Just as the name of the article, this week, implies this was the type of week that could easily be summarized in one song.
“Crazy” by Seal. Listen, for free, on Xbox Music.
Layoffs…
I’m sure everyone has heard that Microsoft is planning to lay off about 18,000 people within the current fiscal year. Understandably, this is due to bloat, redundancy, and the like but this no less takes the sting out of knowing that people you know, people you don’t know, PEOPLE, are going to be losing their jobs. They’re going to have to figure a new plan, a new strategy for their life. That’s never easy.
It’s kind of difficult to grapple that some of the great, smart people who had a hand in some of the great technologies, that I’ve used over the years, will one day soon wake up with nowhere immediately to go. I sincerely hope that many of these people land safely, either with other companies that can utilize their talents or even within Microsoft.
MixRadio and Xbox Music sitting in a (different) tree…
Then there’s the thing with MixRadio, now becoming its own thing. The story was always about how MixRadio and Xbox Music was going to co-exist. It’s kind of interesting because if MixRadio is now independent and decides it’s going onto other platforms, it could very well become a competitor to Xbox Music. Frankly, I was a huge fan of MixRadio. It offered simplicity in use and ease of music discovery. The sharing features were a little off-putting, but overall it was a solid app. This actually puts more pressure on Xbox Music to make their discovery and social features more robust, especially if you’re going to be the 1st party software living under this ‘better on Windows’ mantra or whatever.
Speaking of Xbox Music…
Before you crack your knuckles to get at the comment section to start in about how Xbox Music sucks, channel that energy into their User Voice site and leave some constructive feedback and suggestions that they can act upon.
Xbox as an entertainment brand…
Over at LiveSide, Kip Kniskern opined on what exactly is Xbox now, if not going in the ‘entertainment’ brand direction. This has been brought up because as part of the layoffs, Xbox Entertainment Studios is basically getting dwindled down to fry cook.
I encourage you all to go read it.
Now reach up and stretch those muscles…
Deacon, over at Unscripted Xbox, made a point that should be shouted from rooftops: Xbox Fitness is quietly becoming a killer app for Xbox One. If you’ve been paying attention to me, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve gushed about this app. It has the right blend of fitness variety, competitive enhancements, social aspects, and the like to make you not only give it a try, but realize after a few days that you want to play more — if, for no other reason, than to best your personal score or show your buddies that you can do push-ups just as well as they can.
I made this point to some members of the Xbox Fitness team that they created an app that is well designed and really does help a person ease into fitness or go right for the jugular. I know (KNOW) I’m not a candidate for P90X or Insanity, but the 10-Minute Solution workouts are perfect. The idea that in the middle of this I could suddenly be competing with men of my age range or a friend who just did this workout makes me want to try that much harder. The way, after a workout, it shows you all of this data and rewards makes what you went through more satisfying. It’s a well done program.
Granted, like Deacon said, the Kinect can have some problems tracking you, but when you’re really going at a workout you tend to not care so much about that stuff.
Seriously, don’t sleep on Xbox Fitness.
And finally…
In going through Twitter, I noticed that some folks who used to follow me don’t anymore. Now, it’s easy to take that personally, you know? “What did I do?” “What did I say!?” “What happened?” After some thought, though, I figure that no explanations are really needed. It’s kind of like life. There are people I was very tight with in college who I no longer communicate with. Things pass, interests change, you move on.
In fact, I had made the point on Twitter that we might be all better off paring down our lists, cutting out a lot of the bloat especially when you really can’t explain why you follow certain people.
So if my wild chatter about music and geek is of no interest to you, anymore, do the unfollow. It’s fine. I’ll take no offense. This is how life works.
So yeah, we all can survive if we just get a little crazy.
See you next week.
