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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."
I got the Java Midlet based IM (Specilized ones for MSN, Yahoo and AOL ) and a mobile jabber client. Also, with my sprint vision plan I can use the web browser to use the IM ( which I prefer, specially on a well made mobile IM tool like Yahoo's messenger).
But a small dumb terminal, that looks and feels like a pda would be handy, I think the portable phone/usb base station is a pretty good idea, Would a pda that does all of it's processing on your desktop computer be a lot cheaper? I think a cheap zaurus-like pda would be a good trade of for range of use.
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
... is something that provided a very cheap screen/kb/mouse combination which wirelessly connected to a new session on a linux box. That way, I don't need to scatter boxes all over the house and multiple people could use it all at once. Mike
Why buy an extraneous hardware device to do what my computer can do in a few pixels of screen space?
If this were mobile, MAYBE it'd be worthwhile but my phone already has this covered (e-mail, c-mail).
I know that the US is not really into SMS, but in europe, it's HUGE. In belgium alone, a few MILLION smss are sent every day. At 40cents/message, that's big bucks for a service that costs next to nothing.
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. Like dialing an ordinary phone, or pressing the doorbell.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I'm not sure if this will be a good-selling device.
First of all, the limitation because of a base station, really hurts it's image. It would be very cool if I could Jabber in the train, but I don't think I will Jabber on my couch, when my PC is ten meters away.
The second Bag Thing is the huge competion between PDAs and IM devices. Why would I pay for a (probably expensive too) IM device, when I can get a PDA with 802.11b? A PDA gives me much more features, including Instant Messaging. I currently have the Zaurus SL-5500, and I'm really happy to have it, I can do just anything with it, including Instant Messaging.
I think this device has a chance, but only if the prices are (much) lower than the PDA prices, or if it's going to support GPRS/UMTS/etc.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Motorola is still on that IM kick?
After that crap V101, you think they might just go after quality and customer service instead.
I'll wait 'till Nokia makes one. I need my phones to last longer than a few weeks.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Yip, MSNBC does tend to get slashdotted quite regularly...
I've had a chance to borrow an iBook with an AirPort card for awhile, and I really like being able to go anywhere in the house and be online without wires getting in the way. I see this device being very successful for the same reason. There are trade-offs: you can't browse Slashdot with it and the screen and keyboard are small and awkward, but it's vastly cheaper than a laptop.
I wouldn't want one of these for myself. I do a lot with the computer, and usually just have AIM running in the background; when I'm not at the computer I probably am busy doing something and don't have time for IM. I'm not in their target market though. A lot of less tech-savvy people use the computer exclusively for communicating with people (via IM or e-mail) and surfing the web, and don't necessarily do both at the same time; for them, this would free them from having to sit in front of the computer, which they only do now because it's the only way to use IM/e-mail/the web.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
the form factor, keyboard layout and purpose is so much like a blackberry that surely it won't be long before Research In Motion layers are knocking on moto's door. Remember when RIM sued Handspring... *sigh* imagine if someone had successfully protected a patent on the QWERTY keyboard layout. We'd all have to learn to type all over again every time we bought a keyboard from a different company!
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
seem to be carrying around cell phones these days. And it seems a lot of them support AOL Instant Messenger.
When cell phone prices eventually drop to the point where everyone can afford them (which I guess may be now), then an IM only device will be kind of unnecessary. That is, unless it's a dirt cheap service.
Vonal Declosion
wonder how long it will be till someone makes it run on linux .. *ducks*
I'm a little tea pot.
...the ability to let others use the computer whilst someone is IMing. /. or the like is usually slim to none, due to my little sister spending copious amounts of time 'chatting' to her friends.
I know that when I go home for a weekend or something, the likelyhood of being able to check my email, the latest
I think this sort of thing could come as a breath of fresh air for other members of the house hold
Also IMing age is usually self-concious age and so privacy hilst IMing is usually of the upmost importance (I know it is for my sister), thus the ability to do it from their bedrooms, for instance, would probably be very much appreciated.
Just my thoughts on it,
Alex
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Any fool can talk, but it takes a smart man to listen
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aol/tw ought to offer a rebranded
version of this, integrate it with
their services (emphasis on aim),
and send out these things for free instead
of the damned cdroms (including a
net installer for their pc & game console software
in the im device).
(or someone else should)
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?
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
This seems pretty silly to me as most teens here (Netherlands) are equipped with a mobile phone. It doesn't seem to have any added value over plain-vanilla SMS messages. Don't the States have a SMS service?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I wonder how long it will take linux to make this device appear as a terminal. You could admin your box from anywhere in the house.. Or you could watch your cpu usage from the roof.
