The news business is totally commoditized. Don’t believe me? Look at TechMeme this morning. It’s all about Google’s Android mobile platform announcements. All the time. Whew.
Instead of trying to compete with the news crews who have written endlessly I just went to Peets, got myself an iced latte, and filed this report from my cell phone.
Oh, don’t expect to see much about this on my link blog, either. There’s too much discussion about it so far.
My two cents?
1. How come there’s no talk about building devices that integrate better into automobiles? I think Microsoft is WAY ahead here.
2. This is a platform, not a hardware device. Andy Rubin, on the call, said that we should expect 1,000 GPhones.
3. There wasn’t much specific about how this platform beats other operating systems like Symbian and Microsoft’s. Big selling point for Android? It’s open source. Will that lead to end user innovations? We’ll see. So far I haven’t heard anything that’ll make me sell my iPhone on eBay.
4. I like Google’s strategy of giving stuff away to developers. It’s the right strategy, but like with last week’s Open Social announcements by Google there are a LOT of unanswered questions. I guess we’ll see how good this OS is when the Android SDK comes out next week.
5. I hope we really see some innovative new devices like a great podcasting phone, or great integration into your car’s environment. But those kinds of fun things are going to be off in the future and Google seems to want to be a platform player, and seems to be avoiding going up the stack for now. We’ll see if that holds out over the next few years (I suspect it won’t).
Anyway, fun Monday morning.
[kyte.tv appKey=MarbachViewerEmbedded&uri=channels/6118/69129&embedId=10010781]
Scobleizer 
Neat seeing you report the way you did. Now I’m just waiting for Chris Pirillo to get excited that you reported from Peets! 😉
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Neat seeing you report the way you did. Now I’m just waiting for Chris Pirillo to get excited that you reported from Peets! 😉
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You wrote:…great integration into your car’s environment WHAT ?!?!?! You should be doing one and only one thing in your car and that is:DRIVING. ALl your senses must be focusing on driving your car while you are inside of it.
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You wrote:…great integration into your car’s environment WHAT ?!?!?! You should be doing one and only one thing in your car and that is:DRIVING. ALl your senses must be focusing on driving your car while you are inside of it.
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Where is the love for OpenMoko? They’ve been open source for awhile and have an actual developers kit you can have right now. Unlike Google which is still working on it.
OpenMoko has both the hardware and the software already. lets give them some love today
http://www.openmoko.com
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Where is the love for OpenMoko? They’ve been open source for awhile and have an actual developers kit you can have right now. Unlike Google which is still working on it.
OpenMoko has both the hardware and the software already. lets give them some love today
http://www.openmoko.com
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Scoble, I have to admit that you surprised me. I came here fully expecting you to declare Google Android as the best thing ever, and that you’d already ordered three phones. :p
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Scoble, I have to admit that you surprised me. I came here fully expecting you to declare Google Android as the best thing ever, and that you’d already ordered three phones. :p
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We need more photoshopped pictures and vague promises about what the phone could or might eventually be. Apple releases, Microsoft promises thrice what it (after much delay) delivers, Google just spews hot air. Generic widget platforms to background-role telecom consortiums, wow, impressive. Go Vic Go.
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We need more photoshopped pictures and vague promises about what the phone could or might eventually be. Apple releases, Microsoft promises thrice what it (after much delay) delivers, Google just spews hot air. Generic widget platforms to background-role telecom consortiums, wow, impressive. Go Vic Go.
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Robert check out my podcast with HTC about Android/Google and Microsoft here:
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/6868.html
!
HTC is THE ONLY manufacturer that commited to specific date to release Android phone and they claim that they will be the first!!! Is it any good?
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Robert check out my podcast with HTC about Android/Google and Microsoft here:
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/6868.html
!
HTC is THE ONLY manufacturer that commited to specific date to release Android phone and they claim that they will be the first!!! Is it any good?
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This phone will no doubt get all the pasty-faced geeks in a tizzy much like the iPhone did.
These companies exist for one reason: to divest you of your income.
It’s a phone. No more, no less. People are trying to usher in a Star Trek lifestyle all of a sudden.
Give me a tricorder and I’ll be impressed. Until then, it’s a phone with a few extras.
The tenet of a great program or great device is simply this: it does one thing and one thing well. The more complexity, the worse off things are.
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This phone will no doubt get all the pasty-faced geeks in a tizzy much like the iPhone did.
These companies exist for one reason: to divest you of your income.
It’s a phone. No more, no less. People are trying to usher in a Star Trek lifestyle all of a sudden.
Give me a tricorder and I’ll be impressed. Until then, it’s a phone with a few extras.
The tenet of a great program or great device is simply this: it does one thing and one thing well. The more complexity, the worse off things are.
