Anina told to stop blogging (I’m not using wifi)

I’m writing to you from Southwest Terminal 10 at Oakland Airport. But I am not using wifi. I got a Cingular wireless 3G card. Works great. Costs $80 a month. But I just paid $30 of hotel wifi fees. Got so fed up we all went to the Cingular store today to get this.

Anyway, I just saw that Anina, the geek model, has been told to stop blogging. That sucks. But leaves a bunch of future opportunities. She’s smart and that’ll take her a lot further than her looks.

I keep coming back to the iPod. Why is it such a cultural phenomenon? Hint: it isn’t the features. At least not alone. It’s the combination of the technology with fashion and culture.

Match Anina up with an inventor and you’ll have an interesting marketing combo. Her work with Nokia was an interesting example of this.

This week I am going to Switzerland for the LIFT conference. I hear Anina will be there. Hope to talk with her more about this then.

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47 thoughts on “Anina told to stop blogging (I’m not using wifi)

  1. Which card did you get? Hopefully the Aircard 860 or Novatel U730 that support HSDPA. Most Cingular stores don’t understand the difference between these new cards and the old cards that only support EDGE. It’s awesome using these cards- no need to bother with Wifi anymore (as long as you’re in a city that has HSDPA deployed).

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  2. Which card did you get? Hopefully the Aircard 860 or Novatel U730 that support HSDPA. Most Cingular stores don’t understand the difference between these new cards and the old cards that only support EDGE. It’s awesome using these cards- no need to bother with Wifi anymore (as long as you’re in a city that has HSDPA deployed).

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  3. Steve – are there any cities with HSDPA deployed? I didn’t think they’d started yet.

    Robert – Why did you go with Cingular? You could have had a Sprint card that’s cheaper and faster with better coverage.

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  4. Steve – are there any cities with HSDPA deployed? I didn’t think they’d started yet.

    Robert – Why did you go with Cingular? You could have had a Sprint card that’s cheaper and faster with better coverage.

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  5. Brandon: cause my sell phone is with Cingular and I don’t need another bill to worry about. Is it really much faster? I can’t see all that much difference between this and wifi, damn this is transformative.

    I have 30 days to return it if I want.

    It’s a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860.

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  6. Brandon: cause my sell phone is with Cingular and I don’t need another bill to worry about. Is it really much faster? I can’t see all that much difference between this and wifi, damn this is transformative.

    I have 30 days to return it if I want.

    It’s a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860.

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  7. Where does it say that Anina was told to stop blogging? The way I read her blogs, it seems that her agency said that she must “quit doing the technology stuff”.

    It wouldn’t make any sense at all to say “blogging and fashion” don’t go together, because there are plenty of fashion blogs. On Technorati, for example, you will see that on average each day, there are about twice as many blogs that are tagged “Fashion”, as there are that are tagged “Visual Basic”.

    Having said that, I’m not clear what Anina’s modelling agency has against tech. And, as a point of fact, they’re just plain wrong to say that “fashion and tech don’t go together”. Surely they must realise that customers for haute couture fashion and off-the-shelf high-end designer clothes are, largely, rich women. And rich women have to get their money somewhere. Either they make the money themselves; or they have rich husbands/boyfriends.

    And where do a significant percentage of rich people get their money from? Errrr…. Tech. The technology industry has been responsible for creating many of the world’s millionaires. Bottom line: many of the paying customers of companies in the fashion industry come from tech homes. So… the *only* good reason I can think of to ask Anina to stop doing her tech stuff, would be if she is turning down work that agency can get for her, because of tech committments.

    I think Anina should at least explore seeing if other agencies would let her do both her tech stuff and her modelling. I don’t trust what her current agency says on this – given that the people there are apparently so retarded that they don’t even know who pays their bills.

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  8. Where does it say that Anina was told to stop blogging? The way I read her blogs, it seems that her agency said that she must “quit doing the technology stuff”.

    It wouldn’t make any sense at all to say “blogging and fashion” don’t go together, because there are plenty of fashion blogs. On Technorati, for example, you will see that on average each day, there are about twice as many blogs that are tagged “Fashion”, as there are that are tagged “Visual Basic”.

    Having said that, I’m not clear what Anina’s modelling agency has against tech. And, as a point of fact, they’re just plain wrong to say that “fashion and tech don’t go together”. Surely they must realise that customers for haute couture fashion and off-the-shelf high-end designer clothes are, largely, rich women. And rich women have to get their money somewhere. Either they make the money themselves; or they have rich husbands/boyfriends.

    And where do a significant percentage of rich people get their money from? Errrr…. Tech. The technology industry has been responsible for creating many of the world’s millionaires. Bottom line: many of the paying customers of companies in the fashion industry come from tech homes. So… the *only* good reason I can think of to ask Anina to stop doing her tech stuff, would be if she is turning down work that agency can get for her, because of tech committments.

    I think Anina should at least explore seeing if other agencies would let her do both her tech stuff and her modelling. I don’t trust what her current agency says on this – given that the people there are apparently so retarded that they don’t even know who pays their bills.

