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.
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.
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...!
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.
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.
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.
To listen to a podcast, you need:
1. a computer with a DSL or cable Internet connection
2. TO LISTEN ON A COMPUTER: A sound card and a free multimedia program such as Windows Media Player, RealPlayer or QuickTime.
3. TO LISTEN ON AN MP3 PLAYER: A free podcast aggregator, which is software to subscribe to and automatically download podcasts to your computer. One of the most widely used is iPodder for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Transfer the files from your computer's music database, such as iTunes or Macintosh or Windows, to your MP3 player.
What you need to create a podcast:
1. A computer with a sound card and a DSL or cable Internet connection (more)
For many of us, just getting through the day's load of e-mail is our highest and best use of the Internet. But interesting social changes may be on the horizon thanks to a consortium led by Nick Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. The $100 laptop is not yet in production, but it is designed to be rugged because it uses Flash memory like an IPOD Nano, not a conventional hard drive. It also has a screen bright enough to view in the searing daylight in Africa or India, and can be hand-cranked for power. It is designed to be used as a portable book, even a primer to learn how to read, using software that displays the book in the local language.
Google is part of the consortium to build and distribute these laptops. The thin client refers to the system design that allows the heavy processing to be done by the network, not on the laptop. The laptop is a thin client of the network, and the programs that do the processing reside on the network. The laptop is a terminal that can display a book, send e-mail and do homework, but it doesn't have to own a copy of the Photoshop program in order to be able to access its functionality. The laptop remotely accesses the program and does the work online, with the processing done on a server on the network, not on the laptop. The laptop just gets the results.
This hasn't happened yet, it is on the horizon. The photo-retouching program used is more likely to be Google's free Picasa product than the tightly-licensed Photoshop. But you get the idea.
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