Motorola's marketing and empty promises

As you remember, I wrote about how great my phone was. True, it has great components, it's well designed and the OS isn't crappy either. As such, it's a big improvement over some of my earlier cells, and as such, I'm happy.

I am not, however, completely satisfied.

Backstory first. Motorola is a company that has a history of building one great phone, and then releasing new versions with some cosmetic changes and ignoring R&D till the phone is hopelessly outdated and they're bleeding money. Latest example; Motorola Razr, which even at the start had a bad OS, but sold because it looked sleek. For this and related reasons, Motorola has lost markets during recent years. When I was buying my phone, I heard that no company (either electrics stores or phone operators) imports Motorola's models to Finland because the tech is hopelessly outdated.

Now, enter Milestone. As I said before, the phone is really cool. It runs Google's Android, a fact that defines it. It's marketed (in the States, under the name DROID) as "a phone without compromise". It has keyboard, great components, up-and-coming operating system and you can give yourself root (administrator) access to the phone, even load your own operating system (making sure the phone will never be outdated, and helping writing software for the phone).

I bought my cell only to find that unlike the American version, the bootloader is signed, meaning that you can't do any of your own upgrading. Motorola marketing has gone back on its word that Droid and Milestone are the same model, and shouldn't be expected to be treated the same (even though they share the same components and software). [1]

This wouldn't be much of a hazzle if Motorola could be trusted to update the phone with the latest version of Android as they come out. However, the version 2.1 (the latest version as I write) hasn't been released yet for Milestone, two months after the release. This may have something to do with the fact that not only did Motorola (apparently) divide the coding of the Droid and the Milestone, but EVERY SINGLE REGION OF MILESTONE AS WELL. The European, Canadian, Mexican and and Asian version of the "same phone" actually contain just enough different code that you have to write them separately.

Which leads to questions, when does Motorola upgrade the phone? After promising the upgrade originally in January, they finally published the revised schedule.

"Under evaluation" is marketing talk and means "will not be released". DEXT, CLIQ and DEVOUR are other Motorola's Android models.

Would help if the roms weren't signed. So, Motorola has made their flagship phone - the one developers and bleeding-edgers will buy- into one they can't use. Which gives us hilarious discussions like this one in MotoDev's Facebook-page;



I've started to really hate the American marketing talk, where the company asks you to "wait for announcements" or "follow our twitter-account" etc, while no announcements will be forthcoming. Nearly every message at the Facebook-page is like that; apparently it has been going like that for several months now, and the storm isn't coming down.

However, the PR-person is one to be admired; probably intern or underpaid marketer, with no ability to affect the company policy, she/he tries to make everything look sunny, while the mob is at the door.

This is what happens when Marketing does their own thing without consulting the technicians. There would never have been any problems if they would have from the start told that DROID and Milestone have different standards, instead of pushing for maximum sales while forgetting honestly.

Also understand; my phone is serving me wonderfully currently. No problems. I'm just afraid that if Motorola is cutting support from the second world now, it probably has no qualms for dropping Europe when the sales dry out (probably inside a year). But I'm sure someone has found a way to circumvent the bootloader by then. Here's hoping.

Replacing Ipod Touch

Few weeks ago I was careless and put my Ipod Touch (Gen 1) into the washing machine. It's now really clean. Also - really dead.

My Ipod Touch - sleeping with the fishes.

Well, things could be worse. My insurance paid most of the money back (they were surprisingly generous), so I'm not weeping myself to death. This does leave me with a problem - how should I replace the machine? Please understand; Touch wasn't just mp3-player for me (as such, it might even have been inferior to the Gen 5 Ipod Video I had ordered in 2006). However, the machine had several redeeming qualities. First and foremost, a big screen that was suitable browsing the Internet with WLAN, watching Youtube and pre-downloaded video-files while on a train. It was also shockingly thin, and as such, I loved it.

I however didn't have much love for the way Apple ran the game behind the curtains. Mainly, that I couldn't install programs freely, but had to use the App Store. Sure, you could jailbreak it (and I frequently did ), but the hazzle to keep the thing both up-to-date AND usable was getting on my nerves.

