NaughtySpawn

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

It’s 5am and we’re gathered here today to release a major update and make a whole slew of changes. Of course, things would go a lot better if we had power at our data center. I mean seriously, what the hell kind of data warehouse/ISP loses power? Where is the generator the size of Yugoslavia, that burns on kerosene and bellows thick black smoke into the air that will keep your servers running for days on end?

So we lost power at the data center, got corrupted data, fixed the corrupted data, lost power again, apparently got a Russian surplus generator from the Czech Republic and turned everything back on. By that time the sun was coming up and the launch was scrubbed.

Oh well, sometimes you launch a rocket into space and land on the moon. Sometimes your booster rockets go haywire and burn up on the launch pad. At the least the drive in to work was easy. But seriously, who the hell are these other people are where are they going at 4:30 in the morning?

Just saw another article where Microsoft is firmly stating that hard-core gamers are just going to eat this device up. In the same breath they’re also saying it’s for the younger/older/female/family audience. Whoa? Who the hell is this thing for?

Isn’t this marketing scheme the exact same thing that killed the Kin? Microsoft claimed that device was for everyone and then it bombed within weeks (days really) of being launched. MS seems to have the same mentality about this thing. How can it possibly appeal to hard-core gamers, a 7 year old and grandma at the same time? That’s just stupid!

If Microsoft doesn’t actually define and target an audience (with a slew of spectacular games) then this product will follow in the footsteps of the Kin. Hell, it shares half it’s name already…

Is it good or bad that Microsoft is paying devs and offering incentives for them to write apps for the Phone Series 7? It seems funny that Microsoft has to all but bribe people to write for their platform, but at the same time, it does show they’re at least thinking ahead and need more than 400 apps to sway people from the behemoth that is the Apple App Store.

Microsoft better turn up the wick, Apple and Google are getting a thousand new apps a day while they’re still struggling to get a thousand apps total.

So who out there is getting a Windows Phone Series 7 unit? Anyone ditching their Apple iPhone for one? Did this latest Apple snafu strengthen the case to switch to another platform or was it insignificant?

And now I see that Microsoft plans to hand a Windows Phone Series 7 device (they *have* to shorten that name!) to everyone in the company. This is part of their "word of mouth" advertising. If nothing else, if they give one to every employee they can always say the number of units shipped was better than the Kin… (Or was it the Kon?)