By now the word is out on the street. Microsoft/Danger has most likely lost everyone’s personal info including contacts, notes, calendar entries, to-dos, etc. The question remains: How did this happen? Microsoft is a big software company, they’re well versed in the enterprise world and should have systems in place that allow them to weather any sort of issue like this. Of course everyone (T-Mobile, Microsoft/Danger) hasn’t come out with any details on the cause of the failure, but we’ve got some theories and rumors floating around.

Currently the rumor with the most weight is as follows:
Microsoft was upgrading their SAN (Storage Area Network aka the thing that stores all your data) and had hired Hitachi to come in and do it for them. Typically in an upgrade like this, you are expected to make backups of your SAN before the upgrade happens. Microsoft failed to make these backups for some reason. We’re not sure if it was because of the amount of data that would be required, if they didn’t have time to do it, or if they simply forgot. Regardless of why, Microsoft should know better. So Hitachi worked on upgrading the SAN and something went wrong, resulting in its destruction. Currently the plan is to try to get the devices that still have personal data on them to sync back to the servers and at least keep the data that users have on their device saved.

We’ve heard this from what appears to be several sources and it seems to hold weight. Needless to say it all boils down to one thing: Microsoft did not have a working backup.

How this happens in today’s day and age is beyond belief. Hundreds of thousands of customers that generate millions of dollars in revenue means you back their stuff up, in triplicate. You test these backups regularly, and you move a copy off site that doesn’t get touched except in case of an emergency (i.e. right now). The head of the mobile division (and person in charge of what’s left of Danger) is Roz Ho, who has been at Microsoft for 18 years. You would think she’d know something about how to run a business.

What does this mean for the future of the Sidekick? Unless Microsoft pulls a miracle out of thin air the Sidekick is dead. People are already jumping ship to other phones with this news, and the exposure of how inept Microsoft is when it comes to the mobile world is huge. If Microsoft can’t continue to run Danger, a company that was ground-breaking and solidly built, how can we expect anything from the Windows Mobile department?

If you haven’t lost your contacts from a hard reset, start copying them to something else right now. Microsoft has officially announced that your contacts, calendar, and other data has “almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger”.

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

Updated: 10/10/2009 12:35 PM PDT

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.

We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

I am speechless.

Original post

There’s an extensive (and well written) article over on RoughlyDrafted about Microsoft, Danger, Windows Mobile, Apple, et all. If you have the time, I highly recommend you read it to get a much fuller picture on the state of things. It’s one of the most comprehensive and up to date “State of the Union” when it comes to Danger/Microsoft/Project Pink/etc. That said, I know not everyone has the time to dive into such an article, so here are some highlighted snippets from a RoughlyDrafted’s Microsoft/Danger source that I thought would be most interesting to Hiptop3.com readers:

# The source says that the details about the Project Pink phones are true and that they wouldn’t be surprised if the photos were an intentional leak, however the rumors about Microsoft working with Verizon and the unhappy employees are definitely from an unhappy (ex) employee.

# What about handset makers?

“Let’s start with the handset makers. Motorola has announced their intention to abandon WinMo for Android, and Palm has already abandoned WinMo in favor of their own WebOS. A few others, such as HTC, have been hedging their bets, announcing their support for Android, but not yet willing to publicly disown WinMo. Now the story has been leaked that Microsoft has been secretly working with Sharp on this (doomed) [Pink] project for over a year, cutting everyone else out of the picture completely.

”You figured out the likely consequences of this over a month ago so I won’t belabor the point other than to say that Sharp, who has been a terrific partner to Danger throughout the Hiptop/Sidekick era, was no doubt hoping that Pink would allow them to expand their phone offerings in the Americas, a dream which has now been dashed due to typical Microsoft blundering. I doubt that either Sharp or any of the other handset OEM’s will ever take Microsoft at their word again.

# Trying to build 4 versions of the Pink phones?

“the Pink planners decided to try to build both UMTS and CDMA phones in both form factors, for a grand total of four different SKUs. None of the other smartphone platform builders were foolish enough to try to build more than one phone at a time, and whoever made this decision didn’t take into account the added complexity involved in coding to support two different radio modules (from two different vendors, no less!) for two completely different radio technologies, not to mention validating and testing the RF performance of four different antennas (since each form factor and radio technology requires its own antenna design). At some point the UMTS project was placed on the back burner, and for all I know it may have already been cancelled, but the damage to the project has been done.”

# Pitting Verizon against T-Mobile

”The final operator who is going to be pissed is T-Mobile, who has been just as loyal of a partner to Danger as Sharp has been. I don’t know exactly what Microsoft has been telling them, but they have no doubt realized that they’ve been cut out of this deal in favor of their largest competitor. What’s worse is that apparently Microsoft has been lying to them this whole time about the amount of resources that they’ve been putting behind Sidekick development and support (in reality, it was cut down to a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc.).

