Slashdot Log In
Cell Phone Sommeliers on the Way?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jan 21, 2008 02:12 PM
from the aged-vintages-not-quite-so-popular-for-some-reason dept.
from the aged-vintages-not-quite-so-popular-for-some-reason dept.
Japan is reportedly toying with the idea of educating and licensing "sommeliers" to help potential buyers wade through the vast sea of options available for a new cellphone purchase. "Japan's communication ministry is looking to the private sector to manage the potential nightmare exam and certification process, with children's online safety highlighted as an important part of the plan. Mobile sommelier sounds like a pretty sweet title, we can totally feel how an HTC TyTN II might be paired with an earthy unlimited plan followed by the soft nutty finish of a 200-minute a month daytime calling package."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Where's TFA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This wisdom befits TFA, as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Except having too many layers of indirection."
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
But, since your user ID beats mine by something like two orders of magnitude, I am clearly the one who is new here.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Too many features (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh? (Score:2)
I don't remember a cell phone that actually produced a dial tone; my memory is fuzzy but perhaps some of the older Motorola "brick" analog phones did.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, that was my point. Never had a cell phone, never care to have one.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
but seriously, i know lots of people that don't want cellphones. They don't like using a phone and don't want one they carry around with with them. Some people aren't all about being connected all of the time. How they manage it, i dont know. but they do, and seem perfectly happy that way. Who are we to judge?
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd give up my cell phone completely if my work permitted it.
Re:Too many features (Score:5, Insightful)
In the states I'd want it turned off as well - the thought of paying because *somebody else* wanted to get in touch with me makes me shudder... what happens if some nut job gets your number and you didn't even want the messages. Can I then call up my provider and ask for a refund?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, there are things that you don't know about that you might find useful. You might be aware that blackberries let you send/receive email with strong encryption. You might not know that a blackberry can get google maps, instant messaging, GPS turn-by-turn navigation, tethered internet
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you need a professional to pick out the features you need on a phone, chances are you don't need all those features in the first place.
Ahhh...but would you notice the subtle differences in one phone's clever UI for navigating photo storage vs. that employed by another, lesser vintage? Or how about the conditions in which the device was manufactured...would you expect Joe Smo to know the values imparted by the region and year of its birth? I think not! Surely you see the need to protect the uninformed so that they too can feel the joy of an expertly paired bluetooth accessory connecting on the first try.
Then again, it does seem kind
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you need a professional to pick out the features you need on a phone, chances are you don't need all those features in the first place. If you really needed them, you'd know enough to ask for them in the first place.
This is not as 'insightful' as it sounds. There's a difference between features and needs. If you're not up to date on cell phone technology, then you won't know what features are out there that actually address a need you have. That's where advice in general helps. You may not know that something exists, that doesn't mean it's not useful to you.
Oenophile on a chip? (Score:4, Funny)
The software is available... (Score:5, Funny)
Now that you have mentioned a consumer demand for it, it will be new cell phone feature soon!
Parent
how long (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously - even with a simple menu of features, not all phone will be alike. This one might have a slightly better screen, this one a keypad that's easier for you to use, etc... etc...
But it's not just the "extra" features ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... the voice plans themselves can be confusing. If you just had a fixed rate per minute, or even a number of included minutes plus a fixed rate per minute thereafter, it wouldn't be that bad, but there are so many kinds of minutes: peak, off-peak, evening (and when does "evening" start?), weekend, same carrier, same account, "friends/family", rollover, etc.
That's in the U.S. I've never looked at a Japanese cell plan. For all I know, they might be even more complicated
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A future scene..... (Score:5, Funny)
Sommeliers vs. Sommeil? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Of course, in the US, there would be no difference. Any discussion of cellphone features would be so boring, thanks to our provider-mandated crippled (but free) hardware, that it would put the most tragic insomniac into a deep slumber. "CallerTunes lets
Re:Sommeliers vs. Sommeil? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Sommeliers vs. Sommeil? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, if we trust the results of a google search, it comes from a coarser latin a very long time ago. No idea if it's true, but here's a link [alphadictionary.com]. From the linked article:
Cheers
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Used Car Salesmen-Like People More Likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Cell phones have always been about fads and over-hyped widgets. It's all about pushing out the current model and signing people up as fast as possible. The market is too cutthroat to allow for anything else. For this same reason, sommeliers don't stand around selling wine at your local grocery store.
I walked into a supposedly high-end cell phone store a few months back. They had towering signs that said things like "Ask our experts anything! They will help you figure everything out!". I walked up to one of the reps who wore a big badge saying "I'm a cell phone expert, ask me anything!". I asked a simple question: "Which devices do you have that run Symbian OS?". I received a blank stare and "What's a simmian?" in response. Followed by "We have lots of phones with cameras and MP3 players. Do you want one of those?"
I'm not holding my breath that this program will make any difference.
Re:Used Car Salesmen-Like People More Likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Pretentious wankery (Score:2)
While the wine snobs might think this is all great, it is just wankery that does not help the average Joe enjoy their wine. In fact it often detracts from Joe's enjoyment because he's stressing as to whether that's blackberry or raspberry he's tasting.
Doing the same for phones wil
Curious analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason that individuals can offer credentialed expertise in wine as a restaurant service is because they can base it on a body of knowledge which goes back some 9000 years. Yes, wines are complex, tasting is subjective. To that extent, the analogy holds. But unlike the cell phone market, the characteristics of wine, and the particular requirements of fine wine, are stable and well understood. Therefore, both the somellier and the patron gain an enduring advantage through cultivating their wine expertise over time, and the dialogue between them can be efficient and meaningful.
