Fynspire

This morning on TechCrunch I ran across a post about G1, the phone that's pegged to be the first Android phone from T-Mobile. After hearing insiders grumbling about how Android was bound to be overrated, slow, or hideously late, I must admit that I was beginning to feel a bit lackluster about the platform. However, after laying eyes on these sketches from the Android Guys, my excitement has returned.



The phone seems to take its basic design from the Sidekick, which I think is an excellent move. The Sidekick is a popular phone, and users enjoy its design. The iPhone is remarkable and revolutionary; it would have been foolhardy for Google and T-Mobile to try to out-design Apple--a battle they would have undoubtedly lost. By taking the Sidekick's basic design as a starting point, they avoid trying to re-invent the wheel, and can be comfortable having a strong industrial design base, freeing them up to focus on the most important aspect of the phone: the Android platform.

I look forward to Android launching. If it has a minimum of bugs and launches in tandem with T-Mobile's efforts to open an app-store, Android could do a great deal to move mobile applications and technology forward. What most fascinates me about the Android is the potential for it to effect Apple. I don't expect Android phones to push the iPhone off of its well-deserved pedestal; however, I will be interested to see how Apple would be forced to respond to a thriving open design platform. What would Apple feel the need to do to remain the darling of designers and developers? At the least, I suspect they might have to loosen the strangle-hold they maintain over the apps. I also suspect that an Android phone will be cheaper than an iPhone, thus opening up smartphones to the more price-conscientious market, and allowing greater market saturation for smartphone technology.

This is of course speculation, and entirely dependent on the ability of Google and T-Mobile to launch the Android platform and G1 phone on time with a minimum of bugs, and in way that attracts and maintains developers.

Although Facebook is the world leader in social networks, MySpace still has more American users. Michael Arrington, over at TechCrunch speculates that MySpace dominates the U.S. market because of how it caters to musicians. I think he's absolutely right.

Every band has a customized MySpace page with streaming music and a concert calendar. Whenever I discover or want to investigate a band in order to decide whether or not I should by tickets for a concert, I inevitably seek out their MySpace page to check out their sound. Facebook is trying to address MySpace's musical supremacy through iLike.



From the sounds of it, iLike appears to be a bit convoluted. Arrington's description makes me imagine that accessing music on Facebook will require a lot of clicking, or more clicking than I'll feel enthusiastic about.

Valleywag has leaked videos of the first Android phone.

Great posts on TechCrunch:

-How to Demo Your Startup--a great post on the do's and don'ts of presenting your startup.

-Why Twitter Hasn't Failed: The Power of Audience--Interesting analysis about how Twitter succeeded by allowing users to find and address a particular audience.

-iPhone Apps: One Month and 60 Million Downloads Later. But Not One Of Them Is A Killer App.--About the impressive, but not too impressive first month of the iPhone App store.

Most iPhone Apps Are Failing To Leverage The Network Effect.

Ars Technica:

Opinion: Why laptops will kick PC desktops to the Curb.

Linux everywhere: mobile Internet devices and the cloud--"At the LinuxWorld expo in San Francisco, Ars met with Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin to discuss the future of the open source operating system and the impact it will have on emerging mobile and embedded technologies."

And Wired and Ars Technica both cover The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and DEFCON controversey:

Judge zips MIT students' lips on mass transit fare exploits

Federal Judge in DefCon Case Equates Speech with Hacking

Apparently, before suing StudiVZ, Facebook first tried to buy it. StudiVZ is essentially a Facebook clone established in Germany before Facebook could creep over to Europe. StudiVZ has almost 10 times the traffic of Facebook in Germany, which surely doesn't please Zuckerberg and the gang.

According to Silicon Alley, MySpace's app platform is beginning to pull in money for developers at a rate similar to the pay out they receive from their Facebook apps.



Sridharan speculates that MySpace's app platform is taking off because they added more features, and that Facebook's page redesign may have scared some developers into MySpace's welcoming arms.

It will definitely be interesting to see how both networks develop and what role apps play in that development. For all its popularity, Facebook never quite succeeded in killing MySpace, in the way that MySpace killed Friendster (though it is currently priming itself for a comeback). MySpace has a strong lock on music, and still caters to particular social groups, like goth and techno kids, while Facebook managed to attract users who were turned off by the music-blaring, pink-skull explosion that MySpace evolved into. Facebook also seems to be oddly attractive to "older" users (users in their 30s who refused to use MySpace) who found it to be a great way to reconnect with classmates.

