Okay where are the Windows Mobile 5 phones for Verizon and Sprint? My CEO loves Verizon’s coverage in NYC, but hates the battery life of the new Blackberry 8703e. The standard battery only lasts 3hours of talk time, and there isn’t an extended battery available currently. He had a Motorola E815 with extended battery and liked it, but it eventually got worn out and he wanted to go for a combined device. Sprint and Verizon both offer Windows Mobile 5 PDAs with full QWERTY keyboards, but no simple phone WM5 devices like Cingular and T-Mobile. Does that mean people don’t want the Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition? I don’t think so, since I know several people who own the T-Mobile SDA, Cingular 2125, Audiovox SMT5600, and Motoral MPx200 and 220.
Hooper just left his job with me, and needed a new PDA-type device since he wasn’t going to use his Blackberry. You might remember that he had been using the Nokia 6682 from his article on CityID. It was not really “Outlook compatible” in both of our minds as the sync software was clunky at best, and required a USB cable. He needed a professional device that he could use as a mobile worker, but without the bulk of a blackberry.
Castle and I have the Audiovox SMT5600, but it runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE. While great, it is not top of the line with only offers GPRS data speeds along with a lot of software bugs. Schlosser upgraded from his Motorola MPx200 and picked up the new Cingular branded 2125. Would that be the device for Hooper? (more…)
Microsoft is doing some guerilla marketing of Visual Studio 2005. They look like 16 employee created short clips to highlight a few of the the new 400+ differences they put into the product. This video on coffee is my favorite. Check out Coffee!
A few of the others that made me laugh were:
King of Coding?
Change Request
Project Manager
Whiteboards?
Recently, I’ve been borrowing a Nokia 6682 smart phone from my current employer in order to test out some of the new software that has been developed for these high-end handheld computing devices. This will be the first in a series of posts about these software applications and my thoughts on them.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to pick up a phone call when I have no idea who might be calling me. Today, the limiting factor is whether or not that number appears in your address book. As I’m sure has happened to many of you, when I receive a phone call from a number I don’t recognize, the first thing I do is ask the people around me if they happen to know the location of the area code. Unfortunately, the list of area codes that I have memorized is short and limited to places I have lived, have family, or major US cities.
As early as six months ago, I started suggesting that this would be a great thing to have on cell phones. Sure enough, within the last month, a Seattle-based company, Cequint, came out with just such an application.
First, I would like to caveat my comments by saying that this is an early stage company with the first release of their software, so a few bugs are guaranteed. With such an application now installed on my borrowed Nokia, you would think my problem would solved, right? Well it is, sort of.
This time I found the MakeSomeNoise Podcast. MakeSomeNoise (aka MSN) is a podcast from Andreas Churchill out of London who mixes some new and old mashups. You can get the last 8 podcasts over at makesomenoise.co.uk/podcast. He has track listings, and great links to the creators. Each one is 60 minutes long too! I hope to show some of these off at a BBQ this weekend.
I went on a Beta binge this week and grabbed the new Microsoft Windows Media Player 11. I love it! Super fast, and a nice interface. I’m not ready to give up iTunes yet until this is out of beta, but I like what I see. The only downside currently is that the WMP 11 tray doesn’t function, so you can only run it in a window and not on the taskbar. Grab it from Microsoft.
UPDATE WMP11 Beta doesn’t work with Windows Live Messenger 8 Beta’s “What I’m Listening To”
Everyone was wondering what the Origami device was, why it is special, and if Microsoft was going into the hardware business. Personally I think it is clear that features and devices they showed in March at CeBIT didn’t live up to the hype. These Ultra Mobile Portable Computing (UPMC) devices are supposed to fall between Tablet and PDA.
Samsung has the Q1, which is basically a small 7-inch tablet pc with an 900MHz Intel Celeron and 512MB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive. The only differences between tablet pcs and this thing are extra controls/buttons, instant-on multimedia player (no XP load to play). Why in the world do I need this thing? It costs close to the same as some tablet PCs at around $1100. It isn’t going to have a longer battery life, which will be 3 hours to start.
I personally predict this thing will flop. People have not been flocking to tablet PCs like they have to PDAs and ultra small media players. I think this market won’t pan out until the battery life is there and the device is thinner and lighter. The idea is great, but I think there is a disconnect between the current offerings and what would be successful in capturing the consumer market. I could be wrong since pre-orders at Best Buy sold out within 24 hours. Sure that grabs some media attention, but I don’t think the marketing for UMPC was done properly. Next I’ll post on why and how I think Microsoft should change marketing techniques.
To make up for my post yesterday about the Firefox ad, I wanted to point out some entertaining advertising from Microsoft. They have launched a new viral campaign for their product OneNote 2003 called stationaryisbad. Here’s just one ad from the campaign and view more below to see some others.
Everyone knows Flickr, the wonderful Yahoo! company that enables photo sharing. I am currently on a hunt for software that will run a linux screensaver that pulls photos from Flickr based on tags and/or usernames. This is for another project, but I will save that for later. During my hunt I found a few interesting tools that interact with Flickr, so I thought I would share them.
- Flickr Official Tools - These include the XP Explorer Wizard and Uploadr tool.
- FlickrLilli - Allows you to search Flickr photos based on tags and Creative Commons licensing.
- Grabbr - Useful for capturing screen shots of windows or desktop and uploading to Flickr.
- Slickr - Screensaver for Windows to show images from tags or users.
- FlickrDown - Useful for mass-downloading of photos. Useful for backing up, or for grabbing original photos from friends.
- FlickrBackup - Haven’t tried this one, but sounds good. Java tool to download photos to your hard drive.
Apple is a brilliant designer and marketer, one area where this really shines through is their packaging. In this brilliant spoof, take a look at what the package would look like if Microsoft designed it. If Microsoft really wants to play in the consumer electronics space they need to rethink their design and marketing, and do it quick.
Back in February I posted about the struggles that we face with current user interfaces. Well just recently I came upon a video on YouTube that shows a multi-touch user interface. The applications of this are almost endless as shown by the video. This screen records the input of multiple touches on its screen; whereas current touch surfaces (screens or trackpads on your laptop) can only record one touch at a time. If you try to touch it in two places at a time you get sporadic, unpredictable response. Check out the below video and keep your fingers crossed that this becomes mainstream quickly! (I know it’s long, but you get to see MANY possible applications of this technology).