Cell phone capabilities and services, on the other hand, are so extremely volatile that there can be no ground for consensus. It's still possible to go through the exercise of gathering requirements and outlining solutions, an activity which has already been given the name System Analysis. Let's call it what it is, because that tells us what we can reasonably expect from it.
Re:Curious analogy (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Websites exist to do this ... (Score:2)
I had issues looking for a cell phone with at least as long of talk time as what I currently have, specifically _without_ a camera, due to security requirements with places I occasionally travel to. Here are a couple that I found. (note -- I got different results with them, so they might not all know about all currently available phones):
The Communication Age (Score:5, Funny)
What the fu-
What is this?
WHAT LANGUAGE IS THIS?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
An argument for consumer-protection legislation (Score:5, Insightful)
What we need is not used-car salesmen with delusions of grandeur. What we need is better truth-in-advertising regulation. Like this:
Japanese Retail Smiles (Score:5, Informative)
1. Japan is very far ahead of us as far as cell-phone technology is concerned. They've had fully-functional video phones for at least a year or two, for example (as in, you can communicate via real-time video).
2. Japanese retail is much more about service than most US retail. We just want to get in and get the product, but the Japanese are all about greeting you at the door, pleasant smiles, and all of that.
Therefore, a sommelier isn't all that strange in the context of Japanese retail. It's strange to Americans, but to the Japanese, it must make sense, otherwise they wouldn't bother.
Translation (Score:3, Funny)
He will clench his teeth together as he tells you what phone you need.
Sounds great.
Re: (Score:2)
"Any of these would have been much more understandable: specialist, expert, buff, genius, nerd, advocate, certified authority, professional."
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking about the Seinfeld episode where one of the characters wanted to be a 'buff' after talking with a Civil War buff.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the word 'sommelier' is actually more commonly used in Tokyo than it is in Dullard, USA. They have the word in EDICT as a borrowed word, a common dictionary for English speakers studying Japanese language, anyway. Tokyo and Paris vie for top position in culinary arts, and there's a lot of Fine European dining available there too.
Re:sommelier? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, sometimes English words don't exist which have the nuance of a foreign word -- they can lack that certain "je ne sais qua".
A highly trained individual whose job it is to help you select from a wide array of choices
I once had a native speaker of French as me for the English word for "gourmet", to which I had to explain that we had never come up with a single word which conveyed as much as "gourmet", so we stuck with it. The word carries with it a lot of implied meaning and suggestion that aficionado or whatever wouldn't convey.
Let's face it, English is just plain littered with words which have never really been translated. Sommelier is one of them. If you need to express a particular connotation or inference which is attached to a certain word, using substitutes makes the word understandable to more people, but might lessen the actual intended meaning. Subtle nuance is something which is difficult to replace with a synonym.
Words from other languages which have been kept intact aren't that uncommon.
Cheers
Parent
Re:sommelier? (Score:4, Informative)
They do, but it isn't what you would think. Here's some fun examples (note double vowels means to hold the sound longer):
Japanese: Depaato
English: Department Store
Japanese: Supa
English: Supermarket
Japanese: Terebi
English: Television (TV)
Japanese: Pasokon
English: Personal Computer (PC)
All of these words are derived from English words but have been kana-butchered because Japanese does not have all of the sounds English has and some are even shortened forms of the full words. For example "pasokon" which you would hear sounded like "pah soh com" is really from the first parts of "personal computer" being "perso" and "com".
Some words actually sound pretty close to their English equivalent:
Japanese: kohi (pronounced co-hee)
English: coffee
But when written in katakana or even romaji you sometimes wouldn't figure it out the actual English word as an English speaker. Only until they show you the object or describe what they are talking about do you suddenly make the connection.
So they do use English and other foreign words (not related to English) as any language is allowed. But even if they did, the word probably wouldn't sound exactly like it did from the originating language.
You could also say similarly of English which takes and borrows at will. In fact English will even allow you to force words to be used in different contexts than are technically sound. For example words like "guestimate" are used more commonly to express estimates that have no basis or technical reasoning. You may have issues trying to use that type of verbage (verbage--yet another made up word) in published works but for communication it is just fine. Additionally we still takes words like rendevous from other languages (French) despite using it in English. So are we speaking French or English? Well English obviously.
I had the same complaints about the languages my parents spoke because sometimes they would alternate between the native language and English. So I would hear certain English phrases thrown in at random times and get frustrated and ask why they wouldn't just speak in one language or come up with a valid translation or expression of their thoughts in the other language. The answer is they switch between languages because sometimes it is easier and quicker to express a thought or concept in one language versus another.
I also get an awful lot of complaints from my Spanish speaking friend who says we (American) English speakers tend to butcher the pronunciation of many borrowed Spanish words. For example the word "churro" in Spanish is specifically pronounced "chu ro" but English speakers tend to sit on the "r" sound and say something "chr ro".
So language (in general) is a funny thing. But of course you would have learned that in your required foreign language studies classes that you didn't sleep through, right?
To end, I'm going to leave you with one last Japanese kana-fied English word. But I'll write it in romaji without correct spacing (there are no "random" spaces in Katakana words) so you can read it. Some hints: the word is actually taken from 2 common english words combined to express a concept and the first portion "ai" is sounds like the English pronoun "I" or "eye" but is commonly written with two katakana.
Japanese: ai su ku ri mu
English: ?
Parent