Acronyms: Confusing the Customer

The topic of confusing acronyms came up in a meeting yesterday, and got me thinking about the CE industry and the product sale. It's obvious that a salesperson should "dumb things down" in order to make sure the customer doesn't stare at him like a deer in headlights. But how many CE-related acronyms do we unknowingly take for granted that the average customer understands?

"HD" is the most common. You'd think by now that everyone under the sun knows what "HD" stands for, but the truth is that some don't. Then there's "PVR" or "DVR". The other day, a friend of mine asked me what "SLR" stood for because she had no idea.

Keep in mind that the actual words might not be important to know as long as the customer understands what you're describing. For example, as long as he knows that an LCD is a flat-screen TV, or a DVD is a circular disc that plays movies, then the actual term isn't 100% necessary. Two other examples: JPEG and MP3. No one really needs to know what they stand for as long as they understand what the terms are in reference to. But then there are others. "Who's your ISP?" a retailer might ask a stunned mother of three. "Huh?"

There's a simple way to avoid this: just use the words! Acronyms are meant to shorten sentences and simplify language for people who understand them. If the person doesn't, acronyms only make things more difficult. And that's the key. It could be a really simple word, but using the acronym might mistakenly intimidate someone, and make him think it means more than it is. So rather than say JPEG, just say "a type of digital image called JPEG", or even simply "photo". (The exact terminology will, of course, depend on the context).

It's important to note that you should always know your audience. If you're sitting among a group of CE industry members, well, you're pretty safe to follow the anything goes policy. But at a family dinner, you might want to go light on the alphabet soup.

With that said, for anyone who is interested in the meaning behind the acronyms noted above, here they are (along with a few others you might commonly hear or read about thrown in for good measure):

HD: High Definition. Basically, this refers to the resolution of a TV.

PVR: Personal Video Recorder. This is a device that has a built-in hard drive on which you can record TV programming.

DVR: Digital Video Recorder. Same as above, although the term DVR might be better suited toward a device that is separate from your cable or satellite TV box. For example, TiVo is a great example of a DVR. A set-top box from Bell TV that has recording functionality built right into it is probably better referred to as a PVR. The terms really are interchangeble in my books, though.

SLR: Single Lens Reflex. These are those big (although increasingly getting smaller) digital cameras that have interchangeable lens.

LCD: Liquid Crystal Display. This is a type of display, and refers to the process in which it's made and operates. While LCD can be used to describe anything from your cell phone's screen to that of a calculator, it's most commonly used in this industry to describe flat-panel TVs.

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group. This just refers to the type of compression used in digital images that bear this extension (e.g. blog.jpg). It's the most common photo file type out there.

MP3: Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3 Audio. Similar to JPEG, this is a type of compression for audio files. As with JPEG, it's arguably the most popular file type.

ISP: Internet Service Provider. This refers to the company that provides your Internet service. For example, Rogers, Videotron, or Bell.

VoIP: Voice Over Internet Protocol. This is a type of communication that lets you make voice calls using the Internet rather than a landline phone connection.

USB: Universal Serial Bus. This is a universal method of connecting a variety of portable devices. If you own a laptop, you'll probably see a couple of USB ports (small and slighty square-shaped) where you can plug in everything from a digital camera to an MP3 player. In the mobile phone industry, mini USB (a smaller version) is quickly becoming a standard as well.

GUI: Graphical User Interface. This one, usually actually spoken as "goo-ee", is the graphical menu that pops up on a device, whether it be a PC, touch-pad control, or TV. The term is most typically used, however, to describe the guide that appears on your TV when you're searching for programs via cable or satellite TV.

Feel free to add your own in the comments section below!

Bell Won't Back Down, Says Traffic Shaping a Must

A few weeks ago, the issue arose of Bell Canada engaging in Internet traffic "shaping" practices. Bell admits to purposely slowing down the Internet connection for heavy users of P2P and similar sites that are doing things like downloading full-length movies, and thus gobbling up a lot of bandwidth. Since then, there has been a flurry of commentary about the topic. Should Bell be able to shape or "throttle" its traffic? Should the use of P2P and torrent sites be considered "abuse" of Bell's unlimited plans?

