Wonder how active Microsoft is going to be in giving people new features as well as comprehensive driver coverage via Windows Update and the Ultimate add-ons?  Try this on: a major update for Vista Beta 2 users went out for the Mobile Device Center.  Thanks to Sidebar Geek for the scoop- this is great to see.

Last week I wrote about the new MusicGremlin portable media player.  An interesting concept, the musicgremlin is the first portable media player to incorporate music sharing via WiFi and the concept of community sharing.  Both are compelling ideas to me, but I have some fundamental issues with the implementation.  Net-net, musicgremlin in my opinion has a long way to go before it's ready for prime time. 

Out of the Box Experience
The "MG" (as it's called in the UI) has a premium enough cardstock box with matte finish. The front flap has the only other messaging on the box- "the record store in your pocket".  In an attempt to achieve Apple-like simplicity though, other essential details are missing- storage size (8GB), formats supported (WMA, MP3) essential features (Local and Network music playback, FM radio), battery life (reportedly could be better).

The unit is displayed right on top and protected with a spongy foam insert.  A "get activated now" card is placed on the top, another smart touch.  Pull the gremlin out of its nest and a bright orange backing can be seen, another premium touch.  There is no electrostatic or adhesive protector over the screen or the face which I would like to have seen. Underneath is the getting started guide and three items: An AC charger, a USB 2.0 (mini) cable, and headphones.  All three are in plastic baggies, the AC adapter bad was open-ended.  This was not a great experience- it felt like the item packaging was an afterthought.  A pang of buyer's remorse set in.

The headphones look and feel cheap- plastic and too big to fit in my ears.  What bugs me the most is that the left and right earbuds have different length of cable and are unlabeled.  This doesn't generally bother me since I use my Shure e-series or Sony studio headphones when listening.

Despite its chubby girth, the device fits nicely in my hand, but not nearly as well as my current two favorite devices - the Toshiba Gigabeat-S (HD) and iRiver Clix (Flash) (disclaimer- I worked on the Clix). The left-hand side control is a slider with neutral central position- up for lock, down for on/off.  The right hand side has +/- at the top for volume, Play/Pause, and Prev/Next from top to bottom.

The front D-pad is fine as well with good, tactile response.  During boot up, the d-pad lights up very brightly but not at all as far as I can tell during use. 

Ed. Note: I was intending to do a full review of the device, but have decided to wait and focus my time on providing MusicGremlin with a comprehensive list of all the bugs I encountered and in most cases was able to easily reproduce.

Pros

• Nice concept
• Simple browsing of other's libraries
• Can only download/play back subscription music on others' devices
• Supports PIN Locking of device

Cons

• Expensive
• Unstable firmware
• No Windows Vista support (yet)
• No Photo support
• Easily scratched
• No case for device
• Cheap headphones
• Poor audio quality w/ pops

Sample of Bugs/Issues Found during a 20 minute eval:

Bootup/Shutdown/Charging

1. Screen shows unpolished "Please wait" and firmware version over refined logo.
2. Audible "pop" on startup & shutdown.  A big no-no.
3. Returning from standby, saw pixelated, multicolor "static" across entire screen on multiple occasions
4. Turn off device while connected to power for charge and it blanks the UI, then entire screen is blank (white and lit)

On-Device Navigation

1. Music experience always prompts the user to search and peck in letters.  Even if you're searching artists and there are only two in the list. 
2. No menu option for "Now Playing" to take you back to album art and seek view, but volume and seek take you temporarily to the view?
3. Alpha entry & search navigation isn't consistent.  For example, Up/Down scroll for network security key goes backwards through alphabet as if centered on "blank" between "Z" and "0" vs. defaulting to "A" when searching music.

Sync Experience

1. The device reports itself as "MTP Device" when syncing with Windows Vista.  It should state the name, and present the Device Icon and Device Logo in WMP11.  Right now WMP can't even see it.
2. MTP-class devices shouldn't prompt the user for drivers.  Something is wrong here. After forcing a device reboot, it installed. Other devices sync no problem w/ Vista using MTP.
3. Device never reports status of sync relationship other than USB icon. The icon reports actual USB connect state instead of communications state with the PC.  It should tell the user if it's connected, busy, or if there's a problem.

Get New Music

1. If I choose Get New Music, why am I prompted for "New Search" when there are no saved searches?
2. Search on Genres returns Artists.  I want to browse by Genres>Albums.  This makes the feature unusable.
3. Gremlists NEVER worked.  Every song is unavailable, even when other tracks could be downloaded
4. Downloading no longer works at all. Even after factory reset.  No downloads are queued up.
5. Display of queued tracks to download isn't centered on icon when double digit value exists (e.g. 10 downloads)

Community

1. Device stopped playing back tracks downloaded from any users.  DRM-12 error when I went into the Download Manager which told me to contact MG technical support.
2. A number of users in the community could not be browsed.  After factory reset, no users could be downloaded from.
3. Device is now in a state where I cannot download any music from any users.  Nothing gets added to the Download Manager even after rebooting or factory reset.

