Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I got an email from a PR person working to promote a new multimedia cellphone service called RemoTV. Unfortunately, their press release is filled with typos, braggadocio they can’t back up, and points to a website that doesn’t contain any technical information about their service. Where’s the demo? Here’s their press release, with errors corrected:

Hi Elliott –

I hope all is well. With the hype that’s been circulating recently concerning Apple’s iPhone, people who can’t spend $600 and don’t have a day off work to get one [removed ,] are getting a bit antsy. Why does this one device have so many monopolies on technology? Not any more….enter stage left: RemoTV!

RemoTV (which launched its Beta site in June) is the newest addition in the wireless entertainment market. I think the readers of Business 2.0 are going to be psyched [removed siked] to learn of it! [removed .] Basically, RemoTV (which is FREE for all users!!!!!) is a way to host all your entertainment files [what are "entertainment files"?] (photos, music, video) from your computer – giving cell phone users the capability of [removed , at any time,] signing in and having their favorite music videos, hottest songs, or prized picture albums directly within reach! If your phone is web enabled you’ve got [removed the] most tech elements an iPhone offers – FOR FREE!

5W Public Relations
45 West 45th Street
5th Floor
New York, NY 10036
www.5Wpr.com

I’ve removed the individual identifying information, which was another three lines in the huge footer, as well as three phone numbers, and two more paragraphs of gibberish.

My first problem is that a professional PR firm with clients including Evian, McDonalds, Chamillionaire, Snoop Dogg, and GQ can send an email which is unreadable in English because of its grammatical missteps. It also features terrible punctuation and spelling! Honestly, 5W PR, if you can’t write a press release which is generally error-free, I believe you should just stop writing them. And stop being a PR firm with clients.

The second thing is that their promise is not believable. I simply can’t watch video streaming over my computer at another computer on broadband; there’s not enough bandwidth. How are they going to pull it off on slow, slow GSM networks?

AT&T is getting overwhelmed! They just can’t keep their data network online, according to reports from Howard Forums:

Reports coming in on MacRumors that EDGE is down on iPhones… I can confirm, I haven’t been able to get any EDGE data all morning. I’m in Tucson, AZ. Users from Philadelphia, LA, Sacramento, and Washington have all reported the same thing. iPhone users – can you connect and get data via EDGE? (Simple test is to turn WiFi off, and open the weather widget – does it refresh?).

Another post suggests that there’s been almost half a day of downtime:

I have the cingular 8525, and both the EDGE/3G connectivity was down since morning today(07/02) in the san francisco bay area. I had called tech support and he made me do all sorts of things like take the battery out and put it back blah, before telling me that he had to make sure I haven’t done something to the settings, and that there is a “nationwide edge outage”. anyhoo, it seems to be back up now (about 4:00pm on the west coast).

When people are saying things like “Edge is down in Honolulu Hawaii since 9:45 am Hawaii this morning.” you have to wonder if AT&T is the right partner for Apple. I say not.

The Razr 2 was just announced by Motorola, early enough to perhaps head off the iPhone. It’s quite pretty:

Aside from the weird back panel with a new enhanced dual screen, it looks mostly the same. It’s slightly thinner, and slightly longer than already too long RAZR, and for that reason alone I wouldn’t want to get it:

iPhone, RAZR2, RAZR

Interestingly, they’re making three models for three different networks, V9 (3G HSDPA), V9m (EVDO CDMA) and V8 (GSM). They now have 2″ and 2.2″ screens with twice the resolution of the original RAZR, Linux/Java support, USB 2.0, 2GB of memory, a full HTML browser, and 2 MP camera. Those are hot specs. Hotter than the iPhone’s.