So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

After an abortive attempt at starting this site, I've decided to call it quits.

Originally, I thought there was a need for real, useful content about wireless devices of all ilk, not gossip about stolen phones and made-up features of unreleased products. And, I'd written about them in other venues for a couple of decades. But, things changed, and I changed. 

I used to be excited about wireless devices. But that was when I logged 2,000,000 miles on airlines. I remember pulling out of the Miami airport with a giant, old Oki cell phone powered by a battery-eliminator-adaptor plugged into the rental car's cigarette lighter, and making a call that saved a deal (and kept a bunch of us employed). 

Then, there was the time running between flights at the Frankfurt airport with the Ericsson T28, the first "world phone", and being able to solve a customs problem that would have kept materials from getting to our conference in Berlin -- while pulling an O.J. with carry-on bags between Lufthansa terminals. Or, the first time I turned on a Blackberry, while in the customs line at Heathrow, and saw the string of emails pile in before I even got to the scanner. 

But, I'm no longer a 100K flyer. My enthusiasm fell as the devices became less important to me. Tweeting and updating my "wall"? So, millennial. 

Besides, the industry has changed. I realized that when I was with a group of executives from around the globe at an off-site in Provence. We were at a lull, in a bus. The execs basically split into two groups: The Blackberry types, were heads down, skimming email, getting some work done quickly before going sight-seeing. Meanwhile, the iPhone crowd was holding their phones above their heads, or up to windows, trying in vein to get a signal, and claiming the Orange network was to blame. 

Yet, if you asked the two groups, the RIM-heads would say their devices were "OK. They get the job done," yawn, while the Apple fanboys would say their devices were "great, fun" even though they didn't work.

I realized the industry had become all about fashion, and this blog was obsolete before it started. 

So, as Douglas Adams' dolphins told the unappreciative humans when they abandoned Earth before its destruction: So, long and thanks for all the fish.