I’ve used Sony products for a long time, including a Sony computer (Vaio) and the Walkman Bean. It has been a mixed blessing, because I love the multimedia tools that are packed into the PC, but I hate having to use the proprietary Sony ATRAC format for music saved to the Bean. Today, I found out that Sony has decided to join the rest of the world and move toward more open audio formats. Yea!

Here is the email I received from Sony:

August 30, 2007

Subject: Future of CONNECT Music Service

To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Music Customers:

Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.

We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format.

In the coming months we will keep you informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your region. Periodic updates will be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Electronics customer service site, http://esupport.sony.com/EN/news/article215.

Please note that the CONNECT e-book service for the Reader in the U.S. will not be affected.

Thank you for your business and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible.

Sincerely,

Sony CONNECT Music Team

I’ll have to wait to see how easy Sony will make it to transfer my ATRAC format music to a new format. The move is coming a little late for me, because I soon plan to buy an Apple iPod and join the majority of the civilized world. (I’m just waiting to see whether I win one at a charity golf outing organized by my employer.)

Technorati Tags:sony, atrac, walkman, bean, commakazi, ipod
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

I downloaded the beta of Windows Live Writer and am writing this very short post to test it. I’ve included a photo of my daughter with our dog, to see how well it uploads images as well as text. So far, this looks great as an offline blog editor for my WordPress blog.

Neville, thanks very much for   recommending this on your blog. (Yes, I’m testing the link.)

Consumers may be wising up to the reality that cheaper not only doesn’t usually mean better, but it also can mean unsafe. China, which is manufacturing just about everything sold in American chain stores these days, is proving itself to be a less-than-trustworthy supplier as far as consumers are concerned. That has been providing opportunities for domestic manufacturers who have been beaten up rather badly in recent years because of the U.S. dollar’s exchange rate and China’s lower production costs.

A couple of years ago, I avoided a fire when I noticed that some Christmas lights, made in China, that I had strung along my wooden fence in my front yard, had overheated and begun to burn the fence. The lights had the Underwriters Laboratories seal of approval, but failed. I returned the relatively inexpensive lights to Home Depot where I purchased them, and chose to take a refund, rather than to get a replacement set. After all, why take another chance?

Who doesn’t know about the chemical, melamine, that contaminated at least two ingredients used to make more than 100 brands of dog and cat foods? China shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten, corn gluten and rice protein concentrate to North America and South Africa. The contaminated products led to the deaths of many U.S. pets.

This week, the Chicago Tribune reported on an investigation it made into the continued sale of toys manufactured in China that have been recalled because they contain unsafe levels of lead. One test completed for the Trib found lead in a spinning top toy to be 40 times the legal limit.

These examples are a different sort of issue than the trouble that Japan had a few decades ago. I can still remember hearing about “cheap Japanese junk” that broke too soon or didn’t perform as well as U.S.-made products. But safety wasn’t raised as an issue then. It certainly is one with some Chinese-made products.

As the Tribune article states, U.S. consumers are actively looking for toys manufactured domestically, because they refuse to take a chance with the health of their children.

Unless China shows some remarkable progress in its product safety, it will lose business to more expensive, but reliable and safe, manufacturers from other countries.

In addition to my full-time position as an internal communications manager, I volunteer to guide communications at the church that my family has attended for 12 years. I’ve probably faced more challenges in terms of developing communication strategies and obtaining resources of people and budget there than in any of the “professional” jobs that I’ve held throughout my 27-year career.

That’s one of the reasons why I was excited about participating in a communications workshop offered on July 30, 2007 by the staff of Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana (USA). Granger is a solid example of how the Gospel message can reach people who have become disenchanted (even downright hostile) with “organized religion,” and who aren’t attending a church because, according to Granger leaders, they see church as too boring, intimidating, or irrelevant to their “stressed-out, hyper-speed lives,” and/or “they felt unworthy, unloved and unlovable.”

Following the communications workshop, I interviewed Kem Meyer, Granger’s communications director, along with some workshop participants. I posted the discussion on CommaKazi Speek. It was my second recorded conversation with Kem; here is the first one.

