Polishing the turd

It can hardly be said that Microsoft is often early to the game in their developments. Normally they are behind the curve but with the vast resources that allows them not only to play catch-up but often overtake. The incentives for applying these resources usually comes when a competitor achieves a significant success in a market area they had dabbled in but had not concentrated on. Witness the web browser, the web development area, the office suite and even the operating system. Developments in these areas came largely from acquisitions and then concentrated development of the product.

One of these key areas that MS has dabbled with over the years has been with mobile devices and more recently smartphones. However this is starting to become a little embarrassing for them as their flagship Smartphone/PDA OS is pretty much a clunker. Whereas the likes of Apple with their iPhone OS, Google with Android, Nokia with Symbian and now Maemo producing interfaces that are actually usable, the latest incarnation of Windows Mobile 6.5 needs a lot to make inroads. Earlier this year it seemed that the lessons had not been learned at all as the previews of 6.5 showed some efficiency improvements and some added functionality but the same horrific, finger unfriendly interface rolled on. So much so that the leading hardware and software companies compete to produce an interface that disguises the clunker that is the WinMo interface. This is a practice commonly known as polishing the turd.

Possibly in bygone days when not many alternatives existed, this practice would have been understandable even if not forgiveable but to insist on doing it in the face of so much attractive and functional competition borders on insanity! The iPhone is really not a device but an attractive lifestyle toy to browse the App Store. Yes ... the attraction of the iPhone is the apps. Same with Android. The base functionality is all very well but the attraction of customising and adding fun elements with little cost and providing a new level of personal interaction is what pulls people in. So what do MS have to offer? Well so far bugger all. A handful of application stores run by 3rd parties with complete confusion over what can be run on what hardware and what version of the OS. Dependence on the network providers to provide OS updates to the devices sold (most are VERY bad at doing this) and different provider dependencies. A bit of a mess really.

That said, I own a WinMo device. Have done for many years and I have an investment in the software that populates these devices which integrate nicely with my desktop applications on my Windows machines. I have not had much reason to change this because the investment in the applications runs to hundreds of pounds when you add it all up. But now I am looking further afield and contemplating a move because the equivalent applications on the other platforms (Android or Apple) are significantly lower in cost and I don't have to worry about the updating as that will be done for me.

So MS ... here's your challenge. The rivals have all laid out their (app) stores and are now raking it in and the turd you are polishing is losing its lustre. Will you rise to meet this challenge or believe your established user base can wait as long as you can eke out the timescales for the next 'great' version (Windows Mobile 7 I believe)? As a long term user of your product I can tell you that my patience is wearing thin. I am all ready to move away and will not look back. You really don't have long before that particular market is a lock out for you. You have been warned

The peril of 24 hour news

The internet has been responsible for some remarkable advances in our way of life and the immediacy of communication is one of those things that have revolutionised the way we receive news. As we started to expect faster delivery of news the TV channels stepped up creating 24 hour News channels. Now we have access to images and information around the world and news delivered fast.

But this also brings with it a very large down side. There is often not enough news and when it is there it doesn't develop fast enough to fill a schedule.

So what does this mean? Well simply that these news channels have to fill the gaps and the ways that they do this are not necessarily beneficial. One of the methods used is what I call rolling speculation. This is where a news story breaks and only a limited amount of information about the event is available. So of course you want to maintain momentum with a story and you can't really keep repeating the very scant facts afforded to you so what do you do? Take what you know and create scenarios about what could have happened/could be happening. Of course as more details are released this speculation is adjusted. The problem is that this supplemental information is used to modify the expectations of the speculation rather than to supplement available fact. Soon the entire news is based around a channel's speculation rather than what is actually happening.

Another problem is where a story doesn't quite fit the political/corporate stance on the situation. The newsreaders (who in themselves are a problem but we'll come to that) force questions that try to subvert the facts to the position they want to espouse. For instance many of the experts in the e-Coli and petting zoo situation said that closing petting zoos is not necessary but the newsreader questions were always attempting to elicit the response that they SHOULD be closed. This is opinion and not news.

And on to Newsreaders. Yes that was a deliberate capitalisation. Many of the screen pundits seem to think that their presence alone lends weight to the story. That they themselves are the news story rather than the method by which the facts are conveyed. In certain cases such as Kate Adey they became the news simply because they were so good at telling you the news in such a way that their delivery was respected. But they themselves were not the news, just that they were very good in delivering it.

But in this narcissistic self-obsessed world, the 'me' generation obviously require their own self-obsessed purveyors of opinion masquerading as fact and that is what the news has become. Sadly the majority of this is delivered by the state organ, the BBC.