Is There Room for an IM only Device ?

tealover writes "MSNBC Has an article about a new device from Motorola that they're marketing that just does IM. It' called IMFree. Kind of a combination of a cordless phone and pager; There is a base station that plugs into a USB port in your computer, so it's only portable in relation to the base station. Sounds and looks like the kids would like this."

Comments

Re:Text incase of Slashdotting

[12ahead]

Yip, MSNBC does tend to get slashdotted quite regularly...

/. Effect on MSNBC?

[birdman666]

As much as you guys hate MS, you post a story on linking to MSNBC at 1am (PST), a time that probably draws the least amount of traffic to and from this site. Come guys, we may have been able to /. MS's servers if you had posted this at, say, noon. How much fun would that have been, eh?

big

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

Anyone else look at it and think it was a Lable Maker?

Re:SMS ?

[Kurt Russell]

The situation has gone so far that studies have shown teens to use their thumbs for stuff that the previous generation would have used the index finger for.

Girls too?

IMFree: *Bad* choice of name...

[CompVisGuy]

Companies spend millions choosing names for their products so that they can be used internationally without causing offence or laughter (see below*). But I think that the name IMFree will be mocked for a different reason.

IMFree reads like "I'm free", which just happens to be the catchphrase of a character in a British sitcom from the '70s called 'Are you being served?'. The character, played by John Inman, was extremely camp (1970s British shorthand for gay).

Even today, you occasionally hear people calling out "I'm free" in an Inman-ish voice. I think calling the device IMFree is just asking to be ridiculed. That said, Motorola might be able to use John Inman in their adverts or something...

* For example, many years ago in Spain I saw a billboard advertising a carbonated drink called "Pizz" or something similar.

Is it me, or...

[Shoten]

Does this seem like the same thing AOL did with that particular version of the Blackberry, only less useful?

And also...it is just me or does the picture of the columnist make him look like a guy who drives a pickup with a (heavily stocked) gun rack?

Getting Closer...

[moehoward]

Where is the Porn-Only device? Clearly, this is the next "killer app". Are these big companies just too embarassed to release it? Or, did all the beta testers never come out of the bathroom?

We may never know. Please suggest some features that you would need in a Porn-Only Device (or POD(tm)). From both a hardware and software point of view, we probably now have the technology to achieve such technology. (i.e. left-hand-only controls (or right), media player, kleenex dispenser...)