18th Moon Station

Small gift in the morning

A gift in the morning ?

No, this is just to version 8107. There’s still three more updates before I reached Tango

Smoked

So now it starts backfiring, and I wonder how they will handle it.

I'm no expert in marketing, but as consumer I'd rather have the Smoked By Windows campaign to be done in a surprise attack method just like how it turns heads to it when first showing up. Make it into something that depend on that element of surprise and grab attention. But like anything that depend on surprise, don't repeat it too much.

Yeah, in forum and comments, I made short comments several times that it's time for Microsoft to find a new way and leave the Smoked by Windows when they're still winning. The reason is that sooner or later there will be peoples making phone aimed purely to beat the challenge, such as through very optimized setting or even ROM. The motive could be either to win the money or just to beat the company "everyone love to hate".

But there's also voices that say such as... the non-techies hasn't hear enough of this campaign.
Well, not really a problem. It could be kept more subtly among the communities and out of official campaigns. The thing is, get off the ring while you're still an unchallenged champion.

Now, seems like the time has ran out once. It turns into like a scandal, fanned by news channels. Even if they stop it now they will look like a coward running away compared to stopping the campaign early.

Update to the official RTM

Got to Mango yesterday night. Yes, I use the disconnect trick and it finally works after three times. The payment, lack of sleep (did it from 24:00~03:25).

It might not work on first try.

Before continuing, my device is an HTC 7 Mozart T8698 which is not uncommon. My Live ID though, is set to the Japanese region, which background story is for other day but has something with the marketplace.

Frankly, I had used the leaked RTM, so the features is not surprising. I just want to get the official as it s available. But no visible difference so far.

As for now, the main disappointment seems to be related to either the online service side, or (most likely) my carrier’s data connection quality, which can be summarized as sucks.

From the Marketplace, apparently many of the applications are still yet to be available. The official apps for me includes Twitter, Flickr and Gowalla. Apparently, Applications submitted as “Worldwide” after early July won’t be available to the 19 new regions.

But, well, yeah, the update took a long time, but once running, the process is smooth without any problem.

By the way, I also just realized that the Peoples Hub is not updating in the background like the e-mail as I expected it to. That’s not fun because with the fast pace of Twitter and Facebook, there will be a lot of updates that disappeared in the next hour.

Applications as feature

Bouncing back a misconception I had about applications in Windows Phone, especially the Hub concept.

Back then, when not much details are out about the Windows Phone OS, there are some notions about the Hubs. One of it is that the user interaction with the phone will be centred on the concept of Hub. There will be hub for social (People), communication (Messaging), multimedia (Pictures, Zune), work (Office), etc. The old concept about applications that are opening applications will be gone, replaced with seamless experience.

Well… that’s kind of abstract enough, right?

Then, I just thought of the word recently. What if, this means the platform will encourage developers to build not application, but features/functions ? In other word, building modules, building plug-in to the OS itself, as well as maybe the back end cloud service.

For now, the Pictures hub have extra options to pass the file to upload service or editing application. Peoples hub will be integrated more to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, even enabling check in. The Messaging hub will also support native chatting with Live Messenger and Facebook.

But application list is still there.

Microsoft’s survey

Microsoft’s recent satisfaction survey for Office Web Apps is a lot better in my opinion compared to the usual survey even for the website.

This one felt more consumer friendly in comparison to the other survey they did that I’ve encountered. Well, Microsoft in my eyes is still more a Business to Business company rather than Business to Consumer company. When doing survey, they assume the user as an IT professional or sort and seem to care a lot about what the user can do to sway their company’s IT policy.

The consumer survey is still plagued with the usual question though. Satisfaction scale and if you would recommend the product. They also give more places asking about which parts is not satisfying and which parts you would suggest to fix.

One problem that still there though. The survey is as always, so damn long. I could wasted more than half an hour answering dozens of pages of this survey question. I usually quit the survey midway because the answering became too tedious. Many sounds really redundant.

By the way, to give suggestion, choose “Not satisfied”. The survey has no back button and I’ve just realized that it only asked me suggestion about Excel Web App which I choose dissatisfied and nothing about Word Web App which I choose somewhat satisfied.

So something I couldn’t answer in the online survey would be:

• Enable style and more formatting for Word. I like to use style extensively and it’s difficult to set in the online version.
• Enable style and more formatting for Excel. Also make it easier to resize column like in the desktop version.
• Make the Excel faster. Word is not that fast either, but within my tolerance limit. Excel in the other hand felt sluggish. Well, understandably Excel is a number crunching application and it might be more difficult to render everything. But we could keep our hopes, right?

IE9 and the pinned individual sites

Jumplist showing the Tasks and notification overlay on Hotmail from IEBlog

One of the very much promoted new feature of Internet Explorer 9 is the pinned site. This feature enables users to do these to compatible sites.

• Put a shortcut to the site in the taskbar just like applications.
• Have the shortcut showing the website’s icon.
• Give a tasks menu that will act like shortcut to the appropriate sections.
• Give notification overlay on the taskbar icon (like the number “2” on the screenshot at right) as well as blinking the taskbar to get attention.

How is this good for the website makers? For one thing, like you can see, the user in that screenshot have eBay, Hulu, Hotmail, Facebook and Bing’s branding icon staring at them all the time, reminding the user as well as inviting them to click, open the site and look at the ads.