But, that's all water under the bridge. My point, however, is that I'm not running to buy a new Touch (Gen 2), no matter how much I loved the previous version. This brings me back to the stated question; how to replace it? I could get a mp3-player fairly cheap, but the thing I find I'm mostly missing about is the ability to look up facts on the go (and amuse myself with videos, ebooks etc.).

My phone is also getting up there with the years, and I was thinking that maybe I would do a coup and buy a new machine that takes care of both of the problems at one go. The thing is, I dream of a device with;

• a long battery life
• thin (easy to pocket)
  
• big screen for internet browsing and video
• mp3-player
• hazzle-free
• easy to use
• maybe QWERTY
  
• compatibility with Mac and Linux
  

You don't really have to be a technology-adept to see that the thing I'm descripting is actually two phones. Of course, there's available multiSIM-service from several operators, but let's save this option for later, and not only because it would cost me about 4 euros more per month.

About some of the phones I've been considering;

The pinnacle of human civilization.

The Iphone. Yes, I'm a hypocrite. But as it is the standard for the moment, I suppose I have to consider this before I can objectively look at the rest of the alternatives. Otherwise, the whole post would be just a knee-jerk reaction of "I don't want to be like everybody else! And in any case, this phone doesn't do [something I will never use]!"

So, I hear the battery life is getting better. There's a new model coming in few months, and it might actually be something to see; however, I feel that as a phone, it has been really standing still ever since it came out in 2007. Sure, back then it had a big headstart to every other phone out there, but the competition has been gaining, and Apple has been essentially standing still. After everything is said and done, however, it's a solid phone. It synchs with a Mac and should be "hazzle-free".

And it has all the same problems that the Touch had; I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with this alternative. And that's to forget the two year contract I would have to sign (this being the only contract-only phone in Finland).

+I know how this works.
+Compatibility with Macs (if not Linux)
-The two year contract
-No QWERTY
-I would feel like I'd be buying a three-year old phone
-The amount of features isn't really dazzling.

Three options for easier colour-coordination.

The N97 Mini. It has the QWERTY-keyboard and I love how it slightly pops up when in use. And the phone comes with a year's contract of "Comes With Music". It's being marketed as "Buy a Nokia Comes With Music handset and get millions of tracks for free, yours to keep". The thing is, the tracks are in WMA and tied to only one Windows-computer. And I don't own a Windows-operated computer. And of course; keep till I switch the computer or the authorization server goes offline.

Plus this is Symbian-operated phone. Symbian is solid enough, I suppose, but if Iphone is 2007, this is 1995. And I've never really liked it, though I understand it has been getting better lately. So this is a bit knee-jerk reaction, I suppose. I also hear that the processor isn't quite up there.

+QWERTY
+the music
-symbian
-the processor
-compatibility

The thing is more powerful than some home computers.

Nokia N900. Well, this is hard to look at objectively. It's the heir to the Nokia's Internet Tablet-line, and as such isn't really a phone-that-can-get-to-internet as it is an Internet-Tablet-that-allows-you-to-phone. Nokia has also been very frank that this isn't for the average user; that it doesn't quite get there as a phone. It has about every technology they could try to fit into a handheld device, such as an infrared-port (last seen in a phone around 2004). In short; it's a high-tech Swiss army knife. One of the more expensive ones, with fifty functions. And that's why it's 6 mm thicker than Iphone and 50 grams heavier (181 g as opposed to 133). But you can do almost anything with it.

And it runs Maemo 5 Linux. So, compatibility should be excellent.

All this is to say, of course, that the battery life is threatful. One reviewer wrote that with nightly charging, you can make it through a day (all that pretty tech consumes a lot of energy). Not to mention, that Internet Tablets aren't actually meant to be on 24/7, unlike phones.

+has everything and the kitchen-sink
+compatibility!
+Maemo is future
-battery
-thickness

Even as a clamp, the phone is thinner than some of my pens.

Nokia 6600 Fold. Well, the screen is about fourth of the size N900 has, there's no QWERTY and the compatibility is reduced to moving the microSD card to computer and back. But it's small, the operating system (S40) works well and battery should last well over a week. And it has an mp3-player (and FM-tuner). Design-wise it's the best of the lot. Can connect to 'Net, but the experience should be rather modest.

On a plus, this one is so cheap, that I can afford to buy a netbook to go with it. Or buy a new Touch.