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Apple’s policy about not letting one purchase an iPhone using cash is simply evil, despite their attempts to assuage patrons otherwise.
Cash is the de facto method for buying things in this world.
Cash is not easily traced, and this is why they don’t like it, but too bad.
Another company with whom I will not do business. Anonymous buys are a right, not a privledge. Yes, activating the phone might give you away, but hey, that a choice.
More and more I’m starting to believe that it’s not the government so much I need to fear, but corporations. After all, our government is becoming slaves to the corporate world.
Case in point is the telcos. In Europe and in Asia, the government has dictated that telcos open up their pipes for cometition. People in those places enjoy 15, 30 MB connections for a pittance. Here in the US, we pay big bucks for a slow-assed 5 MB connection. Not right. Here the telcos lobby congress and get that whole idea overturned. Time for the government to let people be first, not companies.
Scandinavia looks like a great place to live despite the high taxes. I’d gladly pay 50% of my income to taxes for no-hassle medical care, free university-level education, subsidized everything, and cheap Internet access.
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Apple’s policy about not letting one purchase an iPhone using cash is simply evil, despite their attempts to assuage patrons otherwise.
Cash is the de facto method for buying things in this world.
Cash is not easily traced, and this is why they don’t like it, but too bad.
Another company with whom I will not do business. Anonymous buys are a right, not a privledge. Yes, activating the phone might give you away, but hey, that a choice.
More and more I’m starting to believe that it’s not the government so much I need to fear, but corporations. After all, our government is becoming slaves to the corporate world.
Case in point is the telcos. In Europe and in Asia, the government has dictated that telcos open up their pipes for cometition. People in those places enjoy 15, 30 MB connections for a pittance. Here in the US, we pay big bucks for a slow-assed 5 MB connection. Not right. Here the telcos lobby congress and get that whole idea overturned. Time for the government to let people be first, not companies.
Scandinavia looks like a great place to live despite the high taxes. I’d gladly pay 50% of my income to taxes for no-hassle medical care, free university-level education, subsidized everything, and cheap Internet access.
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Cash is the de facto method for buying things in this world.
There’s is so much wrong with this that it boggles the mind.
(1) Cash is not the de fato method, plastic is.
(2) Cash is legal tender… for? For debts. But not for creating debts – which an iPhone purchase would do. Please, read the fine print attahed to that dollar bill.
(3) Cash is based on – in this country – the gold standard. Or it was. Seems that in 1964 it no longer was. Oh wait, that was when we stopped putting silver in our coins. Damn, it’s so hard to remember those fine details!
Okay, cash is based on one thing only – trust.
(4) It’s what you went on to say that totally boggles y mind. Cash is not easily traced? Sure, unless you meant compared to counterfeit cash. But I know you didn’t mean that. So you must mean that non-ash sales leave a record.
A record that only people meaning to mis-use iPhones care about.
But it gets worse. Maybe you simply don’t care to have your purchases on something like, say, Amazon, out there for public consumption? I can agree.
Until I realize you are posting this kind of thing on this blog – in all it’s Facebook (and soon to be OpenSocial?) glory. You, sir, are talking to a chorus that simply can’t comprehend why the thought of Amazon making your latest purchase available to Facebook and a dozen other “open” and “social” sites is not something you need to explicitly opt out of.
And THAT boggles my mind!
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Cash is the de facto method for buying things in this world.
There’s is so much wrong with this that it boggles the mind.
(1) Cash is not the de fato method, plastic is.
(2) Cash is legal tender… for? For debts. But not for creating debts – which an iPhone purchase would do. Please, read the fine print attahed to that dollar bill.
(3) Cash is based on – in this country – the gold standard. Or it was. Seems that in 1964 it no longer was. Oh wait, that was when we stopped putting silver in our coins. Damn, it’s so hard to remember those fine details!
Okay, cash is based on one thing only – trust.
(4) It’s what you went on to say that totally boggles y mind. Cash is not easily traced? Sure, unless you meant compared to counterfeit cash. But I know you didn’t mean that. So you must mean that non-ash sales leave a record.
A record that only people meaning to mis-use iPhones care about.
But it gets worse. Maybe you simply don’t care to have your purchases on something like, say, Amazon, out there for public consumption? I can agree.
Until I realize you are posting this kind of thing on this blog – in all it’s Facebook (and soon to be OpenSocial?) glory. You, sir, are talking to a chorus that simply can’t comprehend why the thought of Amazon making your latest purchase available to Facebook and a dozen other “open” and “social” sites is not something you need to explicitly opt out of.
And THAT boggles my mind!
