End Of The Line For Mazingo

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.mazingo.net/pc/index.php">http://www.mazingo.net/pc/index.php</a><br /><br />"Mazingo would like to thank everyone who has been involved with developing and using the Mazingo service. Regrettably, the service can no longer be offered due to the cost of content versus the revenue derived."<br /><br />I tried using Mazingo several times over the years, most recently this past summer. The concept was a good one but the implementation was frustrating and after a one month subscription, I gave up. From popup dialogs on the desktop, a 6MB installation that forced itself in RAM on your device and synchronizations that should have been simple taking 30 minutes over WiFi connections, there were just too many design issues to make it usable for the average person.<br /><br />Sorry to see it go. I kept hoping it would succeed and had planned on giving it another go after some more months of development time. I guess that won't happen now. :?

[apeguero]

I tried it a couple of times as well. I didn't think the service was worth my money. It was too slow and occupied too much space on my PPC. Besides, I find Avantgo good enough for me.

[derosnec]

:|
Agreed. The concept was good, but the implimentation was seriously flawed. Once found a 600MB Cache file on my C:\ created by mazingo....., that was the begining of the end for me.

[reidme]

As wireless connectivity increases this type of service will become unnecessary anyway. Why read old info cached during sync (and waste memory on it) when you can view fresh info anytime by connecting to the web?

[Bob Anderson]

Well it's refreshing to see the "survival of the fittest" concept apply to the PDA world too!

Mazingo was a "wannabe" that never really went anywhere. It's a product of what bad publicity can do for you. After I read about the problems I just skipped the opportunity to even try it. I'm sure others wish they had done the same.

I'm glad to see this distraction leave the PocketPC camp.

[James Fee]

Can AvantGo be far behind? At least the free version...

Its a shell of what it used to be. Many good providers have left (ESPN, CNN).

[hrianto]

I dropped Mazingo a year ago because of above reasons.

[Doug Rausch]

I'm surprised it took this long; content has been dropping off for a while. Several flaws obviously in implementation but I still see a need for this type of service. I agree with the previous post that as wireless becomes more commonplace the need for this cached information will go away but what about until that happens? I don't know about you but I'm not finding an access point on every street corner and as much as I'd like to I can't always hang out at the book store or the coffee shop. AvantGo is heading the same direction, content is starting to drop. This is a service I'd pay for; I paid for Mazingo - as flawed as it was.

[PPCRules]

I used Mazingo heavily for about six months, as they were developing and debugging it. There was always the hope of things getting fixed in the next rev that kept me going. But once the pay service started, they stopped developing the free product and after about three months of hoping for more fixes, I gave up on it. Never really missed it at all. What it really accomplished, though, was it gave me a real appreciation for AvantGo, and how flawless that (usually) is.

A bit childish, I know, but I have to say this ("I told you so!"): Before launching the pay service, they sent out a survey seeking input on the type of content people would pay for, and fishing for a price point. In the comment area at the end I said, if you strip too much out of the free product and start charging too soon, you will never reach critical mass, because once you start charging, you will stop drawing in new (potentially future paying) customers.

I really lost interest when they started pushing the adult content so hard (always a sign of desperation).

As for Sync and Go, there is/was a lot of potential there (Microsoft could stand to loose money on it for a long time if it boosted another part of the business). But tying it exclusively (and needlessly) to WinXP was the killer there, at least for me.

[heyday]

Good idea.... sorry to see them go. I tried it for a while and it was ok.

I much prefer ISilo with ISiloX Pay $17 for ISilo once and download as much as you want... plus you can go Full Screen.

heyday

[Jason Dunn]

I wanted to like Mazingo, I really did, but the buggy software drove me nuts! 8O And the past few times I tried to give it another go, I couldn't figure out what type of account I had, how to access it, etc. It was just a mess in the latter days... :|

[reidme]

I'm surprised it took this long; content has been dropping off for a while. Several flaws obviously in implementation but I still see a need for this type of service. I agree with the previous post that as wireless becomes more commonplace the need for this cached information will go away but what about until that happens? I don't know about you but I'm not finding an access point on every street corner and as much as I'd like to I can't always hang out at the book store or the coffee shop. AvantGo is heading the same direction, content is starting to drop. This is a service I'd pay for; I paid for Mazingo - as flawed as it was.

