New Media Reflections

I read an article in ADWEEK about Microsoft’s announcement of a new smart phone that is intended to replace Blackberry and iPhones. This is an ambitious attempt by Microsoft, and an outrageous claim. They proclaim there should be: “One phone for work and play.” Actually, I like the idea of this. Why should I use an iPhone for social contacts and entertainment, and then pick up a Blackberry to handle my work tasks? It seems that the holy grail of media, the Black Box, the one device that will run all things electronic for us, is still the quest that directs new technology.

Unfortunately, although I have nothing against Microsoft per say, these are the people who spent years developing Vista and cast that upon us as a fantastic new operating system. I hope they can do better with this device. I don’t think they actually have a chance, but I applaud them for at least identifying what is probably the next integration of mobile devices. Most likely Apple and RIM are already looking at this type of integration. One advantage that Microsoft does have though is that their new phone will run MS Office apps. That should be a good counter to the competition. Who knows, they may be first in with an integrated purpose phone and do well with it.

I notice from the picture that there seems to be an included keypad. I like that concept instead of trying to use a primarily numeric keypad. Unfortunately, neither is designed to be functional for those with “over 50 eyesight” meaning we can’t see those tiny numbers and letters without resorting to magnifiers and such. I know this has some effect on why I don’t text message from my phone. I think a nice addition to these devices would be one of those portable fold-up, flexible keyboards. Then I could actually use one of these.

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