Hope for the two old guys

Big news isn’t it, about Nokia and Microsoft teaming up and Nokia will build Windows Phone devices as well as cooperating. There seems to be different opinion in different fronts.

• Those that think Nokia is a fool for letting go their superior Linux platform; and it’s the end of the world.
• Those that think Nokia is a fool for not using Android instead.
• Those who want to put faith and expectation that both company will be able to rise and make something good.

Personally, I’m hoping Nokia and Microsoft will be able to pull it out together and make a surprising comeback. Take the mindshare, slow but surely. In the meantime, make a rising revenue, which if it pulls out well, will be something good for Microsoft (not sure about Nokia).

By gaining mindshare in comparison to the other two leaders, which would include advertising to the grass root level, will ease the burden of other manufacturers to use Windows, because it would already be a “proven” product in the mind of purchasers.

If they can get revenue, and miraculously become great new mobile phone company from the “old and outdated” company image, then other companies would be able to see that it’s possible to also succeed using Windows, like what has been shown by Android (used to be no-name manufacturers could churn out cheaper smartphones that go face to face in sales against big corporations’ most line up).

Of course there’s personal reason, like I want to be able to stay idealistic on some view of life, I want to stay away from the media golden boy Apple and Google as long as possible. It’s wonderful to see if the two old man can return and be active again, surprising everyone who only root for the young and hip new kids that knows better to capture everyone’s heart.

There are problems though. Nokia took too long to launch their high end Linux devices in the past and had bad track record in prolonging their installed OS’ lifespan through update (especially in the internet tablet line up). After all, they get money from the hardware.

Microsoft in the other hand, is also very slow in making product and update, still in the long bureaucratic corporate deployment rather than the “want new toy everyday” mentality of internet age. Besides, they have that “US and the rest of the world” mentality that will severely limit the device’s attractiveness outside the main markets.

On the sidenote, I think I better not getting involved in the debate sparked in the forum about why Nokia is looking for trouble by using Microsoft’s product and sidetracked to the Bing vs Google eDrama last week.

I had enough with that simple comment in someone’s Facebook status that mention “mass media hyena” that get me into a serious arguments with someone working in the broadcasting industry when I only want a light full-of-nonsense happy laughy talks.

The markup for Microsoft

From a contemplation in the bus during my commuting back home. Here’s the HTML markup that I think represent Microsoft in the eye of some demography.

<FONT face="Comic Sans MS">Microsoft</FONT>

There’s three components in it.

• Font face tag.
• Comic Sans MS font.
• Microsoft.

I’ll leave the interpretation to the readers.

WM7 via PPC Geeks. Some worries and hopes

PPC Geeks has released a rumour about Windows Mobile 7 in MWC 2010, specifying the details. The post already spreads quickly as everyone is thirsty about any news and the one week wait is becoming unbearable.
Yours truly, is really expecting details about details on update from current devices, which hasn't leaked any more than the Twitter slip-up about HD2.

Some points in the rumour is starting to enrage their users everywhere.

At the Mobile World Congress event on February 15th, 2010, Windows Phone 7 will be unveilved, although at this time plans are only to unveil the user interface of the new platform. Specific indepth functionality of the device will most likely not be shown.

Unfortunately there will be no Flash support at the get go as there was not enough time to implement these features.

Fine with me. If the device functionality is sensors or such hardware features, then I'm fine with showing something consistent around all the devices.

The User Interface is based upon codename “METRO”. It will be very similar to the Zune HD User Interface with a complete revamp of the “Start” screen. The UI is “Very Clean”, “Soulful” and “Alive”

OEM Interfaces will not be allowed to run on the device. Say goodbye to Sense UI / SPB Mobile Shell / Point UI / Infinity, etc, etc

Personally, I'm also cool with the new UI, and even if Microsoft doesn't allow OEM interface out of the box (keeping away advantage like HTC's whose almost define a "PPC experience" to users due to their interface). But, this no OEM interface is better be about Microsoft taking back the OS from OEM and push their own updates.

All these time, "OEM customization" has been Microsoft"s excuse to throw their customers into the mercy of the OEM for OS updates; to the hand of peoples whose main interest is selling more devices even if it has the same specs with OS update only. Of course, like Murphy"s law, if shit could happens, it will happens. Means even after all that they still put us at the mercy of those hardware manufacturers.

But not allowing users to install it later is getting overboard isn't it? Which then goes to the worst part.

Windows Phone 7 will only support application installation through service based delivery. (i.e Marketplace). Application installation via storage card will not be possible.

This is definitely the worst point. "Service based delivery" is a confusing phrase though. Maybe Microsoft would license the protocol to 3^rd parties like HandAndGo. But I'd still like to be able to install from anywhere. Maybe, download from the internet.

Marketplace is for consistency and quality. The wild is for the daring. If just they would give the choice.

But, if the protocol is open… could we wish for more 3^rd party stores. Sa, XDA Developers for example.

No Multi-Task support. Applications will “Pause” when in the background, however will support notifications via push notifications.

Being indifferent about this for now. My worst experience with no multi-tasking is when using Palm OS. That OS also doesn't have multi-tasking and switching between is not that simple. Not to mention some applications doesn't save their state so if I switched to another application to look up on something and return, my previous application would be back to its initial state. If Microsoft could do better, I'd accept this (thus the Marketplace only is the worst thing IMO).

One more week. Lets see how the wait turns out. And September for the earliest batch of the new phones. Happy waiting.