“The reason for the deceit wasn’t purely to cover up the development of Pink but also because Microsoft could get more money from T-Mobile for their support contract if T-Mobile thought that there were still hundreds of engineers working on the Sidekick platform. As we saw from their recent embarrassment with Sidekick data outages, that has clearly not been the case for some time.

# So what happens now?

“The most likely possibility is that anything worth salvaging from Pink will get folded into the larger WiMo 7 project, where it should have been located in the first place. Another possibility would be another massive layoff and shutting down the Danger offices, but with the economic crunch, I doubt that Microsoft would choose to take the hit of handing out severance packages to all the affected engineers, and breaking the lease on the buildings.”

# And finally, what all of us wish would happen, and the reasons why it probably won’t:

”The smartest course of action (and therefore the one that Microsoft is least likely to take!) would be for them to recognize the value of the original Danger platform that they acquired, and to rebuild the Hiptop/Sidekick into a force to compete with Android (which is, after all, “Sidekick 2.0” in many respects). This won’t happen for three reasons: 1) Microsoft’s irrational hatred of Java, 2) Microsoft’s irrational love of Windows in all of its horrible flavors, and 3) all the Danger folks who loved the Sidekick platform have left or likely will leave soon, and Microsoft has no in-house expertise in Java or the Danger platform.

October has been a bad month for the Sidekick and the future of what’s left of the Danger team. Not only was there the Great Sidekick Data Outage of October ‘09, now we’re hearing that Project Pink, a Microsoft project that the remaining Danger team was put on, might not even be seeing the light of day.

MobileCrunch heard some interesting news from an anonymous source that seems to be legit. Here’s the bullet points:

# As I reported previously, most of the Danger team has been fired or left.
# If any of the Pink devices ship, supposedly they will not have third party application support, i.e. no App Store/Download Catalog.
# The Project Pink employees are not happy. Most of the team still uses Sidekicks or even iPhones and “hate the product”. And here’s the best quote from MC’s source: many feel that the division exists only to “challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing.”
# The project is about 2 years behind schedule and some basic applications are getting cut in an attempt to someday launch this thing.
# The touchscreen on the “Turtle” is not a viable touchscreen as the UI contains too many things on the screen at once and your finger ends up covering half the screen.
# The design of the user interface was done by a 3rd party and now Microsoft is trying to actually build the thing with some difficulty.
# And finally, the worst news for the 2 remaining Project Pink fans: MobileCrunch’s source says that the project “is near death and probably will be canceled.”

Ouch, this is of course all unconfirmed rumors, but if any of it is true… our sympathies to the remaining Danger employees.

Trash can photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/katmere/. Device images via Gizmodo

In some very sad news, it looks like T-Mobile Germany may actually be bringing down the axe on the Sidekick. There is a post over on teltarif.de that gives some cause for concern. What, you can’t read German? Here is the content of the article, translated via Google:

T-Mobile announces Sidekick services on 31 December
The reason is termination of service by American producer Danger

T-Mobile announces the remaining value of a current Sidekick, the Sidekick service as well as the Sidekick Data option on 31 December this year. This confirmed a spokesman for the company over teltarif.de. The reason for the termination of the options is to set the Sidekick service by the American producer Danger. The smartphone of the Californian company, originally under the name Hiptop become known in Germany and were initially exclusive to E-Plus markets. Later, T-Mobile devices on the German market. The mobile telecoms subsidiary called smartphones, but – as in the U.S. – Sidekick.

Termination option, but not termination

As the T-Mobile Press Office notifies the service center Danger for the whole of Europe on 31 December, so that any user of the device – no matter under what name – which is affected. In the U.S. offer Danger’s service, however, continue to converge, as there are also more recent Sidekick devices are sold and they are enjoying great popularity. From the termination had several thousand T-Mobile customers affected, the spokesman Dirk Wende.
The affected customers are in the tariff options, but not the whole contract being terminated. As it says in the letter: “Your T-Mobile contract shall remain unaffected and continue to exist.” Turning points, however, if the customer is at the T-Mobile hotline turn, will be a “solution together with the customer” can be found. Here you will also offers customers to switch to current equipment and fares subject. Wool partout but the customer terminate the contract, there will be also a possibility, since each Hotliner a “some leeway”, so the T-Mobile spokesman.

It’s a bit difficult to read, but it looks like Germany is losing the Sidekick, but that it will continue on in the United States: “In the U.S. offer Danger’s service, however, continue to converge, as there are also more recent Sidekick devices are sold and they are enjoying great popularity.” Unfortunately the only English article we can find on this says “A company spokesperson attributed the move to the Sidekick service being terminated by Sidekick manufacturer Danger” and a similar statement is given in the sub-headline of the German article. Hopefully this is just a translation mistake and they intend it to mean that Danger is terminating the German service and not across the board for all Sidekicks. Regardless, it’s a sad day for all the German Sidekick/Hiptop users.

