Happy New Year!
Wishing you all a safe, healthy and happy calendar-changing experience.
May 2008 turn out as prosperous and as fulfilling as you wish it to be.
All the best!
December 2007 Archives
Forbes is reporting this morning that Apple is keen on getting into the location-based services game and has gone to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to file several interesting patent applications to that end.
In one filing, Forbes said Apple:
“…described a wireless system that would allow customers to place an order at a store using a wireless device such as a media player, a wireless personal digital assistant or a cellphone.”
The article further discusses
…a process for placing an order and then notifying customers when an order is ready to grab at a pick-up station. One goal, the patent application notes, is to avoid an “annoying wait in a long queue if the purchaser arrives before completion of the order.”
So Starbucks customers will be able to order their favorite beverage before they even walk into the store, and they’ll be able to skip the line to boot! That’s an extra 2–3 minutes more people can sleep in, or perhaps they can be 2–3 minutes more productive.
Rumors are swirling that phones based on Google’s Android platform might see the light of day as soon as February 2008.
And no, it’s not because my birthday falls in that month. You see there’s this little trade show called Mobile World Congress that takes place in Barcelona the second week in February and Google has booked a fair amount of square footage at the event, reserving two hospitality spaces (1 business, 1 standard).
APC Magazine does a great job reporting on this possibility, with pointers to a Gizmodo snapshot of one of the “rumored prototype phones circulating around the Googleplex.”
The article also directs readers to a demo of the new development platform posted on YouTube’s Android Developer Channel.
To quote the Counting Crows, perhaps February will be a great time to “catch a plane to Barcelona? I may take a (working) holiday in Spain…”
All in the name of Google’s mobile plans, of course…
Cisco CEO in waiting, Charles Giancarlo, has resigned.
Giancarlo, whose last day is December 31, will reportedly join investment firm Silver Lake as a managing director. Silver Lake, as you may recall, is the investment firm that nabbed Avaya in a well publicized private equity deal last June.
In a shift away from current business practices, Cisco Chairman and Chief Executive John Chambers announced that the company would appoint a group of executives to oversee acquisitions and other business deals, as opposed to the current “command and control” organization.
What’s that? Could it be a chink in the armor of the all-powerful Google? More likely it’s just a sign that they need to spend a few more hours fully cooking their Android mobile phone development platform.
What am I talking about?
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, reporter Scott Morrison wrote of “headaches and frustration” for developers attempting to write programs for Android.
In the article, developer Adam MacBeth told Morrison that after weeks of attempting to successfully write programs for Google’s Android, he “found the developers’ tool kit full of bugs.”
“Functionality is not there, is poorly documented or just doesn’t work. It’s clearly not ready for prime time,” MacBeth told the WSJ.
In early November, Google announced the Open Handset Alliance, a broad spectrum of leading technology and wireless companies (see member list) and the development of Android, which is being billed as the “first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.”
Google’s Andy Rubin, Director of Mobile Platforms, said at the time “It’s important to recognize that the Open Handset Alliance and Android have the potential to be major changes from the status quo — one which will take patience and much investment by the various players before you’ll see the first benefits.”
Well, if the early returns are to be believed, patience is a concept the developer community needs to embrace in a big way.
For their part, Google told the WSJ that the SDK is really just an “‘early look’ designed specifically to get developers started as soon as possible and to elicit their feedback.”
Bugs are an integral part of early versions of any software release. Working out the bugs and being responsive to the developer community — that’s the important thing.
And to be fair, Quang Nguyen, self-described Android Advocate, writing on Google’s Android Developers Blog offered the following last week:
It’s been just over a month since we gave developers the first early peek at the Android SDK. We’ve been hard at work since then on some nifty new stuff we think you’ll really like. We hope to show that to you soon, but in the meantime, we wanted to fix some of the important issues you’ve raised.
Me, I think Google is addressing this. I can’t imagine a scenario where they would not allocate the proper resources to ensure this not only flies, but soars.
Patience, dear developers. Patience.
TMCnet’s Tim Gray has some excellent coverage of cell phone spending and how it’s exceeding spending on landline phones for the first time ever.
Writes Tim:
Americans are hanging up on their land lines and going mobile more than ever…
In fact, 2007 is the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services than the more traditional exchanges stationed on living room tables and attached to kitchen walls.
Newsweek picks up where Tim leaves off, and poses the following titular question in an article: How Safe Are Cell Phones?
In the article, Jeneen Interlandi writes:
…even as more people give up their traditional home phones altogether, and ever younger kids get their own cell phones, there are still questions in the scientific community about whether this new American staple is safe for heavy or long-term use.
For more, check out the full article here.
Digium, has announced a major milestone — the one millionth download of Asterisk in 2007!
The company issued a release today touting their achievements over the past year, including “new executive appointments, industry awards, strategic partnerships and acquisitions aimed at further advancing the company’s presence in the small-to-medium-sized (SMB) VoIP market.”
Congrats to the team in Huntsville!
For more information, check out Digium’s news page.
NCTA President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow issued the following statement in advance of today’s FCC Meeting:
“We are pleased that a majority of Commissioners again rejected a plan to consider a multicast must carry mandate. Consumers will be better served if we could all focus on getting ready for the digital broadcast transition instead of repeatedly having to reject stale ideas that would harm consumers, undermine the digital transition and violate the Constitution.
“However, in 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals soundly rejected on First Amendment grounds the precise cable ownership cap that the Commission adopted again today. The Court of Appeals found such a cap to be unjustified and out of touch with the competitive marketplace as it existed six years ago. In the intervening years, competition among satellite, telephone and cable companies and the variety and amount of independent programming has only increased. We are confident that a court will again reject conclusions driven by a political agenda to target the cable industry that are completely at odds with the realities of a dynamic and competitive marketplace that is providing greater consumer choice and value.”
Yesterday, the FCC voted to allow media companies to own both a television station and a newspaper in the largest 20 U.S. broadcast markets. Russell Shaw has more in his RSS – Regulations, Statutes and Standards blog.
Siemens Communications issued a release today, touting the fact that customer numbers for the Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System have jumped over 400 percent in the last year, with success in all market sectors, and in enterprises of all sizes across all industries.
Furthermore, the company announced the latest HiPath 8000 feature release, including over 40 new Unified Communications (UC) Foundation features, such as enhanced one-number service for UC, larger business-groups for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), new class-leading business-continuity and disaster-recovery options, expanded ENUM, and UC interworking with IBM and Microsoft systems.
For more, check out Siemens Communications online.
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