it’s android season (soon)
The first Google phone, android on HTC handsets has been okayed for release in October this year by America’s FCC. That’s what the NYT says.
Regardless of the technology, it will provide a change from all the iPhone chatter. Is the Android challenge may have been what prompted Symbian to move towards making it’s operating system open source too. (See here) ??
What’s interesting is that now, just as open source mobile telephony seems to have got off the drawing board, O’Reilly Emerging Telephony, a major service from O’Reilly publishing that has provided an excellent source of articles, podcasts and conference materials on the open source telephony community is closing down. Or has, at least, announced that it intends to close down. Maybe their mission has now been accomplished.
ceremonial reboot
Did you see the blue screen of death at the Olympics opening ceremony?
I thought the the great LED screen rolled out on the ground during the opening was really the geek highlight for me.
“Laid on the ground of the stadium was an LED screen 147 meters long and 22 meters wide with 44,000 embedded LED beads. LED beads were also embedded on the costumes of performers.”
You can keep in touch with things Olympic thanks to fring too. In case you haven’t seen it yet, read all about fring and the Olympics here.
hitting the streets
The ‘Sydney Morning Herald‘ reports that Google ‘Street View’ has recently launched Australian street views. It’s interesting to note that some real estate sites have already added Google street views as part of their house listing services.
Here are two of my favourite Google street views applications. First there is the Streetview guide to the route of the Tour De France and StreetView Fun which collects unusual and fun sights seen in Streetview.
As you can see, you can customise and embed your GoogleMaps and StreetView to your blog or web site.
Give it a go!
A perfect partner for your fringME widget!
geeks in love
Speaking about romance, Google street view has been used to propose marriage. See here. We don’t know if the intended actually said “yes”, but my guess is that she Twittered her reply.
save a life with your mobile
Speaking about life. The Australian Red Cross is now promoting a mobile phone application that may help you in a life saving situation.
Read about it here or check it out from the Red Cross site here.
go go google maps on the go
Google Maps Mobile is a great new and useful mobile web innovation, and it’s great news for Australians, at least if you happen to live in Perth, Western Australia . Let’s hope public transport authorities in other parts of the country start to revamp their current web offerings (see, for example, Melbourne’s Metway link - and Sydney’s Transport infoline ) to leverage off GMM.
fring’s blonde (2.0) moment
fring and the new fringAPI got some recent attention on digg (see here). The post being digged was from Social Marketing Strategist & Consultant Ayelet Noff who blogs at Blonde 2.0 . Ayelet’s post on the fring, the fringAPI and her interviews with the fring team are worth checking out.
Ayelett’s blog is worth exploring, and not just for the great discussion of fring, but for her comments and links on the world of social media. This is a growing field but, it would seem to me, not really a ‘new’ idea. Most forms of media, say newspapers, and most forms of marketing, have always had a ‘community building’ and ’social’ element. Of course the web 2.0 world has energised and accelerated the whole process, and shifted the centre of gravity somewhat from the ’supplier’ to the customers, users and ‘community’.