Technologizer

The way in which we interact with technology has changed dramatically over the past few years. The era of light computing has begun, and social media is big enough that the average person can shape perceptions. A Web site is no longer the most meaningful way for us to interact to tell companies about their products or to use online services.

Smartphones are selling in droves, and people are using apps rather than visiting Web sites for everything from buying movie tickets to checking stocks. At any given time, it is likely that conversations about big businesses are happening on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and those conversations can be initiated by anyone from anywhere.

Continue reading this story…

While many are focusing on market share aspects of a report from mobile ad company AdMob today, there are some other interesting factoids within the report that I found especially prescient considering discussions I’ve been having with my friends lately.

Those partial to Microsoft have started to float the argument that Windows Mobile is still far more popular overseas, with Apple the also-ran in those markets. If we’re going to believe AdMob’s work, that’s probably not a very sturdy argument to make.

Since the iPhone and iPod touch are on the same platform, its somewhat difficult to gauge the true growth of iPhones overseas as they are not separated when it comes to detection (how these statistics are compiled). Either way Apple’s growth in some of these markets is very impressive, and should worry the fans of Redmond.

In Japan, the user base has grown by nearly 350 percent, followed by France which has seen a 300 percent increase. Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands all grew by more than 200 percent during the year. More details of the report can be found in this PDF.

As should be expected iPhone growth in Canada and the US is lagging, although still up 100 percent. There’s a pretty straightforward and simple explanation for this: by far this is the most established market for the device as it has been here the longest.

I think these numbers are certainly beginning to put to rest the assumption by some in Microsoft that Apple can not compete outside of the US. Yes, Cupertino’s struggling mightily selling computers outside of its home markets — but apparently that’s not preventing people from picking up an iPhone.

When you add to this the data that’s showing Android’s doing well, like Colin Gibbs over at GigaOm is reporting, and data that shows RIM is also hitting its stride, you have to wonder if Microsoft really stands a chance to do much of anything in the mobile space.

Who knows, could we soon be talking about a “Halo effect” when it comes to the iPhone, too?

Caveat: As Technologizer reader John Baxter points out in the comments, we should take into account that some of these numbers on growth may be skewed due to the fact that these are emerging markets for Apple’s iPhone. Like the US and Canada, it’s probably fairly likely we’ll see a dramatic drop off in growth here too as the market saturates.

The developer behind mobile phone versions of Assassin’s Creed and Brothers in Arms isn’t as anti-Android as its finance director led us to believe.

Less than a week after Gameloft financier Alexandre de Rochefort said the company has “significantly cut” investments in Android, Gameloft issued a press release saying, essentially, that it still loves Google’s mobile platform, and wants to make sweet, sweet “High Definition games” on it.

In particular, Gameloft will develop titles for second-generation Android phones such as Motorola’s Droid and Sony’s Ericsson Xperia X10.

When I previously outlined the problems with Android gaming, I said there’s room for improvement, particularly with multi-touch technology in the Droid. It’s worth noting that both the phones Gameloft mentions allow for 3D games as well — something Gameloft excels in with the racer Asphalt 5 and the Grand Theft Auto clone Gangstar: West Coast Hustle.

So it appears that Rochefort’s statement about Android investment was misinterpreted, but remember that he also knocked the Android’s ability to actually sell games. His words: “It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”

That issue isn’t addressed in Gameloft’s latest press release, but I imagine there’s a chicken-and-egg theory in play. If developers take the first step of making high quality games on Android, phone manufacturers can market gaming as a key feature in their products, attracting more game sales, which in turn brings in more interest from developers. So I’m glad Gameloft isn’t bailing out on a mobile gaming platform that has potential to grow.

The latest in self-important mobile app developer drama comes from Gameloft, but it’s not the usual iPhone bashing we’ve come to expect.

Instead, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort declared (via Reuters) that the company’s got beef with Android. “We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” he said at an investor conference in Barcelona. He explained that the Android Market is just too weak compared to the iPhone’s App Store, on which Gameloft sells 400 times more games.

“Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products,” Rochefort said. “On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”

I’m not an Android phone owner, so I can’t speak at length about the Android Market experience. From my understanding, it’s no great shakes. But as a gamer, I can spot a few things that are holding Android back.

For starters, Android 2.0 was the platform’s first version to support multi-touch, a vital feature for first-person shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D or the excellent Eliminate Pro. In Gameloft’s case, no multi-touch means no Assassin’s Creed 2 or Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, both of which rely on multi-touch controls.

Then you’ve got the low application storage limits found in most Android hardware to date. Even the latest, Motorola’s Droid, only allows for 256 MB of app storage. As Android and Me notes, that rules out a game like Myst, which on the iPhone occupies 727 MB.

I also think there’s a silent killer at hand in the form of emulators. I sampled a friend’s Droid last weekend, and I couldn’t believe that he could play classic Nintendo, Genesis and Super NES games on his phone. That’s an asset if you’re a consumer, but I don’t doubt that emulators cannibalize game sales in the Android Market.

To top it off, I don’t get the sense that Android phone manufacturers and carriers are marketing video games as a big use. Check out the pinwheel on Verizon’s Droid Web site — gaming barely gets a mention.

The sad thing is that most of the points I mention are being addressed, or are at least fixable. Gameloft has every right to complain, as developers do, but maybe the company is bailing out at precisely the wrong time.

Sharpcast is serious about putting its SugarSync file-syncing-to-the-cloud service on devices of all sorts. It’s already available on Windows, OS X, iPhone OS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile–and, as of today, on Android. As with SygarSync’s other versions, the idea is simple and the implementation is elegant: You can use an Android phone to browse through folders and files on a Windows or Mac PC (even if it’s turned off, since SugarSync continuously syncs files to its servers) and download them. You can also upload files from the phone, and browse files stored locally.

I chatted with Sharpcast CEO Laura Yecies about the new version; she told me that she thinks Android netbooks will be a thriving product category (even if Google’s Chrome OS takes off) and that SugarSync will be useful on them, both for local file management and for getting at documents stored on a netbook owner’s primary computer.

SugarSync offers a free version with 2GB of storage, which is enough to give it a try; paid accounts start at $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year for 30GB of space.

Here are a couple of screen images from the new Android client:

Internet forums are atwitter about Palm Pre build quality issues. The revelation that the Palm Pre might be shoddy could not come at a worse time for the company, as it struggles to find sure financial footing.

A comment left at Palm enthusiast Web site Precentral.net sums up many of the quality problem that early adopters claim to be experiencing:

“Im [sic] on my THIRD pre (yellow box). Over the last two weeks, i’ve noticed an increasing amount of play with the screen. I’ve also noticed that on the left side of the device the two sections are separated enough that i can almost see the innards. When I push them together, you can hear squeaking. On top of that, the device came with a loose power button that doesn’t click nearly as firmly as that of other devices.”

Last week, RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky estimated that Palm has sold 150,000 Pre units so far. That is not as widely successful as the iPhone 3GS, but it’s a promising start. However, the Pre’s promise might fall short if it gains a reputation for being unreliable.

The iPhone is stiff competition, but Palm faces an additional challenge from RIM’s Blackberry Tour and new Android phones. Palm’s acclaimed WebOS operating system cannot keep pace on unreliable hardware. Meanwhile, Palm’s stock has become a new favorite of short sellers due to its dismal earnings report last week and lack of guidance about future Pre sales. Palm’s Pre could be its last best hope, but the company still has a huge challenge in front of it.

Here at Searchology, Google just announced something that will be available in Google Labs later this month. It’s called Google Squared, and I can’t quite tell if it’s going to be amazingly useful or just quirky and clever. It’s a search feature that returns results in a spreadsheet view, with information sorted into columns and rows. The demo involved doing a search on dog breeds (I’ll post images soon), with pictures of the breeds and information on factors like their size and energy level broken into fields.