Thanks Mike!

We’re hearing lots of rumors left and right about some lay-offs of Danger employees by Microsoft (who purchased Danger).  There is a lot of hearsay and speculation about what this means.  While Microsoft did announce a general across-the-board series of layoffs, we can’t help but wonder how much harder the Danger group was hit for a variety of possible reasons.  There’s been rumors of Danger employees being moved to the secretive “Pink” project that Microsoft is working on.  (Supposedly the Pink project is very similar to Danger’s back-end service)  The Sidekick LX 2009 is days from launch and so a lot of employees that were needed for that might have been let go.  Or they could have just pulled names out of a hat, who knows.  Lay-offs are never an easy thing.

It doesn’t look like it was the entire Danger team, but definitely sounds like more than one or two. We’ve gathered up some posts to Twitter about the lay-offs. The below are either a) from a Danger employee, b) from a previous Danger employee, or c) directed at a Danger employee.

@ceejbot: Oh look, muscled goons walking around the building: layoffs today. 9:55 AM May 5th from Tweetie

@ceejbot: My officemates all just got laid off. It doesn’t make any sense. 11:02 AM May 5th from Tweetie

@ian: WTF? Microsoft is laying off awesome people from Danger. 11:26 AM May 5th from web

@Perigosa: @jag Ugh. I am so sorry (for everyone else too). 12:44 PM May 5th from hiptop in reply to jag

@dangermikeb: Rough day at the office 12:59 PM May 5th from hiptop

@ahpook: Condolences to dangersoft peeps affected by layoffs, directly or otherwise. 4:50 PM May 5th from web

@dangermikeb: The end of a crappy day at work. 5:29 PM May 5th from hiptop

@robey: that sucks about the danger layoffs. msft really had no clue what they wanted out of that, i guess. 6:21 PM May 5th from Tweetie

@akrasia: Suffocating sadness with a load of cookies. 7:14 PM May 5th from web

@tuony: Condolences to Danger peeps who were laid off today. It’s never fun, however you may be considered the lucky ones after all is said and done 10:27 PM May 5th from Ping.fm

To add to this information, there was also an interesting comment conversation posted on an Engadget review of the new Sidekick LX 2009.  No idea who “Aenar” is or where he is getting his information from, but he provokes some interesting conversation:

Aenar @ May 6th 2009 12:45PM

Enjoy the last sidekick. MSFT just fired the remaining SK staff with armed guards and only made this thing to avoid a lawsuit with TMobile.
Roz Ho congratukated the staff and then fired the employees for making it. MSFT just wanted the IP for WinMo anyway.
Now you get a seriously debilitated “PINK”device from MSFT as your next “upgrade.” From what I have heard, it’s a joke. No PIM apps and no 3rd party development system. A typical MSFT consumer product. Copy,rush to market and FAIL.
No street cred-get the iPhone

LStrike @ May 6th 2009 2:57PM

So that is the second time in these comments where someone claims this…Where is your source? Or are you the same dude that posted this earlier and just change your name?

aenar @ May 6th 2009 3:29PM

Listen there are 200 employees there-in that old Sidekick division. They are hacked off and they talk smack on every message board,social net and twitter. In public. Microsoft has no intention of making another Sidekick. They wanted the service proxy patents and they want to let the CE product lines plus this wacko fantasy called PINK access the proxy. That way they have an instant message leg up on the iPhone which cannot do service-backed/proxy push notifications.
WINMO was horrified by the Sidekick Acquisition and they barked at Balmer to handcuff the PMX division OR the acquisition was just to kill a competitor to PINK off and snag the IP.
Inside talk is PINK is a barely functioning piece of junk-which is unlike the Sidekick. The Sidekick has a following and just needed some capital and decent management to make it a competitor. They have delivered and sold millions of these things and get a recurring service charge for each. UNLIKE the Microsoft consumer product which is 5 years late and billions short. C’mon- it’s a NETBSD Sidekick. There is no way, except for lawsuits threatened by TMobile, that Microsoft would want to sell a Sidekick. Tmobile needed another Sidekick on the way to transition to Google phone. There’s nothing that says a google phone cannot be a sidekick. That name is owned by TMobile.

LStrike @ May 6th 2009 3:58PM

Everything you are saying is hard to argue with but why don’t you provide a few sources with regards to the last of Danger employees being tossed?

Without sources it just sounds like conspiracy theory. If Microsoft has no intention on moving forward with Sidekick than why did they bother bundling in their own software on the phone (which I am sure they threw together resources to code) and promise Microsoft Exchange Support in the coming months?

If I am being sued into something I don’t want as a company I certainly am not going to make the product stronger no? Just because TMobile strong arms them into creating as you are saying a final product doesn’t force Microsoft to build more functionality.

