Slashdot Mirror
X10 Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection
telstar writes "As a followup to the recent Slashdot story about X10 losing a $4.3 million patent infringement suit over pop-unders, X10, the wireless camera company that 'only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser', have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This allows them to continue to operate, but they'll be shielded from creditors while they reorganize their finances - so rest easy, X10 popups are here to stay."
I disagree, I have been using Firebird for months and I feel fine!
(paid for by friends of Mozilla)
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
that are rapidly becoming illegal or at the least highly regulated on the interent. Why is it legal to pop up unwanted windows under OR over the browser without the Expressed Written Concent of the END USER.
I suppose they would argue that by viewing the site said concent is implied, however its hard to know what you are signing up for when you click a link and WHAM you get attacked by unwanted windows containing advertisments, often times, inappropriate material to say the least. would be nice to see a question on the home page of these popup serving pages like: "Would you like to see our ads?"
Unrealistic, yes. but so are some of the laws being proposed that TAKE away from the user experience, and they seem to be passing through as laws easy enough.
Just Say no to pop-ups/pop-unders
Are you sure you never miss content? I use internet explorer and an add filter (the popup Ad Filter), sometime when I click on something and it dosn't work (eg. the CNN poles) I realize my popup filter is catching it and I hold down CTRL to disable. Is there a 1 button disable in Mozilla or is there someway around it? Or do you just argue that any site with popups dosn't deserve your time.
Seriously, X10 had a decent concept - build budget networks, budget devices, and sell to people who really don't need much more than that.
Their biggest problem was their promotion. By sexing their ads up, they really didn't do much for themselves. By then having said ads as extra windows - hey, that got irritating, really really fast.
This demonstrates how NOT to sell a product. You want to sell something, you make it attractive to the consumer, not so repulsive that they want to spit boiling acid at the computer screen. (Unless you're a merchant of either boiling acid, or computer screens.)
X10 have only themselves to blame for this. Very few companies, once in Ch11 ever really get out. For most, it's just a delayed death of the company. Usually because they don't actually change anything. Sure, they dump workforce, but that just makes the company top-heavy. It's not the workforce that's the problem, it's the income. There ain't any. The solution is to change what you're doing, to make some. Duh.
Sadly, this often doesn't happen, and I doubt it will in the case of X10. Anyone that persists in ads that don't work, but just infuriate, has demonstrated an inability to change a failing strategy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)