Re: Freedom Box, a personal reaction
- From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 11:48:00 -0700
Hi Sean,
Thanks for your input. Please understand that I figured out what they
thought they were conveying by such a name, trust me. so your explanation
wasn't really necessary, although thanks for bothering. What I'm saying,
though, and I say this as someone who worked in public relations, where word
choices are arrived at much more carefully than this example, is that I had
to think about it for more than a couple of milliseconds before I figured
out what they thought they were conveying by "freedom box." I really think
it was a terrible choice, and I know what I mean by that. I shouldn't have
had to even think about it. They should have hired an ad agency or
something, because this was really amateruish of them. On the other hand, I
never have figure out what the shark in the Spielberg movie has to do with
screen reader technology, but whatever, like they say. Strange world, this
market.
As for the rest, thanks for running it all down so informatively. It's all
very nice, their equipment and programs. I have nothing against any of it. I
was confining myself in my comments to things I'm intimately familiar with
by my experience.
Thanks very much.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean McMahon" <smcmahon@xxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: Freedom Box, a personal reaction
freedom and independence are quite commonplace in adaptive products. The
notion
of freedombox is that working within their box, you obtain freedom. That
notion
isn't verry different from other adaptive technology companies and their
propriotary products. Perhaps the organizers of saveserotech.org should
have
another patition to come up with a new name for the product, that is if
their
aim is to help the noble cause of innovative competition. My vote is to
stay
with system access and just use that name for everything. That is really
what
their product does. You plug it in to any computer without the use of
anything
stupid like authorization or video intersept and you can do a lot to many
systems you don't primarily use. Btw, If youthink of freedom as associating
only with freedomscientific, one could also make a point for the word
scientific
E.G. Boston Scientific, Scientific American, etc. Personally the only
science
experiments going on there have to do with us user-testing products. And
some
use of computer science.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "JFW List" <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 7:05 PM
Subject: Freedom Box, a personal reaction
> In the midst of all this energetic discussion about the FS suit against
> Serotek (I'm still wondering who thought that up), I just want to describe
> what my initial reaction was when I first saw some promotional notice
> about
> Freedom Box. I have a feeling it was a press release from that company,
> forwarded to the NFB GUI-Talk list by someone. A few years ago.
>
> When I opened the message and read it,I had two reactions. One was to
> wonder
> what a "freedom box" could possibly be. Before reading any product
> information, I developed the notion that it was probably just a PC, as a
> lot
> of people like to call their computer "the box," affectionately. But it
> was
> probably a PC that was deliberately configured and pre-loaded with some
> sort
> of adaptive software, most likely made by the company, whose name I didn't
> notice in those messages, or failed to remember. Maybe that isn't what the
> Freedom Box is, but that's what first occurred to me, and the first
> impression something like a brand name makes is very important, if you
> want
> to reach the targeted consumer.
>
> And so I thought, Hmmm. I wonder if their software is some sort of suite
> of
> blind and low vision adaptive technologies that are in competition with
> the
> FS product line. Wonder how good the stuff is?
>
> And then I thought, freedom from what? Freedom from the shackles of
> blindness without the assistive benefits of this product? Fine, if that's
> what they want to claim, but isn't that unattractively negative, to tell
> the
> potential blind customer that he or she is in bondage to low expectations
> about their own capabilities until they get a Freedom Box? That doesn't
> sound very positive.
>
> Then I thought, "why box?" Because "box" called to mind "boxed in,"
> restrained. I never heard of a box, figurative or literal, that enabled or
> enhanced freedom-- but I sure did know about the familiar use of "box" as
> describing confinement, actually. Boxed in. Thrown in the box. Not able to
> think out of the box. So the product name, on its own, left me with too
> many
> questions and not very attracted, already.
>
> And in very quick order, I then thought, what a bad idea to name the thing
> "freedom" anything. In the adaptive tech arena, I immediately associate
> the
> word with FS, before anything else, in fact exclusively. This is how
> advertising works, by the way, for anyone who is thinking that it ought to
> be clear that one is a company and the other is a product. Names are used
> for the associations they immediately invoke, at a level that makes an end
> run around rational thinking. So, you hear "freedom," and if you' aren't
> thinking about fried potatoes and Bush in a bad mood about France, then
> you're thinking of FS.
>
> "Couldn't they have thought of something a little more original?" I
> thought?
> "I don't suppose many people will be confused and think the product is
> affiliated with FS, but then again,maybe they will. Because it's hard not
> to
> make the association with FS.
>
> At that point, I went on to read a paragraph or two about the product, but
> was so brought down by the foregoing thoughts, in other words, so
> unimpressed with the company that had thought that up for a product name,
> that I didn't remember much of what I read, and I never even noticed the
> name of a company called Serotek or whatever. In fact, until today, I had
> remembered this as a company named Freedom Box with a single product,
> which
> I continued to think was something like a custom built PC with a screen
> reader and a screen magnifier program, or something like that, possibly
> pre-registered with a special Internet provider.
>
> Which is all to say, I was scarcely surprised to learn that FS has filed
> this suit and is trying to get them to rename the product. Duhh, I'm
> thinking. Of course. What took FS this long?What were those people
> thinking
> in the first place?
>
> I just say all this in order to stop being so abstract and idealistic
> about
> who should sue whom and is it good for the adaptive tech users community
> and
> so forth? In other words, not strutting an opinion so much as confiding a
> personal reaction.
>
> My take on this is that to start with, that company could have done a
> *whole* lot better naming this product. It was, like really, really
> obvious.
>
> IMHO, yadda yadda.
>
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