SterlingPorter.net

I knew it was coming. The MSN Direct service is like an old car that is sitting in your driveway. You’ve had some good trips with it. It’s been with you during those special times, those milestones. But deep down, you know it’s barely worth anything, and you know you should just donate it to Kidney Kars, but you just can’t let it go! Well, I guess it’s time to let go. Here is an article about MSN Direct shutting down.

The MSN Direct service was nifty. For a nominal yearly subscription fee ($50 at it’s peak), you could get movie times, weather, stock quotes, news snippets, traffic updates, new vocabulary words, and even instant messages delivered over FM radio to your smart watch (or coffeemaker or GPS unit). Of course, I could get all that on my phone, but still, it was a really cool show and tell item and conversation starter and ender.

I was going to wait until January 1, 2012 to write my fondest memories of the MSN Direct service, but I might not remember, so here are a few now.

I got my watch while working as an intern at Microsoft. They were promoting the watches at the Company Store, and I got mine for $99, which they said was a good deal. Here is a pic.