Full FeedWho’s on Crack in Tech: 07.31.09
Whoa! This week was filled with enough hints the tech world has given up on sobriety altogether. This week saw far too much insanity for one column, so here are my favorites:
- David Pogue hates voicemail
- Palm Pre ads hurting sales?
- Google Voice gets everyone riled up
- NuviPhone finally where?
Voicemail is killing David Pogue.
Distinguished New York Times writer David woke up one sunny July morning, stumbled downstairs for some coffee and looked out over his backyard thinking, “Who can I pick a fight with?” The answer that returned to him was “Voicemail.” David is picking a fight with the 15 seconds canned carrier instructions on how you should wait for the beep. Easy, boy.
The reasons behind David’s charge at windmills is two fold: crazy and sane. The crazy and here, I’ll just quote David, “Good heavens: it’s 2009. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO AT THE BEEP.”
I am not so sure. Heck, my grandparents still don’t leave me voicemail with these instructions. I am not sure what would happen if the instructions went away - they’d just start speaking at some random point?
The sane part is “we’re PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up–bigtime. If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year.” Rather insane right? That is a big chunk of change for being told.
David’s rail against the carriers hasn’t gotten too far yet. Most carriers are referring them to the complaint department where he’ll go shoulder to shoulder with the women from the down the street who claims the cell phone tower is spying on her. You might think his street cred would lift him above the common nutjob, but no.
Palm Pre gets all feminine product-like
“Does it know you’re crazy? Of course, it does, sir.” Um. Yeah. If your nationally aired commercial references this line, perhaps you should call in another agency. This pasty-gal gives me the willies and could probably sell me some feminine hygiene products. The biggest question is who let her out of the asylum long enough to hit up a Sprint store (or was it a Best Buy for $99 - whoops!).
Quick comparison:
iPhone: Apps, Apps and more Apps. Look at all these freaking apps!
BlackBerry: All this stuff lives in your phone.
Samsung Instinct: We mop the floor with the iPhone.
Palm Pre: I need professional help and my phone knows it.
Palm keeps surprising me. Just when I think they’re going to turn the corner (Pre headed to Verizon in early ‘10, AT&T too?), they push a spokesperson that appears to be off of her meds.
Apple steps in brouhaha over Google Voice
We all know the walled garden Apple operates for the iPhone is bizarre at best. For those of us with non-jailbroken iPhones, we take that on faith. However, when Google gets turned down for its Voice application (and all other third party Google Voice apps), something changed inside a bunch of us. We are pissed.
There can’t be that many Google Voice users yet, right? Is it Google Voice represents some freedom from carrier tyranny? AT&T really doesn’t have that much to lose on this, do they? Does Apple? So why the blackball? AT&T says to look to the Apple and of course, Apple is saying nothing.
The lost opportunity? Palm Pre. Imagine in the thick of this, Palm raises their hand and shouts, “Hey, we’ve got an app for that.” It would be a viral marketing coup, a “wow” moment, a real chance to show how things are going to be different with Palm. No, they just keep giving us pasty-crazy-lady.
We do, however, get a third party Palm Pre app for Google Voice with zero marketing support from Palm or Sprint. Robert Nelson gives us the deets: “As of now, there has not been any mention as to when we can expect a final App Catalog version which means that in the meantime, this will have be downloaded and installed using the .ipk file. Still, at least the Pre has a Google Voice option available.”
Palm, come on. Here is a golden opportunity to shine your light on something that slaps Apple in the chops, and a whole lot of bloggers willing to help.
Nuviphone finally here - as long as “here” is somewhere in Taiwan.
Rats! Clever, Garmin. After they started to build a GPS phone, got help from Asus, and then announced they’d launch, who would have guessed it would hit up Taiwan first? Taipei is a swinging place (try the snakeblood) but they get Nuviphone first? The US/Europe version won’t be here until sometime in the second half of 2009. What gives?
As each day sees GPS navigation applications hit up the big phones, the Nuviphone becomes less unique. TeleNav’s got some nifty fleet tracking options for businesses so what is going to sell the Garmin entry? What was once unique and exciting has quickly become outmoded and outdated. If only we could roll the clock back and get the Nuviphone out there when no touchscreen phones had GPS navigation. What once had press and analysts cheering now is met with a shrug and a smirk. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, “(tech) moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and take a look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
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Good article and very nice comments.
on August 3, 2009 at 01:40 AM - LINK