quicky product review

So i finally got off thewaitlist for a product I really wanted to test. As in desperately.  Not sure even why.  This stuff is turning into my new crack.  And I am a nice kid who never even had pot.  And only drank legally in moderation.

The reason is, if it worked correctly, it would have solved two of the biggest issues of my life, plus over time had a clear exit plan (it really is that kind of amazing idea)…

It was a product known as CYNCZ.  The premise, utterly awesome.  Back up all the contacts on your phone.  Everything.  All the basic social network stuff (Facebook, LinkedIn) All the basic phone stuff, and All the basic email stuff.  One place.  Now stop thinking.  And have a phonebook,  It’s lovely looking now, isn’t it.  Doesn’t that sound so easy.  I hate phonebooks and email books between networks too.  Easy is good.  Especially on phones.  Hence I was excited.

No more hassle between different products.  Very corporate friendly (Will it work with Exchange, because right now it works with Outlook?  You’ll make current corporate land happy if you do that, and it could be your excuse for Silverlight.)

It is so far behind schedule though, why would you make an application like this, and do the phone stuff last?  What’s with the need for silverlight?  (Do you plan on being the Cloud Version of Microsoft Sync- that might not be a bad idea from a business perspective, yet do I really want to install yet another bit of software on Ezzie the computer)  Do that first!  Seriously!  My phone is the most losable object!  Not my email, the phone.  it’s tiny, My email is gmail, it already exists in cloudland.  Same with Facebook, LinkedIn.  The Phone is the Weakest Link!  It goes Goodbye, the product is pointless! Fix that first.  Why would you release the Beta and not release the phone stuff in the Beta, especially because Blackberries have a huge chunk of marketshare?  Why is android not a choice, damnit (I’m a blackberry user, it raises questions though.)

Also the layout of this sucks.  Granted, this may be a layout free thing, who cares?  Also, what exactly is Google Sync’s long term plan here?   How are we going corporate with SmartPhones- is that the niche you want to fill?  Just without seeing something, you know, a tad more complete (and that’s the frustrating thing), what’s the point?  Is that the plan, super corporate unthinking dummy smartphones that are all nice and juicy when you hook them up, without much thinking?  It’s so hard to tell with such an underdeveloped beta, I’m so hoping.

This is one of those products that I just see selling out early. It has lots of potential, it needs to be hooked up to someone big.  It’s too much of a complement to make anyone really happy that it has to sell.  The question is, who is going to buy the toy?  It’s a great corporate product (Hence I can see Microsoft entering here, especially because Silverlight is already needed).  I can see Google also entering here (It’s actually disruptive with Sync, which is just Google land).  It also needs a lotta help.  Major Help.  The thing it can’t do it semantically tag overlaps (as far as I can see, it’s not super developed yet).  And no product is going to survive without being able to get over the hump of FOF differences in contacts because we want to pretend that ontological problems are going to be solved.  In a product like this, where it is your contact details, and were there will be variances on the same person (Umm, I keep wondering if I should make myself searchable according to a high school nickname for example, or when I get married, maiden name, etc.)  how does the backend keep track of it all, considering it’s a cloud! Something’s gotta give.*  And the Something is gonna have to be either major funding, or a big Corporation willing to buy out for the sake of having a toy concept that plays around with something you know, important and different…

Except now I am disappointed.  Really disappointed.  Because it is hard to tell if this is going to be the case.  So this is going to be one of my annoying, just ignore my while I ramble calls.  This isn’t developed enough,. and I can’t see numbers (and even if I did, I need training to understand what the numbers mean), to tell you good from great.  S, in theory great idea.  In Practice, I’m giving you a shrug and a wait and see.  And stop being annoying.  I prefer happy you go or I hate your guts.  Forgettable because of underdeveloped is depressing.

*It’s a general cloud problem when it comes to semantic tags.  Welcome to linguistics and philosophy, the same issue has been going on since Socrates, if not earlier, in the West.  Just now we have dummy machines which have to deal too. Do computers dream of electric sheep?