Actually I was thinking of CDMA and GPRS, not WiFi.

[Steven Cedrone]

I used it since they announced the Beta. What forced me back to AvantGo (only a short time ago - last week AAMOF), were the long sync times, countless updates to the software, and hard to navigate web page (although I had the free and pay option, I could never get to the free content to make changes to my account)...

Oh well, I am still sad to see it go...

Steve

[popabawa]

Wow! I'd forgotten all about Mazingo until I read this.

Thanks, that uninstallation saves me a few meg :D

Another thumbs-up for ISilo & iSiloX from me...

[paqque]

I know Mazingo went through some fatal growing pains but I still feel that they were instrumental in the evolution of PDA content provisioning, both tethered and wireless. They were one of the first services to provide synchronized caching of assorted multimedia content, deploying a method that allowed non-wireless enthusiasts to benefit from a wide selection of content as their wireless peers.

There were only two early choices: AvantGo with a limited text-based content, and Mazingo with a rich content library. Unfortunately Mazingo's business model from Free to Subscription-based seemed to take them on a different path then AvantGo, and I agree with others here about some of the frustration over user support and technical difficulties. However, I greatly enjoyed the diverse content and any problems I experienced
were resolved in a professional manner.

(They did contribute some critical lessons about customer and market support, though!)

A last thought: Until small device wireless technology supports the same mainstream convenience provided by broadband-ish speed and reliablility, there will always be a lagging PDA user contingent that still need/want to synchronize some content from a cable!

Also sad to see them go,
--Paqque

[bjornkeizers]

I thought Mazingo was already dead.. Oh well. *shrugs*

I tried it once, and I found it was horrible compared to Avantgo. I use Avantgo every day and absolutely love it. I dont really have any feelings about Mazingo closing up shop.. survival of the fittest.

[Charles Pickrell]

I'm suprised to see soo many bad opinions of Mazingo. I used Mazingo for almost 2 years and the ability to sync content directly to a CF or SD card with a USB card reader was excellent. Updates took only a minute or two and I had just about anything I wanted in my Pocket PC.

I'm sad to see Mazingo go, becasue unlike AvantGo, Mazingo wanted to create an experience for the customer that was way beyond what you could get from AvantGo.

All I can hope for is some innovation in the Pocket PC Phone Edition market to get me online so I see all the content I used to get with Mazingo.

Aaaargh! I already miss my movie listings! 8O

Bye Mazingo, I'll miss you! Thanks for the fun ride while it lasted.

[jngold_me]

^-------- Yeah, I feel the same way. I have had no problems with Mazingo (I was one of the beginning members and I was "grandfathered" with premium service) and enjoyed the rich text and multimedia content. Syncing was never really that bad, even considering I had alot of channels. Sync directly to the memory card reader was great which I would do at home and at work sync to the PPC directly.

I'll be sorry to see them go also. I don't subscribe to any wireless connectivity so I rely on "downloaded" information for my train rides to and from work.

I will miss my daily Garfield comics, which never failed to invoke a chuckle or two. :(

[JonnoB]

I had no significant problems with Mazingo until just now when I could not get my content. :( With all of the problems mentioned, I still like Mazingo and personally will be sad to see them go. :mecry:

[TomB]

Charles, Jngold and JonnoB, I agree. I liked what they delivered and after about six months of growing pains, they seemed to get their software right for off-line text feeds. I think the serious underlying flaw here is revenue. People across the Internet continue to make it clear that they will not pay for content. They also make it clear that they will strip or block advertising whenever they can. So your figure it out. You can't make money as a service and you can't sell your viewers' eyes, so how do you make enough money to pay your operating costs and earn a living?

