Another thing that is weird is that Nokia is so trigger happy to release updates to their suite of software applications that you end up downloading something new at least twice a week. If these were quick updates or monumental improvements, it would have been great, but these are tiny incremental changes that are barely noticeable. Applications still crash, applications still run slow.

A common bone of contention across applications and services is usability: did Nokia ever put their applications in front of users to test if they get what needs to be done and heck, what can be done? The applications look great. Nokia has its own distinct and elegant look and feel that can match Apple’s brushed steel style. But when it comes to simplicity – they are far from competitive even with open source products. Nokia Photos and Nokia Music, just do not make too much sense to me. Maybe they are geared for European audiences, but how difficult would it be to make photo print ordering work for the US or disabling the Nokia music store for countries it does not work in?

Finally – Nokia is trying to do really good things with its online Ovi sites. Ignoring the fact that you need separate logins to some Ovi services despite the same name, two things drive me crazy even in these generally good directions:

1. You cannot get an RSS feed of your images. You can only embed a Flash widget in your blog (the Facebook app stopped working but really, who cares?)
2. Ovi offers an awesome idea. Truly huge: calendar and contact repository for free. That means you can synchronize all phones, contact and calendar applications with the service, supposedly, with this single source. This can kill Microsoft Exchange or .mac if they try hard enough and make it work. But count on Nokia to blow this chance too. To synchronize you have to have a synchronization profile set up on your phone. You are supposed to get the profile via SMS/MMS when you sign up for the service. That does not work and there is no way that a somewhat savvy user like me can set the service up manually. Again, what the f- does Nokia’s Quality Assurance team do? Do they even exist?

I think Nokia is pretty much losing the relevance battle. The N97 looks great, but nothing more than a finer quality product than an HTC keyboard phone. Running the Symbian S60 OS puts it immediately at a speed and experience advantage to the iPhone, and worse yet, to its own great variant of Linux that runs on the N810 device, Meamo.

They will keep on making cheap bits of plastic, sell them to the third world and eek a profit there. 40% of the world market, but the less exciting and desirable 40% for sure.

Google at least claims to have Chrome tested before unleashing it unto the world. Microsoft apparently does not even test its own products. Trashing mercilessly. I know.

Yahoo! is probably not blind to this Web 0.9 quality of the services and a year ago they acquired Zimbra, one of the market leaders in the world of AJAX-based Web productivity applications. Zimbra Office, like Google’s office suite and Zoho Office and others seek to migrate people away from Microsoft Office to web-based alternatives. Among other things, Zimbra was selling its web-based office application server so you could manage the applications internally, retaining confidential information without reliance on a hosting vendor.

Yahoo! still appears to be doing that but in a relatively low key fashion, they released a product called Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop as a free download. Maintaining a very high cool factor, the application runs inside the Mozilla Prism container that lets web applications run and work on the desktop whether connected to the network or not. What was especially promising was the fact that Yahoo! finally lets its users access Yahoo! mail accounts outside of the browser. Normally, only paying users of Yahoo! mail can achieve this feat. Additionally, like a regular email client, you can connect to your plain-jane email account that use the POP and SMTP protocols. And like a Personal Information Manager it has a contact manager and calendar. So what is so cool about yet another email client? Well, how about putting the bull’s-eye on Microsoft Exchange?

Exchange (or Lotus Notes if you still believe), is the de facto ruler of all things enterprise communications. It centrally manages email, contacts, calendars, notes, and if you are really cool, workflows and other processes. Exchange’s face to the world is Microsoft Outlook. Outlook is pleasant but will have a really hard time coming across as trailblazing. Then there’s the issue that Outlook is slow – so slow that a great plugin like Xobni is making converts out of anyone who uses (including Bill Gates) because it has better search and information organization than the Outlook application it lives in. In short, the world uses Exchange but there is no passion or fire around it outside the thriving consulting community it nurtures.

What if Yahoo! actually took the effort to not only connect Zimbra Desktop to email but actually to its own Yahoo! calendar. Never mind the calendar, but not even hooking Zimbra Desktop up to the Yahoo! contacts application?! Are you supposed to import your Yahoo! contacts into Yahoo!’s own application using CSV imports? Elegant? I think not. Clearly there is the well-founded notion that Yahoo! needs to make money and they do it by showing advertising on their applications on the web. Then conceptually, is it better to let something mediocre out the door than nothing? What will tarnish your image more – boring or nothing? I will take nothing, all the more in light of the way Google manhandles anything they touch having seen Yahoo! doing bad or not investing in.

I use a Blackberry. An ugly but helpful 8700c. Google’s applications for the Blackberry not only work, but they constantly improve. Yahoo!’s Go – which again – holds the same promise of bridging gaps between my contacts and the ones on the Blackberry, not only does not improve, but became worse in the latest release.

If I am sad it is because Yahoo! used to be that great company. It is because if the folks at Yahoo! put their heads together they could do so much and become relevant again – through resources and users they already have! I used to be a Yahoo! fan as most often they came up with great ideas that Google only then picked up and made truly awesome. These days I am feeling that the Google KoolAid is that much tastier; that the morsels Google gives developers are just so great, that Yahoo! is just not interesting. Maybe, just maybe, they can make it but I doubt it more and more.