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  9. The fashion industry wants models to be hangars for the clothes. They’re there to sell product, not overshadow it. The less they do outside of modeling, the better.

    The iPod’s success is also due to its simplicity of use, and the way Apple made it easy for people to build accessories and integration kits for it. What can you do with all the rest? Plug it into a 1/8″ jack at best, and now you have to control it separately from your radio. Ooooh, exciting. The iPod? Get the kit, and you control it VIA your stereo. That’s what makes all the car companies so excited about it.

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  10. The fashion industry wants models to be hangars for the clothes. They’re there to sell product, not overshadow it. The less they do outside of modeling, the better.

    The iPod’s success is also due to its simplicity of use, and the way Apple made it easy for people to build accessories and integration kits for it. What can you do with all the rest? Plug it into a 1/8″ jack at best, and now you have to control it separately from your radio. Ooooh, exciting. The iPod? Get the kit, and you control it VIA your stereo. That’s what makes all the car companies so excited about it.

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  11. Simon: I’ll talk with Anina this week when I’m in Europe. She told me last month some stuff about how the agencies work. I think this is a middleman getting nervous about his/her role in the world and how it’s being disintermediated.

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  12. Simon: I’ll talk with Anina this week when I’m in Europe. She told me last month some stuff about how the agencies work. I think this is a middleman getting nervous about his/her role in the world and how it’s being disintermediated.

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  13. Robert:I suspect you’re right. Apparently, one of things that happened in the early 1990s, when a clutch of “supermodels” (Naomi, Linda, Cindy, Christie et al.) became really well-known in their own right, was that many in the modelling industry vowed never to let invididual models become powerful again.

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  14. Robert:I suspect you’re right. Apparently, one of things that happened in the early 1990s, when a clutch of “supermodels” (Naomi, Linda, Cindy, Christie et al.) became really well-known in their own right, was that many in the modelling industry vowed never to let invididual models become powerful again.

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  15. Robert,

    Well apparently Cingular has rolled out HSDPA in a few cities already, which is roughly the same speed the the EV-DO connection Sprint has been offering for a while now.

    So right now it breaks down like this:

    Cingular

    ~500kbps in test markets (about 8 US cities, includes Seattle)
    ~120kbps in EDGE markets.
    ~35kbps everywhere else.

    Spint

    ~500kbps in EV-DO markets (100+ cities, includes Seattle)
    ~120kbps everywhere else.

    So as long as your card supports HSDPA it isn’t that bad after all. And apparently Sprint charges the same thing to non-voice customers.

    Still, it seems pretty crazy to pay that much for a card when you could have an entire phone with the same connection (shared via USB or bluetooth) *with* a voice plan for less than half of that cost.

    Like

  16. Robert,

    Well apparently Cingular has rolled out HSDPA in a few cities already, which is roughly the same speed the the EV-DO connection Sprint has been offering for a while now.

    So right now it breaks down like this:

    Cingular

    ~500kbps in test markets (about 8 US cities, includes Seattle)
    ~120kbps in EDGE markets.
    ~35kbps everywhere else.

    Spint

    ~500kbps in EV-DO markets (100+ cities, includes Seattle)
    ~120kbps everywhere else.

    So as long as your card supports HSDPA it isn’t that bad after all. And apparently Sprint charges the same thing to non-voice customers.

    Still, it seems pretty crazy to pay that much for a card when you could have an entire phone with the same connection (shared via USB or bluetooth) *with* a voice plan for less than half of that cost.

    Like

  17. The Anina case to me seems about continuing the old strereotypes of women as arm candy. The agency does not seem to realize it is 2006.

    All we can do is offer her as much support as possible with dealing with the oldskool types.

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  18. The Anina case to me seems about continuing the old strereotypes of women as arm candy. The agency does not seem to realize it is 2006.

    All we can do is offer her as much support as possible with dealing with the oldskool types.

    Like

  19. “I keep coming back to the iPod.”

    Actually, you seem to be avoiding it quite doggedly for months now. And related issues. (Yeah, yeah, you’ll mention Patrick loves it, but you’ve avoided: rumors of MS iPod, the death of WMP for Mac, Google Video, Apple’s results and clear dominance, Napster layoffs, expansion of video selection, as well as the general topics of media and music and portable devices that cropped up every other day for over a year straight.)

    “It’s the combination of the technology with fashion and culture.”

    You still don’t get it.

    “Match Anina up with an inventor and you’ll have an interesting marketing combo.”

    Ha, ha, ha!!! Freakin’ hilarious! This brilliant marketing plan is almost as good as the Elton John(athon Ives) Plan. Sex up a geek with a model: that’ll sell stuff! Whatever, Scoble.

    Like

  20. “I keep coming back to the iPod.”

    Actually, you seem to be avoiding it quite doggedly for months now. And related issues. (Yeah, yeah, you’ll mention Patrick loves it, but you’ve avoided: rumors of MS iPod, the death of WMP for Mac, Google Video, Apple’s results and clear dominance, Napster layoffs, expansion of video selection, as well as the general topics of media and music and portable devices that cropped up every other day for over a year straight.)