It is strange isn't it? We pay for a newspaper, and many times actually read the ads after the news, to locate a sale, or coupon, or to find a job. So, the newspaper's distribution costs are paid upfront by end-users' purchases, their advertisers pay the costs of operation and the newspaper becomes a conduit for news and commerce. In fact, in rural America, there are "pennysavers" that consist of nothing but ads. So why do you think it is that there is this mental lock-down on not paying for any Intellectual Property on the web? I just read a thread at Brighthand where people with enough money for video projectors, swimming pools and multiple home entertainment systems are discussing the best way of playing their DviX and MP3s! One post even mentions that fact that music and movies have to find other revenues because they will all be free on-line in the short term!

So what do you think? What is going on here and is there a fair solution here for providers and users?

[dcharles18]

I'm in the same boat with everyone else. I signed up in the beginning and received free lifetime premium service. The long sync times were just too much though, I scraped it a while ago.

[Paul Martin]

I signed up early even though I didn't have a Pocket PC yet to get the lifetime premium service. Though there have been a few problems with the software, and frustrations with the additions of porn, I've enjoyed getting a few cartoons and text service. I'm going to miss it.

[derosnec]

So what do you think? What is going on here and is there a fair solution here for providers and users?

Indeed there is, for most people - if you supply a good product at a good price, then people will buy it. I gladly pay for services such as Vindigo, and would gladly pay for Avantgo if there were a couple of extra 'useful' channels. I'm not convinced that the premium version on Mazingo was a fair price for what was being supplied (I will admit that 'free lifetime premium service', and I probably would have paid for the premium service at the start)

Hmmm, I wonder how many people were actually paying for the premium service?

[Jonathon Watkins]

It worked fine for me - for the limited number of chanels I accessed. Sad to see it go. :|

[JonnoB]

TomB - the question you pose can lead this thread down an entirely different path. There are all kinds of reasons why electronic media and printed media are different. From the obvious technical differences to those that are more cultural or habitual.

Back on topic - Mazingo should have sold it's client software for creating offline pages for $9.95 and be done with it. Maybe someone will want to resurrect that from them. Except for the premium content they provided, the rest of the stuff was just the client application creating content from the various internet sources and had nothing to do with infrastructure on their part.

I liken the above model to the same way that the TV Guide type programs operate. Another example is Omega One's Journal Bar.

[Brad Adrian]

I know there are a lot of people who really found what they were looking for with Mazingo. What disappointed me (besides the technical problems) was that the variety of the multimedia content never seemed to live up to what they had promised they'd deliver.

It's too bad it wasn't able to survive. I hate to see anything come so close to success, only to fall short.

[johncruise]

For site owners, Mazingo is easier to setup compared to Avantgo, that's why I maintained one for me. For those who has Mazingo enabled-site for subscription, this might be their only way to keep the site alive (mine is free by the way... as if somebody is viewing it anyway :? )

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, Mazingo did help a bunch of site owners lighten up the burden of maintaining a costly site through subscription. Avantgo is the opposite... big channel owners are requested to pay to maintain their site through their service so it's a no brainer why many went to Mazingo instead. So try not to pound Mazingo as it is because they have a good side of the story after all.

I'm sorry to hear them go. But hey, look at the bright side, more space for your Pocket PC (if you ever install one anyway). :wink:

[JonnoB]

Darn it! I realize I was in the middle of an audible book. Now, I have to go buy the book to read the last few chapters!

[Paul Martin]

It worked fine for me - for the limited number of chanels I accessed. Sad to see it go. :|

I just tried to update mine. The text service worked just fine. The Digital Media said couldn't find my account. So, will the text service also be shut off or just the premium content?

