June 22, 2008
Delayed: Android, aka Google Phone
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If you are a start-up targeting the mobile industry, then you are well aware of the slow moving ways of incumbents, equipment makers and of course handset makers. You are made aware of their equally glacial ways when you come from the opposite end of the spectrum, Silicon Valley.
Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine that is making a big mobile push via its Android Mobile Platform, is learning the realities of mobile business the hard way. A report in WSJ suggests that the company is experiencing delays to its so called launch which is now slated for fourth quarter 2008. (Somewhere in Cupertino, Calif., Apple’s Steve Jobs is having a good laugh!)
“This is where the pain happens,” Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms told WSJ. “We are very, very close.” He was talking about adding features etc requested by carrier partners. I think this is why Jobs was smart in being tyrannical and ignoring carrier requests when it came to software. Google apparently can’t afford to ignore partner requests.
Here are the relevant and interesting facts from the WSJ article:
- T-Mobile USA is taking up all of Google’s attention, since the company wants to launch a device in the 4th quarter. This is diverting attention away from other partners.
- Executive reshuffle at Sprint is causing some delays. Sprint now wants to develop an Android phone for its 4G network instead of 3G network. Sprint as we know, is like a dancer with two left feet.
- China Mobile’s equipment partner is having a tough time translating Android into Chinese characters.
- Developers are finding it hard to write apps for Android because Google keeps making changes to the Android.
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Again, as I said earlier - whimsical wishes of carriers, endless customization, software delays and of course, executive reshuffling - these are facts of life for mobile start-ups. Welcome to the club, Google.
Related Stories:
- Android: Much Coolness, but 3 Big Problems
- The Mobile Linux War.
- 5 Open questions about the Google Phone aka Android
Motorola announces MOTOZINE ZN5
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Filed under: Cellphones
Motorola announces MOTOZINE ZN5 candybar
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Much to our surprise, Motorola has just announced the MOTOZINE ZN5 handset. On paper, at least, this is a very nice phone, sporting a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus (yay!), Xenon flash, image editing, Wi-Fi, E8-style ModeShift keypad, and an EDGE radio. The specs are decent, and the EDGE radio is more of a limitation of the target market’s spectrum than of any nefarious attempts to destroy our access to 3G goodness. We made our thoughts about this handset’s evil slider twin known a couple weeks back, though the addition of auto-focus on this one is sure to bring a bit more appeal. Motorola is billing this with built-in Kodak Gallery integration, which is a nice thought, but attempting to upload a 5 megapixel image over an EDGE connection sounds like a savage exercise in frustration. No word on pricing, but expect this to launch in China next month, with worldwide availability coming soon thereafter.
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Report: 3rd-party resellers to carry iPhone 3G in Germany
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The Thin Laptop Wars
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Mova reveals its work capturing faces for The Incredible Hulk film
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Steve Perlman’s motion-capture start-up Mova helped make possible the realistic animated faces in the new “The Incredible Hulk” film that debuted a week ago.
San Francisco-based Mova is owned by Perlman’s Rearden, a holding company that incubates a variety of Perlman-sponsored technology start-ups. Mova makes a tool that does a better job of capturing real faces and converting them into computer images than typical “motion capture” technologies. Perlman described Mova in a wide-ranging interview we did with him in April at the Web 2.0 conference.
With Mova’s “Contour Reality Capture” tool, technicians smear make-up on the faces of actors such as the Hulk star Edward Norton. The tool can capture each dot of the make-up as a data point that can be directly translated into a computer-generated image. Such images give artists a big head start in trying to create realistic animated faces based on real humans.
Perlman said that the Hulk film is the first movie credit that Mova has been allowed to reveal since the company announced its existence about 22 months ago. He said more films will be coming out soon.
