Warning: This post is rambling and with very little point, but then so is mLife.

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Thanks in part to a 6 year old article on the defunct Suck.com, I finally figured out what, beyond the obvious, bugs me about AT&T's mLife campaign.

mLife, for all its teaser-ness, is nothing more than a mashed-together set of cellphone features that you probably already have, including SMS paging, voicemail, email receiving and (laboriously) composing, a fat package of nationwide minutes and "#121", a voice-driven information service so similar to TellMe that it will come as no surprise that they're one and the same.

They don't tell you this in the ads because it's almost as complicated to explain how this will help you lead a simpler life as it is to explain how to type, address, and send an email on a Nokia cellphone.

Of course, packages from Cingular, Verison, Nextel and Sprint have all these features except #121, but heck, TellMe's free and only a speeddial away.

AT&T sells mLife as a lifestyle, in the same way that Apple sells the 'digital hub' as a lifestyle. The difference is that AT&T can't tell you how that lifestyle is any different than the one you have now, because trying to send an email while driving your car isn't really simplifying your life at all.

But the mLife site is ready for that argument, stating on the home page: (spelling and grammar are verbatim from the site)

"mLife has only just begun. soon you' ll be able to use your wireless like cash, listen to live play-by-play sports, and even send color photos. who knows what else? sign up to receive information about the newest powers of mLife."

"Who knows what else" you'll be able to do with mLife? AT&T doesn't know?? Basically AT&T isn't selling a service, or even a plan, they're selling a vision of the future. Actually, it's barely even that, since visions don't usually ask the reader to figure out what they'll include. AT&T is just selling the future as a whole. "You want something cool? Think of it, and yeah, it'll be part of mLife. Sure."

So that really bugged me. I thought, "How does a company get to use money and advertising to blindside actual innovation? how can they get away with this?" Well, the Suck article reminded me of something important: This isn't the first time. This is AT&T.

Remember eight years ago, when AT&T had those ads that asked "Have you ever tucked in your children, from 3000 miles away? YOU WILL. (and-the-company-that-will-bring-it-to-you-is-AT&T.)" and "Have you ever sent a fax... from the beach? YOU WILL. (and-the-company-that-will-bring-it-to-you-is-AT&T.)" Well, they were right about all but the last part. They dumped their picturephone development and the EO 'pen computer' shortly thereafter.

It turns out that while many companies will spend hundreds of millions in developing a new technology and bring it to market, AT&T had decided that with a mere tens of millions, they can hype a product, nayatch, technology, err, lifestyle, and see if the demand is there, by asking for names, numbers, and email addresses. If there's enough interest, then they figure out how to make it, while giving the pretense that the golden unified future is just around the corner.

The sad part is that AT&T is a giant that thinks its nimble. If it does manage to stumble on the recipe for success, there are twenty smaller, more nimble companies ready to bring the product to market.

AT&T brings the market research into the wild, looking for buzz, and trying to trap it if it happens to find any. Bascially, this is the flipside of IBM's coin, where every few months you hear about how they've found a bluer lazer and can store more stuff on a CD-ROM or sugar cube, but it never reaches the marketplace.

And for the link I couldn't find a place to graft in: This one's just fun to read (especially the defunct youwill.com and still-at-stanford Yahoo weblinks).