Monday, September 29, 2008

Level Mobile Playing Field?

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/mobile.html

This is in reference to Google Apps (the rebranding of Google's products for your own domain). In this documentation the iPhone and Blackberry are referenced explicitly - however Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian somehow avoid being mentioned by name.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Another post on Windows Mobile

I want to emphasize that it is not one of these things that is pushing me over the edge finally this week, it is all 4 taken together.

First take the iphone. Yes it sucks in a million ways that will never be fixed. But the fact that Apple walked in and stole the show with a device that made everyone who ever used a pda slobber, with no multi-year ramp-up, is just amazing. Look at Microsoft with the Zune - basically the same circumstance in a different market. Did they walk into the mature mp3 player market and stand the thing on it's head? No way. The Zune is nice - I hate iPods (buggy) and iTunes (slow in Windows), and have 3 Zunes and use the Zune software to play music and download podcasts. But it's no iPhone. It's merely a good copy of the current state of the market.

Secondly, the latest videos of the first shipping Android phone, the ones where the Android team points out their favorite features, are awesome. I totally can't believe this is a cooperative open venture, and they put together a phone that leapfrogs everything else available in the industry except perhaps the iphone, in like a year. Yes I know it was seeded by other work, but c'mon - imagine the number of meetings they had to have. Imagine That alone was a decade gone I figured. I didn't expect it to do anything but barely turn on and make a phone call. But it rocks. This is the first thing ever that makes me want to take on Java.

Third, I have to admit I was shaken by the sad news that my current Windows Mobile phone, the Samsung SCH-i760, which in my opinion is the only WM phone on the market that comes close to getting it right in terms of feature set (except for the need to use two hands on the keyboard), and which took so long to get through Vzw's testing process, and which just got WM 6.1, has been yanked from sale by Verizon Wireless. Supposedly there is a software issue, but I predict it will never be back. And that means a shrinking pool of people interested in the phone, working on fixes or add-ons, influencing vendors, and providing help in the forums. It's stillborn now. Ugh.

Finally, we have the announcement from Microsoft, that Windows Mobile 7 will be delayed. And the rumor that it is due to internal bickering about whether to scrap and start over, or try to continue with the WM platform. Microsoft folks! You just threw away the most important platform for perhaps the next two decades. Idiots! You stole the market from Palm and had it sewn up, to do with what you would. And you sat and did nothing for years and years. No innovation. Barely rev'd the platform, adding the minimum of stability and ease of use. You deserve to lose this, and it may cost you everything. I am so frustrated, because I have waited every day of each one of those years for you to get off your butt and kick butt.

In conclusion, I will be buying an iPhone, and probably an Android phone, as soon as possible. That will annoy me for many reasons, mostly because while I think Verizon Wireless sucks (they are always part of the problem rather than part of the solution) they clearly suck the best. But there too, I think as a consumer they had my business to lose. Why isn't it a Vzw iPhone, or Vzw Android phone? Oh well. The bottom line is the platform is moving forward (read innovation), which is all I care about. Market forces (including me the consumer) will leave the also-rans in the dust where they will be forgotten.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Windows Mobile 7 delayed

http://windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/article/articleid/100384/amid-internal-turmoil-microsoft-delays-windows-mobile-7.html

Paul Thurrott confirms yesterday's rumors that Windows Mobile 7 is delayed. Pair this with the bad news about the i760 yesterday, and the iPhone and Android start to look like good bets to pown the mobile world. In my opinion, Windows Mobile 7 should have already have been in my hand! Now it could easily be 3 years before they deliver me last year's technology. That so sucks.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

i760 recalled

http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/samsung-sch-i760/117465-can-t-find-i760-verizon-site.html

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=37877

It appears the beloved Samsung SCH-i760 has been recalled (removed from their list of phones on sale) by Verizon Wireless, due to some kind of software problem related to connections. Now I don't have a problem with connections, but getting this news on the same day as seeing all the videos on the Google Android T-Mobile G1 is quite deflating. Perhaps Microsoft is throwing away the mobile race, and it will iPhone versus Android. Sure looks that way..

Friday, September 12, 2008

Finally - a free system image tool

Drive Image XML, with a how-to guide by Lifehacker.

http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/hot-image-your-pcs-hard-drive-with-driveimage-xml-326086.php

http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

It's wild how as we move forward in computing, things that were flat out impossible become possible (if painful and expensive) and then eventually easy and cheap.

Making images of the PCs I build for myself and friends just makes things so much easier (you know what I'm talking about!), but the one time I bought Ghost, it needed an expensive upgrade before I even got around to using it twice.