Worst of the Week: Battle of the acronyms!

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
I was planning on using this week’s WOTW column to poke fun at certain aspects of the upcoming CTIA event in Las Vegas. But, as I was swishing around those ideas in my head I came to realize there is actually not that much to poke fun at.
Sure, the weeks leading up to CTIA, or any trade show for that matter, have their funny moments like receiving requests to meet with companies with funny sounding names or odd products or services. Or even more funny/irritating are those requests that come literally days before the event is set to begin. I am all for “winging it” in life, but asking to meet during prime meeting hours at the largest wireless trade show in North America the day before it begins is pushing the bounds.
So, instead of taking the time to point out the “worst” of attending CTIA, I think I will go with pointing out the “best” aspects of CTIA. (I hope this rainbows and unicorns view does not throw too many people off.)
Unlike other trade shows that have already taken place this year, CTIA is of a manageable size and from my dumb-American view takes place in a city that for the most part embraces the English language. These are both direct jabs at the Consumer Electronics Show and the Mobile World Congress event.
When compared with CES, the CTIA event prevails in that there is little need to avoid being sucked into mega-booths housing LCD televisions 100-inches tall and 1-millimeter thick providing a picture so awesome that it makes me depressed I can’t live inside those pixels. Instead, CTIA is an event focused on one technology segment, wireless, and thus does not involve all the side-tracking nonsense of those other technology segments.
CTIA, when it’s held in Las Vegas, also allows one (me) to enjoy the beauty that is Las Vegas. I don’t mean beauty in the traditional sense of the word, but in the confines that Las Vegas can be seen as beautiful. Not having to wait in hour-long taxi lines; being able to enjoy the monorail without feeling like a sardine; finding room at a cheap craps table to blow my meager funds. You know, the beauty of Las Vegas.
CTIA’s advantages over MWC are slightly different, but in some cases more important. First, I don’t have to spend 2-days traveling to get there. I know this is something that can’t be agreed upon by those based in other parts of the world, but this is my column, so it’s me-biased.
Also, while Barcelona is in of itself an awesome city, visiting the place in mid-February, which I believe is still considered winter in that part of the world, does not do Barcelona or the MWC show justice. CTIA in comparison is held a month and a half later, pushing its start date to just inside the official cut off for spring, and is typically held in a locale that meteorologically seems made to handle a conference at that time of the year.
MWC does seem to take a crow bar to the knees of the CTIA event when it comes to real news and announcements as most of the big players in the space seem to center their big events on the MWC show leaving smaller or more focused announcements for CTIA.
But, CTIA can at least claim that its smaller size makes it easier for attendees to meet with the people that matter and get their message to travel farther.
And did I mention the easier time in finding a craps table?
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Good to see HTC not back down from Apple’s latest attempt at flexing its lawyer-flexing capabilities, though I was hoping for something with more teeth in it. The device manufacturer this week released a response to Apple’s filing of a lawsuit claiming HTC infringed on some of its patents. That response was meekly titled: “HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions.”
In the release, HTC cites its history of making smartphones beginning with its XDA that it started designing 1999 and was unveiled by O2 in 2002.
Unfortunately, HTC does not really respond to any points brought up my Apple’s lawsuit, and that is probably a good thing as I doubt I would understand the IPR volleys, but they could have at least spiced up the headline of the release with something inflammatory like: “HTC thinks Apple is a whiny-little girl, plans to make them cry in court.”
–Speaking of HTC, its new HD2 device set to launch at T-Mobile USA next week will include an application from Blockbuster (remember them?) that will allow customers to download movies directly to the handset using a Wi-Fi connection. This should prove a compelling application as long as Blockbuster can stay afloat through an expected bankruptcy filing. Now that’s timing you just can’t plan.
–I have received a number of comments over the past two weeks regarding recent WOTW columns where I have rambled on about difficulties in transferring contact information between devices, activating a new device using the Internet and how poor current mobile Web browsers perform. Let me say that I greatly appreciate the comments on these matters and want to encourage people to continue sending in any comment or question regarding these columns, but the fact that these comments looking to help in the matter are not widely-known outside of the tech./wireless community just proves the disconnect between those on the inside and the consumers on the outside. It’s great that I now know of ways to relieve some of the frustration I expressed, but I think it might be better to install that knowledge into places where the average consumer can find it. Sure, we in the media have our place in getting the word out, but others have to take up the cause as well.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmediaco.com.