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), which represents many small ISPs that use Bell's network to offer their services, sent a request to the CRTC for Bell to stop its shaping activities. The CAIP claims that Bell is "in breach of a number of regulated activites", and called the behaviour "anti-competitive interference in the activities of Internet users." Bell's response was a big fat "no". The telecommunications company feels that slowing down P2P and BitTorrent use is necessary in order to improve overall bandwidth performance for all users. Interestingly, when speaking to CBCNews.ca, Primus President Ted Chislett, who agrees with the CAIP, said that he doubts Bell has any congestion issues related to bandwidth at all.

Assuming issues of traffic congestion do exist as a result of heavy bandwidth usage, does Bell have the right to slow things down? After all, these customers pay the same monthly fees that everyone else does; they're just using the services more. The situation can be likened to an unlimited cell phone data plan: some users might send hundreds of e-mails per month, and chat on the phone for hundreds and hundreds of hours, while others might send a couple of e-mails here and there, and chat less frequently. They're both paying the same monthly fee, but what they get out of their packaged plan is up to them.

In fairness, trying to curb illegal activity is a good thing: if someone is using up gross amounts of bandwidth to acquire loads and loads of illegal content, then really, who are they to complain about slow speeds? But it looks as though P2P and BitTorrent sites can, and are, also used for legitimate activities. Take CBC's recent experimental move, for example, to offer the TV show Canada's Next Great Prime Minister as a free download through BitTorrent. The CAIP reports that it took "thousands of fans" on Bell's network upwards of 11 hours to download the program versus the minutes it should have taken. If more and more legitimate content like this CBC show becomes available via BitTorrent and P2P sites, will Bell stop its traffic shaping activity?

Either way, this issue has initiated a well-needed discussion about regulation and control of the Internet, and opened people's eyes to the rapidly growing nature of the Web world as a whole. We have so much bandwidth, and people will only continue to want to use more of it, not less. Should those who are making frequent use of faster speeds, and thus justifying continued progress in this area, be punished for doing so? Or, on the contrary, are heavy bandwidth users just abusing the capabilities of the service, and ruining the experience for everyone else?

Should ISPs Be Able to Slow Down Heavy 'Net Users?

Recently, it has been brought to the media's attention that several ISPs have been using back-end techniques in an effort to slow down heavy-bandwidth activites that people might perform on the Internet. This includes, most importantly, downloading and transmitting large files, like movies. Is it right of the ISPs to do this?

Let's play devil's advocate. If there are 100 people in one area and 10 are downloading massive files, that's going to slow things down for the other 90 people that are just doing regular Web surfing or messaging. Why should they have to pay the price for high-bandwidth activities that tech-savvy individuals want to take part in?

However, isn't the whole point of offering faster speeds and more robust services to accomodate the needs of these "heavy" users? Sure, everyone wants the average Web page to load as quickly as possible. But think about how far we've come: we have the kinds of speeds available these days that can accomodate much more than just a Web page loading in half a second! We can download entire feature-length films. Stream all kinds of music and video. Even upload massive files. Shouldn't we be utilizing these speeds to the best of their ability and not punishing those who are benefiting the most from them?

This issue garnered a lot of attention when Chatham, ON-based Internet provider Teksavvy Solutions Inc., which gets its network access from Bell, recently started receiving complaints from its users. The company realized that Bell was purposely limiting the amount of bandwidth that heavy users could take up during peak hours of service.

ISPs definitely have the right to limit bandwidth usage to ensure the best possible experience for all customers: it's their service. But on the same token, why bother offering things like unlimited bandwidth and blazing fast speeds if, in actuality, these conditions can't be completely honoured?

It's very possible that, in letting things be, the "regular" 'net users might not even notice slower load times. But maybe they would. You can't please everyone all the time so, as bad as it sounds, it might just come down to who the better customer is: either way, one group is going to be upset.