November 22, 2006
a new version of mothership’s venerable voice command software for windows mobile devices has finally been released!
don’t feel bad if you didn’t know about the voice command update.
your homework for tonight is to find any significant mention of voice command 1.6 on mothership’s website.
sure, it appears in a lifecycle index of current products.
how about anything other than that?
bueller?
seriously, i’m starting to think that mothership’s strategy of non-release releases might be the hot new trend out of redmond. nice to know they’re at the forefront of something for a change.
regardless of its status as a red-headed stepchild or not…
the changes in 1.6 are relatively small…
which means that at least its incremental numbering bump from 1.5 was properly focus-grouped…
but those changes may admittedly be significant for certain folks.
for starters, this release officially supports smartphones.
also, it fixes an annoying issue with bluetooth headsets that basically makes them unusable for…well, voice commanding cingular phones.
and there has been some feedback here & there that 1.6 does not cause as much instability…altho that may perhaps be a simple placebo effect.
unfortunately, this release still has the primary weakness of its predecessor, which is…
voice command is an unbelievably obnoxious ram hog, made doubly worse by the fact that voice command must be installed in the non-expandable-&-therefore-more-precious-than-a-solid-gold-baby system memory.
also, the upgrade costs 10 buckaroos…kinda. i’ll explain that kinda part in a minute.
now when you consider that voice command is $39.99 by itself…
steep for a mobile app, relatively speaking…
yours truly isn’t so sure what amounts to little more than bug fixes is worth parting with yet another alexander hamilton.
but hey…that hasn’t stopped folks from paying for every “new” desktop os release for the last 12 years, right? which are, when you get right down to it…mostly bug fixes.
however…here’s that kinda part…
to add insult to injury…
even if you absolutely need/want/lust for this 1.6 update…
it can only be found at handango.
and that upgrade price of 10 smackers?
looks to be valid only if you originally bought voice command from handango.
if not…you’ll need to cough up 40 bills for it!
yep…color me pissed about that, kiddos.
honestly tho…
all this is par for the course…
yet again mothership pays an amazing lack of attention to a small add-on that causes insta-sell.
whenever this happyfunboy demos windows mobile with voice command to prospects…
we’re talking folks who are…
- lawyers
- doctors
- executives
- sales folks
- real estate agents
basically anyone & everyone that mothership craves as a mobile customer…
voice command absolutely OBLITERATES the fruit-flavored competition.
and that’s because…without a doubt…
windows mobile with voice command owns!
or at least the concept of it does.
the execution?
maybe 70% solid.
but that’s nothing new for ms in mobile devices. the sheer brilliance has been staggering at times.
hands-up if you:
- lost data on a previous windows mobile device when you ran out of power
- had your calendar mangled by activesync
- remember the stellar timing of the msfp rollout
don’t even get me started again on remote device wipe.
still…
if you have never tried voice command, it’s worth trying to dig up a 15 day demo of version 1.5 somewhere.
once you gain the ability to dial hands-free without training or recording custom voice tags, plus intelligent prompting…
you’ll be ready to shell out for voice command, even with the warts.
|| posted by chris under funlab, mobility, thumbs down || comments (3) ||
||
November 18, 2006
today’s the big day, kiddos
the cow college is here in town & the big showdown happens later today.
obviously, the crimson tide has to be considered the underdogs this year.
but if there’s one thing i’ve learned since moving here 15+ years ago…
when it comes to the iron bowl…
toss the win-loss records out the window…
because the only thing that matters is what happens on that field today.
been listenin’ to sweet home alabama all morning long.
yeah, it’s that kind of day today.
turn it up…
|| posted by chris under more cowbell, thumbs up || comments (0) ||
||
November 18, 2006
dunno how i missed this originally…
cuz yours truly would have been using the h-e-double-hockey-stick out of this one for the last month & a week had he known whilst making all manner of toll calls hither & yon.
seems those crazy kids over at go skype city are offering free skypeout calls to the u. to the s. & canada gratis for the rest of 2006.
what that means…
using skype, you can call any phone number in the u.s. & canada…
landline, cell, what-have-you…
for the low low price of…
exactly zero dollars & zero zero cents
so live it up people!
download the latest build of version 2.5, plug in your fav-o-rite headset & yap yap yap the night away!
|| posted by chris under freebie || comments (0) ||
||
November 14, 2006
basically, mothership told best buy to suck it today.
sorry for the language folks, but there is no other way to put it.
in case you haven’t heard, the earnest folks over at compusa have teamed up with mothership to offer a program called small business value, which will grant access to shipping vista code as early as november 30.
getting down to brass tacks…
this small business value program is a volume licensing program with a minimum 5 seat buy-in. absolutely nothing new about that.
and mothership has said for a little while now that volume license customers would have vista in their hot little download queues at the end of november.
now, how long it will actually take to download once the expected onslaught starts is anyone’s guess.
so…really nothing newsworthy about this then, right?
wrong.
by partnering with compusa, mothership gave a nice big one-fingered salute to the white or blue shirt folks who work for the big yellow tag.
about 6 months ago, such a move wouldn’t have been such a big deal.
but best buy has made great waves about their initiative/push/steamroll into the small business space.
to the point that some folks have been sounding the death knell of the the small consulting shop ever since.
here’s a newsflash:
consulting shops, large & small, go out of business all the time. and sometimes for little more than the owner/lead tech/executive trashcan emptier was in a bad mood because the convenience store was out of his favorite brand of fruit pie when he stopped on his way to the office that morning.
however, all of best buy’s previous talk obviously means bupkis to the boys & girls in redmond, if this move is any evidence.
in one fell swoop, compusa becomes the spot for early adopter businesses, while best buy looks like an also-ran, sitting on the sidelines.
heck, i’m half-expecting to see a homebrew recreation of the rumble scene from west side story pitting the cusas against the bbs posted to youtube later tonight.
all i can say is…
welcome to the funcave, best buy.
|| posted by chris under biz, opinion || comments (0) ||
||
November 14, 2006
one of the truly exciting, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat releases from the mothership just dropped today…
windows powershell 1.0 for windows xp sp2 & server 2003
if you haven’t seen powershell in action yet…
as in maybe you took a massive blow to the head over a year ago & just regained consciousness in the last few days…
it’s way past time to get your powershell learn on!
expect to see powershell underpinnings in every application, utility & management tool of any significance for the windows platform going forward.
not surprisingly, mothership’s download transmogrifiers are getting slammed, so if you get this message for any of the versions…
just keep refreshing until you get the respective download page.
|| posted by chris under freebie, it pro, mothership, thumbs up || comments (0) ||
||
