Danger Finally Offers New Applications
Ever since T-Mobile launched the Danger hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick device, I've been complaining about what a stupid move it was not to open up the platform for developers. It was typical carrier thinking about "control". They figured if they could control the applications, they could sell the applications and make a little more money. The problem is that this does nothing for me, as a user of the device. I have an ancient Palm device which I still use because of all the applications I have on it. I can't stand the thought of giving up some of them. With the Danger device, it's just a wireless email and web box for me. If it had some really cool applications, I wouldn't now be planning to ditch it and move over to a Treo 600. Having an open developer community means that you get a ton of useful applications and you end up with locked-in customers. How T-Mobile could have missed this concept is beyond me. However, this morning, my Danger device alerted me that it had an update from T-Mobile, which I downloaded. Besides some minor interface changes, everything seemed the same. However, I just scrolled down to the bottom of the page and was surprised to see an extra icon for "catalog". Within that, I have the option of downloading four applications or a bunch of ringtones. All are free right now... but are clearly marked with a "free" price tag, so you know this catalog is designed to sell you applications. So, it only took 13 months for T-Mobile to come up with four applications and a bunch of cheesy ringtones I don't need (I don't use it as a phone, and if I did, I don't use ringtones)? Not exactly what I was hoping for. The only useful application, by the way, is a telnet/SSH client that folks at Danger have been saying would be available since the product was announced. Too little, too late.
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