23/09/2008 by Gavin.

As per the site link on my earlier post the G1 has launched.  Here’s my scribbled notes.  It looks very nice I must say, and Google, T-Mobile and HTC are really pushing the ‘Open’ message, directly fired at Apple I’m sure!

T-Mobile

Exclusive partnership
Pioneering
Open up mobile internet
Move away from closed gardens
Dominant trend is mobile internet
Net traffic grown 250%, revenue 43%
Commitment to open industry platforms

Google, Andy Rubin

Founded on the internet
Collaboration, openess, bringing this to the mob phone
It is a platform and modifiable platform
Futureproof as openness built in.

Peter Chow, HTC

Congratulations and back patting
Android open handset alliance.
Googles drive for innovation
Unique applications, content that will be usable and enjoyable by people.
HTC worked closely to develop an iconic design unlike anything else in the market.
Impressive touch experience, and good keyboard.
Android is flexible and powerful.

T-Mobile

Lacking compelling applications and devices
Americans overconsume everything, we love them.
Only 16% consumers use mobile net
Mobile internet not compelling.
Open systems and standards, plus third parties to drive forward new devices and services on this platform.

Tada!  No more fuzzy pictures, unsubstantiated blog posts - 11  minutes in.

Swipe across
Long press to access features
Drag and drop applications
Music from Amazon store
Related material links
Multitasking
IM
Link to maps from contacts
Directions and traffic view/streetview
Email links from browser
Android market
Pacman!

T-mobile

3rd part devs
Openness will drive mobile internet
Change will happen as needs and tech changes, Android will adapt.
From garages to grad schools to small towns to big cities, change will come from 3rd parties.

$179 available today to some customers, full availabilty October.

$25 and $35 for ‘unlimited’ data.

Europe launch - UK, early November, rest of Europe first quarter 2009.

Q&A

No tethering (surely openness will solve this!)

Support for Office, PDF, no exchange compatibility but 3rd part can develop.

Simlocked

No syncing with desktop - all done in the cloud

Available beyond 3g markets - wifi included.

iPhone referenced as ‘the device you mentioned’ hehe

No a2dp yet on bluetooth

Browser is webkit, think of it as Chrome Lite

Phone will have mass appeal

Robust Gmail experience, Gmail front end can access other services.

Supports varied music codecs

Skype not supported at present

Device is Quad Band on GSM

Google Founders - Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry - Get ‘geek’ pleasure from tinkering, has written an app, throwing phone in air and measuring time to catch!

Sergey - Has enjoyed using phone, email etc.  A lot of fun.  Very excited at possibilities.  G1 is as good a computer as any from a few years ago.  Ability to search with computer like functionality on a phone.  Excited at Location based services.

And that was that…

Want one? 

Posted in HTC, Google, Android, Phones | Print | 1 Comment »

23/09/2008 by Gavin.

It’s not like the US to be getting cool phones before the UK but here’s the website for the T-Mobile G1, aka Google Android.

http://announcement.t-mobileg1.com/#

Posted in Google, Android, Phones | Print | 1 Comment »

04/09/2008 by Gavin.

Google restores Chrome’s shine | The Register

Follow up to yesterdays post.  It was a mistake apparently!  Just shows that even Google doesn’t read EULAs, far less the rest of us, apart from lawyers!

Posted in Google, Are you having a laugh? | Print | No Comments »

03/09/2008 by Gavin.

I was reading a few articles on Google’s new browser, Chrome, when I came across this comment on the Register.  Interesting reading , I’m sure you’d agree!

“If you’re like every other geek, you were one of the many people who downloaded Google Chrome within minutes of it’s 3:00PM EST release today. There’s no doubt about it — Chrome is ridiculously faster than Firefox and IE. But you, like virtually every computer user out there, probably didn’t even bother to gloss over the Chrome Terms of Service.

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

In other words, by posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime. They can go and edit it all they want. Even further, you’re claiming that you have the power to grant these rights. So no one who works for Conde Nast (Wired, Arstechnica), TechCrunch, Gawker, any of the other big web publishers, or a university where the employee is performing research can agree to the Chrome ToS because they most likely don’t have the right to give a license to the IP (intellectual property) they produce.

Most likely your employee or student agreement requires that your employer/university exclusively owns all IP that you make during your time there. Many employment contracts require that the employee signs away exclusive rights to all IP they create during work hours and anything created off hours related to their employer’s business. Students get their credit because the university typically gets copyrights to any writings and exclusive patent rights to any research and inventions. This means that many content creators (news writers, song writers, artists, copy editors, musicians, students) cannot legally agree to these ToS because they’d be in breach of their employment/student contracts.