Google is saying that the idea is a work in progress, and won’t always do what it’s supposed to–the demo also included a search for vegetables in which the search engine got confused and started populating the row for “squash” with information on the sport. But users can edit the results and save them–the notion is that a Google Squared result can be the starting point for big research jobs like choosing a dog.

It’ll be impossible to judge just how practical Google Squared is without doing a bunch of searches once it’s available, but the fact that Google is launching it at all is evidence of the semantic understanding of Web results that it’s gaining–the whole feature is dependent on the ability to turn unstructured text into highly regimented, database-like fields.

Also new today is a feature called Rich Snippets, which makes the little bits of text in results more useful–by identifying that a result is a review by a particular person, for instance, or extracting the location and profession of a person in a result so you can tell if it’s the person you’re looking for. And the last demo of the morning was for Google Sky Map, a virtual planetarium program for the Android platform that uses a phone’s accelerometer to let  you look in the sky and get a map of what you’re looking at.

Okay, some appallingly bad images of Google Squared in action (I shot these off a display at the Googleplex during a demo). Here’s a search for roller coasters, with a name column, one with an image, one with a description, one with the height and more:

Here’s a look at how Squared lets you see multiple items that might be appropriate for a cell in a square (which is what the spreadsheet-like views are called) and pick the best one. Note also that it shows where the data came from–and that Squared’s understanding of the data goes only so far (it has trouble distinguishing between a coaster’s height and the minimum height required to ride it):

Here’s a square of information about digital cameras (if Squared works well, it could be a potent research tool when you’re shopping for big-ticket items):

And here’s a square that a Google employee showed us when TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington asked to see results that didn’t work well (it’s for pizza, and shows restaurants in New York, Oakland, and Las Vegas):

Engadget is reporting that mobile software company Bsquare issued a press release saying it was providing software for Dell netbooks running Google’s Android OS. It’s hard to see how a company could do so unless it was, indeed, working with Dell on such products. But Dell hasn’t said anything about Android, and I’m not seeing the press release Engadget republished on Bsquare’s site.

One way or another, it’ll be fascinating to see if Android (or other contenders, like Palm’s WebOS) does end up on netbooks, and if so, whether it finds success. It isn’t every day that a new consumer client OS arrives and finds success–in 2009 as in 1984, the major players are Microsoft and Apple, and other players are tiny potatoes when it comes to market share (sorry, Linux, I love you just the same). But with more and more of everyday computing happening in the browser, it’s never been more plausible that a new OS might make sense and gain traction. Although it’s still not entirely clear to me why Android would be a more compelling netbook OS than something like Ubuntu already is…

A happy May to you!

Swine flu tracking for iPhone.

The 240GB iPod upgrade option.

Twittering from the White House.

Apple’s next iPhone: Flip replacement?

Twitter administrator account gets hacked.

The military’s ultrasecure Windows XP.

Dell offers 120 laptop designs.

Android gets sued over trademark.

Are Kindle owners…kinda old?

Rumor (yes, again): cheap Macs.

Lotsa Android-related news today:

Second Android phone finally arrives.

Samsung announces an Android phone.

Here’s the first Android netbook.

Mouse Factory ready to Hulu.

Countdown to Kumo (Bing, Hook)?

So long, tax-free Internet.

Flip HD videocam with HDMI.

IBM computer to play Jeopardy.

Sling: “optimistic” about iPhone SlingPlayer.

Rumor: Apple, Verizon talk iPhone.

Hey, BlackBerry fans, good news:

Spy shots: Skyfire’s BlackBerry browser.

YouTube gets a chat feature.

New Ubuntu available for download.

Microsoft: still under antitrust watch.

$9000 Leica camera: pretty, white.

MSI readying Android-based netbooks?

OQO’s future doesn’t look bright.

Trade your HD-DVDs for Blu-Ray.

Lost laptops cost $50,000. Supposedly.

Asus releases a 17.3″ notebook.

