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johnvanommenHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I found a PDF that confirms the story I heard, and also has information I wasn't aware of until …

I found a PDF that confirms the story I heard, and also has information I wasn't aware of until today: https://availabilitydigest.com/public_articles/0411/sidekick... Details are on page 3. * The Sidekick servers were moved to Microsoft, and I believe they were moved from where I last saw them, which was at T-Mobile's data center in Washington. * There weren't a heck of a lot of Solaris experts at Microsoft at that time. * According to the PDF above, someone had posted a job ad for a database administrator for the project, two months before the database blew up. So if we connect the dots (this is speculation Microsoft, don't sue me): It seems possible that the database for the Sidekick service was the responsibility of someone at T-Mobile or Danger, until Microsoft acquired Danger. My hunch is that it was probably TMo, because the founder of Danger left to go start Android in 2003. By the time Microsoft bought Danger in 2008, a lot of the original Danger folks were working on Android. …

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johnvanommenHN

If it wasn't for the T-Mobile Sidekick, Microsoft probably wouldn't have had to buy Nokia. Here's the story: I worked on the infrastructre for the predecessor to Android, the Danger Hiptop, AKA "The T-Mobile Sidekick." (This is my real name, you can see when I worked on it on LinkedIn.) The "Danger Device" as everyone called it, had cloud storage and a full web browser before Android and before iPhone. In fact, the first Android basically looks like the successor to the T-Mobile sidekick, because many of the people that worked on Android, including the founder, were from Danger. *Here's the funny part:* This is hearsay, so please do not sue me Microsoft. I once saw an article online that confirmed the following story, but the article is long gone (this was more than 20 years ago.) Again: Don't sue me Microsoft. I am telling a story here, that I heard through the grapevine: *Microsoft ble…

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protastusHN

I always thought it was hilarious that a company called Danger lost everybody's data. The connection to Microsoft only makes it better.

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lprovenHN

Cites my employers, the Register, albeit with a typo and no link. « Oracle and Sun fingered for Sidekick fiasco https://www.theregister.com/2009/10/19/sidekick_rac/ Just think what they'll do to Microsoft when they merge »

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