As one of the workshop participants points out in our recorded conversation, Granger has become known as a leader in effective communication to today’s tech saavy person, who may also be wary of any hype coming from institutions–including organized religion. So how has Granger reached and retained members? How has it grown from about 10 people meeting in the living room of Senior/Founding Pastor Mark Beeson and his wife, Sheila, to several thousand people worshiping in a large, modern space that also features:

• a casual atmosphere
• friendly people who’ll help you find your way around
• contemporary music, powerful dramas, high-impact media presentations
• an innovative children’s space and
• a Starbuck®-esque café?

Communications played an important role. Although Meyer was quick to credit the terrific speaking skills of the church’s pastors, she also provided practical tips for church communications staff and volunteers.

Bad communication is when you are trying to change someone’s “world view,” Meyer said. Good communication is when you speak respectfully to a world view, even if you disagree with it. Instead of trying to send “the right message” to your audience, you need to develop communications that release “the right response.”

Meyer defines “world view” as the bias that affects the story we tell ourselves to make it easier to live in a complicated work. Examples of world view include:

• A home-cooked meal is better for my kids
• Church is boring and is for sissies
• Organic food is “better”

During the communication workshop, Meyer presented five “communication myths” and four “best practices.” The five communication myths are:

• You (the communicator) are in control
• The more choices (products, services, message), the better
• Advertising creates interest and reinforces the brand
• It worked before, so it’ll work again
• People care about what you have to say

Although I don’t have time to unwrap all of these myths, I’ll cover a couple of them. People mistakenly believe that advertising creates interest and reinforces the brand, when at best, advertising creates awareness, which is not, in and of itself, a motivating factor. Meyer pointed out that cancer creates a sort of powerful awareness in people–but that doesn’t mean that people want it. Brands are built on experiences, she added.

People remember, on average, 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 40% of what we do and about 100% of what we feel, Meyer said. Emotion is the “on/off switch” for thinking.

The four best practices discussed by Meyer were:

• Know your audience (psychographics as well as demographics)
• Remove barriers to entry (is that tri-fold brochure and over-friendly approach to visitors attracting people–or repelling them?)
• Reduce the noise. Life is hard enough; we shouldn’t make it harder on people trying to get our message.
• Tell one story at a time. Act as an air traffic controller, and let the ministry leaders fly their own planes. You simply direct the flow and keep them from crashing together.

Among the practical examples of how Granger’s communications staff uses this knowledge, Meyer talked about how the church looked to attract visitors who could be hostile to Christianity and church. The church staff developed a message series titled, “The Most Irritating Things About Christians.” That series attracted people who were looking for affirmation that certain things about Christians can be seen as being irritating. Pastor Beeson was able to shape his messages to address those irritations, while affirming the reasons why Christians may act in a seemingly irritating way.

I’ve only skimmed the surface of the workshop, and haven’t talked about the practical advice for improving the communication process, adding volunteers and determining the ways to reach a particular audience or demographic. I’ll be sharing more with my church’s leadership, and may find other tidbits worthy of posting here.

If you’ve seen any of the trailers for the third movie in the Jason Bourne series, you’ll know that “The Bourne Ultimatum” promises a big heap of the ingredients that made the first two movies successful: Action, drama and mystery. It also includes a strong dose of paid product placement, just like so many modern movies.

As an employee of VW Credit, Inc., the finance subsidiary of Volkswagen of America, that paid product placement is okay in this case–because it led to me and 500 coworkers enjoying a pre-release viewing of the new Bourne thriller Thursday night in a Chicago suburb. Several VW vehicles can be spotted throughout the movie–including a lot of action involving an Audi and a VW Touareg 2 in a climatic chase scene near the end of the movie. Without spoiling the movie, let’s just say that the vehicles’ residual value (resale value) after the chase dropped significantly. That Jason Bourne must pay high insurance premiums.

It was fun to sit with my wife and coworkers and look for VW products, while enjoying one of the best movies released so far this summer. I would rate this installment on par with the first Bourne movie (The Bourne Identity) and well above the second (The Bourne Supremacy).