MSN Direct now on Windows Mobile: too little, too late?
Hi, my name is Kevin and I own a SPOT Watch. Boy, do I feel better saying that aloud. It’s not that I’ve been a closet SPOT Watch owner, it’s just that we haven’t seen much impact from this Microsoft informational service. MSN Direct typically uses an FM radio to receive personalized data such as stocks, weather, traffic and news bits, but it sounds like that’s about to change. Arne Hess expects Microsoft to announce MSN Direct support for Windows Mobile, but not likely over FM radio like the current solutions. Instead, the service would leverage any integrated wireless radio to grab the data for display on your device. Two thoughts follow as a several year SPOT Watch owner, but I’d like to hear yours as well.
- I’ve wondered over the past few years why we haven’t seen MSN Direct integrated with Windows Mobile devices yet. Adding an FM radio shouldn’t be a major challenge and would provide additional benefit from an audio perspective.
- At this point, are there already enough similar (or better) solutions in this vein? I’m thinking Java widgets, RSS readers, weather plug-ins for the today screen and such.
Am I being too hard on the service? Perhaps we’ll see an enhancement to the MSN Direct service that makes it more of a value add…Update: I’m either way behind or this page just went live. Hop over to the MSN Direct page for phones and you can download MSN Direct for your phone, check the supported devices and find additional information. Looks like this is a standard (and free) Windows Mobile application that you can install now. I’m going to install this on my T-Mobile Dash to see what benefit there is.Update #2: Looks like I stumbled on this before it got official because the Microsoft Press Release is out. My first impressions with a few minutes of play time? Nice implementation, but I actually had more customized information available to me on my SPOT Watch back in 2004. Still, if you want basic News, Weather and Stocks on your Today screen, this will work nicely.
I just installed it on my Q9m, and is adds itself to a copy of the current home page. If you change the home page (to fine one which fits better with the new content) the MSN content is not present. I reinstalled to get thte content back…
Overall, a nice freebee – but I need to get into home page design to make it fit properly.
Installed it on my Dash, used it for 30 seconds, then uninstalled it. I like the idea of weather, stocks, etc on my home screen, but MSN Direct wasted *way* too much screen space to do it. I went from a single home page to having to scroll to see any of my appointments. Also, the performance was sluggish with an annoying lag when changing screens.
Nice idea, but as is often the case with Microsoft products, poor implementation. To the MSN team: usability and aesthetics matter.