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Interview of Danger (Sidekick II) CEO Hank Nothhaft
r-blo writes "Know that new T-Mobile Sidekick II that Paris Hilton and Derek Jeter have been totin' around town? Yeah, that one. Well, Engadget has an interview with Danger's (the company that makes the Sidekick) CEO, Hank Nothhaft, talking about all manner of things regarding the mobile-internet device, including its closed development environment. They even ask him what phone he'd buy if it wasn't a Sidekick II, gotta love that!"
Is Paris Hilton really the best spokesperson for this product?
What, if any, plans are there to reduce the size of the device? An iPod is about the biggest thing I can stand to carry around in my pocket. I'd like to get one of the hiptops, but I'd rather not need a fanny-pack to carry it.
What they needed to ask him about is the durability of the Sidekick 2. I have issues with how well it is constructed, and I am not the only person who feels this way.
I bought a Sidekick back in April and have been vigilant about it's upkeep. Never dropped it, never sat anything down on it. One day, the action wheel just stops working - literally, I am sending an email and it just doesn't work anymore.
One of the things mentioned in this article is that the Sidekick crowd tends to be 30-ish, which means people are going to have active lifestyles where things can happen to a phone. What is the sense of investing in such a snazzy device if it is not going to keep up with you?
M
The problem with these all-in-one devices is that the ALWAYs, ALWAYs end up doing everything horribly.
That's not the case with the hiptop. Danger has picked and chosen what features to have and what features are out of scope for the device. As many people request features such as bluetooth, mp3 players, javascript in the browser, video recording, etc., Danger has stuck to what works well for the device and kept out most of the stuff that wouldn't work out. The AIM client is the best portable AIM client I've ever used, and I can say the same thing about the e-mail client. For what it is, the web browser is great, and the PIM functionailty suits my needs perfectly. If you want something that also plays MP3s, get an iPod. If you want an awesome phone with MMS, look at Nokia. For what I use most, the hiptop delivers. I formally disagree with you when you say they all-in-one devices always end up doing everything horribly.
-Aaron
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
They should make a system of components that each have a function (MP3 player, Cell Phone, etc). These could stand alone on their own that can be assembled together "Voltron Style" to combine their abilities, processing power, memory, etc to form an all-in-one super device.
:-)
This could different options for components/functionality and perhaps leave plenty of room for upgradability.
Just a thought..
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Or maybe the guy just doesn't have much to say? Engadget seems to be a pretty good source of news and slashdot's linked to more than just 2 of their articles.
Read this, the beginning tells you how cool the device it, but the ending is rather startling Here.
Regards,
Steve
A while back when the first Sidekick came out, I bought one. Signed up for the one year contract with the $40/mo plan, with T-Mobile. Got the whole little kit - phone, camera, headset, etc. All was well. For a while.
You see, the manufacturers that Danger contracted to build the first sidekick sucked. They sucked bad. My first Sidekick's keyboard began to bail on me within months: a few keys became almost impossible to press and the E key stopped working entirely. Then the scroll wheel and Back button (yes, the BACK button) started to go out. So, I called up on the phone and spent a few days negotiating with T-Mobile's people to get a replacement. They were originally going to charge me $70 (gee, what a cheap price to replace a faulty product), but I convinced them to give me the replacement for free, since I wasn't the only person having problems.
So, anyway, fast forward a few weeks. I've got my replacement sidekick (by a new manufacturer), and all is well.
Not. The new one has dust inside the screen casing, and the Menu button has absolutely no resistance so it's possible to press it just by breathing on it.
I don't have any experience with the Color sidekick or the Sidekick 2, obviously, so I hope that the manufacturing problems have been solved. But manufacturing problems were just the beginning for me...
See, one of the major reasons I decided to get a Sidekick was for the devkit. I wanted to be able to write little apps to use on the phone, so I could carry some notes and info around with me. I also wanted to be able to keep my address book on the phone in sync with the one on my desktop. That's not too much to ask, right? You can do that with most J2ME phones nowadays.
Well, apparently it is too much to ask. Practically from the day the original Sidekick was released, Danger promised that there would be sync software so you could keep your phone's data in sync with your desktop. From the day I got my phone to the day I cancelled the service on my second one, Danger never released any sync software, and the only way to get your data off your phone was to use their flimsy, slow, buggy web interface, and manually copy-and-paste information from the textboxes on the webpage - one address book entry at a time.
And the devkit, of course. I signed the NDA, etc. Installed the dev tools, read the docs, messed around. Even wrote a small program just to get the hang of things.
