Search This Blog

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Moogis Wanee Debacle



Having spent the latter part of yesterday and much of last night facing a feeling of impending doom, if the news that Moogis won't be webcasting this year's Wanee Festival is the worst thing I hear all week I won't exactly be a happy camper but I will be more than a little relieved.
In the big picture, compared to earthquakes, cyclones, floods, nuclear disasters and impending financial meltdowns the failure to deliver a webcast is pretty small beer, but serves as a timely reminder that things aren't as close to done and dusted in the wonderful world of digital downloads as they might be.
Now, I'm the first to admit that my experience of Moogis has, overall, been a positive one. Sure, there were issues at the start of last year's run, and I really should have checked that I had the latest versions of Firefox, Safari and Flash Player before the first show this year, but overall things have, at least from where I'm sitting have run reasonably smoothly.
At the same time there are a couple of substantial elephants in the room when it comes to issues like delivering what you commit to and customer support, and I suspect that the overnight announcement re. Wanee is probably the death knell as far as next year's New York run is concerned.
Irate Stateside customers will probably find my perspective on these things  at least slightly alien, but then again I'm faced with a situation where I'm not going to get much change out of a thousand if there's a concert I want to attend and Madam decides she wants to go too.  
Even as a solo effort, at a minimum of hundred for the ticket, another hundred for a return flight to the south, another hundred at least for overnight accommodation and the same for meals, transfers and incidentals I'm not going to get out of a concert for less than $400, and that's assuming an air fare from Whitsunday Coast to Brisbane is available at $49 one way.
On that basis $233 for thirteen nights of Moogis looked good value.
But it's all about what you're asked to pay, what you're willing to pay, how much of what you pay for actually arrives and whether you're happy with that delivery.
It seems obvious that anybody who wants to start up a business that is going to require customer support is going to have to spend a substantial sum in staffing and training those working in that department and ensure that there are enough people on hand to handle incoming issues.
Try to do that on the cheap with minimal resources and you're literally begging for trouble.
Now, I've had no need to call on Moogis customer support, and I get the impression that I may have been lucky in that regard, but I've had enough issues with similar institutions to know what I'm talking about.
My experience with Australia's largest telco, Telstra, suggests that a call for customer support that's answered by someone with a subcontinental accent almost never leads to the issue being resolved.
Those nice voices that ask you to describe the problem you're experiencing before they pass you on to the appropriate department never seem to get it right, and, in my experience, you find yourself slowly stating that I … need … to … talk … to … a … person.
No, Moogis is, when you look at the big picture, very small beer.  
We're currently having a number of issues down this way that have large numbers of Chicken Littles running around crying that the financial sky is about to fall on our heads.  
Those Antipodean cries of impending doom variously involve the Carbon tax, the National Broadband Network, the cost of water reform (which seems crazy given recent flood events, but is going to need to be tackled some time), the fate of the Australian wine industry and rural communities in the areas that would be affected by those reforms, Australian retail outlets threatened by overseas on-line merchants and so on.
And on, and on.
But the key issue is that all these things, from Moogis up, cost money, and if they're going to survive in the short term and prosper in the longer term they're going to need to persuade people to shell out the relevant quantity of readies.
To me, the most significant thing about Moogis was the chance to catch a glimpse of what's possible a bit further down the path in the digital domain.
Now, there's absolutely no doubt that there are a large number of people with a substantial investment in traditional media and retail outlets who really should be wearing their brown trousers as things shake out along the line.
It's obvious that as things shake out there are big changes on the way, and that people are getting accustomed to getting a swag of stuff for not much money in an environment that's not going to be sustainable in the long term.
The problem is, however, that eventually there are bottom lines that have to be met, and doing that is going to mean a lot of people will be asked to shell out a lot more than they have been.
In the meantime, of course, there's the very real danger that a mixture of arrogance, incompetence, consumer reluctance and technical issues will see the baby going out with the bathwater.
Odds on Moogis in 2012, anyone?