[JonnoB]

I just tried to update mine. The text service worked just fine. The Digital Media said couldn't find my account. So, will the text service also be shut off or just the premium content?

The text service just downloads from your machine. The premium content downloads from Mazingo. You can keep using the text service, but won't be able to make any changes sadly. Now is the time for someone to make a local system editor to add/remove sites from your Mazingo profile locally.

[TomB]

JonnoB try the library! :) BTW - the road I wanted to take was not rights based but revenue based. Part of what is being mentioned here is not repackaging what exists but bringing new content to PDAs as Mazingo started to try with multimedia. But as also mentioned here, what they got was disappointing. Why? Because they never had enough money to PAY for the content that would have been acceptable to many people here. Why? because people don't seem to want to pay for internet based IP. How many people here paid for Mazingo? Or for any eContent?

So the very legitimate question is how could Mazingo have survived? Apple is doing it with music, why couldn't Mazingo do it with news and features?

[gorkon280]

I don't think that people do not want to pay for content. If that was so, then how come PPCThoughts has been as successful as it has been with it's subscription? I don't use ad blockers....I DO use POP-UP and POP-UNDER blockers. NOONE opens a window on my desktop but me or one of my programs.

Mazingo had a cool concept. SO does Sync and Go. They both suck. At least Sync and Go can be used to sync your OWN data....the online things are EXTREMELY limited. Only one news source(MSNBC)...Ken Radio and a few other miscellaneous clips and thats it. I would not pay for Sync and Go or Mazingo unless considerable thigns were done.

Avantgo.....if it went all paid I don't know if I would bother unless things improved. It's very nice, but as some on here have said, some content has dropped off. CNN is gone. Some others are as well. I regularly get some channels that time out as well as others. Avantgo currently has a powers user subscription but there's not enough content that I am interested in to make it worth my while. When I get my BT GPRS enabled phone, I won't need it either. T-mobiles unlimited GPRS and of course free and for pay WiFi popping up will make Avantgo moot. One thing I wish would happen is that sites would start upgrading somethings. Pocket IE supports animated GIF's now but I do not know of any Weather site that has a pda page that also has animated radar. That would be very useful to have. I have Journal Bar, but what I really want for my PDA is a app like Weatherbug. would be nice if I was on a GPRS or WiFi connection and was able to pick up weather. In any case, people will pay for content if the price is right and the content is right. I don't turn off banners or any other ads but I do detest popups. Pop-ups are too much. Advertisers like pop-ups so much that they are even using them on TV. Was watching Jimmy Neutron and saw a pop-up add over the content advertising for a Video game (Tak I think??).. Too much....HERE ME AVANTGO(Annoying pop up when I want to just check the weather I just downloaded.

[JohnC]

Mazingo was my content provider of choice until recently. The main drivers for staying with it were:
* Unlimited content due to client-based delivery model
* Better HTML formatting
* Rich media content
* And most importantly, the ability to sync content to my storage card.

What moved me off of Mazingo and back to Avantgo was an increasing amount of syncing errors and a lack of any technical support. I was also glad to again get the New York Times!

I am a big fan of off-line content and e-books, since I often find myself with small amounts of time to kill during the day. With the slow death of the e-book industry and now Mazingo, I fear I won't have the convenience of readily available means of education and entertainment in the near future. If the market is unwilling to invest in the full capabilities of a Pocket PC, maybe my partner was right when he said that he has never seen a good reason to move off of his palm. I hope this is not the case!

[i_spock]

It's too bad about Mazingo closing up shop, but at least the text services still work and I never was interested in the multimedia content anyway. Maybe they'd have done better if they had fixed the problems that the text service had. I for one would not pay for the multimedia stuff because of the less than elegant text service operation. I wonder how many other people thought the same thing.

As for the text service, even with it's annoyances I use it every day. Granted I have to manually do an "erase all files" for the text service and shut down the app on the PPC before every sync, but I'm used to it and the benefit of having that content laid out so nicely for me outweighs the problems.

