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Stylish Smartphones Attract More Women

2008-06-12T20:41:42Z

In the last year the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks wireless trends. In a June 10 article in the New York Times, women have emerged as eager buyers of not just iPhones but of all so-called smartphones — BlackBerrys, Treos and other models. Read more.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google

2008-05-19T23:49:45Z

According to a front-page story in today's New York Times, Microsoft is again considering a new Yahoo takeover effort. Interesting statistics include that Google has 58% of the search advertising market. Microsoft's annual profit is $4.39 billion, and Google's is only one-third as much, just $1.31 billion. Microsoft's strategy to "disrupt the marketplace" seems like Goliath setting out to crush David.

Online Search Ads Faring Better Than Expensive Display Ads

2008-05-19T23:26:23Z

May 19, 2008 NYTimes article By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and MIGUEL HELFT details how on-line display advertising at AOL declined 18% and that large Web publishers face even more dramatic declines in on-line display advertising. PubMatics study of large ad networks show prices dropping 52% from a year ago. Text advertising, like the sponsored links that appear on Google, seem to be holding steady. This chart shows advertisers responses to online spending plans for this year.

Verizon to open network for Google Phone, iPhone

2007-11-27T19:15:23Z

There has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere on how to unlock an iPhone so that it can work on networks other than AT&T's rather slow network. Sprint and Verizon have faster CDMA networks, and new handsets that are not network-specific are expected in 2008. These handsets will use the open source software that Google is releasing that is java-based.

Google is lobbying the FCC to require the 700-megahertz spectrum that is coming on the market (as soon as UHF TV moves to digital) be open to to any device. These wireless networks are expensive to build and Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T are entitled to be paid for their work, but people should be able to use the handset they want. I am eager to try the linux/java handsets in my continuing effort to free myself from Microsoft. I'm glad that Verizon is going to give me a shot at it. I think they have the fastest, most robust wireless network. Expensive, though...!

This isn't the Google Phone

2007-11-06T22:13:12Z

The NYTimes article today followed yesterday's Sunday magazine article about the Googlephone. Google will not be making hardware, they will be providing phone software using open-souce linux and JAVA from Sun Microsystems to members of the Open Handset Alliance. More than just phones, hand-held touch-screen devices are predicted. Intel, an alliance member, has been promoting a new hardware category that they call Mid that is halfway between a cellphone and a laptop. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, predicts that advertising on mobile phones was likely to eventually bring the cost of making calls to zero. That might not include AT&T and Verizon which together account for 52 percent of the wireless market in the US.

Google Phone - Is It Hardware or Software?

2007-10-08T23:13:22Z

The rumored Google phone may turn out to be software rather than hardware, according to the NYTimes article Oct. 7. They speculate that the core of Google's phone efforts is an operating system for mobile phones that will be based on open-source Linux software. Members of Google sit on the Board of Directors for the MIT Media Lab's One Laptop Per Child project (Laptop.org). The Google phone software on Linux could be an interesting tie-in for the XO's meshed technology which enables users to connect with one another without access to a network like Verizon or Cingular (AT&T). And the Google mobile operating system is likely to be free, something very attractive to children in developing nations. more

Search Engines Try to Gain on Google with New Features

2007-09-28T17:36:43Z

In August 2007, Google accounted for 56.5 percent of all searches in the United States, a gain of nearly 10 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the Web audience measuring firm ComScore. Yahoo was a distant second with 23.3 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft with 11.3 percent, and Ask.com and AOL with 4.5 percent each. AOL’s searches are performed by Google’s technology.

Ask.com is offering innovative Ask3D which displays results in three panels that combine standard search results with suggestions for related queries, blog items, videos, photos, news articles and shopping information. Yahoo has quietly introduced a similar set of features, calling them shortcuts, and is expected to deliver more updates soon.

Over the next month, Microsoft will deliver more than "10 blue links" for searches related to products, local businesses, health information and entertainment. It will be interesting to see if they can make inroads to Google's increasing market share. See the full NYTimes article.

Buy One Laptop for A Child, Get One For Yourself

2007-09-25T17:47:30Z

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement is struggling to keep its momentum. Peru, Uruguay and Mexico have made firm commitments, and so has the government of Italy which has agreed to buy 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, the expected large orders from Nigeria and Brazil have not yet materialized, so Nick Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, a sponsor of OLPC, is offering the XO laptop to Americans and Canadians for $399. This buys you a rugged, flash-memory (no hard drive) Unix laptop with meshed peer-to-peer wireless and a bright screen that you can read in full sun. It also buys one for distribution to a poor child. You can order your 2-laptop-combo for two weeks only, Nov. 12 - 26, and your laptop will be delivered by Christmas.

