Slashdot Mirror
AOL Dropping RIM for Danger Sidekick
Eponymous Meow Word writes "After trying to cut the cord for wireless e-mail with RIM, AOL is pulling the plug on its mobile communicator, citing a move away from its older wireless technology. The disgruntled can get a discount on a shiny new T-Mobile color Sidekick." Wireless email is a rather small niche, and it's cool that current users won't be left high and dry, but it looks like they'll have to pay some money to continue using the service.
Don't forget about AOL Communicator, the Mozilla-based AOL email client. Hopefully they don't decide to drop this project too, in favor of Microsoft-based solutions. Pushing AOL Communicator would push Gecko onto millions of subscribers' computers, and possibly allow for choice of rendering engine.
--
Free pr0n.
Wouldn't it be great to haul Google out of your pocket at the bar
No. No, it wouldn't.
The coolest voice ever.
Having used both the RIM and currently the SideKick, the SideKick give a user experience that mimics AIM desktop client a lot better than the RIM devices. The SideKick UI, in general, will be much more attractive to AOL users.
The Sidekick is great, but too bulky for your average Joe. It's too bulky for me too, to be honest, so I just suffer with my otherwise very excellent Samsung S105 cell phone, which nominally lets me monitor incoming emails. The most promising models I've seen are the upcoming SPH-I500 (as in here) and similar phone-form-factor Palm PDAs, which come very close to what I want. Add one of those newfangled laser-keyboard devices, and you've got a winner IMHO. And PLEASE stop sticking cameras on every phone.
Now I'm going to have to buy a fleet of these, to replace our executives' Blackberries, so they won't get pissed off for losing the digital dick-sizing contest at the country club. Oh, how I love technology.
No one is superior to this guy.
The coolest voice ever.
When will someone invent a cheap global wireless solution for email. I don't live on land anymore more I live on a sailboat which spends most of the time in the middle of an ocean. Right now I am using sats for my access which is very expensive. I want a global communicator like in the TV show "Earth Final Conflict" I know the tech exists so someone build the damn thing.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
I've always viewed email as asynchronous communication. I answer my emails when I have time, several times a day. If I'm in the middle of something, I don't pay attention to it until I can take a break. But other people don't see it that way, notably my management chain at work. They're already trying to sell me on the idea of one of these things so I can get my email outside work. (WTF for? I carry a cell phone for emergencies. Exactly what kind of a network failure do they think I'm going to fix with email? But I digress.)
I certainly don't want to discourage the technology, and there are times when I wish I could just drag a decent web browser (NexTel can bite me) out of my pocket. But I'm just afraid that people are going to lose sight of one of the big advantages of email - the fact that it's asynchronous, which is the only way that I can deal with it when I get over a hundred legitimate emails a day. Having my phone ring a hundred times a day will just make me go insane.
It doesn't impress drunk chicks.
a google search of kama sutra might.
As someone stated above:
No. No, it wouldn't.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
....Why RIM (research in motion's) device is being terminated could be because RIM lost a patent lawsuit against NTP. NTP is a patent holding company which claims to hold patents to "sending text data through wireless" or some such sort. NTP was awarded $23 million in damages and has sued again tripling the damages.
:(.
Is this fair ? you ask. Let me remind you about fivolous lawsuits initiated by RIM against palm and handspring because RIM claimed to hold a patent which covers attaching a keyboard to a mobile device !!. Handspring and palm decided to settle out of court, paid RIM a wad of money and "licenced" the "technology". Evidently what goes around comes around.
By the way, the pent-up upgrades to color devices for existing customers shipped on Friday. Some have already arrived.
the main problem is the name.
"HEY, RIM ME TONIGHT, WILL YA? WE'LL HOOK UP."
so much embarassment.
Why is AOL caving in to social norms? There are millions of people who like RIM. They RIM every day almost. It is nothing to be ashamed of.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I still have one of those horrible devices, because we're required to have it at work. At first, I thought it was really useful, but after a while I grew to think of it as useless, and later just a pain to have.
The device itself is horrendously overpriced: it's just an embedded 386-based handheld running WinCE. So not only does it not have enough horsepower to do anything besides text messaging, it's running WinCE so it crashes all the time. It's really annoying when you're typing an email and it spontaneously reboots itself. For such a low-tech device, it cost our company $350. And then the service is $50/month per device.
On top of this, there were all kinds of problems when they first set us up with them; the devices didn't work for weeks while they got all the problems sorted out with the Exchange servers. Real smart: make your devices only interface to MS's unreliable email servers. Even better, MS is competing directly with RIM in the wireless messaging field, and since MS controls the underlying software, guess who's going to have an advantage?
By contrast, I can get a color-screen mobile phone for under $100 now, and the service is only $40/month. Unlike Blackberry, which only does text messaging, and only works in large metro areas, my cellphone lets me talk, and works everywhere in the country. My cellphone also has an application to synchronize with my calendar at work if I wanted to use that. So why would I want to pay a premium for a Blackberry?
I'm glad I'm not the one paying for this crappy thing.