It’s Just Across From The Santa Maria
This past Saturday, I headed out to the well known West Edmonton Mall to check out one of the latest stores to open. For those that don’t know, West Edmonton Mall was for the longest time the biggest shopping mall in the world. Thanks to the construction boom in China it’s now relegated to the largest mall in North America, and the fourth largest in the world. That still doesn’t stop it from attracting a large number of tourists every year, as well as a number of unique retailers not seen anywhere else in Edmonton. My destination today is just a retailer.
That’s right, the biggest mall in North America now has an outlet for one of the most hyped brands online. Joining the ranks of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, we now have our own Apple Store. Apple’s products are decent, but thanks to the barbarian hordes know as the Apple fanboy you’d think Apple was the second coming of Jesus. Yes they are surprisingly absent from the above pic. That’s because I went to weekend after opening weekend. I don’t dig mass hysteria over a single company, don’t like getting up before 10:00 AM on a Saturday unless there’s a damn good reason, and I had another miracle to witness that morning. Even with all that, I was still drawn to the place. I had to check out the gadgets within, which I’ll further showcase after the jump.
A Feather In My Cap
Some people say that it’s not considered very virtuous to brag about one’s accomplishments. Luckily I have no such reservations. So last week when Stephen Fung alerted me to something he saw at Computex 2008, I have to say I was rather proud.
As Stephen was wandering about the Computex floor, he noticed a Futurelooks.com logo on the display for one of the many products we’ve reviewed. This is always a great achievement for a site, but there’s a reason it’s also a feather in my cap.
The logo was the Editor’s Choice award rewarded to Foxconn for their 9800GTX-512N video card in the review I wrote for Futurelooks more than a month ago. The card was a solid performer, and the review was well received. Even with that in mind, it’s still nice to see the hard work put into the review recognized in such a way.
Computex is the second largest computer trade show in the world, and a great venue for our site to show it’s stuff. I have had my writing featured before, but mostly on company websites buried a few pages deep on the reviews section. Though a useful promotion tool, it usually requires that the visitor to that site be looking in that particular area. Sometimes you luck out, and those links will show up in a Google search. However branding that is front and centre on a banner for one of the largest OEM component manufacturers in the world catches a few more eyes, and is definitely a great boost for both the site and myself.
Anyhow enough of the ego boost. Thanks to Foxconn for the recognition, and thanks to Stephen for making sure this review hit the internet running. I’m quite looking forward to going to Computex in 2009, as I’d like to check out some of these companies in person. It’s also a great opportunity to essentially usurp the North American market entirely and see products before they event have a hint of hitting our shores. In addition to all that, apparently I’m being drafted to find Ed Lau some hot Asian girls.
Dell Closes Edmonton Call Centre
Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today has announced that they are closing their Edmonton call centre, effectively putting 1,200 Edmontonians out of a job. This was further confirmed today by the Edmonton Economic Development Corp, which stated that it had been told the call centre located in the Edmonton Research Park will be closing permanently sometime between May and the end of July.
This is the second closure announcement in a week for the 2nd largest PC builder. It was only Tuesday that Dell announced that they were cancelling a 1,200 employee expansion to their Ottawa location and reducing the current workforce of 1,500 by an unspecified number.
The two Canadian call centres were originally opened in an effort to curtail problems with overseas customer service, product issues, and declining profit margins due to intense competition. During a tour of the Edmonton location in late 2006, Michael Dell was even asked by The Edmonton Journal if Canadian labour could compete against overseas workers.
“The reason we are here in Edmonton and in Ottawa is because we need skills…What’s important to us is that our customers get the best experience from anywhere in the world. We found that support teams here have a better track record of helping the customer,” Dell said. This is in contrast to the statement released today with the closure announcement.
“Differentiating Dell through superior service and support remains one of the company’s primary strategic priorities and we appreciate the role our talented Edmonton team has played in this effort,” said Dave Vanden Bosch, Dell’s Edmonton site leader.
Employees affected by the closure are being offered other jobs at the company, or severance packages and career placement services. The jobs being lost in the closure will be moved to other locations.
For more information, check out the Edmonton Sun article.
UNLV and TigerDirect Encourage Charity
Well, the latter encourages charity. The former simply knows how to encourage it. Here’s a quick video from the TigerDirect Build Your Own PC Race for Charity event, one the many parties and events I’ve attended at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. The event name is pretty self explanatory; participants build a mid-range computer to be donated to a charity of their choice. Participants are timed, with 1st place being awarded an additional $10,000 USD to donate. This year, due to overwhelming interest in the event they were also able to award the person in 2nd place an additional $2500 USD to give to the charity of their choice. But before the race could begin, we we’re treated to a performance by the cheerleading sqaud from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Now the year prior, the winner was declared within 7 minutes. This year took far longer than that, and far longer than any build off in the history of the event. After 10 minutes and 10 seconds a winner emerged. (Read on …)
Fatal Interv1ew with Fatal1ty
My colleague, and CES roommate for two years running, Jason Jacobs has published a Fatal1ty CES 2008 Interview and Video on TechwareLabs.
“We recently asked Johnathan “fatal1ty” Wendell a few questions about gaming, his product line, and some funny events. We have his answers as well as a 6 minute video of our interview with Fatal1ty. “
Fatal1ty was very forthcoming with information about an upcoming project with DirectTV to start a championship gaming series that will be aired world wide. Hopefully they decide to include Canada in that worldwide rollout. Also he revealed to us another record he is trying to set; one for the most signups to a community site in a 48 hour period. This is being done in partnership with MadGamerNetwork, and will be an officially recorded Guinness World Record. You can signup from January 15th to the 17th.
Here’s the link to Jason’s article and interview. I encourage you to check it out as it has some cool stories from Fatal1ty, and hey I was the guy behind the camera. Oh and I’ll be taking on Fatal1ty in a one on one Quake 4 deathmatch, so I’ll hopefully have video of that disaster.
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