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And Now We Have a Post About Silly Names

  I promise something more substantive in a different post ( <-- that's just a writing flourish. No actual promise is intended or implied), but I wanted to pass this along. I get press releases every day about companies introducing new products, changing management, or using technology. Many of them are incomprehensible - it's as if PR people speak a different language. Here's the headline from one that crossed my inbox this morning:

Leading Architectural Audio and Video Supplier Builds on FST GUI Technology 
for New Streaming Media Product Line

 

Who? What? After reading the press release a couple of times I think I understand what's going on: SpeakerCraft is branching out from crafting speakers and is building a streaming media system (just the sort of thing I focus on in my Digital Home research service), presumably to get audio to their in-wall speakers. OK. But to do so, they needed a way to quickly create a user interface for their gadget, and they turned to FST.

Here's where things get silly. It seems that the folks at FST are either: 12 year old boys, refugees from movie production companies, or high. FST stands for Fluffy Spider Technologies. FST's flagship product is the FancyPants platform and its Ruthlessly Efficient runtime environment. What the hell?

That is all.

NHT Leaves, Returns; Miss Them Much?

NHT (aka Now Hear This) has been a respected mid-tier speaker manufacturer based in the U.S. since 1986, but as the recession hit earlier this year, they chose to shut down product development and manufacturing, take some time off, and approach the market fresh. They weren't bankrupt - at least not yet - they just saw their distribution channel erode as independent dealers and custom installers went out of business, and their price points crept up to the point where they were out of line with economic realities. Some of this was driven by rising commodity prices, some by a disconnect with changing consumer priorities.

Somehow I missed this story. Anyway, after just a few months off, they're back.

They've shrunk their product line nearly in half, and are selling and distributing online-only. If this sounds similar to the Outlaw model, it is, only NHT isn't just selling direct, you can buy from amazon, Audio Advisor, OneCall, and a few others. This eliminates dealer reps, salespeople, and lots of shipping, so prices are down 20% as well. They're killing all print ads because the goal of print ads was to drive prospects to the dealers, though they will do online advertising because they need to drive sales somehow.