Great name. I suppose it would be kind of cranky and old-fartish of me to harbour thoughts in the recesses of my evil head that maybe… just maybe there’s something a wee bit pernicious and creepy about Google, wouldn’t there?
Aside from emulating Apple’s i-Phone with remarkable ease, it’s somewhat unnerving that this new gadget can leverage GPS capacities to track a user’s carbon footprint while driving in a car or comparison shop based on scanning bar-codes (this will be checked against prices in nearby stores). All quite cool, but more than a few shades of Phillip K Dick as well…
Last year, Google and T-Mobile offered $10 million in prizes to software developers to create new Android applications that can be checked out here.
Just for fun, I can’t resist (it’s futile!) throwing this video in (not much of a Star Wars fan I have to confess, but this is good)…
Red Tory v.3.0.3 
I’m really loving my Ipod Touch (which is exactly like the IPhone, minus the phone and camera). With the recent roll-out of 3rd party applications (which are really cheap), its become a lot more functional than I ever thought it would be (I basically just wanted an IPod, and someone suggested I buy that one). I recently purchased an application that streams webradio through it…500 channels at your disposal (as long as you’ve got WiFi reception). Not bad. A hand-held computer, basically and very easy to use.
It’s been the first piece of technology I’ve been excited about since the CD and the LCD screen.
I got a walk-through of the i-Pod a little while back from daughter #1’s boyfriend. A neat toy. Soon they’ll be hanging from a rope in the shower…
My cellphone is so oldschool, I’m almost embarassed to use it in public. (Seriously, it’s not far removed from the Miami Vice phones…remember?…they were connected to a briefcase). Anyways, I use it so infrequently that I’ve never had need for anything more than the most basic functions (ie dialing & receiving) and the most ghetto pay-as-you-go plan. Costs me about 17 bucks a month. But I gotta admit, these new phones are pretty sweet!
I’ve never had a cellphone and can’t imagine why I would want one. …. To be annoyed? Anywhere… anytime? Yeah — that’s something I really want to pay for. Plus, I’m not mobile… or at least not in the jazzy sense of being “on the go” mobile. I get around, but when I do so I’d prefer not to be hectored by people over the phone.
when I got here in New Zealand, I thought I’d get a super cheap phone, then I got in the Vodaphone store and my wife and I wound up with iPhones. People are against them, the closed nature of the app development etc etc, but the Android scares me in other ways. This google control of so many dispirit bits of our life is a bit freaky.
I’m with Ti-Guy about the iPod Touch, what I wish is that some enterprising company would roll out a wifi package that would work with the Touch nation wide in Canada.
Tory, I never had a cell till my son went to daycare, I just liked the daycare having a way to contact us at all times. That said, I’m a bit atypical, currently about 5 people have my cell number, I basically use the iPhone as an email appliance.
Ok, I’m going to get geeky on you guys so bear with me.
I have an iPhone3G and I do a little iPhone (and Mac) development on the side, for fun. I have also been playing around with Android since an early beta last spring.
From a functionality and form feature, the iPhone rocks. Its GUI of very cool especially the touch stuff – sweeping and pinching.
But for a developer, Android rocks. Its got an open development model as well as a better multi-threaded Linux based OS, meaning more than one app can run at one time as a background process. the iPhone only lets Apple apps do this – third party apps can only run one at a time and shut down when you open another app or answer the phone. This might not sound like much, but it really limits the kinds of apps one can create, especially if you are trying to capture GPS-based info.
I digress.
I hope what this will do is cause a little competition so that Apple will have to open up more so that third party apps are easier to get on the phone and that the phone as a platform becomes better for making apps.
That might cause the price to go down too.
As for the Phillip K Dick worries, well, it can be used in a pull fashion too – you could request location based information when you needed it, rather than have it shoved at you.
For a geek and a technophile, these are heady days.
I’ve never had a cellphone and can’t imagine why I would want one.
I thought I was the only one left. Nor an iPod, but the family all has them and I am fascinated by their addictive effects–endless fuel for middle-aged crankiness about the modern age. One thing that intrigues me/drives me batty is how all the phones, texting, MSN, etc. the kids have at their fingertips results in every plan needing dozens of exchanges to work. There is no more “Let’s meet tomorrow night outside the theatre at seven.” A vague idea seems to form two days before which unleashes a forty-eight hour stream of back and forths about every last detail until the actual event, with no confirmation of anything until the gods of necessity force the issue. If I am driving my son somewhere to meet friends, he spends the drive texting and receiving up-to-the-second reports on exactly where everybody is and they only decide where they will all meet as we are pulling into the parking lot. He gets really upset with me if I have the temerity to ask him to let me know what’s up a few hours in advance so I can plan my own life.
Ti-Guy: Are you really happy about having 500 channels? Do you ever feel it would be better if you only had 10?
Peter — Nicely put.
Mike — It’s interesting to see Apple challenged like this. In terms of dealing with the threat from Linux. It seems very much like the shoe being on the other foot all of a sudden in terms of having its proprietary software competing with “open source” alternatives.
Yep, and the competition can only make consumers and technology the winners.
Unless some vapid sock-puppet of the ancien regime decides to pass some stupid “intellectual property” and “copyright” laws that do nothing but enshrine a broken business model in law, rather than letting everyone else decide.