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Still waiting for a response from the open moko team about this. hopefully this will drive more coverage for them
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Still waiting for a response from the open moko team about this. hopefully this will drive more coverage for them
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Robert –
Not sure I agree with you here about this being a sign that news has become commoditized. News IS becoming commoditized, but pack journalism – the tendency of journalists to flood the zone and cover the news the same way – has existed for generations. The only difference now is that 1) Bloggers – though, not you – are falling into that trap too. 2)Thanks to Techmeme and other aggregators we actually get to see the output of entire pack. To use a hideous cliche: The more things change the more they remain the same.
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Robert –
Not sure I agree with you here about this being a sign that news has become commoditized. News IS becoming commoditized, but pack journalism – the tendency of journalists to flood the zone and cover the news the same way – has existed for generations. The only difference now is that 1) Bloggers – though, not you – are falling into that trap too. 2)Thanks to Techmeme and other aggregators we actually get to see the output of entire pack. To use a hideous cliche: The more things change the more they remain the same.
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Man, did you nail it. I am so sick of the Google fanboys running around loving everything Google shovels out. This is announcement amounting to nothing.
I will keep my iPhone as well.
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Man, did you nail it. I am so sick of the Google fanboys running around loving everything Google shovels out. This is announcement amounting to nothing.
I will keep my iPhone as well.
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Scandinavia looks like a great place to live despite the high taxes.
You had me with your Web 2.0 “CEO” take downs, but then so facetiously going all happy-happy perfect-world socialist. (Rolling eyes).
The Scandinavian/Nordic model which gives the same benefits to everyone, only works on small-scale, tightly-controlled, VERY RACE SELECTIVE, rich-nation scales, with constant high economic growth and low unemployment. Opportunity and development is boxed in, and once the bar is set, going beyond is near impossible. And 50%? You should be so lucky, the ‘paradise’ of Sweden takes 64% of GDP to fund it’s largess, not to mention the very high VAT taxes. The underground economies end up with the only forms of real growth, and serious problems such as high absenteeism, extensive budget deficits and a slew of profitless governmental sovietish “make work” programs, are but the norm.
The Other Models: The Beveridge or Anglo-Saxon model, grants benefits to the poorest, the Bismarckish Germanish Model, only to the labor class, the Subsidiarity Model in which families take all care.
None of them work (families don’t always take care, and the supposed Great Society actually makes a society poor), but the Beveridge is the best of the worst, and even then it works better in the USA than in the UK, that considering it doesn’t much work even here, as California is a bureaucratic sink hole.
Jefferson said it best….
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
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Scandinavia looks like a great place to live despite the high taxes.
You had me with your Web 2.0 “CEO” take downs, but then so facetiously going all happy-happy perfect-world socialist. (Rolling eyes).
The Scandinavian/Nordic model which gives the same benefits to everyone, only works on small-scale, tightly-controlled, VERY RACE SELECTIVE, rich-nation scales, with constant high economic growth and low unemployment. Opportunity and development is boxed in, and once the bar is set, going beyond is near impossible. And 50%? You should be so lucky, the ‘paradise’ of Sweden takes 64% of GDP to fund it’s largess, not to mention the very high VAT taxes. The underground economies end up with the only forms of real growth, and serious problems such as high absenteeism, extensive budget deficits and a slew of profitless governmental sovietish “make work” programs, are but the norm.
The Other Models: The Beveridge or Anglo-Saxon model, grants benefits to the poorest, the Bismarckish Germanish Model, only to the labor class, the Subsidiarity Model in which families take all care.
None of them work (families don’t always take care, and the supposed Great Society actually makes a society poor), but the Beveridge is the best of the worst, and even then it works better in the USA than in the UK, that considering it doesn’t much work even here, as California is a bureaucratic sink hole.
Jefferson said it best….
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
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I have to ask why Peets? Find an indie coffee shop on delocator.net
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I have to ask why Peets? Find an indie coffee shop on delocator.net
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It’s all about getting rid of the PC…
http://tinyurl.com/2l49t8
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It’s all about getting rid of the PC…
http://tinyurl.com/2l49t8
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Robert, I was at Iluna tonight and some journalists were there talking about getting their Google phones. Did you get one? What do you think of it so far? Or is it a secret?
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Robert, I was at Iluna tonight and some journalists were there talking about getting their Google phones. Did you get one? What do you think of it so far? Or is it a secret?
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Did you get one of the phones?
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Did you get one of the phones?
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Wow Robert, such restraint! I am just wondering why they are announcing so early without anything concrete i.e. SDK
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Wow Robert, such restraint! I am just wondering why they are announcing so early without anything concrete i.e. SDK
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Gilberto,
I don’t think it’s going to do anything freaky with your car or take your eyes off the road any more than, say, a fancy GPS that could tell you where your friends are and if they have an open invitation for anyone to meet them for dinner, or shopping at any given moment.
