Does Samsung have a special research team developing the world's most annoying sounds?

The Galaxy S4 is a rather sexy piece of hardware, but the spell is broken as soon as you fire up the phone and touch the screen. You though the cutesy lock screen with the kid holding balloons was bad, but wait until you hear the noises the phone makes.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Every single time you touch the screen you hear a loud and annoying water droplet, like your own personal water torture assistant. When a call comes in, the default "Over the horizon" ringtone makes you feel like you're trapped in a late night informercial for incontinence pads. Meanwhile the loud "Whistle" when you receive a text message is so chipper and pretentious that you want to answer the phone with a brick. Sure you can change the defaults, but Samsung's alternatives aren't much better.

The Galaxy range has always been plagued by annoying sounds, but it's still hard to believe that someone at Samsung actually signs off on them before each new handset ships. The S4 comes with more than 30 dreadful ringtones, sporting uber-trendy names such as "Cloud at sunsets", "Spring of hope" and "Drifting downstream". Even elevator muzak sounds good in comparison -- it's enough to make your pine for "Nokia Tune" on your old Nokia 3210.

Perhaps Samsung's entire product development team is tone deaf, or perhaps no-one can hear them complain over the din of cute bells and whistles. The Galaxy S4 is certainly an impressive slice of hardware, but something needs to be done about the god-awful sounds it makes.

I have heard - though not confirmed - that another three Apple resellers in Melbourne have either closed or are about to close.

As more Apple Stores open around the country, that trend is likely to continue. And whether or not Apple has a physical presence in a particular area, people seem to be getting increasingly comfortable with the idea of buying even relatively expensive products online.

The writing has been on the wall for Apple resellers for some time. I've personally known just one owner of such a business, and he quit several years ago in the face of extremely thin margins and Apple's move into retail.

It seems to me that part of the problem is that the 'high touch' approach used in Apple Stores - lots of machines on display for people to try, and staffing levels that appear to be unmatched by any other retailer - is great for shoppers but very expensive for anyone else to duplicate.

But it does work. I walked past a couple of Apple Stores while travelling recently, and the customer density was several times that of any other stores in the same shopping centres. It's not surprising that Apple has the highest revenue per square foot in the US (and possibly the world).

[Apologies for the intermittent appearance of Hydrapinion:Mac recently, which was due to the travel mentioned above.]

For many years, Castrol used the advertising tagline "Oils ain't oils" to spruik its particular brand of processed dinosaur. Possibly it still does -- I don't buy much motor oil or, for that matter, watch all that much commercial TV any more.

In any case, it jumped back up in my mind when Samsung announced its "5G" wireless network trials, in which it claims to have managed 1Gbps speeds over the air at a distance of 2km. That's pretty impressive stuff from a technology point of view, and naturally enough it reignited the debate over whether it was worth spending NBN-level money on fixed broadband at all.

The thing is, there's a load of unanswered questions in terms of both how Samsung has tested and how (and when) it would be deployed. As ITNews points out, it could be highly susceptible to rain problems. As I pointed out at length over at Fat Duck Tech, there are mountains of red tape, spectrum and power issues to overcome. As Adam points out, it's more likely to be a compliment to fixed line, not its replacement.

But even that's aside from a very simple and basic point. Want some 5G? I could sell you a plastic bucket with 5G written on the side of it, and it would be exactly as legitimate as the wireless solution that Samsung is currently testing. There's no such standard -- as yet -- and with 4G having been so heavily mucked with, to the point where it's an advertising term much more than a "standard", it's entirely feasible that there may never be a 5G "standard". What Samsung is essentially doing is drumming up some hype for a product which even it admits isn't going to be market ready before 2020, and that's at a level where carriers might start buying it, not where you might start flinging movies around on it.

For what it's worth, I've got the 5G plastic bucket ready to sell to carriers right now. Starting price is a very reasonable $1,000,000 per bucket. Check around -- you can't beat those prices for 5G today. Please, please, form an orderly queue. I've got plenty of 5G buckets for everyone.

Image: cogdogblog

“I actually enjoy vacuuming now”…

No-one in recorded history has ever said this apart from the woman in the ad on TV for the ‘Shark’ vacuum cleaner. Just as no-one ever says:
“I really look forward to sharpening my knives now I have …” whatever it is called.

My favourite though (can you hear the sneer in my voice), is the one that promises to fix the wrinkles around your eyes by employing ‘stem cell technology’ and give you “a really neat feeling”. Really neat.” I asked a doctor about this last one, and basically it is pure unadulterated crap. Apparently stem cells need a constant blood supply and of course, they don’t say what sort of “stem cells” they are. As my doctor mate says, they could come from a lantana bush for all we know.

Why on earth the watchdog doesn’t stomp on these ads, as well as the bogus haircare ones with all sorts of exotic fruits embedded in them (apparently) I don’t know.
But my major objection to these ads is their production values. I know enough Australian actors to get REALLY pissed off when I hear ads with American accents and voice overs, references to things that don’t even really apply here (such as the dreaded “mom” and “cookie”, left hand drive cars and of course, the wrong spelling (“tire”, “favor”, “color”, “frosting” for “icing” and so on).

Yes I know it is all about cost of production. Why shoot something when you can just slightly doctor and run something that already exists?
Here’s a thought. A lot of shooting IS done in Australia as we do a damn fine job and we are cost effective. Perhaps the production companies should look at selling their expertise overseas to make commercials as well as for the full length movie?

The cash flow would be better to start with. And open up a whole new global market.

(As an aside, many of these items are a monetary rip off as well – quelle surprise. One ad for a magnetic insect curtain for doors was marketed as I recall, for 3 payments of $7.95. The EXACT same item is down or local markets on the weekend for $3.99).

But you knew that …

No one likes making mistakes at work, but doing so could well be the best way to get ahead.

While traditional theory revolves around getting things absolutely right before taking them to market, increasing numbers of business thinkers reckon failure can actually help. Put something out and see how it's received. If it works, great. If it doesn't, dump it and move on.

You don't have to look very far for examples of this approach. Search specialist Google is constantly releasing new products and services to test how users respond. If they catch on, Google continues to develop and expand them. If not, they are quietly killed off.

On the hardware front, Samsung is an example of the trend. The electronics giant is continually putting out portable devices in every conceivable size. Some fly, but some don't. As long as success outweighs failure, the company continues to grow.

The 'fail to succeed' approach is also followed by many software makers. In the past, a company would have waited until a program or app was fully finished and polished before releasing it to the world. Now many get their product out the door before following it with a rapid series of updates to add functionality or fix any problems that arise.

According to Gartner, failure rates of between 20 and 28 per cent among business projects is likely to become the norm. As more organisations get their collective heads around the fact that failure is not bad, they'll increase their experimentation and - as a result - have more successful futures.

What's your organisation's attitude to failure?