Avantgo is good for some channels but I liked the way Mazingo presented content like Yahoo!. In AvantGo you'd have to set your Yahoo! sign-on and password in order to get all the content that Mazingo gives with that channel by default. I can't even count the number of times where I get to the gym and find that I somehow wasn't "logged in" to Yahoo! in AvantGo during my last sync, so now I have a whole lot less news to read.

Incidentally, I really like reading PPCT on AvantGo, especially now since you can change the link depth to sync article comments.

As time goes on I imagine fewer sites will keep the Mazingo content active now. Maybe it's time I look at an RSS app for my PPC.

[Carlos]

The big negative comments are very surprising to me. I've been using Mazingo since the early beta stages. It's how I found PPC Thoughts, and how I've been reading it for a couple years. I was glad to get rid of the AvantGo junk.

I got the DVP free as a beta tester. I would not have paid for it. However, I would have paid for the text service. DVP was just fluff to me, some comics and stuff. The text service has value; it's how I read the news (general and tech), and other things I find valuable. Ever since they announced the DVP I thought, "this is a loser." I just don't see the value in the multimedia content.

The text service still allows you to add/remove channels and sync. Wonder how long that will last though... I don't know if AvantGo has improved since I last used it, but I'd rather not have to find out.

[Wes Salmon]

I tried twice early on to make Mazingo work for me but it was too obvious that the app was not really ready for prime time. When they went pay-per-view, it sealed the deal for me.

By reading some of the replies, I think it's obvious that the lack of revenue was due to Mazingo's technical failings, not a market that can't sustain paid content.

[TomB]

Wes, I used Mazingo for over two years and thought it was great once they got past their first few months of getting the software right. It never took more then a few minutes to update my SD card so I am surprised to hear some people needed 30 minutes to sync? What were they syncing to feature films?

Jason actually turned me on to them with an article back in May of 2001. I got the feeling early on this was a one or two man operation. Jason is that true? I had thought that this was a Korean business, but I also know that they were going after American producers and some network level program rights.

I am also interested to see some people panning their multimedia efforts. I was wondering if this is because people are not interested in rich media or because they didn't have anything really compelling? Considering that transcodes of popular TV shows would have not been financially feasible, I wonder what the support would have been for a daily news/tech/talk PPC-based TV show?

[Ed Hansberry]

Wes, I used Mazingo for over two years and thought it was great once they got past their first few months of getting the software right. It never took more then a few minutes to update my SD card so I am surprised to hear some people needed 30 minutes to sync? What were they syncing to feature films?
No, buggy software. I would sync ABC News, text only and it would cycle through pages forever. I got so frustrated over the text syncing this summer I never fooled seriously with the multimedia stuff. $30 down the drain - I actually got dinged for two months before cancelling and just never bothered to call them up and complain/ask for a refund. I tried one comic strip that required shockwave and that was another mess.

[ntractv]

When does the service shut down? I just synched morning around 6:00am

[TomB]

Ed that is strange - I do ABC too with no problems! Also Ed do you know where Mazingo originated? Is this Korean or is that just where the server was?

[Ed Hansberry]

Ed that is strange - I do ABC too with no problems! Also Ed do you know where Mazingo originated? Is this Korean or is that just where the server was?THe guys I talked to were in California. 415 prefix, so San Fran.

[Carlos]

I had talked to Bill Dettering, pres/owner, and someone named Carmine. There was also a woman doing support, and one other person I can't remember. Small but not one-man.

I can still sync text, but not the premium stuff. The DNS entries have been removed for the premium content domain name, mazingomedia.com.

I had an occasional slow sync on text, but it was caused by the provider, not Mazingo. Normally my DVP sync took about 2 minutes and the text sync 2-5 minutes. I've recommended it to a lot of people, and never heard of all these issues. Maybe people are talking about early versions?

I sure hope the text service can continue somehow. If they start charging for it, I'll sign up immediately.