Imagine being able to let only your friends know where you are going to be and telling them what you are doing at all times of the day and they can just drive right over to where you are because maybe they realize they are right down the street?
Or maybe you can Google for pizza shops in the area that serve beer and it will instantly prep it for GPS all the while making suggestions for the next best thing in the area if your exact search isnt found.
The possibilities are endless.
I think the best one, though, will be when big brother dials into the Gphone coordinates of political enemies (or their families) and rains a few rockets down on political enemies while claiming they were Al Qaeda operatives.
Yeah, that’ll be cool. Good thing Google shipped their HQ onto NASA headquarters and all your deleted Gmail is held for 6 months to a year.
Hello? Anyone home? 😉
Sam Freedom
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Gilberto,
I don’t think it’s going to do anything freaky with your car or take your eyes off the road any more than, say, a fancy GPS that could tell you where your friends are and if they have an open invitation for anyone to meet them for dinner, or shopping at any given moment.
Imagine being able to let only your friends know where you are going to be and telling them what you are doing at all times of the day and they can just drive right over to where you are because maybe they realize they are right down the street?
Or maybe you can Google for pizza shops in the area that serve beer and it will instantly prep it for GPS all the while making suggestions for the next best thing in the area if your exact search isnt found.
The possibilities are endless.
I think the best one, though, will be when big brother dials into the Gphone coordinates of political enemies (or their families) and rains a few rockets down on political enemies while claiming they were Al Qaeda operatives.
Yeah, that’ll be cool. Good thing Google shipped their HQ onto NASA headquarters and all your deleted Gmail is held for 6 months to a year.
Hello? Anyone home? 😉
Sam Freedom
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What amazes me, is that no-one from Google bothered to point out that the Android SDK is apparently actually a Java SDK.
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/11/05/gphone-announcement-errr-what/
To hear Eric Schmidt talk, you wouldn’t have known Android had anything to do with Java.
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What amazes me, is that no-one from Google bothered to point out that the Android SDK is apparently actually a Java SDK.
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/11/05/gphone-announcement-errr-what/
To hear Eric Schmidt talk, you wouldn’t have known Android had anything to do with Java.
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I love Peets, but I wish they had WiFi. For that reason, I am headed to ‘It’s a Grind’ FREE WiFi!!
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I love Peets, but I wish they had WiFi. For that reason, I am headed to ‘It’s a Grind’ FREE WiFi!!
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I have the love for the OpenMoko, honestly this android sounds more like a trolltech creation than true opensource…the GPL and other licenses will ensure proprietary software. I would rather have a completely opensource phone for a true mobile linux experiance
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I have the love for the OpenMoko, honestly this android sounds more like a trolltech creation than true opensource…the GPL and other licenses will ensure proprietary software. I would rather have a completely opensource phone for a true mobile linux experiance
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Scoble,
Can you PLEASE ask someone at Google to give us some idea of what the prerequisites for the SDK will be? It REALLY sucks that I have this weekend to get my Mac ready for development on Monday, but no idea what it needs.
When I started doing Mono development on Ubuntu, it took several days for me to file bugs and get patches developed before I could even get started. I eventually moved to Gentoo.
Ultimately I’m willing to develop under any OS except windows. Life is too short to try to secure those things.
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Scoble,
Can you PLEASE ask someone at Google to give us some idea of what the prerequisites for the SDK will be? It REALLY sucks that I have this weekend to get my Mac ready for development on Monday, but no idea what it needs.
When I started doing Mono development on Ubuntu, it took several days for me to file bugs and get patches developed before I could even get started. I eventually moved to Gentoo.
Ultimately I’m willing to develop under any OS except windows. Life is too short to try to secure those things.
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There you have to go thinking all selfishly again Scoble. How many cars are out there versus mobile phones? It is a very American view to think everyone has a car, come over to the other side in Europe and Asia and you will quickly realize that cars are the exception to the norm.
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There you have to go thinking all selfishly again Scoble. How many cars are out there versus mobile phones? It is a very American view to think everyone has a car, come over to the other side in Europe and Asia and you will quickly realize that cars are the exception to the norm.
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After all the excitement about the Android platform, a community for Android developers has been set up called http://www.androiddeveloper.com which is a central hub where developers can discuss and learn about the Android platform.
A different site called http://www.androidmobileforum.com has also been set up for everyone to discuss anything about Android mobile.
It looks like theres going to be a lot of talk before we even get the first Android mobile devices in late 2008.
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After all the excitement about the Android platform, a community for Android developers has been set up called http://www.androiddeveloper.com which is a central hub where developers can discuss and learn about the Android platform.
A different site called http://www.androidmobileforum.com has also been set up for everyone to discuss anything about Android mobile.
It looks like theres going to be a lot of talk before we even get the first Android mobile devices in late 2008.
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