some comments on the cactus release

Catching up after a surge of input from friday's release of clevercactus, I've found some nice comments on weblogs about it, by Matt, Martin, Haiko and Jim. Thanks! :)

Update: found some more comments, from Jason, Reverend Jim, Rick, Ryan, Docnotes and TIG's corner.

T-Mobile drops MS phone software

Another setback for Microsoft: T-Mobile has announced they are dropping plans an MS-based phone:

Europe's second largest mobile phone operator T-Mobile International said on Thursday it had shelved plans to introduce a mobile phone powered by Microsoft software. "We have decided not to introduce this phone," a spokesman for T-Mobile told Reuters at the fringes of a Deutsche Telekom news conference. "For the time being, we are not pursuing this project further."

T-Mobile announced in February that it planned to introduce the Microsoft phone this summer in a move analysts saw as a blow to mobile handset industry leader Nokia. But industry sources said the phone software of the world's largest software maker still had "fundamental problems" leading to high failure rates.

Wow. That's worded quite strongly isn't it? However, we shouldn't forget that Microsoft usually doesn't come up with a good platform product until the third try (Many examples of this: Windows, PocketPC...). Still, I have to wonder how much of this is due to "fundamental problems" and how much it is due to the phone operators trying to keep Microsoft at bay...

Update: Martin clued me in a bit after I posted this that apparently T-Mobile had reversed this stance. (Here is post from Gizmodo where they went through the same report-clarification cycle). Hm. Strange...

second acts

Charles Cooper on strategic makeovers by technology companies, with two main examples: Borland and Handspring. Interesting read.