I am not sure if I was revising something on Feedly that I had not read yet, or if this crossed one of my feeds last week, but the story was about Windows Mobile 10 being taken off life support (it wasn't this story, but it gives you an idea). I've come to the conclusion, over the past decade, that Microsoft (just like Sony) just isn't good at Mobile.  They've given it a valiant try with Windows CE, then PocketPC, failing to get PocketPC 6.0 out and cancelling it (reminds me a bit of PalmOS 5 in the way this was done), then purchasing Danger and killing off the HipTop and the HipTop OS for the Kin...which was summarily euthanized right out of the gateway.  Then buying off Nokia (and I would say putting their mole in that organization to make this happen) so that Nokia would make Windows Phone devices and kill of the Symbian OS, and then bungling Windows Phone by making Windows Phone 8 incompatible with Windows Phone 7 apps, and then making Windows Phone 10 incompatible with 8. Seriously, with this kind of loyalty to people who buy your devices who needs friends ;-) . Maybe microsoft should stop trying and become a custom android manufacturer - or just get out of mobile altogether.

Microsoft (Nokia) Lumia phones

I guess happy Pokemon day to you ;-) Hard to believe that this thing has been going strong since 1996 (I was in high school!). Part of me wishes I had bought the game on Game Boy back then, but I only watched the cartoon after school

Well...another one bites the dust...

Wikispaces this past week notified users of their Free wikis that the platform is going away this summer (apparently private label wiki admins got this notification earlier). It seems that one by one pioneers of the Web 2.0/social media revolution are closing their doors and moving on. I remember the excitement that was afoot when we could create our own wikis without needing to setup our own server to run mediawiki.  Wikispaces was a pretty awesome space. Yes, wikis by their nature are not as pretty to look at as compared to something that you lay out in InDesign or something similar, but it does get the work done.   Back in the day, when I was a student in the Instructional Design MEd program there was some turmoil in the department; lots of turnover for program directors, so no steady leadership, and lots of brain drain. Because I was an employee of the institution classmates kept asking me program specific questions that they thought I knew.  Getting tired of answering the same questions (and also looking for an opportunity to get my own questions answered), I created a wiki on wikispaces called PocketID (Pocket Instructional Design), which included faculty bios (which I tried to crowdsource from faculty themselves as well as students), syllabi, course material breakdown (sort of like a crowdsourced OpenCcourseWare), a history of the department, and so on. A few years later, once things settled in the department I didn't maintain PocketID with much regularity, but the department decided to adopt the majority of it (and fork it).  Good times wikispaces, sorry to see you go.

The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting look at the genesis of Star Trek, from before there was even Star Trek, through The Animated Series, through a few aborted concepts, to Star Trek VI. Told through the words of the people involved in the series, so there are multiple views on any given thing. One thing is for certain: for any Star Trek don't put all your eggs in the "What would Roddenberry do?" basket because it's clear that while there was a good idea, and a few good moments, he wasn't the Trek messiah people paint him to be :-) I think that what makes Star Trek what it is are the people involved and the stories told in the universe. Saying that something "isn't star trek" is a quick (and not so sophisticated) way of dismissing it.

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I guess this is a take it, or leave it, type of humor.  Saw this posted on facebook by one of my acquaintances who is a (medical) doctor.  Hope I never have to go through the pain of stones :-)

Well...I guess that's the end of that!  Miitomo has announced in via their app that Miitomo will go offline and never come back in May. For the past couple of years this quirky social network has kept us company. The idea behind it was that people would customize a Mii (which Nintendo has also slowly walked away from in their newest console, the Switch) and through those Miis you could interact with your friends: send messages, funny photo snaps (like this one), and answer trivia about you (favorite movie and such, which seems like a way to get your information phished). You can import your Mii and your sidekick Miis before the end of May to your WiiU or your Nintendo 3DS, but sadly all of the clothing and accessories that you've gotten in Miitomo do not transfer.

This punchline never really made much sense to me.  Something about baldness? :-/

(original archive here)

Found earlier this week.  It an interesting commentary on a common trope of video game stories - accused of a violent crime, didn't do it, be violent to clear you name.