[bbarker]

The text service just downloads from your machine. The premium content downloads from Mazingo. You can keep using the text service, but won't be able to make any changes sadly. Now is the time for someone to make a local system editor to add/remove sites from your Mazingo profile locally.
I just now went to the Mazingo site by using File, Account Settings (Web) from the text sync program. I was able to add additional channels. Seemed to work fine, as did the sync process. The top of the accounts page was all messed up but it still worked.

I use Mazingo every day, although I haven't used the digital service for a long time even though I was grandfathered in as a lifetime Premium member. There were too many problems with the digital service and I wasn't really that interested in the multimedia aspects. OTOH, the free text service has been great. It even picks up my PocketPCThoughts subscriber mobile settings, whick I can't get AvantGo to do. One advantage to Mazingo has been that there's no size limit as there is with AvantGo.

I'm sorry to see Mazingo die. I plan to continue using the free text service as long as it works. I wonder if there is a way to uninstall just the digital media portion.

[bbarker]

I agree with the previous post that as wireless becomes more commonplace the need for this cached information will go away but what about until that happens?
There's a wireless mobile version (http://www.mazingo.net/mobile/) of Mazingo that's great for wireless access. It's one of the best mobile portals.

[Brooks Haden]

Just so that we all will have the same historic perspective, let me set the record straight. Bill Dettering and I started Mazingo in September of 2001. From day one, I was the CEO and Bill was (and still is) a tech genius. We initially conceived of the idea of "Magazines to Go" hence Mazingo. We launched the software version on October 4, 2001 at the Pocket PC 2002 launch event here in San Francisco.

From the beginning, we were committed to the concept of "advertising free" content distribution. I decided to create a differentiator between ourselves and Avantgo shortly after the launch of Version 1. My idea was to provide a TIVO type of service for the PDA. Every major content provider that I met with all had the same observations - COOL idea - so how many paying subscribers do you have? I initially approached them all with a revenue sharing model. Again, nearly on a universal basis, all of them had been burned on this type of model in the dot.com melt down. So it became an endless "chicken and the egg" discussion. The users said they would subscribe if we had the content and the content said that they would gladly come if we would write 6 figure checks - in advance or with binding guarantees.

The other question the NBC's of the world posed was "how is our content protected once it is downloaded onto the device?" To that end, we can certainly claim and demonstrate, that Mazingo was the first company in the industry to create a sophicated and certificate based DRM for audio and video content on Pocket PC's. This was a breakthrough as far as getting the acceptance of the mainstream content providers. Thanks to our friends at Pocket TV, we were able to create this system and we are very appreciative of their support in our efforts.

We were unsuccessful in our full-court press to raise Venture Capital. The last 2 years have been the worst 2 years in the history of VC commitments. Strike two.

Then, the 3rd and final strike, and BTW I agree with many of the posts about this, there seemed to be a new Pocket PC hardware device being introduced on a weekly basis, not to mention the new Microsoft Mobile 2003, and Pocket PC phone edition(s). With every nuance in OS and hardware came more engineering and re-engineering. The costs just continued to climb. Therefore, it seemed like we had a never ending list of "to dos" that always left the software problematic for many but not all
the users.

We tried to service the Palm community with a Maizngo application for the Palm OS5, but their hardware configuration did not lend itself for downloading large MPG files through the device and we could not afford to write yet another application to sync directly to the Memory Card.

I am sharing all this with you as I think you deserve an answer to your questions. I have read every email to tech support, both hostile and not, and sympathize with everyone's hope for a better product offering while trying to continue on in the face of unending red ink.

All I can tell you is that we gave it our best efforts and I would like to use this public forum to acknowledge the efforts of those terrific people who I had the opportunity to work with:

Bill Dettering - Unquestioned genius programmer whose lifestyle I hope to attain someday. He taught me alot about an industry and I am grateful for all his dedication, 1000's of hours of coding, and general good humor and dedication to the cause.

