I got a cryptic e-mail message recently, that barely made a ripple among the daily spam flood:
How come you pop up on my computre without invitation. Get lost you MF
As you can see there is not much we need to do to educate written communications skills these days… So being curious about the accusation I replied:
I have no idea what you are talking about nor have I in any way broached your computer. It is more respectful to be more clear and specific before making allegations.
To which comes the pseudo explanation:
Let us know if you are part of Macromedia. If you are not we apologize.
Our complaint is that we keep getting a pop up message from macromedia inc.
asking us to download their flash player. In attempting to reach them with
our complaint “and to have them cease and desist”, we linked to your
address. We don’t think its ethical for someone to push their wares and
invade our domain.
Ahhh, this is one person among the 1.8% of the internet yet to be “penetrated” (their word) by Flash. Poor soul, and this person is rather angry. But can Macromedia be so hard to find? It takes but a google, and here is the explanation why I got poked- 3rd on the results list of a google on Macromedia comes our well aged Director Web site, a place we set up in 1994 as a resource site for uses of Macromedia Director (amazing that it still gets action, since there are some crusty old tips and resources there, but other parts are refreshed on an automated basis). Way way down at the bottom in a tiny unreadable grey small type, it states:
This is NOT an officially sanctioned entity from Macromedia caveat emptor… mileage may vary, void where prohibited, batteries not included, contents may have settled during shipping, not valid in conjunction with other offers, miscellaneous CYA legal gobbledygook, etc.
Whew!
So Macromedia, look out and stop pushing your wares and invading domains! I bet the legal department at 600 Townsend St is quivering.
I reinstall browsers and mess around with my system enough that I fairly often end up using a browser without Flash, etc., installed.
I am sympathetic with the letter-writer (if not his expression). Hitting a site with Flash (or any other MM product) is really annoying if you don’t have the plug-in installed. You get pop-ups, your browser minimizes when you hit cancel, you can’t turn any of this stuff off…
I found myself installing the Flash plug-in just to get rid of the error messages (which, in the early days of Firefox, was a long job – today you just click a button – phew). So the marketing is effective – but I still have a sour taste over it.