Google Maps for Treo

This new software package saved my butt on Wednesday night. I was lost, it was rainy, and with Google Maps for Treo I was able to find my way to where I was going.

http://www.google.com/gmm/treo

It isn’t a web page, it isn’t a Java program that requires VM. It’s a real, compiled, app for the Treo. Check it out!

Microsoft: So weak we can't believe it

The Secret Failures of Microsoft

If you hate Microsoft, this article will make you feel very good. If you like Microsoft, this article will worry you. It describes the economics of Microsoft and why/how their monopoly position has permitted them to hide how fragile they are.

This is part 2, or possible a sequel, to the article Why Microsoft Can’t Compete with iTunes.

I hadn’t heard of RoughlyDrafted Magazine until now. I find it quite interesting.

(By the way.. I don’t hate Microsoft. I love MS-Office (and to all the people that are now about to click on “Post Comment” to say how great OpenOffice is, hold your keystrokes. OO is so rough on the edges it should come with a box of bandaids), and I have a Windows PC in addition to my 2 mac laptops and FreeBSD server. I just don’t hate all of Microsoft, just many of their business practices.)

Microsoft is in the position of a pro wrestler who has only fought for show in staged fights, but has now been thrown into a no holds barred street fight against assassins with nothing on their minds but survival.

If this article’s predictions are true, I predict the next 10 years of Microsoft is that it will be like AT&T in the 1990s: Crumbling quickly, spinning out of control, as it pretends it is doing just fine. I still remember the day that an AT&T executive told us that “IP Telephony is going to disrupt the entire industry, it is the future. We’re not ready for it. Our plan is to spread PR saying that IP Telephony is so bad it sounds like CB Radio, meanwhile we’ll be secretly working on our own IP Telephony solution. When we finally ship it, we’ll start PR that says, ‘oh, we used to say it sucks, but we fixed it and only AT&T’s experience could have fixed it’.” Then I watched as the “It can’t work” message was so loud even AT&T believed it, and executives kept cancelling IP Telephony projects. I honestly started to believe that AT&T was even lying to itself, and had no actual intention of doing anything serious with the internet, figuring that it was a “fad” that would eventually go away. Now AT&T is just a trademark owned by some other company.