Carmine Gallo - Carmine came from TechTV where we had met several years before as I was a regular contributor to his TV show. Carmine was and is one of the most gracious and determined people that I have every had the privelage to work with. He handled all of our media relations and got the company publicity and exposure that was simply unheard of.

Tom Mayes - A personal friend of both Bill and mine for over 10 years. Tom handled all of our sales and many of you had continual contact with him. Again, Tom is an individual who always went the extra mile for every customer - both user and publisher. He is self taught in the industry and now can accurately claim that he has as much experience in this field as anyone.

Jason Deadrich - Jason did all of our web design and most importantly designed all of the audio and video specifications for playback. Jason's work ethic is limitless and his dedication to the product and service continued to the very end. He was and is a person who I will admire for his endless and tireless support of all of the technical systems.

These people formed the core discipline of the company. And then we had dozens of very talented support and outside contractors who worked with us over the two year period. They are far too numerous to name here, but rest assured, that each tried very hard to respond in a timely fashion and write code quickly and efficiently.

In closing, I am not asking for your sympathy nor is this meant to be a complete epitaph. I new what I was getting into and everyone here understood the risks involved. We all worked very, very hard and in the end there were just too many factors working against the product in order to keep it alive. There may be another life at some point in the mobile phone space for the application or perhaps licensing the application to a major content provider. But for now, it is game over.

A very special thanks to all of the Pocket PC User Group heads around the world who supported us. Without their support and enthusiasm for the product we would have never gotten off of the ground. And also a special thank you to Jason Dunn. He needs no introduction and was an early backer of our concept.

Just a final word - the only way to sync large content files of any sort and use it on your pocket pc is through a USB memory card reader. Period. For the users who took the time to try this, the service appeared to work fine. I for one, had no trouble ever syncing in this method to my 3955.

It has been a privelage to get to know you all and meet many of you in person. Thank you for the opportunity - one and all - from the bottom of my heart.

[Carlos]

I wonder if there is a way to uninstall just the digital media portion.
You have to uninstall the software on both the PC and PPC, then reinstall it. During the install you get the option of which portions to install. It will still remember your settings, easy to do.

In my case it failed to delete \programs\mazingo.exe, so I just removed the whole directory manually. I also removed \mazingo and \mazingodvp from the storage card (the data directories).

as wireless becomes more commonplace the need for this cached information will go away
Not necessarily. I have wireless, and still depend on Mazingo. Two obvious reasons are speed and network availability. Mazingo makes the data available instantly, whereas wireless makes you wait. How long depends on size of course. And if I want to read the news on a plane, I'm not going to have a wireless network available.

When wireless is both blazing fast and ubiquitous, THEN we won't need this type of technology any more.

[TypeMRT]

^-------- Yeah, I feel the same way. I have had no problems with Mazingo (I was one of the beginning members and I was "grandfathered" with premium service) and enjoyed the rich text and multimedia content. Syncing was never really that bad, even considering I had alot of channels. Sync directly to the memory card reader was great which I would do at home and at work sync to the PPC directly.

I'll be sorry to see them go also. I don't subscribe to any wireless connectivity so I rely on "downloaded" information for my train rides to and from work.

I will miss my daily Garfield comics, which never failed to invoke a chuckle or two. :(

I used it over AvantGo for a while (the free premium subscription helped) and it was great for catching up the news (real video, not just text) and showing off what a PPC can handle! After I moved to my Mac last year I've missed Mazingo & AvantGo.
I don't get why such harsh comments about a company trying to make a decent product and deliver a service. Big files & buggy code aside, multimedia content delivery is a really cool idea when someone manages to get it right. Microsoft will probably buy the scraps for cheap and roll it into Windows/ActiveSync/MSN Subscription service.

[paqque]

Just so that we all will have the same historic perspective, let me set the record straight. Bill Dettering and I started Mazingo in September of 2001.

