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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 03/05
/2008 The thrill is gone –
corporate websites now don’t really want your emails The WWW offered the promise of consumers being able to
contact companies and organizations immediately, instead of the traditional
way of typing up a letter and sending it snail mail. And when the web first
started, most websites had a simple button for you to click on and send them
an email about your comment or complaint. But now
with the number of web surfers approaching a billion – China alone is
estimated to have 137 million, and the US 165 million, the promise of
instant communication with a company on their website is now becoming a
complex problem. If you go
to www.kpbx.org it’s very easy to send a general
email to KPBX, or to a specific person in their email directory. If you go to
my website – I try to have an Email Me button on every page of my website. But
you’ll actually find some websites of big companies that have been
virtually abandoned. It’s
as if they had a website party, and nobody came, so they just forgot about
it. I’ve actually clicked
on an “email us” button and composed and sent an email, only to
have it bounceback immediately saying the corporate
email address was bad. One of
the things I like about the web is the instant communication you
theoretically have, but that seems to be diminishing. CNN is all the time
saying they want viewer comment, but they make it complex to contact them. Say
you’re watching CNN and something jogs your mind that you want to give
them your two-bits about what they just said. So you go to your computer to www.cnn.com and there’s no easy to find
Contact Us button at the top of the page – just layers and layers of
news stories and advertising and videos to click on and news stories to click
on and read. You have
to go all the way to the bottom of the page to find the tiny contact us
button, and when you click on it – they ask you what specific program
you want to comment on, which of course you don’t know – because
isn’t CNN just CNN ? No
it’s not – and so you immediately have to run back to the TV to
see if you can figure out what part of CNN you want to respond to, and of
course by that time they’ve cut to commercial break for 3 minutes, and when it finally comes back
there’s different talking heads and it’s on a new show.
But if you can actually remember
the particular part of CNN you want to comment on, and click on say – CNN.com
– you then face a list of choices which are almost more daunting than
college entrance exams:
All this from a company whose forte is supposedly
communication ....... they could do better – much better. Even If
you go to www.msnbc.com – which is
a computer company based news channel website – you still have to find
the Contact Us button again at the bottom of the page, and then you go to a secondary
screening menu
But then when you click on the topic you want to comment
on – you switch immediately into whatever email program you use and you
can comment away – as opposed to most other sites that make you use
their specially designed to aggravate you even further form and make you type
your name email address city state zip country phone number –
dog’s name – favorite flower – whether your comment is
positive or negative – which by this time I’m frothing at the
mouth with anger – and then they give you a comments space about the size of two postage
stamps.
So if you’re frustrated like
I am,
there’s still snail mail. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2008 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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