Doom: The Boardgame

February 16, 2005 | Comments

Doom - the board game. Wonderful, but I want more. I want to see multiplayer, on-paper games of Microsoft Office: format that paragraph! Throw 2 sixes to save successfully! Play your paperclip card for no reason other than to really fuck the other players off!

Selling 3G to users

February 13, 2005 | Comments

Russell writes about a recent survey where only 4% of people questioned said they'd like to upgrade to 3G.

Well, duh. I'm sure if you'd conducted surveys in the mid 1990s asking the public what they thought of v32bis modems, you'd have had blank stares and "no I don't think I need one of them"... despite the fact that they drove the uptake of the consumer internet. 3G is a network technology which no-one outside of the telecomms industry should care about, just as no-one cares about ADSL or cable.

I'm with Russell when says that 3G needs to be sold on benefits, not features; but similarly, if you're going to conduct research into this area, your research should be similarly aligned - if you want to get any meaningful results.

Out of interest - anyone know what the "bewildering number of features" on 3G handsets refers to? Whilst many 3G handsets have appalling user interfaces, I've not seen much on them that isn't available on 2.5G or lower... so was this survey measuring public perceptions of 3G by people who've not used it yet?

Push-to-talk

February 13, 2005 | Comments

Nokia on Push-to-talk: "Push to talk service users are typically engaged in some other activity than a telephone call, and they listen to the group traffic during their activity. A user can be contacted by the name, or he may occasionally want to say something to the group. Half-duplex traffic is ideal for such use cases. This simple, real-time direct communication serves the diverse needs of both business users and private consumers ranging from controlled team management to spontaneous sharing of experiences."

MS Intern weblog

February 13, 2005 | Comments

Quite an interesting (if tech-heavy) weblog here, from a guy who's currently a Microsoft intern.

Monkey porn

February 13, 2005 | Comments

Monkeys will pay for porn.