Archive for October, 2009

Scathing rebuttal from GPS Nav company

You know you’ve hit more than a nerve or two when your competitors determine that you are either the devil or … well, what else is there. Read this email from startup Cloudmade (producer of data and tools for mapping and navigation applications).

Meanwhile, in the process of building out end-user applications rather than sticking to being a platform player, Google is causing considerable collateral damage. Its move into the territory normally occupied by mobile operators, OEMs and small, medium and large developers is turning the marketplace against itself. The honeymoon is over and the do-no-evil days have ended. Google has declared any monetizable pocket in tech a target, including the key franchises of Apple, Microsoft, the mobile operators and now also mobile application developers. The problem with Google’s approach is, the value is not in horizontal services, but in leveraging the democratizing effect of the app stores to use the 100,000+ vertical apps as a way to divide the market into tiny segments and let them flourish and gain traction

Article posted at Tech Crunch

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HTC Hero to get Android 2.0

And the cookie crumbles for the Motorola Droid, just when we thought the Droid would be the savior of the fledgling firm, news broke out today that Android 2.0 is being pumped in the uber popular HTC Hero phone.
“Yes, we are working on an Eclair update for the HTC Hero. Because Eclair is a significantly enhanced release, it will require some time to update Sense for this new version of the Android OS. Please be patient while we work to provide you with a tightly integrated experience like the one you are already enjoying on your Hero.” a statement from HTC read.

This would be the second handset to feature the Android 2.0 operating system, after the Droid, which releases on November 6th. It would be interesting to see the Sense UI integrated with Android 2.0 on the HTC Hero

The HTC Hero is one of the highest selling phones in the world, it features a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus with a screen resolution of 320 x 480 on its 3.2 inch screen, along with Wifi, Bluetooth, ac3.5 mm audio jack, microphone, speaker, Accelerometer and it delivers a talk time of 470 minutes with a standby time of 420 hours.

Android 2.0 improves upon allowing developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. Google Voice for the Google Voice service, Scoreboard for following sports, Sky Map for watching stars, Finance for their finance service, Maps Editor for their MyMaps service, Places Directory for their Local Search, Secrets for safely storing passwords and My Tracks, a jogging application all run on Android.

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Mobile app stores “gold rush” is a fallacy

I hadn’t seen this article before and it was authored back in May of 2009. It’s a sobering perspective on the hype surrounding the app store and the notion that application developers can become a millionaire success story overnight. Written by a “successful” (used loosely)* iPhone app developer, the piece details just how difficult and improbable it is for you to get rich writting mobile phone apps. If you are thinking about getting into this racket, this is definitely worth a read.

http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the-incredible-app-store-hype/

* actually, his apps are really pretty popular so he is, in fact, successful by iPhone App Store standards, just not by Wall Street standards as his article demonstrates.

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Droid “Phone Holder” car mount announced

Motorola has added a cradle accessory for the Droid phone being released on November 6th. The simply-named “Phone Holder” is intended to be either dash or window mounted in your vehicle in order to provide the same vantage point as dedicated GPS devices available today.

I’ve read a number of opinions about how the new GPS navigation offering from Google is going to have only slight impact on the GPS manufacturing market. While there are some reasonable points to these arguments — hard to use the phone while it’s being used as a GPS, necessity of a data connection to pull down maps which makes the feature nearly useless in low coverage areas, search and rescue needs — I believe the impact will be a lot more serious than people think. The pounding that Garmin and TomTom took on the stock market in recent days lends weight to this possibility. If the navigation functionality offered by Google and the Droid is even moderately good, I can’t imagine how GPS makers can survive without getting into the mobile phone market.

Phone Holder Accessory

phone_holder

Multimedia Dock
Some initial reports when the Droid was revealed last week stated that the multimedia dock was included in the Droid package, while others are claiming this is a for-purchase accessory.

multimedia_dock
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Android 2.0 OS on a G1

Not surprisingly, it took about 3 days before someone was able to port the Android 2.0 OS to Android 1.6-based phones.

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How much will that new phone really cost?

Billshrink.com, breaks down what the use of a smart phone will really cost you over the course of a now standard two-year contract. Phones and carriers used for the comparison include the Apple iPhone 3Gs/AT&T, Palm Pre/Sprint, MyTouch/T-Mobile, Droid/Verizon. Missing from the comparison are any calculations for app purchases or average cost of the best selling apps on respective app stores.

Original article

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Find the best cell phone plans and more graphics at BillShrink.com
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HTC Droid Eris images leaked

The folks over at phonearena.com have a mole deep inside the caverns of HTC who is feeding them juicy info on the coming HTC Droid Eris. Actually, I’m sure it’s a little less insidious than that. The Eris is expected to sell for 100 bucks cheaper than the Motorola Droid though it will ship with a display that’s somewhat smaller. Head over and check out leaked, top-secret, national security killing images.

phonearena.com article

eris1
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