+battery
+size
+solid operating system
-Internet-experience nothing to write home about.


Well, let us see how the wind blows. The engineers promised a new and improved version of N900 even before the original model was out (showing once again how Nokia is ran) and Iphone should be updated before Summer is here. And even if updates are coming, should I lock my answer now and then faithfully expect for the new generation to fix the problems of the current one?

A fast comment on piracy

Lately several people have mentioned that the failing music industry/artists should get slice of the monthly fee of Internet subscription, in a similar way that the industry gets money from empty VHS- and C-tapes and CD- and DVD-ROMs.
I had some troubles with this - particularly with the last one - I know I downloaded lots of questionable material on CD's back on the day, but today most CD-R's and DVD-R's of mine are full of photos, game-saves and other things I wouldn't hesitate to show to police. Mostly because the actual questionable material can safely be stored on hard drives and deleted after use. And then downloaded again, if need be.

Yeah, I'm not really making much of a case against, now aren't I? Well, this is the punchline;

When people talk of Internet, piracy and monthly compensation, how do we divide the money between the right parties? I mean, the number one legal way of using Internet is to browse web pages - why don't they get a share? What about porn? I have a feeling that porn is at least as big part of the traffic as Hollywood-movies or music from the big cartels.

Instead of trying to keep their stuff illegal, they could try to develop ways to get money out of Internet legally - for the U2 manager even iTunes was piracy against artist*. Radio seems to have worked well for the industry for decades. Over the past ten years, the music industry has done everything it could to shoot net radios down with fees that far outweight their income.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to subscrition system (I would be happy to get the whole copyright question sorted out, so we could concentrate on some real questions) - I just think that paying one group of people who claim their property is shared illegally isn't very good while people who provide their stuff for free on Internet get nothing - nor does game, film, porn or software industry. In the worst case scenario, each of them will be knocking at the door for their own $5. And in the best case scenario -- well, that's just fucking lazy, innit? If I were to forget a keg of beer at busy junction and then notice it empty afterward, I can't really ask the police to take $5 from every person in the neighbourhood who has alcohol on his breath. Or everyone else (he might have just hidden it for later consumption!).

Advertisements work as a model for webpages, for flash, blogs, even amateurish doodles - the Swedish procecutor is claiming that the owners of Piracy Bay are raking millions (YouTube certainly does) and Last.fm is doing fairly well as far as I know.

And the music industry is saying that they, armed with the best artists in the world can't do as well as a 14 year old kid with a pen and a scanner?

And if not advertisements, then maybe subscription -capitalistically chosen between competing alternatives, mind you... or just a dollar per song. I understand it's working very well. 2007 was -again- a record year for digital music transactions.

*and I bet he doesn't mean the fact that the artist gets 5 cents of the dollar, because the rest goes to printing and spreading the CDs. And of course manager will take his 20% out of that 5 cents as well. Plus taxes.

References; U2 manager blames Microsoft et al, Canadian songwriters propose legal music sharing, Music-industry tries carrot after years of stick, Internet radio may face crippling fees, Digital sales up worldwide.

Maps of Europe

Here's a link to several maps of Europe. It's coloured accoarding to interesting tidbits of information, such as the hair colour, eye colour, legal drinking age or when it's legal to have abortion.

Tells something about the differences between the European states.

Harry Potter Part II

The relationship between parents and the children in the books. In case you have not read the books, short description of my current topic should be in order. Harry and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger all go to the boarding school of Hogswarts, where the students start at the age of 11 and which consists of seven year-classes.
Trough the books the children and parents both show very little parental interest in their kids - and the kids, in turn, don't seem to need any.

If I understood correctly, the summer vacation from Hogswarts is six weeks, and the winter vacation is about two weeks, I suppose. Outside these vacations, the parents don't see their children. Also, it is possible to spend the Christmas vacation at school.

While Harry is an orphan and his adoptive parents are horrible, Hermione and Ron both come from loving families. Hermione is the only child of muggle-couple (eg. they cant do magic) and Ron is one of the six children of old wizard-family. In all the six books, Hermione's parents dont speak even once. As far as I remember, they were spotted once, from afar, but they never talked. From Hermione's dialogue, however, it can be seen that she dosen't resent her parents, and probaply loves them. Ron's parents are shown in much more detail. Harry and Hermione both spend days if not weeks at Ron's parents at a time. The mother is shown to be perfectly lovable house-wife, who washes the dishes, clothes and even knits by hand sweaters to all members of the family (and Harry and Hermione).

