Having discussed women and gaming a couple of weeks ago, you can imagine how pleased we were to find out Wednesday’s announcement that OnLive will finally go live on 17 June.

Having had 11 months to refine a marketing strategy to appeal to the widest possible market, OnLive produced a product that got so much right and falls down at the last possible hurdles. The subscription fee model that will appeal to a broad range of consumers (read: women, too)? Check. The ability to work on both Macs and PCs without additional hardware requirements? Check. A microconsole to stream video games direct to a TV? Check! A fast, streamlined, informative website? Check, check, check. Check.

Now let’s look at the games – oh, dear. So close! The “featured games” on the website include Assassins Creed 2, Metro 2033 and the upcoming Prince of Persia.  Every single one of the games listed is graphically violent, arguably not the way to appeal to many female gamers.  By contrast, the most popular games for the Wii console (the most popular games console with women) are of the Super Mario Brothers/Mario Kart variety and multi-player sports games.  Two exceptions – the hugely successful Call of Duty and Lego Star Wars, my personal favourite, which involves shattering Lego walls, Lego objects and Lego storm troopers – no blood involved.

Given this evidence, the available games choices for OnLive needs to be rapidly re-examined to attract women gamers. Ignoring the huge female gaming market is a perilous tactic for OnLive, which gets so many other aspects right.  Making sure female gamers are catered to could turn OnLive from a quirky, interesting gaming footnote to a superstar player.

My first ever PC was a noisy clunky beige-coloured box which sounded something like a hair-dryer and produced twice as as much heat. It was a useful workhorse, but profoundly unpleasent up-close. Such a device would have no hope in my living room: In most households women control which devices are allowed into that most precious of space – the typical grey PC is not getting in.

Fortunately the PC has evolved: The boxes got smaller, quieter and more beautiful- they gradually adapted to fill every possible niche in the household.

The Dell Zino HD is the most extreme example of this evolution: It’s a tiny box that’s built for the bedroom or the living room. Dell understood that you probably want to connect it to a TV, that’s why it has an HDMI port and comes as standard with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Who wants wires trailing across their living room?

Unfortunately, the living room is a fiercly competitive ecosystem: At best there’s room for no more than three devices beneath the TV. That means if you are going to introduce a new device you probably need to boot something else out: The Zino is likely to displace a games console or a DVD player since it can do the job of both.

Dell have clearly studied the aesthetics of Nintendo’s Wii, however unlike the wii, the Zino HD is no toy: It packs a 64bit AMD Athlon X2 chip and runs a full edition Microsoft’s Windows 7. That means it can play just about any game or media you throw at it. Imagine your favourite games on your wide-screen TV? This is going to appeal to all but the most obsessed Wii-sportsmen.

With most women being the gatekeepers of the home – Dell have a smart strategy with designing beautifully made PC’s that are as much architectural fittings as they are useful pieces of technology.  The worst thing Dell could do now is patronise women like Samsung are doing with their Genio and come out with fluffy marketing statements asking women ‘What colour is your life?’

Whilst the Zino has earned it’s space in my living room, the marketing has yet to earn my respect.  Only time will tell.

For my 21st birthday I asked my father to buy me a power tool.  I still remember when I got my AEG power drill! I loved it then, and I still love it and use it today, 9 years after. It never let me down and it built my furniture in 3 flats and installed in at least 10 of my industrial design exhibitions.

Unfortunately it wasn’t designed with women in mind, so I often strained my wrist using it or had trouble carrying it around in its big and heavy case. I would have loved if AEG had thought about me, about other women, when designing it.  AEG like so many other technology companies, fail to understand what women want and just ending up producing a ‘pinked up’ and often’ dumbed down ladies version’ like the toolkit featured here.

This kit has probably been designed by men who didn’t want women to ever use tools, and if they ever do, this kit ensures they will have a bad experience. Bad grips, cheap metal, tiny fiddly components all coated in pink! Forgive me for thinking this is not a manicure set, right? It’s a tool set…

If women are not very experienced in DIY, a kit like this should make the job easier, not difficult and patronising.  I would have felt terriblly confused if my father had got me something like this, I would have probably never got closer to the DIY shop anymore.

Nine years on, and on my 30th birthday I would love to say that design is much more female centred.  Unfortunately it is not and according to CES, women think only 1% of designers have them in mind when designing for them.

Lady Geek’s DESIGNWITHME product takes into account women’s aspirations and strengths, not their nail varnish colour…