Thursday, April 24, 2008

Some things I don’t understand

Today I visited an event where Microsoft was promoting their new Windows Mobile 6.1 platform and Mobile Monday organization delivered first “Most Mobile Enterprise” award. At that event I noticed some things that are either funny or embarrassing, depending on your views.

I’m not a Windows Mobile expert, but I got an impression that a great new feature in Windows Mobile 6.1 allows users easily enable out-of-office email alerts from their mobile terminals. This feature was listed in two different presentations, just after a long story how Windows Mobile 6.1 allows users to continue work with mobile devices almost as if they were at the office. I understand that in some situations out-of-office messages are handy, but in most cases those messages are needed if you don’t have a powerful mobile device. If you have state-of-the-art Windows Mobile 6.1 device with all the goodies, wouldn’t that just make out-of-office messages obsolete. Instead of turning easily that message on, just use your device!

Microsoft’s Unified Communications solution was presented and it has features like user’s presence information, real time chats for both one-to-one and group meetings and so on. Unfortunately the demonstration failed twice and I didn’t quite get the idea about what was so great about the new product that allowed chatting between PC-client and Windows Mobile terminal. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention to the presentation because I was doing realtime group chat with my Nokia E61 using Fring, like we have done in our company for a long time. By the way, our chat didn’t fail, although the bad network conditions were blamed for the demo effect. If you are about to invest in Microsoft’s solution, use the free services first and test if it fits to your business; if yes, then do the investment. (I admit, this is not a fair comparison because Microsoft’s solution is much more than just chatting and it also has manageability options that are very important for enterprises, however the failed demo compared to my live chat session gave some perspective)

At the event Most Mobile Enterprise title was awarded to Helsinki public transport system, because they use mobile possibilities in many ways to give better service to public. This is yet another initiative to make public transport better option to private cars and hence limiting the pollution originated from traffic. Ironically enough, the event was held in a car megastore located in an area where nobody could arrive without a car because public transport connections are not adequate there. While public transport system was awarded I could have bought a nice little Hummer H3, carbon-dioxide emissions just 346 g/km. 

//Harri

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