I was astonished to find out that not everyone thought this was an excellent idea! Read this blog post on the NYTimes "Bits" blog and the mind-boggling comments.

Printing Documents from the Cloud

2007-08-24T18:37:30Z

John Markoff of the New York Times recently reported that it is now possible to print documents on almost any printer through a free service from Hewlett-Packard. Let's say you are a traveling salesman and you have created different versions of the contract you hope to get signed, based on different deal structures. You can "print" your document to HP's servers on the Internet where each document will be assigned a document code. The code is sent as an SMS to your cellphone, and when you are in the client's office and have closed the deal, you will want to print the contract for signature. Just enter your phone number and the number of the document you want on the Cloudprint website using a computer at the client's location and it will be retrieved as a PDF, ready to print. A directory of public printers is planned for Google Maps.

Will the iPhone change the way networks are used?

2007-06-25T20:28:47Z

In a New York Times article on this week's iPhone launch, there is speculation that because the iPhone can access wi-fi as well as cellular networks, traffic may move away from the telephone cellular networks. iPhone users can view YouTube videos using a WiFi network rather than the AT&T cellular network. The point out that owners of Apple products stay faithful. "Apple makes it easy," said Sony VP Bill Sanders. "Phone companies and their cellular networks don't make the user experience easy." The conjecture is that iPhone users may shift the traffic to WiFi, away from the cellular network.

How to make your cellphone work like a Blackberry Pt. 2

2007-05-26T02:39:18Z

Who needs to pay $100/month for a Blackberry? If you can get e-mail functionality and calendar functionality without spending the big bucks... well, any schlub can pay retail... Just visit calendar.google.com from your phone and see your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location and guest list. See the GoogleBlogPost on the subject.
The trick seems to be to have a compatible phone with the right service plan so that you can take advantage of the free services offered by Google, Yahoo, Teleflip and others. Becoming untethered from our desks gives us the chance of having fun, even though gas prices are going up. Hiking instead of motorcycles, kayaking instead of waterskiing.

"You Are Here" on your cellphone GPS map

2007-05-26T01:51:51Z

If you have a Cingular Blackberry 8800 (okay, I mean AT&T, the current name of the company formerly known as Cingular), when you download Google Maps for mobile and fire it up, not only do you get the map when you search for info, you get a blinking blue dot that shows you exactly where on the map you are! Why is this cool? Since Google maps knows where you are, you only have to enter "pizza" or "hospital" and they automatically show the closest ones. No more adding the zip code or city name. More more, see the GoogleBlogPost.

How to Make Your Cellphone Act Like a Blackberry

2007-05-25T01:45:32Z

David Pogue, columnist for the New York Times, gives us the latest details on services available to provide e-mail delivery to many ordinary cellphones. Three new services -- from Google, Yahoo and Teleflip -- can deliver your e-mail messages directly to ordinary nonsmart cellphones. Because I have a Blackberry, and I have a Gmail account, I have an application that downloads my Gmail when requested, but it is slow. David Pogue says that the new service "Gmail for Mobile" is five times faster than m.gmail.com, which is what I use in my Verizon Blackberry's Web browser, but that the new service only works on about 300 phones from AT&T (formerly known as Cingular), Sprint and T-Mobile. The Yahoo and Teleflip services are very interesting, too. Teleflip works on any phone by converting e-mail to text messages, and only sending the ones you specify. Click here for the whole article.

Big Money on Little Screens - NYTimes article

2007-05-10T20:48:11Z

Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google said, “The biggest growth areas are clearly going to be in the mobile space,” at a conference in San Francisco on April 19. The New York Times said that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have trained their sights on cellphones as the next great battleground in the Internet search wars. Click here to read the whole article.

Bill Gates Predicts The End of the Yellow Pages

2007-05-10T20:21:11Z

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Bill Gates said that society is set for a dramatic shift to digital media. He predicted that within five years, almost everyone younger than 50 will stop using the printed Yellow Pages. He also said, "Reading is going to go completely online. We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links." Click the link to read the whole article. There is also buzz that Microsoft is thinking of buying Yahoo which is continuing to struggle to with profitability. Today Yahoo announced that they are ending their online auction service for North America.

Google's advertising revenue of $10.5 billion last year dwarfed Microsoft's advertising of about $1.5 billion for its 2006 fiscal year. But Microsoft makes most of its revenue from licensing Vista software, not from advertising.