3 posts tagged “cell”
In the world of retail Christmas is the season to be jolly, because the holiday rush makes up a major component of nearly every store's yearly revenue. The holidays are when the dollars leave the wallet, and the customers leave ladden down with packages. So why is my store so slow?
Oh there's been a slight increase in traffic into the store, but nothing like our summer months. Sales are down, activations are generally down and most of the people who are coming into the store are either coming in with problems or just doing the regular daily business of owning cell phones.
The trouble with cell phones and Christmas is that they're kind of a shitty gift. They're great if you're a parent buying you kid a phone, because you're going to be paying for their contract anyway, but for almost anyone else it's really bad. Why?
First off most phones are hundreds of dollars cheaper on a contract than they are to just buy. So why buy someone something for $500 that they can get for $75 on their own? To get it at that cheaper price requires a contract but very few people want to be giving someone a three year comitment to a monthly payment plan.
Santa: "Hello Timmy I got you a new cell phone. It's just going to cost you $43 a month for the next three years."
Timmy: "Fuck you Santa."
This is where I'm working. These are all cellular telephones. Ironically my cellular telephone is at home on my bed. Don't try to call me today, it's hopeless.
I got sent a new Nokia 6682 phone as part of a marketing program that's trying to get the phone in the hands of bloggers in both Toronto [mbt] and Vancouver [mbv]. The hope on the part of the marketing company in charge of the program is that I'll use it and blog about it.
I got it last night and started to charge it. Today I've loaded on Nokia's Lifeblog software [nok] which I guess will help me organize photos and notes on the phone, though it won't sync with my Macbook. I then loaded ShoZu [sz] on it to let it easily load my photos to my Flickr account.
My only complaint, aside from the lack of Mac compatibility, is that it's not got a full keyboard which would make mobile blogging so much easier. Posting from my BlackBerry is simple, even though I can't add photos, with the Nokia 6682 I'll be able to add photos but typing is going to be annoying. Still it'll be a nice portable video camera / camera that will let me take it out on the town. I'll be blogging more about it in the future.