No?

aenar @ May 6th 2009 7:12PM

There is no Exchange support coming for that particular device and if there was, that’s the internal team getting secure IMAP mail from a secure server. The Sidekick engineers, or any other device engineers, are smart enough to access the LIVE search API without getting too many MSFT employees involved- if any-because the Microsoft engineers are as dumb as the day is long. It’s just bits coming from a Microsoft server and the device application has to render them. Microsoft just opens the door-they didn’t do jack after that.

nolatron @ May 6th 2009 4:16PM

The entire SK team hasn’t been fired. I’m a contract worker for Danger via MS/Volt. Sa couple were let go, but not everyone, during a Microsoft company wide layoff.

aenar @ May 6th 2009 4:47PM

30-40 people were let go. The UI team, media teams, hardware and some associated PMs with the Sidekick. Shocking since Microsoft is mostly Political Project Managers with chips on their shoulders.
The remainder of the SK team that the PINK team needs to write in CE(not java or NetBSD) was moved to PINK or WINMO months ago. So the people who shut the lights off on the Sidekick were thanked in an email by the Roz “Dragon Woman” Ho and fired promptly. Then, to keep employees from going apeshitzz, they had the stormtroopers from Securitas(with arms this time) walk the halls and maintain control. Sort of like the Stazi.
So,
a) No more sidekicks. The people that made them are fired or working on the mirage of PINK,
b) Microsoft tried to weasel out of Danger’s contract with TMobile but were threatened with lawsuit
c) To make schedule, MSFT had to ship the Sidekick as designed at that point which was NetBSD and Java. VP of PMX was said to have cried at that announcement.

That’s it. No more Sidekicks.
Naming sources? Do you work for the Dragon Lady-why would I call out these sources. So I can get more people fired? The information is 90% public domain from public feeds anyway.

We don’t want to cause anyone to panic, so we’re not going to make any rash assumptions about the future of the Sidekick.  Just wanted to toss the information that’s flying around up for you guys.  Feel free to speculate in the comments and if you have any hard and fast info, please email admin@hiptop3.com.

Appletech over at PoweredByDanger has posted up a new batch of screenshots of the Sidekick LX 2009, and we’ve collected them for you.

Lots of screenshots of the updated Microsoft Live Search application, as well as the Twitter and Facebook applications.

T-Mobile is launching the new Sidekick LX (2009) on May 13th, but if you Pre Order yours now online you’ll get it earlier (When, is unknown.)

Here’s the featureset:
3G Enabled
Social Networking apps (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) built in
GPS Live Search and Geotagging photos
3.2″ TFT LCD (F-WQVGA 854×480 pixels)
Thinnest Sidekick Ever
3.2MP Camera with AutoFocus
Record your own Ringtones
Carbon (Black) or Orchard Finish

Pre order with 2year contract for $199.99 (Plus taxes and fees, and a 50 dollar Mail In Rebate) at Sidekick.com or buy without contract for 449.99.

*Note: When we spoke with T-Mobile we were told we would NOT have to change the old 19.99 plan to use the 3G on the new devices.

OK, I felt the need to clear some things up regarding NetBSD being used for the m3/Sidekick Blade/Sidekick LX 2009.

What does it mean for you? Nothing. You still won’t see any Non-Catalog 3rd party applications, you won’t see a “Jailbreak”, you won’t see free rangt0n3z… none of this will happen with the Blade running NetBSD as it’s foundation. Sorry to burst any bubbles.

What you might and probably see however… is a more stable, reliable and powerful device. NetBSD/*nix is a rock solid foundation to build on top of (Bravo Danger for the choice) and I’m going to bet you as the end user will see a much more stable device that doesn’t crash and reboot nearly as much as previously (Although for us the LX was/is a very stable and reliable device).

So, let’s break this down again. No free applications or ringtones outside of the catalog on the blade.

Stanford University has posted an interesting video of a talk given by Joe Britt, one of the founding members of Danger. He talks about the design of the Sidekick/Hiptop and how it became what it is today. It’s not a short watch since it clocks in at over an hour, but definitely interesting to gadget freaks that like to learn about this stuff. Here’s the info on the video from Stanford:

May 25, 2007 lecture by Joe Britt for the Stanford University Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (CS 547). When mobile phones became within the financial grasp of the everyman, the value was easily understood. Telephone-accessible “content” could now be enjoyed from a car, while waiting in line, or from a table at a restaurant. In this talk, Joe discusses several key aspects of the platform’s development and shares the design philosophy applied by the team. Strong belief in the importance of hardware/software integration and an organic, iterative design process were critical for success. Lessons learned at companies like Apple, General Magic, and WebTV provided the team with a context for partitioning a complex problem across hardware, software, and a powerful back-end service.