Microsoft's Language Problem

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John Gruber points out something related to the launch of the Windows Phone 7 category of phones this morning:

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7, in a press release headlined “Windows Phone 7: A Fresh Start for the Smartphone: The Phone Delivers a New User Experience by Integrating the Things Users Really Want to Do, Creating a Balance Between Getting Work Done and Having Fun”:

The goal for Microsoft’s latest smartphone is an ambitious one: to deliver a phone that truly integrates the things people really want to do, puts those things right in front of them, and either lets them get finished quickly or immerses them in the experience they were seeking.

Who talks like this? This bureaucrat-ese is intended, I suppose, to sound serious. But it just sounds like bullshit.

Here’s how Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007:

Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

Experiment: Town in England turns off traffic lights, surprising results.

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Interesting video of a small town in England that was experiencing chronic traffic backup due to a bad intersection which has a long delay on its traffic lights. The local government tried an experiment where they turned off the traffic lights for a few days to see what would happen. The results surprised a lot of local residents.

Go watch the video (sorry, not embeddable)