FM Radio

1. You have to push up/down to tune. 
2. No visual notification of presets found during seek. 

Mailbox

1. It looks like on 06/08/06 the device was either flashed or tested and "Error getting root license" was found.  Why would a new user need to see this?

Settings

1. If the device is registered, it should tell you.  Right now if I go to the website it says the device is registered and will not give me a key.  The MG unit prompts me for a regkey. 
2. If you restore the device to factory defaults, this should wipe out your list of downloads in the download manager and your WiFi security keys.
3. There is No way to de-activate the device (e.g. if you wanted to resell it on ebay in the future.)

Conclusions

If you're going to give your product a name that refers to a mythical creature that destoys machines and is the subject of one of the scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone ever and two campy 80's movies, you better make darned sure you've worked your own Gremlins out of the system.  This was honestly one of the worst device experiences I've ever had. The fact that Walt Mossberg's column seems to like it so much tells me either someone over at the WSJ isn't really spending much time living with the device or perhaps I just have a bad unit.  Either way, it's time to put this one back in the oven and let it bake a bit longer. Here's to hoping there's a firmware update because right now, the device isn't working for me as-advertised and is about to get returned. I'm waiting to hear back from technical support.

Update #1: Well, it looks like MusicGremlin got my bug list because they sent me out a new device and a separate box to ship the "defective" unit in.  They did look at my connection and it does appear something was awry.  I still think many of the user experience points stand but will report back tomorrow on my experience with the new unit.  Big points to MG's customer service though.

Larry Hryb, Mr. Major Nelson himself and I were chatting a few weeks back about his move to Community Server.  I'm thinking of doing the same.  I like DasBlog and it's been good to me.  Back when I moved to it, it was one of the few .Net based blog engines.  It seems now though that most of the new development is coming out of CS by way of the fine folks at Telligent Systems.  Now I just need a way to port my existing blog entries and help on the design- any suggestions are appreciated!

Update: Ryan Hoffman from Bink.nu fame contacted me and offered to work on a migration utility.  Thanks Ryan!

Today the announcement was made that Bill Gates will be stepping down as Chief Software Architect and in two years will retire to his part-time position as Chairman of Microsoft. Instead he's going to focus on efforts such as battling tuberculosis, a topic near to our family. 

My "little" sister is a microbiologist for the CDC, running Tuberculosis projects around the world.  Yesterday she IM'ed me from Botswana-a surreal moment.  She was in Kazakhstan just a few months ago, it's amazing.  Regularly she talks about Bill Gates a reverence not seen (in my parts) in a while now.  Despite all the flak he received in years past, Bill is doing something incredibly worthy with his immense wealth.

I've had the opportunity to work with and talk with Bill on four separate occasions.  In each of these, he had the air of an elder statesman, on one occasion even sticking around for an extra hour to brainstorm a few ideas with a group of us.  It was energizing to have this kind of engagement with him, outside of a review, just like a group of friends and co-workers out of the office shooting bull about the industry.  He's human, we didn't necessarily share all the same ideals but could discuss and debate.  I enjoyed our time in this capacity.

Bill is part of the reason I joined Microsoft- the mystique inspired me like many; the desire to meet him "one day" was strong (checkbox filled plus pictures).  But in actuality his is just one person.  Microsoft is filled with bright and passionate people I learn from every day. He's not the only one.  The transition is bittersweet, but now it is perhaps my sister's turn.  I know she (like many other scientists) would like to one day work at the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.  Perhaps she'll get her opportunity one day to meet Bill and the two of us can compare.

For now, we can all joke about how Bill is following Robert Scoble's lead :).

I'm actually not sure why people aren't more up in arms over this (via iPodLounge & MacWorld UK).  It sickens me personally.

The WSJ has an interesting article on a small outfit called MusicGremlin whose portable music player goes on the market today.  What makes MG unique?  Wireless.  You can wirelessly download music from the service or even share tracks (legally) between friends and other subscribers.  It's a really interesting idea and Uncle Walt and Kathy seem to agree.

The device is a bit chunky (or is that clunky?), the service lacks the desirability of others (i.e. letting people browse before creating a registration) but it's an interesting concept to what I'd call, "Super-enthused music lovers who have a wireless connection and want to share with friends and can't wait until they get home to download music oh but they still need a wire to charge their device" kind of people.  Wireless should support the core experience, not BE the core experience IMO. Laboriously typing in characters to search? No thanks.  Back in the day it was a pain typing in three letters for my high score in Pac Man using a joystick, I'm sure not going to make this my primary way of searching for music. 

But... it supports PlaysforSure so Urge should work with this, so thats a plus... when connected to a PC.

Update: Michael Gartenberg weighs in on the concept himself here. David Card seems to agree with him that Uncle Walt has been seduced.

Here's the link. They started shipping to stores over a week ago as well- call your local store or pop your zipcode in online but chances are if you're looking for a last minute father's day present, this could be it.