Monday, April 4, 2011

New Postings to April 5, 2011


Fermoy Estate 2009 Yallingup Vineyards Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc
Hay Shed Hill 2008 White Label Tempranillo
Pfeiffer 1999 Reserve Marsanne
Pikes 2009 The Assemblage Shiraz Mourvedre Grenache
Pikes 2009 Gills Farm Mourvedre
Whiskey Gully 2005 Upper House Cabernet Sauvignon

and while the most recent musical treats that've attracted my attention have been almost exclusively Allman Brothers concerts from the 2011 run at New York's Beacon Theatre, though I also commented on the passing of former Grateful Dead sound man Owsley 'Bear' Stanley

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Allman Advisory 1


On the off chance that anyone's interested, I've posted the first part of my preview of the Moogis webcast of this year's Allman Brothers run at New York's Beacon Theatre here.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

New Posts February 21 - March 7, 2011


Garry Disher

Dominic Knight "Comrades"


Baileys of Glenrowan 2009 Rutherglen Petot Sirah

Fermoy Estate 2009 Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc

Fermoy Estate 2009 Yallingup Vineyards Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

Lenton Brae 2009 Cabernet Merlot

Lenton Brae 2010 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

Lenton Brae 2009 Southside Chardonnay

Tahbilk Everyday Drinking 'Limited Release' 2009 Zinfandel

and while the most recent musical treats that've attracted my attention haven't generated a review yet, Friday should see the first Moogis webcast from this year's Allman Brothers Band Beacon Theatre run.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

New Posts February 14-20, 2011

Rather than posting everything here, now that I've split the various strands off onto separate themed blogs, I'm thinking in terms of using this as a sort of index, with links to the new content rather than publishing everything here, and duplicating the content on the other sites. Comments on how this works welcome, but I'm not holding my breath...

So, to see if it'll work out that way...

New on the Little House of Concrete Bookshelves:

Graham Hurley "Deadlight"

Magdalen Nabb "The Inspector Makes His Report"

Fred Vargas "Seeking Whom He May Devour"


New samplings from The Little House of Concrete Wine Rack:

Baileys of Glenrowan Founder Liqueur Muscat

Baileys of Glenrowan 2008 1920s Block Shiraz

Baileys of Glenrowan 2009 Rutherglen Durif

Tahbilk 2010 Everyday Drinking Riesling

and the most recent musical treats that've attracted my attention:

Gregg Allman "Low Country Blues"

Various Artists "The Amazing ZigZag Concert"

Monday, February 14, 2011

A slight readjustment

First there was the actual Little House of Concrete, a masonry block structure that derived its name from a suggestion from The Woodman on the Elvis Costello Mailing List circa 1997, along with subtitle A Very Fashionable Hovel.

EC afficianados would, of course, recognize the Little Hands of Concrete as a self-derived descriptor of EC's guitar technique, and the quote from Beyond Belief in the subtitle.

When Australia was being filmed in downtown Bowen in 2007 i wanted to write a blog about the shooting and related matters, and figured that the LHoC was a suitable blog title. That Telstra BigBlog went the way such things go when I changed ISPs, but the text and photos ended up here.

By that stage I'd already signed up for .Mac to give email continuity in the event of a change in ISPs, and a copy of iWeb had me thinking about a website, and the LHoC concept again came to the rescue when I was looking for some sort of structure for the thing.

That Little House of Concrete is still there, but, like Topsy, it just growed to the extent that I had to spin off a number of sub-sites dedicated to, among other things, Books and Reading, Music, Travelogues and Wine.

Another spin-off from that website is the bi-monthly Little House of Concrete newsletter, which, with a distribution list of fifteen of my friends and acquaintances, mightn't have set the digital publishing world on fire but virtual arson was never the point of the exercise.

Investigating the blogosphere, I thouight that the easiest way to keep track of wine blogs, for example, was to have a blog yourself and read the ones you're interested in from the Blogger dashboard, which explains the decision to start this one, but again it hasn't taken long to discover t the original notion needed refining.

The result is the following redistribution of content from this particular blog to:

The Little House of Concrete Bookshelves

The Little House of Concrete Music

and The Little House of Concrete Wine Rack.

The original Little House of Concrete's going to be sitting right where it is for the forseeable future, though I've relocated some of the older posts to the relevant newer versions.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Pfeiffer 2008 Chardonnay

A visit to the cellar door at Pfeiffer Wines at the end of 2006 left us extremely impressed, and apart from signing up for the C2 Wine Club (two shipments a year, a dozen at a time) there have been regular reorders of the Gamay and Ensemble Rose. Apart from the fortifieds, which are very much in the mould you'd expect a regional trademark to be, the rest of the range is generally more than acceptable and the C2 parcels usually throw up a few other order possibilities. 


Pfeiffer 2008 Chardonnay (4* $17) Pale straw in the glass, some varietal character on the nose and across the palate, and a touch of oak as well. Workman-like style that's pleasant enough drinking but wouldn't have prompted a reorder, and, in any case, the winery's sold out of this vintage. Maybe there are others out there who liked this more than I did.