Then I discovered that the API was horrible. Vague/incorrect documentation, slow performance, and an obscene lack of basic features. It was well below the standard set by J2ME 1.0 (and that's saying a lot, considering that J2ME 1.0 is one of the worst APIs I've ever had the misfortune of using). The dev tools were flimsy as well. For example, the Hiptop and its development tools would crash when fed PNGs that didn't match its exact format specifications. Apparently Danger has never heard of libpng, because you had to make sure to feed every PNG file you created through pngcrush with a specific set of options before Danger's software would even touch it.
Resources were also a pain. In J2ME, your app's resources are stored in a JAR file (basically a ZIP plus a manifest). You can store files of any type you wish in there, and easily load them up at runtime and read them. Not so with the Hiptop. All data, whether it be a string, an image, or an arbitrary block of bytes, had to have a unique integer identifier, and be compiled into a proprietary resource format by their horrible resource editor. Once it was compiled, you had to copy those identifier constants into your application somewhere, and use a switch statement or something to load up that data at runtime. Not only did this make hiptop development a pain, but it meant that it was extremely difficult to port J2ME applications to the Hiptop or develop an application for both platforms at once.
And of course, once you had your application written, the fun truly began. First you had to download a buggy, unsupported USB driver for
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I looked a bit closer at r-blo's other submission that was accepted. It's the MS-vs-TIVO article on Engadget. The curious thing is that it's written by a Thomas Hawk. That name sounded familiar to me.... So I looked at his user record on Slashdot.
Turns out Thomas Hawk submitted two stories last Thursday. Both accepted. One is a review of the Windows Media Player and the other is the article that originally got me suspicious about Advertorial Content on Slashdot. It's the Mark Cuban fluff piece that looks like paid placement to boost Cuban's image as a tech guru. Thomas Hawk writes in his introduction to that slashdot posting--
Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, HDNET, blogger extraordinaire and all around tech visionary really, really gets it.
And when I wrote this post questioning Mark Cuban's predictions, it was modded down as 'flamebait'... oh, well. I guess slashdot has to pay the bills somehow.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The bottom line is still "lock the customer in and bleed them for everything you can get".
Can customers upload their own ringtones?
No. There's an effort by the industry to make people pay for the content on these devices.
And people wonder why I just want a dumb cell phone and a separate handheld for *my* stuff that I can control.
Just to add my voice to Saxton's, the Hiptop is probably one of the best all-in-one devices I've ever used. When it worked, it worked extremely well. The web browser was very well designed and made it a pleasure to browse most websites, as long as you had signal, and the AIM and Email functionality was more than adequate for conversations with friends and checking your inbox while you're on the go. The SMS was a bit weak, but honestly with AIM and Email I never needed to use it. The keyboard, in particular, made it a pleasure to type in notes or messages. I wrote entire short stories on the Hiptop's keyboard, and it was a pleasure. For someone who likes to write in particular, the Hiptop is excellent, because it allows you to have an efficient way to jot down an idea or note the moment you get an idea, and just slip the phone back in your pocket. No need to carry around a big notebook, and no forgetting great ideas.
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Hey Ryan, the story here isn't my paranoia, it's your lack of full disclosure. For starters, you're hyping up your website with posts using a pseudonym that you do not use on said website. The slashdot community typically frowns on such disingenuous self-promotions. Had you instead been open and said, "Hey slashdotters, here's an article I wrote on my website about XYZ" then it certainly wouldn't have come across as some sort of deception.
Is your site really a news source or a distributor of press releases? I know that sounds like a flame, but I don't mean it that way. I think your site is probably a lot of fun to produce. At the same time, when a site's content is so product-heavy, I get suspicious about the possibility of paid placement, etc. Especially when you gush about a product like this-- "Know that new T-Mobile Sidekick II that Paris Hilton and Derek Jeter have been totin' around town?" The only reason Paris Hilton would have any tech gadget is if she's paid to endorse it. By commenting on Paris Hilton owning a Sidekick II, you've taken on the role of a mouthpiece for the Danger PR department. Does your community really care what consumer products Paris Hilton owns? Actually, it would have been a hundred times more interesting had your contacts at Danger's PR department arranged for you to interview Paris about what she does with her Sidekick rather than the CEO.
If you want to call Engadget a news source, you need to brush up on your journalism ethics. Real journalists don't accept gifts or freebies of any kind from people / companies they might write about. For example, Roger Ebert pays to see the movies he reviews. Quality journalists don't present advertisements as news. Does Engadget qualify?
Please check the Society of Professional Journalist's website on the issue:
Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!