T-Mobile announces Nokia 6301 and Samsung SGH-t339, world yawns
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Exciting these new handsets are not, but if you’re in the market for a middle of the road Hotspot@Home-capable T-Mobile device, your search just got a bit more cumbersome. First off is the Nokia 6301, which T-Mobile is describing as having “the style of a home phone with the look of a mobile”. We’re not entirely sure that’s a good thing, but we suppose you can be the judge. Specs include
- Wi-Fi-enabled; supports T-Mobile HotSpot @Home
- T-Mobile myFavesSM-enabled
- Music player (supports WMA, MP3, AAC and eAAC+)
- Stereo Bluetooth connectivity
- 2.0 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and video capture
- Expandable memory with microSD (support for up to 4GB)
- Instant messaging; supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live
- Speakerphone
- FM radio
Next up is the Samsung t339, which is another yawner of a phone, sporting
- T-Mobile myFaves-enabled
- Music player (supports MP3, AAC and AAC+)
- Stereo Bluetooth connectivity
- 1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and video capture
- Expandable memory with microSD (support for up to 2GB)
- Instant messaging; supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live
- Speakerphone
Both are available immediately, but if it were up to us, these two would be sent directly to the D.O.A. pile.
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Google has best reputation in U.S., airlines fall: survey (Reuters)
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Reuters - Google Inc's famous employee perks -- from providing "nap pods" for a quick break during the day to allowing engineers to spend 20 percent of their work time on side projects that may spark new ideas -- have given the Internet leader the best reputation in corporate America, according to a study released on Monday.
Google has best reputation in U.S., airlines fall: survey
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June 19: What’s Interesting This Morning
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It’s another beautiful day in the San Francisco Bay area, though unfortunately it’s going to be spent indoors, in meetings, as we plan for our Structure 08 conference. Almost everyone in the company except Stacey is going to be in the office, and that means a hectic and challenging day. Thankfully there is no SF Giants game today, so we won’t have any crazy onlookers walking past our digs. Anyway, here are some interesting links that might be worth checking out:
- The Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T wants DISH to pay back $500 million in convertible notes, a move that indicates the partners might be on the verge of breaking up. Of course, it also indicates that AT&T has no interest in buying DISH anymore. WSJ points out that DirecTV has leveraged the HDTV trend better than DISH. The growth in the satellite industry has almost halved. AT&T’s move shouldn’t come as a surprise — they have to grow their IPTV business, and fast.
- France is going to ban illegal Internet downloaders, according to Times UK Online. So much for the great, technology-friendly President Sarkozy. He’s joined the likes of Universal’s CEO, in my book — people who don’t quite understand the real issues around the Internet and believe in strongarming.
- Apparently the guys at PPLive have no such problems. Meet the Asian Joost, which is cranking out some big numbers and is on the prowl to buy its way into the U.S. market.
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- Amidst all its misery, Motorola has something to celebrate. Its GPON division has found two new buyers, even if they are microscopic in size.
- Are you a Wi-Fi thief? The answer is yes. Seriously, I’m not joking about that.
- More Free SMS for you…and I mean FREE. You know how much I love free SMS services. Today, the folks at 3Jam have introduced a new service that would allow you to send and receive free SMS messages. It’s also context-aware. It’s still in beta, and the first 100 GigaOM readers can try it. I think this one could catch on. Watch how it works on YouTube.
- By the way, did you know that men like the mobile web and constitute 88.1 percent of total web users? Or so claims Opera. I think that would be that 88.1 percent of Opera users are men. Nearly 14.7 million used their Opera Mini to browse the web. Great, though not as much fun as iPhone browsing. I use it for checking out WAP.MLB.COM — all the time!
- There is a growing army of people who, like me, stumble into becoming web workers, which isn’t as easy as it seems.
- And if all that seems frivolous, then it is frivolous. Check out this report on Earth2Tech, which points out that our planet’s climate change problems are worse than previously thought. This comes from a group of highly respected, Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
Before I sign off, I just wanted to get your feedback on this “interesting” post — if you like it or not, should I carry on or not, or perhaps how best to improve it. I have embedded a little poll for a spot test.