Amazon deletes bribe-revealing reviews.

Google’s browser-based version of Gmail for the iPhone is pretty darn impressive–good enough, in fact, that I’ve been using it as my primary iPhone email program instead of Apple’s Mail app. But Google is rolling out a new Gmail for iPhones, iPods Touch, and Android phones today that looks like a significant leap forward. It’s got some basic offline features (you can read recent messages and compose new ones even when you’re disconnected) and it’s got some new interface niceties (you don’t need to scroll around as much to get to tools such as the search bar). And Google says it’s a lot faster.

Back when the iPhone was young(er), Steve Jobs briefly tried to convince the world that it didn’t need native apps, because sophisticated Web apps would do everything you needed. He turned out to be wrong, which okay, since Apple announced the iPhone SDK within months. But I still think that Web-based iPhone apps have tons of potential, and I’m glad to see companies like Google explore it.

The Gmail and Android versions of Google Calendar–which are nowhere near as sophisticated as Gmail–also got some new features today.

More thoughts once I’ve had a chance to spend time with the new Gmail; for now, here’s a video walkthrough from Google:

[UPDATE: I've been playing with the new verson, and it's terrific--really polished and well done. I just wish that there was a way to cache larger quantities of old e-mail for offline use, as you can with desktop Gmail.]

T-Mobile has been one of Google’s biggest supporters in the US when it comes to Android. Confidential documents obtained by the New York Times indicate that the carrier plans to take that partnership even further with at least two new devices due to launch in 2010.

The first of the two would be a home phone unit that would plug into a docking station and would have some type of additional device for data synchronization. It sounds very similar to the Hub that Verizon Wireless has begun selling recently.

As for the tablet, it is said to be a 7-inch device without a keyboard. While it’s exact specs are not known, it would likely act much like the netbooks that have seen increasing popularity in recent months.

Spokesperson Peter Dobrow would not confirm the report, but did share that the company plans to release “several” Android devices in the future. It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile’s gamble on Android pays off, if/when the OS takes off.

1Word? That was a gag!

Microsoft Office…for the iPhone?

Lemme touch the Palm Pre!

$1000 Sony camcorder has GPS.

SlideShare’s prank: funny, cruel, both?

Sorry, unauthorized iPhone app stores.

More on Android tethering apps.

Conficker could still be dangerous.

Disney’s Iger on Internet TV.

XM/Sirius merger’s loose ends.

Stolen iPhone? It calls cops!

Hands-on with Nintendo DSi.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that HP and other manufacturers are considering using Google’s Android on netbooks. HP has confirmed the report, saying it is considering using the OS, however has made no final decisions on the matter. Asustek and Dell are also said to be considering similiar moves.

Using Android on netbooks does not come without pitfalls. While Linux graced early models, manufacturers turned to Windows to allow the devices to run popular programs, and in turn make them more marketable.

However, at the same time, Windows is expensive to put on the netbook. As these devices sell at prices typically well below $500, a non-Windows model could viably sell for under $200, say analysts.

There is no charge to use Android at the moment, a move by Google to spur quick adoption of its product.

Will it work? I’m guessing it probably won’t, unless Google can figure out how to overcome the software hurdle. While these PCs are cheap, consumers have shown a preference for the familiar, and putting Windows on these netbooks have proven to be the kick in the pants netbooks needed.

Heck, I’m a Mac guy and I have seriously been considering an Acer Aspire One everytime I walk by it at Wal-Mart. The price is attractive, and that would be great for conferences.

Big 5Words news coming tomorrow!

Skype for iPhone now available.

Google gets into venture capital.

American Airlines: Wi-Fi almost everywhere.

Sorry, no Android tethering, please.

Microsoft announces Windows Phone partners.

Ahoy, matey: iPhone app pirates.

Lauren: happy PC? Can’t say!

Shure’s new headphones: they rock.

A cheaper PS2. Starting tomorrow.

Firefox is top European browser.

Netflix raises price for Blu-Ray.