Thoughts Cubed™

In our 9/19 post Windows ad campaign we made a comment on how Microsoft should spend their money on making Vista better more reliable and instead of spending millions on making us feel better about windows Vista.

Well apple did their own commercial on the subject, who couldn’t resist. Using the I’m a PC vs. I’m Mac format. Apple poked back at Microsoft with the PC guy dividing up his money in two plies. The large of the two plies to be spent on advertising and the very small pile on Vista bug fixes. At the end of the spot PC guy puts all his money in to advertising.

The next night Apple comes out with another commercial bashing Vista with the “Bake Sale” parody. In the commercial Mac eats the ten million cup cake sold by PC guy. It is short and to the point, nothing to miss here.

The question is how long can Mac continue to be the Cooool guy on the block? And will Microsoft ever win in the TV commercial arena? For my viewing pleasure I hope Microsoft continues to give Mac more material to work with because these guys at TBWA with Laurie Coots do a great job putting down the PC.

No the lower case p in the title “JUNK political Signs” was not a typo. I typed that way. The clutter of political signs, during election, is yet another sign of the dual standards of Joe private citizen vs. government politicians. Local politicians have all kinds of ordnances restricting how business can advertise. BUT when it comes to the politicians they can place a sign all most anywhere. True they can only be placed 30 days before the election and must be removed shortly after the election, but the still become an eyesore.

Do politicians really think that a display of sign, as pictured above, will convince a person to vote for them? To me it shows total disregard, by the person running for office, for the city they are running in.

There once again another indication of Dumb Americans, the way we allow the dual standards.

This photo was take accross the street from the photos above. So on the west side of the street are 17 signs and on the east side there are 21 signs.

How high are women heels going to get. This fashion season we are seeing high heels that are like skyscrapers. a few short years ago a three inch high heel was on the high end. Now we are seeing seven and eight inch high heels with a platform sole.

Are eight inch heels piratical? What about women’s health, doctors are getting more complaints about back, leg and foot pain, from women that are wearing extremely high heels. I would like to know how women drive a car with these extreme heels. And what about twisting an ankle and falling in public.

But it seems that women are will to do just about anything to live with the pain. Some even get cosmetic injectables, like Restylane™ or Juvederm™ , shot into the balls of their foot to increase the padding of the sole of the foot. This is only a temporary solution that last about 5 months.

So how dumb are Americans, that we will wear these ridiculous high shoes that are dangerous in so many ways. Reports are the shoes are flying off the store shelves. So what is motivating the purchase of these over the top high heel shoes?

Some time when it sounds too good to be true there is got to be a catch. Several years ago we switched our phone service from Verizon to Vonage and saved about $200 a month on our phone bill. The only down side was the setup (getting the ATA installed, configured) and the quality of the calls was less then Verizon. But we were saving $2,400 a year. So it was worth the problems.

Then fast forward 4 years and we hear about MagicJack for only $20 per year. WOW only pay $20 for the whole year. How does that work. Well the first down side is you need to have a PC (desktop or laptop) running to get a phone call. So if you want 24 x 7 phone service then your computer need to be ON 24 x 7. OK! We already us a computer as a DVR so that is not big deal. So let do the free trial.

Just be careful when you sign up for the free trail you are prompted for all kinds of options. Big bold type in your face ads wanting you to up for 5 years and other stuff. Any of the options negate your free trial. So I was smart and avoided all the temptations.

The next problem, after a week of testing, was when we decide to go with the service and port our existing phone number to MagicJack. The FAQs say YES but but not now, we will in the upcoming months. That was eight month ago 1/2008. And here we are in fall 2008 and you can sitll not port your number to MagicJack. Hey we do not want to change our number. I like the phone number i have, it has been mine for 20 plus years. So does all of my friends, neighbor and family.

So now we want to return the free trail. So I want to uninstall the MagicJack software. Oh surprise there is NO uninstall. Who today, in 2008, does not have an uninstaller? Someone who wants too look at your system and serve up ads on your MagicJack control panel. Just check the “end user License agreement” it is full of all kinds of stuff that you should not agree to.

So the only way to remove the software is by hand, a good reference is here at uninstallmagicjack.com. What a pain to do this all by hand.
Then we try to sent the USB adaptor back using UPS to get a tracking number and proof of delivery and that’s right they only have a PO box (UPS will not deliver to a Po box). So now the only thing I can do is send it back US mail with a return receipt. We are waiting to see is the $49.00 ever hits my credit card.

Just a word to the wise…think long and hard before you jump on something like this. It is not worth the loss of privacy to have MagicJack watching who you call and what you do on you PC and then sell that info and delivering ads to your desktop. After all it is how MagicJack make more money to offset the low cost of the service.

It is just too high of a price to pay, and it wrong wrong wrong…