#818 Zinger Flinger

Hold on to your quality control. Word of mouth just got very dangerous. And it’s assisted by a new technology called MARMS.
That’s right, MARMS. As in smarmy. As in suspiciously attractive but liable to strike like a snake the minute your back is turned.
MARMS is a new technology on the boards with the Motorola cellphone people. The letters stand for Mobile Augmented Reality Messaging System. MARMS is like the help button in a computer program, but in the real world.
Say you’re in a restaurant. The built in GPS system in your phone can tell you where the best seat is. The phone can then suggest what is the best dish on the menu or if there are any special drinks. It can even tell you to avoid certain things.
Go spirit of adventure...
It does this by incorporating user reviews of the place in its database. It’s kind of like the navigator thing in your car, mining different information sources to plot your best route in real-time, but adding MySpace style social networking and Ebay style ratings.
So like I say. Watch your quality control. Because you know how it is. You can have a thousand good meals in a restaurant and never tell your friend. But one rude waiter or one bad cook and you tell the story for a week.
It is unfortunately the tendency of many of us, from newspapers to neighborhood gossips, to report the bad and salacious first and fail to make any effort to praise the good.
You can raise flocks of chickens and feed folks countless eggs. But let your cat kill one baby bird and you’re the talk of the town.
So keep your cat corralled, because as soon as MARMS goes into effect, you’re just a cellphone away from someone flinging your business a zinger.
It’s bad enough when the local newspaper gets a story wrong on the front page and only prints the retraction on D-4 next to the high colonic ads.
Once a bad review gets on the MARMS social network, you might as well close your doors and turn off the phone.
America, ya gotta love it.