Comments on: TomTom Talks

TomTom Talks

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:03:16 -0800

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:21:17 -0800

According to their "privacy policy" they say that they will collect all information about you that you provide to them for use in marketing, to inform you of products you might be interested in. For instance:

TomTom also uses Personal Information to contact you, always on an "opt-in" basis, via mail, via e-mail or phone to inform you of our (new) products and/or services and the products and services of our carefully selected partners, promotions we may offer, to submit a customer survey and any other marketing activity. TomTom is entitled to contract third parties to perform its direct marketing activities. TomTom may use your Personal Information to conduct market research, to improve our products and/or services, to provide more responsive customer service and to improve our Website, products and services.

In other words, this is mailing-list bait.

By: kingfisher, his musclebound cat

kingfisher, his musclebound cat — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:21:30 -0800

Well. Hm. I made a British woman say things I always wanted a British woman to say to me. But for a greeting card, for others, well fuck that bird.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:21:31 -0800

goodnewsfortheinsane, goodnewsfortheinsane - it that the website? goodnewsfortheinsane, goodnewsfortheinsane - I think we passed that IP address. goodnewsfortheinsane, goodnewsfortheinsane - do you think we need to switch bandwidth? If you need to get where you're going, you need pompomtom on MetaFilter - not TomTom, or goodnewsfortheinsane, goodnewsfortheinsane. Heh, heh - couldn't resist. ; )

By: niles

niles — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:37:38 -0800

The card sounds like Dapne from Fraiser. Hmmm..... Or do all European women sound the same?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:39:16 -0800

niles writes "The card sounds like Daphne from Frasier. Hmmm....." Eponysterical! :)

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:07:34 -0800

Or do all European women sound the same? You think she sounds Italian? Or Swedish? See Received Pronunciation, aka BBC English. Anyway, I'm disappointed at the (lack of) word-to-word transitions -- this is hardly state-of-the-art.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:49:16 -0800

Happy Holidays!

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:48:09 -0800

If you give your gmail account, it will just add a negligible amount to the tons of spam gmail fails to filter.

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:18:46 -0800

It's enough that I have to put up with their seriously irritating advert on TV lately.

By: GavinR

GavinR — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:25:49 -0800

This has so many terrible possibilities.

By: Frankieist

Frankieist — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:41:50 -0800

note to everyone: your emails are visible in the url (in case you wanted to keep your personal email secret or hidden from spambots).

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:09:01 -0800

You can try the talking feature on this page without signing over your first born. Hmmm

By: barnacles

barnacles — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:38:47 -0800

I thought about poo-pooing this post, but goddamn it, I had a fair bit of fun sending XMas greetings to friends in a female Britishian accent.

By: disillusioned

disillusioned — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:13:19 -0800

Welcome to TomTomBlue.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:27:47 -0800

The French voices sound a lot better than the English ones. For example.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:30:07 -0800

Are these the AT&T voices or the Cepstral voices? I know I've heard them before.

By: punilux

punilux — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:53:22 -0800

Yep, the French voices are fun.

By: Science!

Science! — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:45:07 -0800

trip and a half You have a message from Earth's Human Command: NO ROBOTIC RIGHTS!!!

By: nofundy

nofundy — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:53:50 -0800

That last link lost me at the "turn right" command. F*ck that. Too many uss clueless nuts there.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:42:43 -0800

What I don't get though, apart from the email addy being visible in the url, is why they would be spamming you. When you're done creating your message, it asks you if you want to be added to their db; also, in the privacy policy SCDB quoted, they say it's opt-in. So by default there should be no spamitude, right? Am I being naive?

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:48:51 -0800

Smart Dalek, I know that ad from Dutch TV and I didn't even recognise it at first, what with TomTom being Dutch originally I somehow assumed the ad was only aired in the Netherlands. Strange experience to read it in another language.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 08:09:09 -0800

Bah. I just made the Fronch lady sing Bell Jingle Rock to me, but then I screwed up the address or something. She sings it all sexy. The German dude, less so, unless you're into yingles.

By: daHIFI

daHIFI — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 08:21:30 -0800

kilit bang you have no idea what a godsend this is on a slow friday workday before xmas. thank you.

By: swell

swell — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 09:40:21 -0800

gnfti: If you have an email address, and they get it, you've opted in.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 10:42:37 -0800

"We'll only send you spam if you opt-in" is rapidly taking its place as one of the "big lies", along with "of course I'll love you in the morning", "the check is in the mail", and "We're from the government and we're here to help you."

By: bshort

bshort — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:12:25 -0800

best post ever

By: deborah

deborah — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:37:49 -0800

I watch too much TV.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:25:31 -0800

Flash back.

By: mhh5

mhh5 — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 23:26:25 -0800

emelenjr -- look at the bottom of the page.. it says the voices are done by Loquendo.. Personally, I like these voices on my TomTom.. And I find the Garmin text-to-speech kinda irritating and hard to understand.

By: the_very_hungry_caterpillar

the_very_hungry_caterpillar — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 04:39:12 -0800

niles writes "The card sounds like Daphne from Frasier. Hmmm....." Nah... Daphne has a *bad* Mancunian (Manchester) accent in Frasier - she speaks like the TomTom in real life. Confused? You will be after this episode of ~~Soap~~ Frasier.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 08:40:57 -0800

Oddly enough, the_very_hungry_caterpillar, she is supposed to be Mancunian, but sounds decidedly Yorkshire, no?