Essentially, both are managing to survive by successfully endearing themselves to particular communities. I wonder if we will start to see differences in the types of apps that developers deliver to their respective platforms, based on perceived differences of the audiences.

When Cuil.com (pronounced "cool") debuted yesterday, the New York Times and other news outlets and blogs were wondering whether it would emerge as a Google-killer, a search engine capable of challenging Google's search supremacy.

Apparently, Google has very little to fear. The popular consensus seems to be that Cuil still has a great number of kinks to work out. When I first tried to use Cuil its servers were so bogged down with new traffic I had to wait at least four minutes for it to process my query--which is fine. I anticipated that the servers would probably have trouble keeping up with the onslaught of interest. However, Cuil failed to deliver in the nature and usefulness of the results it returned.

When I type "steampunk" into Google the first entry that pops up is a Wikipedia post defining the term, that's followed by a variety of sites that concentrate on the steampunk movement. However, when I type "steampunk" into Cuil the first results page is dominated by entries from steampunk.com. It's results are much less useful and interesting. I'm also not a fan of the UI. The manner in which boxes of text and images are staggered over the page is a little overwhelming to confront. I do like the idea of pairing images with each entry, but ultimately the images associated with each result were not topically related to my search and thus useless to me.

All this is not to say that Cuil doesn't have potential. It does, but they're going to have to work a lot harder.

I feel the need to point out that I don't own a single Apple product. Not one. The closest I come is to using the Quicktime Player on my ancient PC laptop; and yet, I can't seem to stop myself from writing posts about Apple, the iPhone, and Steve Jobs.

Currently, the blogsphere is all a-titter about the state of Steve Jobs' health and whether this information is a "private matter" as one apple executive told a shareholder during a conference call about Apple's 2008 Q3, or if it is indeed fit for public airing because of the heavy ties between Apple as a company and Jobs as a brand.

The mere mention of this topic has provoked outrage on some comment boards. Commentors on Silicon Alley (rather unfairly, I believe) accused Henry Blodget of fishing for clicks by writing about the topic. While some ran to his defense and wrote that the topic is indeed very worthy.

I definitely understand why Jobs wouldn't want to feel compelled to continuously comment on the state of his physical health. Jobs is notoriously secretive, rarely deigning to give interviews, and very controlling about the personal information he releases. However, Jobs' ties to Apple are unique in that I cannot think of any other major brand so strongly tied to one specific individual. To most of Apple's shareholders, Jobs=Apple. And concerns about the state of his health could very understandably affect stock prices.

Michael Arrington has an interesting post on TechCrunch about how he believes it is a mistake for Facebook and Myspace to not incorporate the iPhone's location awareness feature into their networks.

He acknowledges that both have stated that they intend to release future versions that will incorporate the technology, but he argues that a speedy adaptation can drive user growth and open both social networks up to new audiences. Arrington implies that both companies are proceeding slowly because of legality and privacy concerns.

I believe it's extremely smart of Facebook and Myspace to proceed with caution. The iPhone's location awareness feature presents so many wonderful opportunities as well as dangers. Any technology that can broadcast your location to others presents a myriad of privacy concerns, and when stepping onto such treacherous terrain it's best to proceed with caution. Missteps could not only result in lawsuits but possibly endangering of users safety.

I'm pretty excited to see how a mobile culture will evolve, and my imagination has been greatly piqued by the opportunities that the iPhone's location awareness technology presents, but the initial companies that seek to capitalize upon it must move forward in a thoughtful way that acknowledges and anticipates the potential pitfalls inherent in the technology.

Any major players that utilize it would do best to set up systems that allow users to opt-in to sharing various levels of information with particular or specific groups of people. I as a user would want to have a great deal of control over how my information was shared.

Pandora is apparently cleaning up like gangbusters on the new iPhone. Techcrunch has seen fit to hail it as the iPhone's killer app and declares it to be their "flat out favorite application so far."

TC points out that the iPhone and mobile devices are exactly what internet radio needs to be relevant.

Currently, Pandra is the fourth most popular iPhone app.

Danah Boyd, has a great post on her blog about the iphone and the potential ways it can transform social interactions once it achieves a particular level of saturation in certain social clusters.

Boyd caught a cab with a driver who happened to be borrowing his cousin's gen1 iphone and seemed to be quite taken with the device and the potential it had to ease the difficulty of navigating LA's perilous traffic, as well as making it simple for him to connect and keep track of his fellow drivers.

Boyd writes: