A New Groove

     First there was Zune, which is pretty much gone except for the desktop client which is still available for the diehard amongst us. Then came Xbox music. A service that failed to live up to either Zune or the Xbox name. Now there’s Groove. How long this incarnation of Microsofts music service will stick around is anyone’s guess. But at the rate it’s going with its available features, it can’t be long. Groove is feature poor. Compared to Apple music/iTunes, Spotify & even Google play music, Grove is just sad as a music service. And it’s even sadder when you know Microsoft can and has done better. But it doesn’t mean that what’s wrong with Groove can’t be fixed.

Let’s get Social again:

     What passes for social in groove is a joke. I can share a song or a playlist to Facebook, Twitter or whatever the share pane will allow. Big fucking whup. We live in a day & age of Spotify and can see each other’s music, playlist and latest plays without having to open facebook. Congratulations Microsoft, you brought groove into 2010. But if you were a Zune user, you know that Microsofts music service had social before Spotify existed. Lets’ bring this back. Imagine logging into Groove with not only your Microsoft account, but also your facebook and twitter account. In doing this, Groove can not only link you to your friends & the music they’ve shared/liked. It can see what music, artist, concerts you’ve shared/liked and curate music based experiences for you. Be it songs or playlist or concerts.

     For Groove to survive and maybe even succeed, it must be more than just a means of playing music. It must be a music social network. From within Groove, you can see your friends regardless of whether they have a groove account. You can see the music they’ve shared, liked and artist they’ve followed. If they have a groove account, you can see their most recent plays & the playlist they’ve made. You can communicate with them from within Groove and even send them music & playlist. These songs & playlists can much like a message in snapchat be set to automatically self-destruct.

     Let’s add a feature to kill a hardware accessory, Shared play. Have you ever seen two people walking down the street and they are either sharing a set of earphones or they have a headphone splitter? The worst of these is the Bluetooth headphones that can share the music experience at the same time with someone with the exact same pair of ugly & otherwise useless headphones. Why can’t we listen to music from our own devices but have them play at the same time? Netflix for the Xbox 360 used to do this.

     Now this shared experience can be expanded beyond people on your friends list. Let’s say that you’re at a friend’s place. You have on your phone and they have groove on their PC or Xbox. But you aren’t friends on groove for some reason. But your device is on the same Wi-Fi as their devices. You can broadcast through their device and add to their now playing playlist. With Spotify, stagnant on windows mobile and not even available on the windows store. Social features are DESPERATELY needed. There, now we’re not only back up to the social levels we were at when Groove was Zune, we’ve up the game a bit by adding Chromecast like functionality.

     But music is about more than the music your friends listen to. It’s about the artist you love. By plugging in your social media information, Grove automatically follows artist you’ve followed. From the artist section, you can get more than their albums, songs and a little information about them. You can get their full Wikipedia page & if applicable, their IMDB information. You can also get their latest facebook, twitter and even Instagram feed via a mixed view pane. This is in addition to their photos and if applicable, a link to their website. Zune also had a great, but under developed feature that allowed you to see artist concert dates. If Microsoft partners with a ticket agency like live nation & or ticket master, you can get concert promotions directly through Groove.

      Now we need to fix groove itself. So far, grove is SOOOO basic that there’s nothing that needs to be stripped from it. But there’s a few features that it’s in DESPERATE need of. One of those feature is crossfading. It’s the ONLY thing I like about iTunes. This should be available if throughout the app whether your just playing random music or listening to a playlist. Another is a feature that was available in the Zune HD & windows phone. The ability to affect the lock screen when music is playing. Not simply affect the live tile. Let’s add a few social features that don’t merely involve sharing a link to facebook and twitter (Sidebar, If you’re going to let me share what song I’m listening to via social media, INCLUDE THE ALBUM COVER for the song along with some text saying I’m listening to X song from X artist from X album. Just FYI). For instance, lets borrow from tinder. Let’s say I’m listening to a smart playlist. But the biggest feature that’s missing from Groove is podcasts.

More than music:

     You can get music from any app. But having 1 place for all your music & podcasts is something that’s appreciated by virtually EVERYONE. Google knows this. It’s long past time that Microsoft accepts this. On windows, I should have no problem what so ever in finding new podcasts via the windows store. It gives people a reason to go there and maybe get games, apps, media and books.

     The podcast app from windows phone, albeit bare bones has a great mechanism for searching for podcasts. So that if for some reason, a podcast isn’t available in the store, it can be found thanks to Bing. Podcasts should be displayed and categorized in accordance with the way the store works for apps, games & media. But from within the app, there are core features that Groove MUST have. The ability to add podcasts via OPML file is at the top of that list. Because many of us have podcasts libraries with other services and this shouldn’t be a barrier to entry. Adding podcast via a link is also important because some of us subscribe to podcast via paid subscription. And on this note, it’s important that it can be able to add login information if the podcasts ask for it. Like music MUST have crossfade, podcast must have the ability to be played at faster speeds, skip and rewind by a set amount of time.

     Now that the basics are there, what’s needed now for podcast is smart playlists. These are groups that are automatically created based on the genre that corresponds with that podcast. Other than these, there are 4 other list: All podcasts, new episodes, now playing and downloaded. These are fixed playlists. User can create playlist. Podcasts and playlist can have setting fairly like music playlist. They can be set to be available offline. A set number of episodes can be downloaded and this can be set for when in Wi-Fi. Podcasts can be set to be automatically added to now playing playlist once a new episode is added. Old episodes can be automatically deleted once listened to or once a new episode is downloaded. Episodes can also be favorited for listening to later.

     But Groove is now social. You can see what your friends listen to. You can share podcasts with them. Either your choice of episode of entire podcast. This should be limited to podcast available in the store. For podcast, you’ve added via link and even need login credentials for, you can only listen to their podcast if you are on your friend’s groove page. You can’t subscribe or download. Possibly even limit the amount of time you can listen to that podcast. But ultimately, podcast can be as social as music. And if used with OneDrive for syncing, I should be able to stop listening to a podcast on my phone and pick it right back up on another device.

     Groove is can be so much better. We know this because Microsoft has done better with its media players in the past. Now Microsoft needs to take a few simple actions to make Groove a better media player. Doing the above and bringing groove to even more platforms beyond Windows, iOS and Android will help make groove sustainable and maybe even popular. Bringing it to Mac, Linux & even if possible other gaming consoles will help bolster Groove.

If you have some of your own idea, leave them in the comments section below. If you agree with me in anyway, do me a favor. If you’re a windows insider, go to the feedback hub and add as a new suggestion “groove needs better social and podcast support” and post a link to this article. And or Tweet this article at:

https://twitter.com/joebelfiore

https://twitter.com/panos_panay

https://twitter.com/tmyerson

https://twitter.com/donasarkar

AND last but not least

https://twitter.com/SatyaNadella

Getting Microsoft wearables back in shape

 

 

 

  I’m going to get a little personal here. Not that long ago, I was, let’s not mince words, fat. I was well over 100 lbs. overweight. To be exact, I weighed 250 pounds.  EVERYTHING I wore was a large. I had a 42-inch waist. Below is a photo of me.

 

   

I don’t take a lot of photos of myself but here’s the most recent full body shot of me. This is after I lost 50lbs. I’ve lost 25 lbs since then.

     I’ve battled weight issues for a long time. I’ve either been fat or thin. And I genuinely don’t know why I gain weight, hold it for a while, then lose it for almost no reason whatsoever. I can have no fitness routine at all and be thin, then eat 1 pop tart and balloon up to the point where none of my clothes fit me anymore. Until the fitness bands and health apps came around there really wasn’t a way to monitor my activity & caloric intake without a pen and paper. FYI, I don’t keep paper money around because it gets lost & or destroyed. How do you think a notebook with scribblings of my diet/exercise routines faired? Then along came the various apps which helped a lot. I went from weighing 250 to 245-240. I had a pretty wide net of them. But they couldn’t do a lot. Because frankly, a phone as a fitness device is just a glorified pedometer. Enter wearables and the Microsoft band. The Microsoft Band was the only 1 that worked with my Lumia that was on par with what other fitness bands and some smartwatches did at the time. It allows me to basically micromanage my body. I track my sleep, my calories (when I could use it with the MSN health app to track my caloric intake) and workout routines. But all that isn’t why I initially bought the Band. I bought it as a companion device for my phone. It’s simple. It doesn’t run any apps. What it does is it kept me apprised of what’s going on with my phone without having to look at my device. I could control some functions. About the only thing, I could do is buy a cup of coffee with it. The fitness stuff was a bonus that I didn’t think I’d use on a regular basis.

     But when I started seeing my sleeping stats, my calories burned, etc, I started to care more about those health functions. I currently weigh around 180. And I’m still losing weight,  getting in better shape and I’m still rocking the Microsoft Band. But I’ve got a problem with the Microsoft Band. As far as Microsoft is concerned, it doesn’t exist. Because Microsoft isn’t really a company that fights battles unless they’ve already won it. Microsoft band isn’t the #1 fitness band or even in the top 5 fitness bands/smart watches? So, they pretend it doesn’t exist. Windows Phone isn’t setting the world on fire? So, they do what Apple did with the Apple TV after it 1’st launched. Treat it as a hobby but then, unlike Apple they did nothing after that. Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft is a retreat and play nicely on other platforms while it almost completely disregards its own platform. Don’t believe me? Look at the mail/calendar app on windows then look at the outlook app on iOS or Android. Where do you see most Microsoft garage apps? Do you see them on windows as UWP apps? Do you see ANY in the windows store? “Windows 1’st or Windows best” right?

     Microsoft keeps saying that Windows Mobile is important to their overall strategy. I believe that’s true. But the same goes for wearables. The Microsoft band isn’t exactly the Microsoft Spot Watch. This is important because it’s capable of being the perfect fitness monitor and device companion. Microsoft is fully capable of innovating. The question remains however, is Microsoft capable of reaching down a little deeper for a bigger set of balls to compete anymore? Should Microsoft get back into the wearables business as more than a hobby, I’ve got an idea of what I’d like to see from them. Starting with the hardware.

Surface Pulse:

     Let’s do away with the Band name all together and ride the Surface coat-tails. In doing so, let’s keep with the design and engineering philosophy that comes with that brand name. Something that could be a category all to itself. Not just a fitness tracker or smartwatch. But a perfect companion device for phones, tablets, PCs, ETC. Currently, there are 2 main parts to the band. There’s the main part with the screen and then there’s the sensor on the latch. The Pulse, needs to be an all in one. Put the sensor right in the main housing of the device. This allows for 1 size fits all devices with customizable bands and straps. There should be 2 options for powering the pulse.

· QI wireless charging: Lots of Lumia devices do this already.

· Thermoelectric: Lots of watches do this. It wouldn’t be enough to keep the battery at 100% but this could be used to prolong the battery life.

· The point of this is to help make the device as water resistant as possible. The device itself shouldn’t even have buttons or dials.

Back to the wrist bands, Microsoft, I know you like partnerships. PLEASE SKIP THIS. Just make the connection for the wrist bands to be made by ANYONE. This is going to play a very important part because now we’re going to talk about what the device is going to be shaped like.

     The current band is a curved plastic unit with a thin strip of glass that’s roughly a half inch tall and about two inches wide. This is probably why they couldn’t get windows to run on it. But rather than make Windows smaller, lets make the device a little bigger. What if it was a little over twice that size and turned on its head? So now when you hold your wrist upright, you have a device that’s 3 inches tall & 2 inches wide that curves around your wrist. Now we have a bigger screen and an overall bigger device to work with. Use an AmOled screen to save power and allow for glanceable details to be shown such as the time & a few app notifications. Now the pulse would be running a stripped down, device specific version of windows 10. This is not windows mobile or windows that runs on your Surface pro/book/studio or your Xbox. You will see tiles and tile groups. The interface will allow for being viewed in portrait and landscape. But what will be front and center is Cortana. You can get the time just by turning the screen off. Now if the pulse runs apps, does that mean I can run office and play games on it? This leads us into what the Pulse should not do/be.

1. It’s not a smartphone for your wrist. This shouldn’t be a gaming platform. Maybe like the Surface Dial it can be a peripheral for apps and games on the phone, PC/Tablet & Xbox (more on that later). But it shouldn’t be able to play games.

2. It shouldn’t run full blown apps & programs. At best, what it should be running would be something more akin to widgets for the active apps on your devices. Allow me to reply to things like messenger apps & social network reply’s and updates. But this shouldn’t be a full-blown app platform.

3. The Pulse needs to be a companion to primary devices like phones, tablets, PCs, Xbox and windows IOT devices first & a fitness tracker a close second. It should be sparingly used as a standalone device.

4. Storage shouldn’t be an issue. It should have enough space for the OS, Maps and some data relevant to the apps on your windows device. The closest thing to 3’rd party apps you’d be using on the device would be almost like a cross between widgets and googles apps on tap.

     Keep what’s currently on the Microsoft band. The weather app, Messaging should be the skype app. Just combine messages & phone. Cycling, workout but lose guided workout (more on that later), outlook mail and calendar, alarm & sleep. Music controls, power options, quiet hours & settings should be accessible via edge gesture. Swipe out from the right to get them. Cortana would be available by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Notifications would be a swipe from the right edge of the screen. The rest of the apps available would be based on the apps you allow from your windows 10 devices. Facebook, News, whatever the developer allows for. For most things like looking at photos, it would stream it via Bluetooth from whatever device associated with your account, it’s connected to and nearest. Earlier I said there are no buttons or dials on the Pulse. So how do you turn it on & off? When the screen is off (connected standby), double tap to wake it up. When the screen is on and you want to go back into connected standby, swipe down from the top of the screen. There really isn’t a reason to turn it off. But if you should need to & then need to turn it back on simply power the device off while not charging it either by Qi or wearing it. To power it back on, just plug it in or wear it and it’ll power back up.

     Tap to pay and tap to pair are a must. This shouldn’t have Microsoft edge however. Just let Cortana handle searches. GPS is a must. Pulse should just communicate with the nearest device it’s paired to. There shouldn’t be a camera. It doesn’t need LTE but it should have Wi-Fi. Keep the Optical heart rate sensor, (Formerly3-axis) 8-axis accelerometer/gyro, Gyrometer, GPS (for running, cycling and navigation when maps are downloaded), Ambient light sensor, Skin temperature sensor, UV sensor, Galvanic skin response, Barometer and add a Proximity Sensor, Gyroscope, Magnetometer & SensorCore. The only things it shouldn’t have is a camera, speaker & a microphone.

     So, what can this device do? Imagine your phone rings. You see who’s calling. But you don’t have to touch the device. By using gestures, you can lower your hand to dismiss the call or bring it up to your ear to answer it (No, there are not speakers built into it. More on that later). In addition to using it for security as you can now with any Bluetooth device for windows 10. You can use it as a peripheral in almost Kinect like ways. Maybe 1 extra sensor that can allow the device to sense the tendons in your wrist to tell what your fingers are doing. So, let’s say I bring my wrist to chest level & I tap my palm with my index finger. That triggers it to go to music controls. From there I can gesture to lower or raise the volume or move to the next or previous song. Other fingers correspond to other actions on the Surface Pulse. This can be further customizable for other functions with your phone or pc. If the Surface Dial has shown us anything, a new peripheral can attract developers. So, these gestures can be made relevant to an open app on a device then set by the developer. Or Imagine doing a gesture, turning your wrist upside down and hovering over a table while you’re using your surface. While doing this, you have your index & middle finger extended like you’re making a peace sign. Now, because of the gestures you’ve made and the actions you’re doing with your fingers, you have a virtual mouse. For gamers, this would almost be like a small cross between a Kinect and a controller. Microsoft can even sell an extra accessory. Something small like a small, Bluetooth joystick like what some VR sets come with.

     But earlier on I said this device has no speakers. Not entirely true. What about if it came with a Bluetooth headset? Now they can’t be too expensive. The LG Tones can cost as little as $50 and they get long battery life. These headsets wouldn’t have controls on them except for the power button, because they are controlled by the Pulse. They’d be chargeable by USB-C & Qi. You’d have your choice of in ear and over ear. Pairing would be handled by the Pulse rather than at the headset.

The Microsoft Band app.

     Since the band as far as this piece is concerned is dead. Then we can stop calling it the Microsoft Band app. But don’t go back to calling it the Microsoft Health app. For right now let’s call it by Bings initial code name: Kumo (That and no one apparently owns the site). This would have the added be added benefit of not being strictly being locked to the Surface Pulse. Which leads me to my next point. Allow it to be used with other fitness trackers. Allowing it to be used by other fitness trackers allows many things. It lowers the barrier to entry for device makers to support windows because for all intents and purposes, they don’t have to. It lowers the barrier to entry for users as well. Their fitness tracker of choice if it’s not the Pulse, is available for windows 10 devices. Furthermore, this allows for Kumo to be a fitness social network by allowing people to compete against each other with universal data points: Push ups, sit ups, steps taken, etc. Not to mention it buys good press and the best experience would still be possible would still be the Pulse. I don’t need to get into what the benefits of having a social network would mean. If you don’t know the possible ad revenue streams, then I would have to sincerely question why are you even in software. But this can be easily done for Microsoft as they already have the means of getting ads in front of users. Use Azure as the back bone. You wouldn’t be in direct competition with your “partner” Facebook. But you would add to your revenue by filling a gap left behind by Facebook because it’s too much of a niche for them to dedicate time to fill.

     This app will allow you to set the background and layout of the pulse, the tile group layout along with the tiles as the current band app does now. It will give you your stats; calories burned, sleep, steps, etc. But it’ll also do a few other things. Kumo, as an app/service/social network will compete against services like Strava for cycling and running. By letting users show the miles they ran, jogged, cycled and challenge their friends and various other people that are in their skill level. It’ll also compete against lose it. MSN health used to be able to tell you how many calories was in a meal just by entering it. Whether you where cooking it from scratch and allocating the portions yourself or if it was a store-bought meal or something you bought from a restaurant. Add the ability to scan items and use location to help input what meals the user is logging in. Allow for smart scales to connect to it and you have a fully developed featured social network based around fitness. Apps like Lose it and Strava are not and for the foreseeable future will not be available as an app in the windows store. Let alone a UWP. And apps like Runtastic are leaving. So, until they are, users shouldn’t be left wanting for similar functionality.

     You know what my favorite thing to take into the gym is. My Surface Pro. It’s honestly my favorite fitness tool. Because with the apps available, I can select the workout I want and the screen is big enough that I can see what I need to do. So, as I said earlier, pull guided workouts from the device. The pulse when used by itself for workouts should be running, walking, golfing, cycling & generic workout. A guided workout should be done with the phone or the PC. This allows for Microsoft to build in features from properties they already owns like Kinect fitness. Finally, both the device and the app need to strongly benefit from 2 things Microsoft does well. 1 is calendars. For scheduling workouts & tracking progress. The other is Cortana. Because she’s connected to so many things: your phone, tablet, etc. As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft has several apps that center around 1 thing. This is the usual Redmond redundancy. Build in Microsoft health vault and health vault insights. This part WILL NOT BE SHARED TO THE SOCIAL NETWORK ASPECT OF KUMO. This allows for users to make their health data portable.

So there you have it. The Surface Pulse! It’s a smartwatch that’s the perfect companion device for your windows 10 devices be it a Windows Phone, Tablet/PC, Xbox, IOT or the range or Cortana devices like the Harmon Karmon Invoke. A fitness tracker that can collect your health data, analyze it & allow you to share it. And it’s a peripheral for your choice of gaming or productivity. It’s a smarter bluetooth headset. And because it’s made with some of the internals as the current Band 2 and the Lumia 520 minus the LTE, camera & microphone, it can be made on the cheap & sold at a bargain. If you have some of your own idea, leave them in the comments. If you agree with me in anyway, do me a favor. Tweet this article at:

https://twitter.com/joebelfiore

https://twitter.com/panos_panay

https://twitter.com/tmyerson

https://twitter.com/donasarkar

AND last but not least

https://twitter.com/SatyaNadella

Dear #Mozilla & Microsoft haters. Knock off the bullshit with #Windows10

It NEVER ends & somehow NEVER gets old. So with the launch of windows 10 comes the launch of Microsoft’s new browser, Edge. For all of the bitching & complaining about Internet Explorer, you’d think there would be fireworks and dancing in the streets for its demise. After almost 20 years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been killed… by Microsoft & when it’s above 50% market share. Not killed by Opera, not Chrome & sure as fuck not Firefox.

Speaking of the devil, Mozilla is butthurt because of something. What I don’t know or care about anymore. Some bloggers are saying Mozillas panties are in a bunch because the defaults after the windows 10 update switch to Microsoft’s apps. Others are saying the 1 or 2 extra clicks are to hard for users to figure out. Either way I don’t care.

It’s not that hard to set a different browser as the default. As soon as a browser installs your prompted as to whether to keep using edge or switch. I’ve gotten prompted twice after installing Opera. And in settings, all you have to do is type default and you can get to it. It’s not hard AT ALL unless your brain dead. To which I guess that’s most of firefoxs customer base.

Most people aren’t having this default problem because they don’t click express install. Others didn’t even know this was an issue. But this is the internet. If 5% of people complain about something then that means the world is coming to an end. Why doesn’t anyone complain that changing the browser default in iOS is not at all an option? That’s somehow ok. 1 or 2 extra clicks to change the default ANYTHING in windows and it’s a call for a public hanging. People complaining about the defaults on an OS is ridiculous and stupid. You don’t hear about tire companies complaining or suing car companies. If a tech company is more whiny than a tire company, then they should just close their doors.

Funny their name is Firefox. A Firefox was a real thing. Every now and then a forest would catch fire. Of the many woodland animals that would run from the blaze would be foxs’. Many of which would still be ON FIRE. They’d run out of the flames and into wooden villages, setting them on fire. Hence the term, FIREFOX. I’m reminded of this everytime I load Firefox on my otherwise fine PC only to see the CPU want to die and programs crawl then crash even after I close Firefox out.

But then there are the Microsoft haters. Sorry! I mean Micro$oft haters, jumping into defend poor Mozilla. Yeah really? Microsoft! That evil company that when a blogger from Gizmodo got their hands on a prototype iPhone left in a bar, they sent Jack booted police into their homes then banned them from their conferences. Oh wait, that was Apple. I mean that evil company scooping up private Wi-Fi data while mapping. Oh wait, that was Google. You mean that Hitler-esqe Microsoft with Chinese slave labor that jumps out of windows because they work 18 hr days? Nope, that was Apple. Wait, I mean that evil Microsoft that made Ellen DeGeneres apologize the day after she made an Apple parody ad on her show. No wait, that was also Apple. I mean the Microsoft that sued the city of NYC over the the nickname the big apple. Nope, that wasn’t Microsoft either.

I guess I’m not talking about the Microsoft founded by the guy running around the world getting rid of malaria & HIV, funding a new condom, giving pretty much all his money to charitable organizations (doing much of it now before he dies. Beats the shit out of Steve Jobs who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge his own daughters existence without a fight. Let alone donate to charity. His wife and Tim cook did that in his name after he died.), was the FIRST major tech company to publicly support glbtq equality & was a major, early investor in Facebook? Which evil Microsoft are people talking about? And oh, really? Micro$oft? Because Apple & Google just toss iPhones and Google Glass out of the side of a truck for free right?

You know what, I take it all back. This browser issue isn’t a whiny, first world, white person problem. This is worse than when the barista at Starbucks misspells my name on my $6 coffee. The EU should break up Microsoft for having a monopoly. Because Google doesn’t have a search or mobile monopoly & Apple doesn’t have a media distribution monopoly? And it’s not like Mozilla had ever changed search defaults in their browser right? Sataya Nadellas head should be mounted on a pike. How dare they include a browser with their own OS. If I want a browser, I’ll order one on a cd or floppy disk via toll free number. Or they could give me the same browser choice that the EU made them offer but then everyone just ignored.

And that analogy I made about car companies and tires. I should have unfettered user choice everywhere. I’m going to march down to my local Ford dealer, buy a Mustang but then demand they fit it with monster truck tires. I don’t want their 18 in firestone Bullshit. It’s my choice. And I’m genuinely concerned as a customer of Brangelina movies that they have a monopoly. I’m gonna sue and make them take turns being married to me. In the EU court I’m seriously sure I would win.