Anyone else look at it and think it was a Lable Maker?
Some years ago, my bro'in law was vp at Vodafon.
He showed me their latest product : MyAirMail.
It was exactly the same thing as mentioned above except that it would send and receive real emails and be 4-times smaller.
So, is there a market for this new im device when there has already been such products in the past ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Have been brainstorming a bit about this subject in the past: why haven't the mobile phone producers and network operators integrated instant messenging ( real-time! ) contact list with the phonebook in our cell phones? Just like with IM programs buddies could than update their own profile and this would show up in everyone's phone. My friends use this to keep track where everybody is and what they are upto all the time! It would require both new functionality of the phones and more significantly, a cheap broadcasting technique similar to SMS. But it would rock, I think!
I have AIM on my Nokia 3390 (I think it's a 3390) through T-mobile. I think you get 50 incoming messages free with most of the plans, an upgrade to 500 is $3/month, which I have. Considering that's about 16 messages/day average, I'm unlikely to go over it. I actually rarely use it cause when I'm home I'm usually at the computer with trillian running anyway.
Typing on it's a little annoying at first, but I can manage it ok now. It's nice to have when I need to get ahold of someone and I know they're probably on AIM, or when I'm just sitting somewhere bored.
The only problem I have with it is I can't seem to get it to pull my entire buddy list down off AIM, even when I tell it to. So I often have to manually add people to keep it in sync with the list on my computer. Once they're added it's fine though, so it's a minor annoyance.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Cybiko does this. Am I supposed
to dance around and clap at motorola's innovative entry into the teen PDA
market?
P.S. I'm just P.O'd slash doesn't do more coverage on this device, I
have 3, they're a hell of a lot better than luggin a laptop through the house
for IRC or IM'ing. Really cool toy.
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.
"The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race"---Hans Blix
I'm a perfect example of this.
My senior year of college, I had a desktop and a laptop. The desktop was always kept reasonably up-to-date for my entire college career. (That year it was a 1.1 GHz Athlon with DDR memory, etc etc.)
The laptop was an old cheap beat-up POS. Pentium 200MMX, 128M, 12" screen.
I used the laptop 95% of the time that year, for one reason: Even though the chair at my computer desk was pretty comfortable, the couch in my apartment's living room was ten times more comfortable. I pretty much did all my work that year either on the couch or sitting in a folding chair in the front lawn.
Thank God for 802.11
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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...)
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Hey, with CSI and CSI: Miami they're on a roll, right?
"IMFree...IMFree...and freedom tastes of reality..."
This is pretty cool, but AOL had already introduced a device years ago called the AOL Mobile Communicator.
The device costs $99.95 and the service is $29.95 a month, which is in addition to the monthly AOL membership fee. The service is only available to AOL members.
This one also did AOL E-mail so I guess its fair to say it wasn't an "IM Only" device- but its major selling point IMO was that it did AIM before you could get AIM on cellphones. I think you can still buy it from them!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
It's not surprising that this article has attracted a torrent of comments like "I wish it were a dumb terminal" or "Why can't it access Jabber?" As always, these foolish questions can be dismissed by reading the article.
"Motorola is marketing IMfree to young teens, and to young teenage girls in particular, because they found this group was a heavy user of instant messaging services."
Now I know that many of you Junior Slashbots out there are very proud of the fact that you've been using Linux and Jabber since before they were cool. However, the market for AIM is enormous among young teens. In homes with broadband, many AIM users have started leaving themselves signed in 24/7. This leads to some contention, as it's impractical to run more than one instance of AIM on a home PC. In a home with, say, one PC and three kids, mom can type a letter while her kids use the AIM devices wirelessly. Total cost for the kids' hardware: $300.
Now, I'd like to see a $100 handheld terminal device that would sell well among the Slashdot crowd. Remember, it has to include wireless Ethernet, a color screen, Bluetooth, compatibility with all bands of GSM, at least 128 MB of RAM, an MP3 and Ogg Vorbis player, a Gecko-based web browser, a terminal which can run any shell imaginable, Perl, a C compiler, an 80 GB hard drive, a usable keyboard, FireWire, USB 2.0, and Infrared. And it has to run Linux.
For more information, click here.
I have a cell with unlimited free long distance and free in-region calling (Verizon), not to mention a free message service. Why the hell would I bother with IM when I can simply call someone up and *talk* to them - or leave a message if they don't have their cell on?
I fail to understand what the appeal is, unless the younger generation has an aversion to actually using the spoken word.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?