Sérgio Carvalho:

Este blog é de facto muito bom. The value of programming. Porque é que os programadores andam a fazer rios de dinheiro?

Huh?. Eu não estou a fazer rios de dinheiro. O dinheiro que ganho não dava de certeza para pagar uma casa e viver com o conforto a que os meus pais me habituaram... Onde é que estão a dar dinheiro a-la-gardette?

He responds to something I wrote/linked to. I don't really know what that means. I guess it's not what Altavista thinks it says:

Because he is that the programmers walk to make money rivers? Huh. I am not to make money rivers.

(I told Altavista to translate from Portugese to English but I'm not sure if that's correct).

I suspect he disagrees. When I write "Huh?" it usually means "are you out of your mind?". But maybe not. Who knows? All I know is that I am not to make money rivers.     

T-Mobile's Pocket PC Phone. I've just written about different options for phone/PDA combos. There's no doubt in my mind that internet access via such devices will take off. The question is only who'll be the first to do it right. I'm still waiting for Danger's Hiptop (which will be branded by T-Mobile as Sidekick). Same T-Mobile (née as VoiceStream)  just launched a new phone based on Pocket PC Phone edition. It's one of the first of its kind (phones based on Microsoft's OS were delayed, as was almost everything that depended on GPRS). I had a few minutes to play with it, so here are first impressions.

The good thing is that it's more or less Pocket PC so all the software for Pocket PC should run on it and hopefully people will come up with additional software that makes sense when you're on-line. That means that the device meets the first requirement for being successful: it's an open platform. Programmers can write whatever software they want and user can use whatever they want. No policing from the phone company. No one to tell you what you can and cannot run on the device.

Being Pocket PC has also its cons. I'm not in love with this OS. It looks much better and more polished that its many predecessors but still many UI elements (e.g. toolbar) hurt my sense of aesthetics and there are too many little annoyances to call it a polished product.

The device fails my second requirement for being successful: it's not cheap. The gadget itself is $550 (currently $500 with the rebate) and the plans are expensive: $20 for 5 MB/month, $40 for 10 MB and $60 for 20 MB. Simply stated, T-mobile is out of their minds. People won't browse the Internet at those prices. 5 MB is nothing, I would probably exceed this just by downloading headers of my e-mail messages. If people won't browse the Internet, the device doesn't have much value. Its main attractive feature is ability to browse the Internet. If the device doesn't have much value people won't pay half a grand for it. They will stick with cell phones, thank you very much (I got mine for free from the very same VoiceStream, just for signing up, and it's not a bad phone). If people stick with cell phones developers won't develop services target for such devices that will make the devices even more desirable.

So here's a message for wireless carriers: get real. $20 per month for unlimited use (+ charging for additional services, if you can come up with something useful) and you have a chance at making a killing in subscriptions. Otherwise happily watch early adopters jumping into the game for a few months and then watch what happens when there are no early adopters left. Hint: nothing. Regular people don't have that kind of money to spend on toys. Just ask Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Oh well, they'll come to their senses sooner or later and realize that it's better to get $1 from 100 people than $10 from 5 people. But the way things are going so far, this is going to be "later".     

Pepper no more. I've recently mentioned Pepper (a text editor). Well, Pepper is no more:

End of story

I'm no longer taking orders for my software.

Thanks to all who supported me and my software over the last years. I had a great time, esp. in the beginning. However, recent changes in the various OS's and several not so nice experiences with less than honest 'clients' combined with negative feedback on my software have forced me to stop.

Oh well, back to Emacs for me. The life goes on. Wouldn't that be a good case to release source code? Assuming that the author can't profit from the source code, why not slap it on the sourceforge and let the software live? Similar to what will happen to gobeProductive (gobeProductive is an office suite that started life on BeOS (created by people involved in Apple Works (used to be Claris Works) and when BeOS was dismissed (there's not enough oxygen in the OS space) the company made an attempt at Windows port, but failed (there's not enough oxygen in the office suite space)).