x walks into electronic store y, sees the new “cheaper” blu-ray player and knows its entry level and the brand is ok. Sales person pushes the product or tries to upsell the customer. Sounds normal and is. However, the customer doesn’t know they can immediately save $50 by going elsewhere.

What the stores and retailers are banking on is that the customer will not know the products are the same because they have different brand names on them. They of course rely on the fact that their store name carries with it a certain quality and thus they will pay a little more than another store because of this. The customer has not been informed adequately and the information is readily available on the Internet (it took me maybe 5 minutes to find out the information). You may say that’s fine, the customer is at fault for not doing the research. I agree to an extent but there is a point where it’s blatantly ripping people off because they basically have insider information. Your average customer is going to depend on outside information to help determine purchase decisions outside of price.

Of course this is not the only product in our stores that are like this. There are many products we buy that we can find a better deal elsewhere. But, we don’t do the research and find out. Why don’t we? Because most of us either don’t know how or don’t want to waste the time it takes to research something. The retailers know this so they continue to set pricing the way they do and continue to make higher profit margins on the same items packaged differently. We are being taken advantage of because we are allowing it. If we decided to become more educated on our product choices, we would not buy the higher priced products of course and the retailers would be forced to lower their prices or stop stocking that particular brand. The power is in our hands and the information is free and readily available.

Next time you are on the Internet, rather than just surfing around, research a product and just see what it is exactly you are spending your money on. At the very least, for any new product you buy, research about it on the Internet first. You will be greatly surprised what you find and you will be nicely surprised by how much money you can keep in your wallet. Don’t allow the retailers to take advantage of you because they lump you together with the other uneducated consumers. Take back the power and educate yourself.

Citation: http://myblurayplanet.com/

That’s all well and good and the product IW created has made them a very profitable development studio. However, CoD4 was not their first release and they were a profitable company before this particular title hit the streets. They have been profitable for quite a few years and have future game development projects already locked in. Their financial standing and outlook is great. So what’s the product rant? As I mentioned, they recently released new downloadable content for CoD4. The content was a map pack that augments their online portion of the game. It contains an additional 4 maps to go along with the included 16 maps available for online play. This gives the people who purchase the DLC the ability to play 20 different maps with other players via the internet. What’s the problem with that, what’s the big deal? Well, considering that the initial purchase price was $60, the DLC was priced at $10. That’s a fairly high percentage of cost for such a small addition of content.

You may think, so what, it’s only $10. Yeah, that’s what they depend on for you to think and agree with. So what, pick up the maps, be happy right? The initial game was purely focused on online play, the single player portion is great, but it is very short and their emphasis was for multiplayer gaming. They KNEW people would get tired of the initial online maps and be thirsty for new content. IW knew a major portion of their user base would be willing to part with an additional $10 for content to extend the game’s life. When IW released the map pack on Xbox Live, they achieved over 1 million downloads in 9 days. For an additional 4 maps, at minimum, they have gained another $10 million in revenue. This doesn’t account for the sales on the Playstation Network.

Ok, so it’s a business, they deserve to make money off their work and if people want to buy stuff, that’s ok. Sure, I’ll agree with that. However, as the consumer, you need to watch out for the simple ploy of buying something only to have to keep buying additional product to support your initial purchase. There are lots of companies out there that depend on the fact that people will continue to spend money to support a product after their initial outlay of cash. These companies are willing to sell the initial product as a lower than expected cost because they intend to reap their rewards after the sale by making it up with huge profit margin items to support the current product. Or better yet, they sell you extended warranties, upgrade kits, and all kinds of neat little accessories to extend their product.

It’s one big ploy from the outset to get people in the process and then take advantage of them after their purchase. You usually can’t take most of these products back or there are huge hurdles to jump over if you can which then deters you from doing so. Some of these products are even crippled in a minor way to promote the need to pay more for the upgrade or accessory item. What feature can we disable on a less expensive version which in the future “makes” the consumer feel the “need” to purchase an upgrade or more expensive version of the product? This is a very easy way to generate future revenue from a product line.

So what I’m ranting about is the devious natures of companies that are out to push products that they KNOW are not going to satisfy their consumer with the initial product. It’s done on purpose for the simple fact that they can almost guarantee extra revenue at a later date by limiting the feature set of the initial product. It means a company can release a non-finished product and then charge people later for the “finished” product via upgrade charges, service fees, etc. IW’s DLC is a similar charge for consumers. They knew people would be prime targets to pay a fee for additional content because they limited the single player portion to almost a tenth of what normal single player games contain. This “forced” their consumer base to pay for the additional content of the game via an upgrade. Yes, we all have choices and sometimes we even use our principles when making our choices. We should all take a look at how we are spending our money on products going forward. Determine just what you are buying. Are you buying a complete product? Are you going to be asked to pay for things that should have been included day one? Are you ok with buying a partially complete product without all of the bells and whistles of the super duper “complete” product?

Go into purchase decisions with your eyes open and don’t just assume that these companies are playing fair. They are purposely releasing unfinished products with the knowledge that the average purchaser of their product will continue to spend money down the road to satisfy their supposed needs. I’m sure there are many of you out there with examples of products and companies that fit the bill. Most likely ones you’ve bought.

There are many products out in the consumer world that have no other meaning other than to cost you money.  Other products are out there that serve no purpose other than to clutter up your life.  Some products actually provide usefulness and save you money.  This category could include reviews or rants about any such item.  Our world of mass marketing should give us a vast array of products to talk about.  I have no doubts we will have some very interesting conversations in this category.