Talk about patent trolls.
Microsoft has received five times more income from Android than from Windows Phone | asymco
This ad seems weird to me. I’m not sure what the point is? People that use their phones a lot aren’t doing it because the user experience is bad, they do it because it’s good, and they are having fun. Reading facebook, twitter, their email, the web, games, what have you. This seems like it would mostly appeal to people who have never used a smart phone and imagine that “these kids” must be doing much more mundane things like checking voicemail, or looking up phone numbers. If you think that, then you do perceive the problem of spending too much time doing things on the phone. But if you actually know what it’s like to use a smart phone, appealing to the idea that you won’t use it much isn’t a huge seller. I think Windows Phone 7 is a good direction, this ad just seems a little confusing. I’m sure Microsoft will blanket the market with all sorts of random ads though, and this one will get forgotten eventually.
So, I am really excited about google wave. I’ve watched the keynote, read the specs, and the mailing list. Google seems to be legitimately planning to open this up as much as possible. Easily as much as email is open now, plus they are giving a lot of reference implementations and example code that even goes beyond that in my opinion.
The reaction so far has been very positive I think, but there has been some negativity. Most of it seems to be along the lines of, “that’s nothing new”, or “it’s just fancy chat” etc. I think a lot of this is missing the point from a perspective of technological superiority. Sure, it might not be anything that different if you are the kind of person who can set up a wiki, and a mailing list in a few minutes. Most people aren’t like that. Most people have never used a mailing list. Most people that use computers have never used a mailing list, or a wiki. It’s just too hard, and not something they are interested in. People that forget this I think, may just be (enviably) isolated from that level of user.
The inbox metaphor is something that people get. If I can send you a wave, that is also a wiki page, and a chat, and a shared document all in one that is a lot of hurdles I have crossed in getting you to use modern software. Currently I have to talk you into a wiki, train you to use email correctly. (no reply below what i said!) and convince you that chat isn’t just for your kids.
From what I have seen the initial user interface will be easy enough for everyone to just get, without having to be talked into it. That ease of use is based on the email metaphor. The actual protocol though is not similar to the email metaphor at all, and is another source of excitement.
This system is lightweight and simple enough for it to very easily grow into things that are not planned now. The system of waves, wavelets, and blips, allows for a really simple access control system, and versioning. As more clients and tools support this I think we will really start seeing some uses for the tech crowd that look very little like email.
I hope use of this spreads quickly. Microsoft seems like the big loser here. Of course they could implement this in whatever is after Exchange 2010, but somehow I think they would resist out of pride.
Infopath is a weird thing. Thinking about it is like staring at the soul of Microsoft, I think. Confused, trying to be helpful, but to a group of people that are increasingly isolated and change-averse.
It’s a form system that stores the data in xml, for use by web applications, or more realistically Sharepoint Server. Businesses need to make forms, and Sharepoint only has limited support for this, so obviously the answer is another application to create forms, that will interface with Sharepoint. Because no one has thought or had this problem before, right? No one has ever needed to make a form on the web until Sharepoint came along, and helped everyone.
It’s just weird. Maybe this is a textbook case of escalation of commitment. The idea that you need to throw up some web form, and that infopath is the tool for you seems like a huge weird leap to me. You have to have it installed (even to fill a form out!), and it’s not free, you probably need Sharepoint, which is also not free, and functionally does everything much more poorly than, say, mediawiki, or knowledge tree. So instead of a simple server side client-agnostic approach, you would take the exact opposite, and sacrifice functionality?
Now for the meditation. People use this.
