Alienware (recently acquired by Dell) seem to be causing quite a stir following an incident where they refused to provide a test system to a high-profile review site, after that site gave an unfavourable review of a previous Alienware product.

Review site HEXUS.net recently reviewed Alienware’s Area-51 7000 PC gaming rig. While the review they gave didn’t say the machine was bad, they pointed out that the same components in the system could be acquired for a lot cheaper from another manufacturer.

Later, when HEXUS.net requested another test system from Alienware for another review, they received this email:

Hello Tarinder,

I’m afraid, after the last review, our ability to send you any hardware for review is pretty much gone. When I have one of the executives in the US threatening my job on the telephone, my hands become somewhat tied in the future.

Anyway since…

“there are better and cheaper alternatives to the Alienware Area-51 7500″

… surely those would make a much better choice for a launch-day G80 review?

Certainly we’d have to have rocks in our head to come back for a second helping with the same SKU [product].

Mat Bettinson
Marketing Manager
Alienware Limited

In fact, there are plenty more of these emails that HEXUS have published and you can read their account of the story here.

Later, in another email, Alienware’s Marketing Manager then admits to something quite shocking:

Firstly, optimising product placements to the press is a specific role of anyone in a marketing function and not someone behaving like a moron.

From experience I’ve known that you and I see eye to eye on a number of industry issues but I’m a little baffled by your idealism on this front:

“… the only inference which can be made from this is that ‘Alienware’ will only submit products to publications which will write nice things about ‘Alienware’.”

That’s was and remains Alienware’s global marketing strategy from the beginning. We’re hardly alone.

Well, to be honest, I’m pretty convinced that this is real - and to be honest there’s not really very much I can say about this story other than it spells disaster for people wanting to find honest reviews of products. Draw your own conclusions.

CrunchGear have the story that the founders of many services including Skype, the P2P file sharing service Kazaa are planning to launch a new peer-to-peer Web TV service which will allow people to share their TV programs (the idea being they will be created by the users) with other users of the service.

The service is currently codenamed ‘Venice’ and will, if we can judge it by the success of previous projects, be very big.

From the original news article:

“This is a system where people with professional content can put it out (on the Internet). And that can be anybody,” said Friis, who currently has “a lot of people” negotiating with TV production companies around the world.

Of course, there is an enormous potential for people to put copyrighted material onto the service, but Skype co-founder Janus Friis did say he didn’t want any more trouble with lawsuits (after Kazaa was extensively used by users to swap copyrighted material).

This is a very interesting move and it has the potential to become quite a popular service, if it can successfully tear people away from the likes of YouTube.

Does that mean they’ve left it too late this time, having let YouTube absorb almost all of the video sharing market, or will there be a market for the peer-to-peer element?

Now we all know that a while back, Google started sending cease and desist letters to people using ‘Google’ as a verb.

Apparently, the Official Google Blog has the news of Google’s official stance on using ‘Google’ as a verb.

According to them, it’s all right provided that you actually make it clear that you are using Google and not just using it as a term for using any random search engine.

So, ‘Googling’ is fine if you’re actually looking up something on Google, but ‘Googling’ as a generic term for web searching isn’t allowed according to the gods that be at Mountain View.

Usage: ‘Google’ as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: “I just love Google, they’re soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!”
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There’s no question here that you’re referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: “I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Well, we’re happy at least that it’s clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to “Google” means “to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: “I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

Hold on, shouldn’t you be able to ‘Yahoo’ as a verb as well?

It’s a shame that they feel forced to do this, but it’s really a matter of the courts. If Google aren’t seen to be defending their trademark they will lose the right to defend it and that is the primary issue here.

Well, at least we know what we’re allowed to say now. If you want any more information on this topic, don’t be afraid to search for it using your favourite search engine…

Just a quick post to let everyone know that hot on the heels of the release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla have officially released Firefox 2 to the world.

Unfortuantely I don’t have time for a full review this evening and basically the functionality won’t be much different from the release candidates other than it being a stable release.

From the official Mozilla press release:

Mozilla today released Firefox® 2, a major update to its popular and acclaimed free, open source Web browser. Firefox is developed by an international community of contributors working together under the umbrella of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit, public-benefit organization dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere.

In less than two years, tens of millions of people worldwide have discovered the easier, faster and safer online experience that Firefox provides. Translated into more than 35 languages at its release, Firefox 2 is available in a native language version for more people around the world than any other Web browser.

Firefox 2 is immediately available for Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems as a free download from www.getfirefox.com

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that Apple have unveiled a new version of their high-end MacBook Pro laptop product.

The new MacBook Pros (both 15″ and 17″ versions are available) feature Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor rather than the Cire Duo.