In the end of the first book and the beginning of the second book, it is told that Ron's younger sister Ginny would be starting at Hogswarts. She has - so we are told - expected it for years. The mother is sending her to the school happily, and both she and Ginny see this as the way things should be. She does not cry, nor is she missing her mother. Indeed, during winter vacations both Ginny, Ron and Hermione decide to stay at school to keep Harry company. Year after year.

The parents see their children up to six weeks a year. Less, some years, as Hermione stays with Ron's, to be with her best friends.

And parents think this ok. Not once during all the six books, do the children imply that they miss their parents, or parents miss their children.

The only expection is Harry himself, who is an orphan. His feelings toward his real parents are expressed several times during the books. He misses them. And in the later books, he wants to be like his dad. He is very angry of the way how his parents died when he was only a year old, and seeks openly revange against their killer (Lord Voldemort). It is very suprising, that all the rest children in the books don't have any feelings towards their parents. The only one who is expressing love is Ron's Mother, who in the fifth book is weeping for her loved ones, of whose life she is scared for. However, after a while, she recovers and sends her children once again to Hogswarts.

While I was wondering this, I tried to look up info about boarding schools. What sort of parent - in real life - sends hir child, who isin't yet even on hir teens, to place that means you will ever be able to see him/her few weeks every year? Isin't that cruel? And what does all that do to the psychological development of the child?
I tried to google some studies, but it didn't give me any results, only pages that wanted me to send my child to a boarding school.

Harry Potter Part I

I just finished reading the Harry Potter-series. I have known of the series since about 2001. However, I had not seen fit to read any of the books, mostly because I found the descriptions of the series dissapointing and the fans of the series annoying.

I once browsed thru book one, but didn't much think of it. Two weeks ago I loaned the first book from library again (I was really bored and I have mostly read everything else worthy there), so I thought to give it a try. The first one went down pretty badly. I didn't find it that interesting. Second was slightly better, and starting from book three I read the rest inside a day or two per book (the last book went in a day).

Anyway, now that I have finally educated myself in this phenomeon, you would be wise to expect that I will be writting several posts about the subject. That is why there is "Part I" in the topic.

Things I thought to bring up are:
1. The relationship between parents and children in the books
2. The concept of magic and "muggles" in the series.
3. How the concept of these stories relates to other stories in this and other genres.
4. Some problems I have with these series, particulary the target audience.

I do not yet know which of these concepts I will actually be talking about, it may be that I drop some of the topics in the list, and talk of other things entirely. There might even not be "Harry Potter Part II".

Anyway. I have noticed in myself that, when reading long stories on one go, I really start to live the stories. And when I close the last book, I start to feel very small and unimportant. It may be that I live thru much trough the stories, and my mundane life, that goes between school and computer (and friends during weekends) is not that interesting.

Stories that have previously caused myself such immersion could start with the David Eddings' Belgariad and its sequel Mallorean. I reread them last summer and noticed that they haven't really stood the test of time, but at the time (when I was 13) they were really great.
It was the first story I read that wasn't based just on adventure (Tarzan, Zorro, Blyton-books) or on story on epic levels (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings), but had some romance- and soap opera there too, if I may say it so bluntly. I may have talked of this previously in this blog. Since then I have felt so very strongly when I first read Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku, Uncanny X-Men's "classic" stories (from #80's up to #250 or so), saw the 90s Superman-series (I watched the first three seasons nonstop) and a read Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth-series (before the very dissapointing last books).

Anyway, should I have any readers, I would ask you to recommend some similar stories for me to sample. Longish, with development between and with the characters.

Recomendatons on Blogsphere

Just Like That. Jokes and amusing pictures. If you are bored, this is a good way to spend your time. The jokes didnt even seem to be of the boring variety, these were inventive, and not so many times used you can see the light coming thru.


...


I actually browsed for two hours, and only found this one. Hope you enjoy it, though.