This is the type of personal response offered by Brooks and Bill and the rest of the team that made Mazingo stand out both from a technical and customer service perspective.

We salute you and the team, Brooks, and wish you luck on your market return!

Paqque

[paqque]

I don't get why such harsh comments about a company trying to make a decent product and deliver a service. Big files & buggy code aside, multimedia content delivery is a really cool idea when someone manages to get it right.

Most of us who are early users had no gripes. The negative noise seemed to come mostly from folks who either didn't know the background and evolutionary path or had just bought the latest device and wanted immediate content via WiFi.

And to be honest, there were some technical issues and lack of content vendor support that always seemed to need attention. I guess those of us that had been around beta'ing Mazingo from the beginning greatly appreciated the progress, while new users, especially paying ones, rightfully demanded updated content immediately.

Content vendor management, content data licensing, fast-evolving technology, and venture capital seem to be the critical keys for future Mazingo replacements...

--paqque

[TomB]

Brooks sorry things didn't work out - but your team did an amazing job. BTW - I never did figure the Korean registration out. Why go that route? Didn't that get in the way of folks at NBC who are wary of the Internet to start and DOUBLY protective of their IP because of that? Also, why persist with multimedia when you did text so well and quickly came to find all of the industry paranoia associated with video and theatrical film content? Finally, did it ever get to you when you were busting your chops trying to get content providers to sign while at the same time hearing users swear they would roast in hell before paying for content? Were these posturings in line with what you saw from your subscriptions or totally bogus? If you were going to do this again, what would you change - or would you even bother?

[cmlpreston]

After I moved to my Mac last year I've missed Mazingo & AvantGo

Just FYI, I use synce (synce.sourceforge.net) under Mac OS X on an iMac to enable network access for my iPAQ. Mazingo and PIE worked fine when operated from the device (obviously no desktop version of Mazingo).

cmlp

[Ed Hansberry]

Just so that we all will have the same historic perspective, let me set the record straight. ... It has been a privelage to get to know you all and meet many of you in person. Thank you for the opportunity - one and all - from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks Brooks for the perspective and background info. Sorry it didn't work out. Best of luck to you and all of the other Mazingo team members in the future.

[bbarker]

Brooks, thank you for taking the time to post your very detailed and thoughtful history of your Mazingo efforts. I worked with a high-tech incubator in 1999-2000, just as the dot-com bubble was bursting. I know what you mean about the difficulty in raising venture capital since then. It has been almost nonexistent.
Just a final word - the only way to sync large content files of any sort and use it on your pocket pc is through a USB memory card reader. Period. For the users who took the time to try this, the service appeared to work fine. I for one, had no trouble ever syncing in this method to my 3955.
That's true. I've been doing it through a reader for so long that it didn't occur to me that anyone would be doing it through ActiveSync. That would be painful.

I used Mazingo from the beginning. I never got into the video or audio content. There were problems getting Pocket TV working on my device and I just wan't interested enough to keep trying. What I loved was the text content without the AvantGo limitations.

Thank you for trying and for sharing the facts with us.

Bart

[applian]

After spending almost 2 years working on Mazingo and wrestling with the content, licensing and technology issues, I've come up with a better way to get video on your Pocket PC.

Check out my new product - WM Recorder. This wonder lets you record streaming Windows Media video from the Web, and watch it on your Pocket PC using Windows Media Player.

You can try WM Recorder free from here:
www.wmrecorder.com

The demo lets you record up to 2 minutes at a time.

Let me know what you think!


Bill Dettering
Applian Technologies Inc.

[seatec]

Brook and Bill,
very sorry to lose Mazingo, I have been a long time user and was also grandfathered in to the Premium content. I will miss reading my comics and ebooks. I never did get into the video content that much but have had better luck with Mazingo than Avantgo. I use both for different content. Wish you well in future ventures for you and your dedicated crew.