Also featured in the new models is one Firewire 800 and one Firewire 400 port. The lowest-end configuration of the inital MacBook Pro didn’t feature the 800 port, and many people were concerned that Apple were thinking of dropping Firewire. While USB is ubiquitous and has essentially ‘beaten’ Apple’s Firewire technology, Firewire is still very important for things like camcorders and part of the appeal of the MacBook Pro is to video professionals.

Other than that, the upgrades include a fairly generous 2 GB of RAM and 2.13 or 2.33 GHz Core 2 processor.

Apple’s consumer MacBook laptop remains as it has been and hasn’t been upgraded from the Core Duo to Core 2 Duo processor.

I have had access to Vox, Six Apart’s new blogging tool for a little while now, and have been slowly gathering my thoughts on it. At the moment it is invite only, but it is fully launching on the 26th October. For those of you who haven’t yet heard of Vox, it is a blogging tool with very robust social networking features built around it, including ‘friends’, picture sharing and post permissions. The target audience is clearly the mass market; those who don’t know much about technology or care about it. (more…)

The IE Team Blog has the news that Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP has now been released and is available from the Internet Explorer home page at www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.

Apparently it isn’t available via Windows Update just yet, and it seems that they haven’t pushed it out to machines as a high priority update as I reported a while back (or at least they haven’t done so yet).

From the post:

We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier … IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing.

From the user’s perspective, it will be interesting to see how much reaction there is to the announcement and how many ordinary users will update to IE7 (I’m guessing not many at all). If and when Microsoft deliver it as an update, we will really get to know what the average computer user thinks of Microsoft’s latest browser offering.

From the web developer standpoint, IE7 is a mixed blessing. On the good side, IE7 supports quite a lot more (but in my eyes still not good enough) CSS support and improvements which will hopefully bring things like syndication more into the public eye. On the bad side, however, many sites will break when they find that code hacks they were using to get IE6 working no longer work in IE7 and for a while, the journey may be a bit rocky.

What’s certain, though, is that the rise of alternative browsers like Firefox has forced Microsoft to play catch up, with IE7 being the first Internet Explorer release to sport standard features in Firefox and Opera like tabbed browsing. Arguably, they’ve also done some innovation in the security space, but most of the better security features will only show themselves in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.

IE6 has been out since August 2001 and this has been the longest gap between releases in IE history. Will it be another 5 years until IE8? I hope not.

Following on from when I reported on EA’s in-game advertising deal, I have just read on Slashdot that EA will bundle mandatory spyware into their upcoming game, Battlefield 2142.

According to the article, the spyware installed by the game will monitor browsing habits and other online activities and the data will be used to target advertisements that will appear in-game (presumably delivered courtesy of EA’s deal).
Now I’m not a big gamer by any standards - I suppose you could call me a ‘very casual’ gamer. But I definitely would not buy a game with this; it takes in-game advertising far too far in my opinion. From Kotaku, who originally covered the story:

When you open the box, a big slip of paper falls out first, preceeding any discs or manuals. The slip of paper says, essentially, that 2142 includes monitoring software which runs while your computer is online, and records “anonymous” information like your IP address, surfing habits (probably via cookie scans), and other “computing habits” in order to report this information back to ad companies and ad servers, which generates in-game ads.

I think this is a very dangerous move and could potentially put people off gaming on their computers entirely and make them consider consoles instead (where they obviously don’t have as much personal data stored).

From what I understand, the Battlefield series has a fairly substantial community around it, and it certainly will be telling to see what the gamers who might actually play the game think of this move by EA.

Vista is approaching its RTM (release to manufacturing) in time for its availability to consumers by early 2007. I installed Beta 2 on my under powered laptop when it was released to the public, and found it a little bit too unstable for use. I haven’t installed it since (and don’t intend to), but I thought it might be a good idea to see what the consensus was in reviews of RC2 - a kind of ‘meta review’ This is a big battle ground with Linux, and something that MS has to get right if it wants big adoption of Vista. (more…)

MSNBC’s NewsWeek has an article where Steve Jobs talks about the evolution of the iPod and iTunes, and why he isn’t scared of the Zune.

There are some interesting points he makes in the article:

On convincing record labels to invest in the iTunes Store:

Let’s talk about the iTunes store. How did you get the record labels, which had been resisting digital music, to sign up?
It was a process over 18 months. We got to know these folks and we made a series of predictions that a lot of things they were trying would fail. Then they went and tried them, and they all failed, for the reasons that we had predicted. … they started to believe that we might actually have some insight into this…”

And on the Zune:

Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

He talks a lot more about the iPod and iTunes and it makes interesting reading, but of course, take it with a pinch of corporate-agenda salt.

Read the full article.