Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

This is where we call out the tech moves that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity. 

This close to the holidays, everyone is hoping what is bolted down to the table withstands the storm.  (No, not that Storm).  Here is what caught my eye this week:

AT&T Marketing text messages

What are these guys thinking?  Texts are the “hey baby” of the new era, the “come hither,” the “I am at 34th and 8th freezing my A$$ off, where r u?”  AT&T, this isn’t your playground to send me marketing messages like:

“AT&T Free Msg: Need ideas for a great holiday gift?  AT&T can help.  Add a line to your already discounted plan.  Visit an AT&T store or call 800-423-2851.  Reply stop to end mktg msg.”

This is offensive; one, because you made me drop everything for that lame advert?  And two, because you think putting AT&T Free Msg in front makes it ok?  Save the spam for email. 

Oh, and thanks for the idea of putting “AT&T Free Msg:” into all my text messages to give your store employees hell with when I refuse to pay.  But it says free, just like the others…  Crack heads.

Akon and Sandisk. 

Still going with this despite my admonishment back in September?  Fine, freaks.  They just announced you can buy Akon’s new masterpiece digitally, on CD or on an Slotmusic card.  The Slotmusic card will feature images, music video and a documentary on the man’s life.  But Akon thinks it is more than just that:

“To me, slotMusic is the return of the album in all its glory, but updated for today’s mobile world.” - Akon

Is that so?  The return of the album?  Hmmm, let’s see: forcing me to buy stuff I don’t need, like track #4 where you thought it was a good idea to just let the drum machine go for a bit…  yeah, you are right, that sounds a lot like the return of the album.  It too will fail.  (note: I’ve not actually listened to Akon’s new album track #4, but I still think this is a safe bet)

BlackBerry Storm

RIM, assuming you were not duplicitous in the leaks, I am going to let you off the hook.  I don’t think the storm around the Storm is really your fault.  You built a neat phone.  You built a phone some will love.  Unfortunately, thanks to leaks, the expectations of this phone were so high.  Almost all the reviewers gave it an “OK, but I’d rather have something else” review.  Isn’t that the “its not you, its me” excuse?  “I just need some space with my iPhone to figure things out.” 

You want to create a real storm?  Drop the Flip price another $50.

Apple hate touch owners

Apple, really?  This is the love you show us?  I spend the inordinate about of time updating my OS to 2.2 this morning only to find 2 major issues for me: no frickin’ street view and still un-iPhone-optimized search results by using the search box in Sarari?  Come on!

Street view ought to be an easy thing.  GPS isn’t required for this function so what is the deal?  Touch owners want this function and not including us in the fun just seems mean.

The search results thing seems like an easy one, but I am no programmer.  I can tell you, as a user, I love the Google search results optimized for the iPhone screen.  No scrolling around, the time-saving suggestions as you type, I love it all.  What I don’t love is hitting my google.com bookmark every time I want to head there.  Having the search bar not take advantage of this just seems lazy.  Or maybe I am the one who’s lazy.  Whomever it is, it ought to be fixed. 

Touch on a laptop

What do you get when you take two Gadgetell guys and two demos of HPs new tablet/PC?  Mixed results.  Our editor Iyaz was at HP’s launch earlier this week and was wowed.  Last night, I got a demo of the new unit and everything went wrong.  Tough to get it in touch mode, tough to select things, back to a stylus.  While I can give out huge kudos to HP for realizing that touch can’t just be an alternative input method, it has to be functional UI changes like they did on the big awesome-looking all-in-one desktop/tuner, I can’t help feel that they missed the mark.

I ended up leaving the demo feeling that HP had realized we (you and I) really don’t know what we want from a touchscreen on a laptop.  Do we really want to multi-touch photos?  Do we really want to just rotate them in 90 degree intervals?  Is it only for pictures?  HP’s software chops are impressive, very impressive.  But, this new laptop just seems crack-o-licious.  I can almost hear someone hollering, “I don’t care if consumers don’t want it or use it, just build it.”

I expect Iyaz to tell me how wrong I am on this and that’s cool.  He really like the option to close windows just by touching the screen vs. using a trackpad to finally get to the upper right corner.  That just seems like a lame use for it, like buying a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California to keep in a garage.  Just saying.

And I haven’t even touched on Black Friday shenanigans.  What did you see this week?  Let us know what I missed in the comments.

A special word of thanks to Exec. editors Adam and Doug for sharing their personal peeves with me this week.