Worst Thing Since the New Coke - Flat-Packed Swedish Food at IKEA

I picked up Lisa at Newark Airport, and then we headed over to Ikea for a romantic dinner with a gorgeous view of the Turnpike (well, it was dark so all we could see through the panorama windows was the lights of cars, streetlights and incoming airplanes). We had stopped at Ikea in Elizabeth to pick up some Swedish food in the mini market, but we came away pretty disappointed. Ikea is doing the "New Coke" thing, phasing-out the good old Swedish brands and replacing them with Ikea-branded food. Flat-packed chocolate doesn't look as appetizing as the Marabou's we used to buy, and they had signs warning us that we better buy the Siljans knäckebröd now, because soon you will have to make do with Ikea branded bread. For ex-patriots like myself, a visit to Ikea is a visit to the old country, and it is nice to be able to buy Kalles kaviar, Västerbottensost and Lingonsaft, but that will soon be history.
Not only that. Ikea is now selling half-size packages of soft tunnbröd for the same price as the full sized bread I used to buy, and the substitute for the "Hönökaka" is not only square, but nouveau in size, or approximately one third of what it used to be.
I left Ikea sad and disappointed. Is it good business? Well, everytime I visit Ikea to pick up Swedish food, I usually spend a couple of hundred dollars in the store. Without the food, I won't bother to drive to Ikea anytime soon.

Lost in a Cloud of Words

Welcome to the wordcloud. I just got a press release from Microsoft about their big partner conference in Washington, D.C. People from all over the world have gathered there to "seize new opportunities in the cloud" and help consumers "tap into the cloud through all the screens in their lives."

Lost in translation? No, Microsoft is not Volkswagen having fun with words like fahrvergnügen or Ikea being cute with Swedish names. Microsoft is from Redmond, WA.

"WASHINGTON — July 13, 2010 — Today at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Jon Roskill, Microsoft Corp.’s new channel chief, addressed the Microsoft partner community for the first time, unveiling business strategies and resources to help partners of all types seize new opportunities in the cloud. The company also detailed new products and services to help consumers tap into the cloud through all the screens in their lives — from the largest screen in the living room to the smallest screen in one’s pocket."

I know what they mean, but isn't there a fundamental communication disconnect here?

The digital era has given us many new words, and a whole new way to view the world. We have learned to understand expressions like the world wide web, and reinterpret others, like computer (which used to be a person who calculates) and surfing (no board needed these days). I have no problem with that, but then we have the Globalyst stuff. No, it's not something from Harry Potter. It was a new PC-series launched by AT&T in 1994 after the company had bought NCR and renamed it Global Information Services. I remember the press conference when the Globalyst PC was introduced, featuring a communications program called Vistium. I asked one of the marketing guys about the weird name. He shook his head and said that all the good names were already taken.

Fast forward to July 2010:

“The industry is at an inflection point....and we are committed to helping our partners adapt and find the right cloud opportunities....,” said Jon Roskill.

Well, the cloud makes sense as a concept and is okay on a powerpoint slide, but beyond that I'd like my clouds in the sky. Leave it to the true believers to seek opportunities in the cloud.

Hans Sandberg