Speaking of which, today my VP stopped by my office to note all the VPs that have Clix devices now.  The funny thing is, they're getting one passed around by another VP at a meeting.  Then they're buying them for themselves.  They're showing them to family and then have to buy them for their family.  I know of at least 50 units that have been sold.

Why?  Because it just works. Just like the iPod, it works as advertised. But this one works with services where you can download all you can eat for a flat rate per month.  iRiver has done the due diligence and the hard work on the QA side to make sure the issues were addressed.  While I may have helped by leading the Microsoft team that worked on this project and was the Microsoft UX guy on the end to end, iRiver's engineers are what makes this thing shine.  It was the best project I've ever worked on- hands down.

DAPreview was skeptical of the other big reviews too.  They said:

After using the player these past weeks I have to say it is one of the best players I’ve ever used, and right now is the best flash player out. When I first saw it, and read how high it was being rated by other reviews [read: CNET] I couldn’t believe it. I still just saw it as a 2GB U10. The first few moments of using the player changed all that. The player has more features than others in its range and for just about the same price.

So there you have it.  One C|Net Editor's Choice, one Top 100 of the Year by PC World, and now DAPreview, perhaps one of the most intense reviews gives it the thumbs up.  Now you can go to BBY and try one out yourself. 

Update: Go demo at BBY, it's coming soon online but their price is too high at $229.  You can get it for cheaper ($195.00) at Amazon.com.

Update2: I hear rebates should be available soon at BBY.  Please let me know if you see them.

Ok, not that I really know of, but at this point it could happen as we've entered a bit of a bizarro world. :)  The reaction to Robert's announcement about his leaving Microsoft has been a groundswell of feedback, blog postings, analyst comments, CNET headlines, Reuters articles etc.  I knew the Scoble effect was big, but not that big.  Larry Hryb (a.k.a. Major Nelson) and I were talking about it on our respective drives home last night*.  He asked my thoughts on Scoble leaving and here's basically what I said:

I've known Robert for almost ten years now, going back to when he was an event and communities coordinator at Fawcette Technical Publications and I was just entering the corporate world.  Scoble and I have always had a good relationship and I think the key to his success is that he's affable and a little goofy, while amazingly self-aware.  He uses these traits to his advantage.  Like a certain cartoon bear, he wanders around Microsoft looking for picnic baskets.  Sometimes, he wanders into the wrong campground and he gets shooed away, but people like him still.  He's also been amazingly adept at using his position to build his own brand, his own presence, and no one can fault him for that.  It's just the nature of blogging.

This disarming charm and sense of humility paired with a strong desire to share his own perspective is what's made Scoble such a lightning rod.  Am I sad to see him go? Yes.  A bit perplexed? Yes.  Then there's the obligatory questions about who is going to step up to replace him?  I think there may be in the future others who take on his job role, but he came along during a perfect storm- one part nascent blogging concept in corporate america paired with a curiousity about what happens behind the curtain at Microsoft.  Let's not forget the willingness to let the story be told by Microsoft as well (and many teeth were gnashed in the process I'm sure).

Good luck Robert and I'm looking forward to reading about your next adventure.

*Note: We were using speakerphones in our cars in true geek fashion. ;)

I've been doing my part by dutifully dogfooding Office 2007 and Vista over the past three weeks and while things are a little slower (as often happens with betas), my productivity is still up there.  But every once in a while, something goes haywire.  For example, I was just catching up on some RSS feeds when Outlook 2007 disappeared.  I said the required, "What the?!" and Outlook restarted.  But that's not the cool part... what happened next is.

I got a notification (toast) message: "The bug you just experienced has been fixed in an upcoming build of Office 2007."

How's that for customer response?  Sure, it would have been even nicer to get an actual fix, but I got peace of mind in getting a checkpoint that the issue had been found and fixed already. I don't have to be one of the many who will file a duplicate bug against this issue.

Sometimes I wish WMP and Vista were more like Office.  This is one of them.  I just email to my VP about that topic.

It appears more CEDIA installers are putting MCE and Xbox 360 into their mix.  Over at AVSForum, there's a headling on the following article detailing an impressive setup involving whole-home distribution, home automation and more.  I'm humbled.

As a budding photo hobbyist (Nikon D200 in-hand), like Thomas Hawk I enjoy taking pictures of architecture when I'm out and about on my travels.  What happened to Thomas when he was snapping from a public venue at 45 Fremont Street in San Francisco is unconscionable.  I wish I could say this was the first time this has happened to him.  Thomas is standing up for all of our rights - photographers or otherwise.

Suggestion for Thomas - consider taking a small portable audio recorder in the future and notify the person at the beginning that this conversation will be recorded. ;)

If you're a beta junkie like me, and have a spare test system laying around, why not give Windows Vista Beta 2 and Office 2007 a whirl? Unlike when XP was in beta, broadband is finally at acceptable speeds for most to able to download.  Just be sure to run the Vista Upgrade Advisor first m'kay?

• Download Windows Vista Beta 2 (or order DVD media)
• Download Office 2007 Beta 2 (or order DVD media)

Wondering what all the fuss is around Vista?  Download the Vista Beta 2 Guide (Word .doc).