Further, you probably can’t use your company or school email with Chrome, because your company probably exclusively owns your email, and you can’t give away a license to something you don’t own. You also can’t make representations to Google that you have the power to license this IP if you don’t.

And for the record, Microsoft tried this years ago with MSN messenger, where MS got an irrevocable perpetual license to all IP that passed through MSN messenger, and the net basically revolted. AOL did this too with AIM.

There are some people who have claimed that this is standard legal jargon for every piece of software. Not only is that simply not true, no clause even close to that is in the Firefox terms of service.

And unlike all these people who “are not a lawyer”, I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this post does not constitute an attorney-client relationship, but Chrome’s ToS are ridiculous. If you’re like me, you use your browser for a lot more than just web browsing. The web browser is an entire application platform (isn’t that the idea behind web apps?). Google simply cannot have a license to all of the IP that goes through my browser. I, as an attorney, cannot give that up, especially because some of it is confidential. The Rules of Professional Responsiblity (which all lawyers must abide by) easily prohibit this exact kind of thing. Until Google scales this back, I will NOT be using Chrome.

With more and more apps being shifted into web browsers, this is almost like MS claiming that it gets a license to any document in MS Word, Powerpoint, or Excel. What if MS got a license to patents, trademarks and copyrights of any software created with Visio or Visual Studio? What if Maya got a license to everything 3d model you made? What if Adobe got a license to everything made in Photoshop? We have to stand up and stop accepting these ridiculous EULAs.

The worst part is the software guys over at Google saying that it’s no big deal. Well, if it’s no big deal, and they’re not going to enforce it, then why is it in this contract? Take it out, and don’t put it back in. “Do no evil,” remember? ”

– David Loschiavo, licensed to practice in FL.

posted by : gaspeU, 03 September 2008

Posted in Google | Print | 1 Comment »

02/09/2008 by Gavin.

I’ve been using Google’s new Chrome web browser for half an hour now, and I already feel right at home. Downloading and installing Chrome was quick and painless - a welcome contrast to the chaos and downloading hassles accompanying the launch of Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 browser in July.

Within just a couple of minutes, Chrome had hoovered up hundreds of Firefox bookmarks, saved passwords and my recent browsing history. This gives a pretty seamless transition to Chrome - with the exception of my RSS feeds, which weren’t imported automatically and aren’t supported in this 0.2 Beta version of Chrome.

First impressions

Chrome is so unobtrusive it almost isn’t even there - a clear design choice by Google, which has just a tiny, semi-transparent logo above the tabs, running along the top of the screen. There’s no status bar, although another semi-transparent tab appears at the bottom of the screen showing the status of loading pages.

Each tab has its own small forward, backward, reload and new tab buttons, along with a couple of menu items and the address bar - or Omnibar if you speak Google. The tabs can be ‘ripped’ to the desktop to form new windows just by drag-and-dropping - another neat touch.

The Omnibar is much more than just a place for typing URLs. Most importantly, it doubles as a search box: type search terms and hit Enter to be taken to your local Google website. It autocompletes with a level of smarts that rivals (if not exceeds) Firefox’s new Awesome bar, picking out previously visited sites intelligently and extremely quickly.

Speed freak

You want quick? You got it. Chrome feels nippier than Firefox all round, as well it should considering the demands it places on your computer. With each Chrome tab forming a separate process, you quickly build up a list of ‘chrome.exe’s in your Windows Task Manager (Linux and Mac versions coming soon, apparently). This means that one bad tab can’t crash your whole surfing session but I think I’ll have to keep a sharp eye on how many tabs I have open, especially when working on less powerful machines like my Fujitsu P1610.

Chrome munches through media sites with ease, streaming music and video and handling Flash very smoothly. PDFs open so suddenly that you might not even realise you’re using them. Opening a new tab brings up not your home page (although you can switch to that) but a thumbnail view of your nine most visited sites, plus recent bookmarks and a box to search your history. It loads almost instantly but is visually cluttered and doesn’t really do anything that the Omnibox and a good selection of bookmarks can’t handle.

And now the bad news

There are no plug ins for Chrome just yet so it does feel like a very stripped-down, Google-heavy environment right now.

But these are typical issues for a new version of any browser, let alone one that has been built from scratch. Overall, my first impression of Chrome is 9/10 for speed, 8/10 for ease of use and 7/10 for stability. And those figures should have Microsoft and Mozilla very, very worried.

Posted in Google, Cloud computing | Print | 1 Comment »