Archive for November, 2009

Android Marketplace aggregator Cryket is gone

By Brian Kelley | 11.05.2009 | Android Development, Android Phones | 2 Comments

Either the proprietor of cryket.com has sold the domain for a tidy little fee, is selling the domain, or it has fallen prey to the “do no evil” corporation.

Cryket (pronounced “cricket”) was one of few places where you could search the entire Android Marketplace for phone apps via the web. It was popular with the Android development community as a handy method for charting the success and trends of applications they built against others in the store, as well as reviewing daily comments left by consumers. Some bits of information found at Cryket.com were stock market-like up and down arrows charting an application’s popularity trend over time, download statistics, an area for video and screenshot uploads, and the best part of all… a QR barcode image on each application page in the Android Marketplace that provided all the information needed to download the app with your Android phone. (example of how this was done in the video below.)
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Fortune: Steve Jobs, CEO of the decade

By Brian Kelley | 11.05.2009 | General Technology | Comments Off

Not necessarily android news, but considering the iPhone is being targeted by a bevy of android-enabled smart phones, I thought this was mildly related.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was named CEO of the decade by Fortune Magazine and frankly it’s not even a close call why he was chosen.

In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets — music, movies, and mobile telephones — and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.

Think about that for a second. Radically reordered three markets. There’s not an executive on the planet who doesn’t pray to the god of Midas for the skill and good fortune to influence a single industry. Steve Jobs turned three of them up-side-down and remade them without realizing the impact they would have on people.
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Verizon Droid tethering available Q1 2010?

By Brian Kelley | 11.04.2009 | Android Phones | Comments Off

Gearlog.com is reporting that tethering for their upcoming Motorola Droid will be available sometime early next year. I’ve found a dozen posts around the innerwebs quoting the Gearlog scoop, but nothing substantiated from Verizon. Tethering has been the bane of 3G mobile carriers for as long as they’ve been providing the increased speed thanks to the enormous load it puts on their data networks. AT&T provided tethering to users of iPhones at one point, but quickly disabled the functionality as load went through the roof. Blackberry customers have enjoyed tethering for a number of years, but on a slower 2G network.

If you happen to know of an official position from Verizon on this, feel free to share it.

Yep, There’s A Lawsuit For That

By Brian Kelley | 11.03.2009 | Android Phones, General Technology | Comments Off

AT&T filed suit in Federal District Court in Atlanta, Georgia — home to AT&T — late today in an effort to put the kibosh on some of the most effective Verizon TV ads they’ve run in a while. Apparently the “There’s a map for that” ads by Verizon used in concert with the November 6th launch of the Motorola Droid phone are not only hurting AT&T’s public image, but are causing irreparable harm.

To be honest, they have a point about the ads being a bit misleading. Whether or not it’s as serious as they claim is another story.

The “College” television advertisement starts the same way as the
“Bench” advertisement, promoting why customers can do various things on
Verizon’s network at “3G” speed and referencing Verizon’s “3G” coverage map.
47. The announcer’s voice then changes, and he says “and if you want to
know why some people have spotty “3G” coverage, there’s a map for that.”
48. The “3G” coverage map ofAT&T then appears on the screen showing
large swaths of white or blank spaces. The character in the commercial tries to use
his wireless device but shakes his head expressing disappointment.
49. As with the misleading “Bench” advertisement, by depicting AT&T’s
non-”3G” coverage as white or blank space in the map used in Verizon’s “College”
advertisement, and depicting an AT&T customer as being frustrated with his
wireless device, this advertisement misleads consumers into believing that
AT&T’s customers have no coverage whatsoever and thus cannot use their
wireless devices when they are outside ofAT&T’s depicted coverage area.

The full measure of damages that AT&T will continue to suffer from the publication of Verizon’s misleading claims is difficult if not impossible to calculate [snip] No amount of corrective advertising would undo the damage.

Download the Legal Complaint in PDF

One of the Verizon ads behind the controversy

Verizon billing shenanigans. Here we go again!!

By Brian Kelley | 11.03.2009 | Android Phones | Comments Off

One would have thought, with the lessons that Verizon appeared to have learned from missing out on the iPhone success, that they turned a corner with respect to it’s customers. A number of articles have suggested that they “get it” now — that the nickle and diming approach may protect the bottom line, but that such behavior engenders more frustration with customers than it may be worth. Reports surfaced that Google had a strong influence in the design of the Motorola Droid and that Verizon was NOT going to be “interfering” with the OS in any way. It was a breath of fresh air to existing Blackberry customers considering the new Droid.

Now it would appear that the news was too good to be true as the $15.00 charge to use Microsoft’s Active Sync — and by extension using your phone to sync with Microsoft Exchange servers — is the strategy to milk as much as possible from its customer base. It’s a bit like having someone offer to buy something you are selling without haggling the price down, realizing you could have asked for more money, then reneging on the deal asking for more money.

Here’s an interesting take on this potential roadblock for business users.

However, Droid, with its “iDon’t, Droid Does” advertising campaign, has the iPhone squarely in its crosshairs. The iPhone uses Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology to connect to Exchange, bypassing the need for an extra server like Research in Motion’s BES. This connectivity is inclusive with its $30 unlimited data plan. Droid also uses ActiveSync, so why does its data plan cost 50 percent more for the same functionality? Surely if Verizon is seeking to steal business customers from AT&T, it should make an attempt to be cost competitive.

Original news story

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 with a gorgeous UI

By Brian Kelley | 11.03.2009 | Android Phones | 1 Comment

It’s not lost on anyone not living under a rock in the last 10 years that Google, for all of it’s successful offerings, lacks flair in their user interfaces. If reports that Google was intimately involved in every design aspect of the Verizon Droid are true, the functional yet uninspired interface of the Motorola device perpetuates the trend. If the Droid is what happens when Google UI engineers are involved, then the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is what happens when they are not.

Available Q1 2010 to select markets, the Xperia X10 looks fantastic and betters the Droid in a couple of areas while being developed on the [by-then outdated] Android 1.6 OS:

8.1 MP autofocus camera with LED flash
Blistering 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor
Wide assortment of pre-installed apps