It’s the end of an era. MSN Direct has announced that their wireless data service will be shut off on January 1st, 2012. The service supplies a data feed to wristwatches, GPS units, and other portable devices.
MSN Direct was a great idea that never really took off. The service gave you the ability to see real-time traffic reports, news and weather updates, and in come cases, meeting reminders. There were a series of devices that used it, but in the end they were prohibitively expensive, and have been replaced by smartphones and the like anyway. So it’s not a huge surprise that MSN Direct has blamed reduced demand for their decision to shut the service down.
Honestly, there’s not much reason to panic at this point (if you were thinking about it), as MSN has given people using the service two years worth of warning that the end is nigh. But of course, there will be those few holdouts who will fight it right up to the end. Or, they could just go buy a Droid phone, and be done with it now.
[via Mediabistro]