Cloudy Thinking

Microsoft, with a deft assist from Microsoft’s Scoble-PR-izer, artfully orchestrated this week’s Origami madness.

Thanks to the single-mindedness of meme-tracking algorithms (with little if any human editorial guidance), Microsoft got a free ride. The Origami rumor/news non-event has dominated Tech Memeorandum for days.

If the not-yet-revealed Origami reality turns out to be (as expected) a new compact mobile computing device with a touch screen, built-in GPS that can play music and video it will be interesting, to a point.

One might also speculate that such a device has a hard drive in the 30GB range, supports WiFi and Bluetooth, is “instant on,” has a terrific screen, and great battery life.

You’d expect a small Qwerty keyboard as an option. In mid-2006 decent voice command capability is a reasonable goal. Naturally it supports a plug-in memory card, quite likely Reduced Size - MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC).

If all or most of this refelects reality, the relevant questions are “what does Origami cost?” and “when will Origami ship in volume?”

However, we may well have plowed this ground before.

The Nokia 770 is similar, at least from a 30,000-foot level. The 770 does not have a hard drive, and the first model doesn’t have a keyboard. But the 770 screen is awesome, and performance is decent.

Nokia uses a variant of Linux as the base 770 operating system. They are (so far) doing a terrific job of keeping the 770 specs and software open and available so the community can enhance and extend the 770’s functionality.

Here’s the interesting part: Nokia got a reasonable level of buzz when they launched the 770, although it was nothing compared to the Origami PR madness.

What was the independent variable that accounts for the difference between Nokia 770 PR — OK buzz — vs. Microsoft’a Origami PR — over the top, “will you have my babies?” blog love from the entire universe? One blogger, Mr. Robert Scoble.

Scobelizer, you be da man. They can’t possibly be paying you enough.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 8:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.