EDIT: Found the kippledrome too. Looks something like my own blog, I think, with interests that are not really mine, but cool nonetheless. I think he has some belief in aliens and finds pictures of yesterday fascinating (me too of course).

EDIT2: AMERICA the Blog. Has all those newspieces from America that are so much fun to rant to your friends. No "this happens everyweek" stuff here, but all that stuff that makes America-bashing so much fun.

Will probaply add these links to the right later on.

Still about Flags

I have been hitting that NEXT BLOG button again. Now most of the blogs that came out were actually people who put thought in what came out. No more printer-adds or whatever. Still, most of the blogs were pretty uninteresting, but that could be expected.

Vast improvement.

About Walking the Blogosphere

I thought would be amusing to do some more "next blog" surfing. This time, instead of telling you of the blogs, I will LINK you to them, with description of what you can see behind the link. Hopefully exambles I give you will be amusing, useful or interesting. Alas, I think most will be in the category 'disgrace'. Maybe you thought I was joking last time, eh? HAHA! You wish!

Links will open on new page, so you can click freely. Comment if you would prefer, in future, to see them open in the same window. Anyway, I hope to get to ten, and report you every blog I click. If I go nuts, please tell my family I really loved them, and ask them to formate my hd's without going them thru. Very well. Lets start.

Blog 01. - Office. This blog is inane post after inane post about - apparently - office machines. The words seem to be random words that you can usually see in adds on papers. Each topic is infact a link to copy-central.com - and as far as I can see, the suburl they link to dosen't exist.

Blog 02. - Infinitely Curious: Musings & Ponderings. This blog belongs to webring of "WomenBloggers". Seems to work as diary, with now-and-then amusing tracks into other territory too. Found this picture on the page. Dunno where it is taken from, but it is most amusing, and easily worth your time.

Blog 03. - Awassa. This blog only has one post, written in english, broken by internet slang and bad sense of grammar. Dated in second day of March. The message ends "cheers till next time".

Blog 04. - WE ARE THE INCREDIBLES !!!. Apparently some sort of community blog, with users belonging to University of Signapore. In english, though you can hardly tell from the spelling in that page. And some - you know who you are - insist that MY writing is horrible.

Blog 05. - 5 sia chabohz. Apparently five teenager girls. Lets see if I can mimic their writing skills..............no commas or other stuff is uses..haha....particualyr ncie how they tlk of yaoi and manga and smut...lol.... actually respect fr them... my head hrts even this much writing......lol... and they cn do it page after pages..... and its actualy readable... LOL.....NEXT NEXT NEXT!!!!!!!!!!

Blog 06. - Auto Parts For All Makes And Models. Each post has the same link, and the same text; "Go Home Auto Parts Newsletter Archives Auto Parts Links Advertise on this site Add URL & A Auto PartsA & A Auto PartsA&a Auto PartsAbc Auto PartsAccord Auto PartsAce Auto PartsAcura Auto PartsAdvance Auto PartsAdvance Auto Parts ComAdvance Discount Auto PartsAdvanced Auto PartsAdvanced Discount Auto PartsAfter Market Auto PartsAftermarket Auto Body PartsAll Oem Auto PartsAltima Auto PartsAmerican Auto PartsAnd Auto PartsAntique Auto PartsAu..". Also Google-adds. Freaky.

Blog 07. - Gardening Info Source. Im actually pretty interested of this. Taking the blog name into account, its amusing that each of the posts this month - and there must be hundreds -have only url in them. Im not kidding. I also fastly scrolled the messages thru. They all have one of two url's in them. First "Hot-Gardening.info" and then - for most messages - "Laptop4U.info". Great.

Blog 08. - Some Thoughts About Corn. Honestly, I was starting to lose my hope to get to "Blog 10". This is just so depressing. But this one - if not a golden, is at least good. Not about anything, its still full of life. I would do blog like this, if I just could. But I cant. Cos I suck. OK, next blog. Maybe its good too (but I doubt it).

Blog 09. - Asset Managment Info. I knew it. I KNEW it. This sucks. Pretty much like Auto-Parts above. Oh well, one to go...

Blog 10. - merdümgirlz. This blog is actualy empty, with lacking even one message.



Oki, that was it, and Im still pretty sane. Conclusion: I did ten blogs. Wow im good...