andrewbuonocore.com

Just noticed this on my Settings screen in GMail:

Haven’t dived in to see what these features can be used for but I will do in the next couple of days….

So the outage that caused everyone’s Skype connections to go down was down to the fact that a Windows Update required a restart of millions of PCs?

No way, I do not buy it.

If this were to be believable, I would have to accept that:

• The number of installed Windows machines has suddenly reached some critical number that restarting enough of them would bring down Skype, especially as….
• MOST Windows Updates require a restart! You can hardly make any changes to Windows or Office applications without needing to restart, let alone…..
• The fact that such is the crappy nature of Windows that millions of people will be restarting their Windows machines all the time.

Also puzzling was the advice given by Skype  gave to leave Skype running during the outage. How much bandwidth was wasted, how many networks were bogged down with Skype connection requests to a system which they knew could not accept them?

Skype have a lot of goodwill but an outage like this and what seem to be dubious reasons for it have knocked my confidence in them.

I installed SPB Traveler on my Windows Mobile device, it didn’t last more than a day before I removed it.

The most comprehensive piece of software for managing travel itineraries is Worldmate but their licensing is nothing short of thievery. As if the initial price is not bad enough, incredibly, that only gives you use of the software for a year, after which you have to pay another huge fee.

So, when SPB announced Traveler, I thought that Worldmate’s grip on the travel market for Windows Mobile was over but sadly it is not.

SPB traveler is a good-looking applicaton, as are all SPB applications but in terms of functionality it falls way short.

My main gripes:

The only form of transport handled is flights
No hotel management
No flight schedule lookup
Crazy time management which is non-configurable.

Essentially you have a calendar input tool with some pretty pictures and weather lookups.

The time management is a real puzzle. I spend most of my time in Zurich, Switzerland but for me, London is home. Now, Windows Mobile does me no favours when it comes to time zones so I work around it by keeping my time zone as London and changing the time every time I fly.

I have no interest in comparing times between London and Zurich. If I make an appointment for 19:00, it is 19:00 regardless of time zone. While I am in London and make an appointment to meet someone in Zurich at 19:00, I don’t want that changing to 20:00 when I change the time zone on my device, so I leave it.

SPB Traveler does the same. If I book a flight from Zurich to London, the departure time is 19:05 and arrival is 19:45 (both local times) and that is how I want it recorded. Traveler inserts a calendar entry for 18:05 to 19:45 because it converts the departure time to the time zone set on my device, as if I want to keep track of the departure time of my Zurich flight using the London time.

I don’t.

I have no option to keep times as local times, as entered. It makes it useless for me.

SPB applications have started to fall short of what I would call full functionality. Pocket Plus is a great application, same with Diary and Backup but recent additions like Insight (the RSS reader) and Traveler do not cover their ground well enough for me.

I hope Traveler improves because Worldmate does not deserve to survive without competition. Their pricing structure simply cannot be defended.