    “It’s the combination of the technology with fashion and culture.”

    You still don’t get it.

    “Match Anina up with an inventor and you’ll have an interesting marketing combo.”

    Ha, ha, ha!!! Freakin’ hilarious! This brilliant marketing plan is almost as good as the Elton John(athon Ives) Plan. Sex up a geek with a model: that’ll sell stuff! Whatever, Scoble.

    Like

  21. Wow, they want her to focus on what they’re paying her to do control the image of the products that she’s representing. What an unreasonable demand.

    She wasn’t hired as a blogger model or an internet socialite. The fact that she didn’t work with her agency up front on how and when to incorporate technology into her work (and their image) was clearly a poor decision. There are a thousand other women with equal or greater physical beauty that would be happy to just do their job.

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  22. Wow, they want her to focus on what they’re paying her to do control the image of the products that she’s representing. What an unreasonable demand.

    She wasn’t hired as a blogger model or an internet socialite. The fact that she didn’t work with her agency up front on how and when to incorporate technology into her work (and their image) was clearly a poor decision. There are a thousand other women with equal or greater physical beauty that would be happy to just do their job.

    Like

  23. I don’t know, the decision is clear to me. If my employer tells me what I can do and it has little to do with my employer’s operation, then I tell him where to go and find another job.

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  24. I don’t know, the decision is clear to me. If my employer tells me what I can do and it has little to do with my employer’s operation, then I tell him where to go and find another job.

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  25. Brandon- HSDPA is available in a few cities now, with virtually all of Cingular’s towers scheduled to be upgraded by the end of 2007. In Phoenix I get 1.5mb/s real-world on average, but more importantly, very low latency. It’s faster than my DSL at home.

    All in all, it’s great to have Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon in heated competition for cellular data because it’s making deployment of new technologies go faster and faster. The projection for 3G is be at 100mb/s down and 50mb/s up by 2012. The future is very bright, indeed.

    Like

  26. Brandon- HSDPA is available in a few cities now, with virtually all of Cingular’s towers scheduled to be upgraded by the end of 2007. In Phoenix I get 1.5mb/s real-world on average, but more importantly, very low latency. It’s faster than my DSL at home.

    All in all, it’s great to have Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon in heated competition for cellular data because it’s making deployment of new technologies go faster and faster. The projection for 3G is be at 100mb/s down and 50mb/s up by 2012. The future is very bright, indeed.

    Like

  27. I don’t see anything unreasonable with asking her to stop fiddling with blogs and tech stuff when she’s supposed to be focusing on demoing and selling the products she’s hired to represent. There is no such thing as free speech or free conduct clauses in the workplace. Blog when supposed to be working, well…you figure it out. It’s not a big attack on blogging itself, geeesh, get over yourselves.

    Someone toss her a copy of Cynthia Shapiro’s ‘Corporate Confidential’ (gawd I totally love that book, Book of Year, imho). http://corporateconfidential.org/index.php4

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  28. I don’t see anything unreasonable with asking her to stop fiddling with blogs and tech stuff when she’s supposed to be focusing on demoing and selling the products she’s hired to represent. There is no such thing as free speech or free conduct clauses in the workplace. Blog when supposed to be working, well…you figure it out. It’s not a big attack on blogging itself, geeesh, get over yourselves.

    Someone toss her a copy of Cynthia Shapiro’s ‘Corporate Confidential’ (gawd I totally love that book, Book of Year, imho). http://corporateconfidential.org/index.php4

    Like

  29. oh to have something like this here in New Zealand.

    Right now if i were to walk down to a vodafone store (only GSM provider), it would cost me about US$400 just for the card…

    US$80 a month would buy me exactly 512MB’s a month and we are talking GPRS here… i think they JUST introduced a 1GB plan and thats about double the price and if you exceed 1GB they cut you off under a fair use policy.

    I mean, they still offer bloody CSD here, makes me wanna cry 😦

    Peter
    http://peteremcc.wordpress.com

    Like

  30. oh to have something like this here in New Zealand.

    Right now if i were to walk down to a vodafone store (only GSM provider), it would cost me about US$400 just for the card…

    US$80 a month would buy me exactly 512MB’s a month and we are talking GPRS here… i think they JUST introduced a 1GB plan and thats about double the price and if you exceed 1GB they cut you off under a fair use policy.

    I mean, they still offer bloody CSD here, makes me wanna cry 😦

    Peter
    http://peteremcc.wordpress.com

    Like

  31. Pingback: Marv's Blog
  32. Anina Told to Stop Blogging is turning out to be a pretty successful marketing campaign…..for Anina. How many of us heard of Anina the first time from this post? I would lure my employer to do the same.

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  33. Anina Told to Stop Blogging is turning out to be a pretty successful marketing campaign…..for Anina. How many of us heard of Anina the first time from this post? I would lure my employer to do the same.

    Like

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