Creative makes MP3 players. They do a good job. I like Creative. Good people over there. A good company.
But I got this email today describing Creative’s plans with the new Zii handheld and I was immediately struck by a question: What the hell is this Plaszma Zii StemCell garbage?
To recap, the Zii is a new Android handheld. It is basically an iPod Touch running Android. Fair enough. We all like iPod Touches. But Creative is selling this is as a computing platform. They’re calling the actually device the Zii EGG and they’re calling the platform a StemCell Computer.
Now people aren’t comfortable with stem cells in general – most of them are made from bits of humans and animals – and a whole group of people are against stem cells for religious reasons. So there’s Creative’s first problem. Naming your new SDK after something that many believe comes from dead babies is probably a bad thing.
Then you have the Plaszma SDK. Interestingly, in Poland “sz” sounds like “shhh” so this would be the Plashhh-ma SDK over in Warsaw, which is funny enough. But plasma? More blood? Really? And dual consonants? I don’t think Americans like to see S and Z together. It’s seems too socialist.
To be fair, Creative sent this advertisement to developers, asking them to embrace and extend the platform. The EGG is just a low-cost demo unit, in fact, and they want developers to drink their Plaszma Kool-Aid and suck down some StemCells in the quest to produce amazing apps.
Everyone and their dog is trying to make an app store and platform. Most will fail. At least Creative is still good at making MP3 players.
Also, to people who are not tech saavy, this sounds like it features a plasma screen.
As far I’m concerned, this is a marketing failure when it comes to the name.
I was also thinking plasma screen display when i saw the name and wondering why would you want a tiny plasma screen?
Side note: I’m all for stem cell research. The human race has killed a great many for a lot worse causes. Sacrificing fertilized human eggs is a small price to pay for huge health care advances
I’m totally down with stem cell research. Great stuff. But to associate the a slurry of genetic matter with a handheld is a little bit much.
Also, what the hell is with the name Zii? Are they trying to capitalize on the Wii’s name or something? I don’t get the logic process for a single word on that advertisement. The hardware looks pretty great, but who thought anything written on there was a good idea.
This comes to mind:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/28/
If you look at the PTO…the name Zii was regged back in 2000. Before Nintendo regged Wii. Just an FYI.
And Plazsma or however it’s spelled is never really meant for the end user to see. It’s an OS for devs to build apps on. So really at the end of the day…consumer confusion will be a non-factor I’m guessing.
I for one am ALL about having some competition in this space.
if this thing can live up to its potential. The bar has been raised significantly on the hardware side.
Plaszma is the name of their native OS: http://snurl.com/o7vl8.
Stem Cells are extremely useful, versatile and have many potential applications for medical treatments. They don’t need to come from aborted fetuses anymore, either: http://www.newsweek.com/id/208450
I love that there are little Davids trying to take on the App Store Goliath. Competition = Choice. Monopoly = facism.
Step 1: Innovate
Step 2: …
Step 3: Profit!
Egg: Not yet hatched.
Stem cell: A cell that can become anything.
Plaszma (plasma): The juice that feeds it all.
I understand what they are trying to do: Provide all the building blocks (hardware and an SDK) and let evolution come up with something amazing. The process doesn’t have to start at conception though, as this device is well formed already. Now we wait and see what develops. ;)
4D
actually in hungarian, the letter ’s’ sounds like “shh”
and ’sz’ (which is considered its own letter in the alphabet) is pronounced like the english “s”.
I agree with 4DThinker.
I feel like they are trying to design computers after what they’ve seen in nature. They’ve built the building blocks, and now are waiting for developers to come and ‘evolve’ the platform.
I watched a bunch of their videos on their website, and their processors indeed act like stem cells, hence the name.
I think the author should have done some more research. This article was a little ignorant.
Creative did not name Stem Cell technology, they are using it. Do some research first before confusing other people.
I like 4DThinker, because he can actually think. The article wasn’t a little ignorant, it is almost the epitome of ignorance. I don’t have to say why, 4dThinker pretty much did it.
This tech looks really promising, if anything it runs on google’s work which is always great for the market. I’m all for the tech though after watching the demo i was stoked to see it come to life. As for the name.. if that bugs you, get a life.
Its not like the iPhone is an incredible amazing name. iMac, iPod, iLife, iCare, blah blah… really original. /sarcasm (and thats coming from someone who actually loves his iphone 3gs)
Who cares about all this marketing jargon? How about answering the quesions Creative Zen and Zen Xi-fi owners have been wondering about every new creative mp3 player? For example, will their fancy new “stem cell processing” manage to actually integrate the data on the SDHC card with the rest of the device memory? Or are we going to just have a really cool feature just go to waste because none of the data on the SDHC can be integrated into playlists, bookmarked, etc.?
Video out sounds great, and no other device can do 1080p, but is that really worth the inflated price of this device? Personally, I’m leaning towards jumping ship to the new Zune this fall.
The Plaszma is capable of 8 GFlops versus 6.5 MFlops for the iPhone 3Gs. That is over 1000 x faster floating point performance.
The Plaszma can output 1080p video. Assuming that the cost of a Plaszma device is priced comparably to an iPhone, I would call this a revolutionary device.