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Waiting for GPhone to ring? MATHEW INGRAM Globe and Mail Update E-mail Mathew Ingram | Read Bio | Latest Columns September 6, 2007 at 12:01 AM EDT Apple may be the undisputed king of preannouncement hype (with the recent flurry of rumours about new iPod features, some of which were announced yesterday, being just the latest example) but Google has to run a close second. And the current hot spot for die-hard fans of the technology giant is the much-rumoured “Google phone” or GPhone. Whispers about such an animal have been circulating in the geekosphere since last year, but have recently caught fire again, with reports that some Silicon Valley insiders have seen actual prototypes of such a phone, and other reports that Google might be ready to launch a version in India. Om Malik, a former writer for Business 2.0 magazine who runs a blog network called GigaOm, recently spoke to a technology insider who said the tech company is working on a Google Phone that will run a modified version of the Linux operating system and have a special Web browser. According to some analysts, Google has been talking with several major carriers about distributing a low-price (or even free) device, the cost of which would be paid for by advertising. Various reports – including one in The Wall Street Journal last month – have said the phone will be loaded with Google software, including Gmail, Google Talk, an instant messaging and voice-calling service, and a special version of its mapping software that would use the device's built-in GPS. Skeptics (including yours truly) have pooh-poohed the idea that Google might want to get into the phone business, in the sense of designing and/or selling a specific piece of hardware. Why? Because it seems antithetical to what Google has been about – namely, perfecting software for searching, and more recently for search-related ads, e-mail and other online services. The only piece of hardware that Google makes or is involved in making is the Google “appliance” that companies can use as part of their internal computer networks – although it also plays a role in customizing the hundreds of thousands of servers in its giant server “farms.” It wasn't that long ago that Google was rumoured to be building a cheap “Google PC,” one that would be loaded with Google software and sold through retailers such as Wal-Mart. That never came to pass, however, and the company made a point of saying it had no intention of getting into the notoriously cutthroat hardware business. One of the driving forces behind much of the Google Phone speculation appears to be dissatisfaction with existing cellphone companies and carriers. You can almost hear people wishing that a giant company with billions of dollars in cash – not to mention a propensity for offering things for free – would come in and shake up the mobile phone market. The GPhone rumours have been persistent in part because there are so many puzzle pieces that appear to fit, with one of the biggest being a Google employee named Andy Rubin. A co-founder of Danger Inc., the company that developed the Sidekick phone/PDA, Rubin started another company called Android, which was acquired by Google in 2005. Google also bought a Waterloo, Ont.-based mobile software company called Reqwireless. Google recently said that if the U.S. Federal Communications Commission were to change the way it auctions wireless spectrum, the company would be willing to spend almost $5-billion (U.S.). And there have been repeated rumours about Google buying up “dark” or unused fibre capacity across the U.S. The perfect foundation for a new Google Phone service, some say. But does this mean a dedicated piece of hardware known as the Google Phone is definitely coming? Hardly. There's no question that Google has been actively courting phone makers and carriers about bundling its applications on their devices. It may even be working on developing its own mobile phone software, to make those Web applications easier to develop and use. But it's still quite a leap from that to a Google Phone. Of course, when you are churning out billions of dollars in free cash flow every month the way Google is, virtually anything is possible. Mobile phone users who are craving something new – and can't afford an iPhone – will no doubt be keeping their fingers crossed.

Forget iPhone, Think Google Phone Written by Om Malik Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 12:33 AM PT | 74 comments The Observer of London is reporting that Google might be working with HTC and mobile/telecom giant Orange to build a Google Mobile Phone, which could possibly have Google software inside the device, and would be able to do many of the web tasks smartly. The device, article speculates, could go on sale in 2008. (Of course, we would all have forgotten by then… if it doesn’t happen.) Orange and Google, both declined to comment. Their plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange’s logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset. It would be interesting to see if this comes to fruition. Google, in recent months has become increasingly aggressive about its mobile ambitions, and is pushing into the carrier space, though there have been some snags. Google Phone, if you think about it is a reasonable speculation. Google has been aggressive in developing location based services, has amp-ed up its local search and mapping services. In addition, it has also been mobilizing its applications such as GTalk and GMail. YouTube, the video arm of Google, is beginning to embrace the mobile ecosystem. Normally, one would not spend too much energy on this bit of news. However, presence of Andy Rubin on Google campus gives us a reason to pause. Who is Rubin? He was one of the co-founders of Danger, the company that makes the Sidekick devices. He sold his last company, Android to Google for an undisclosed amount of money, and he has been holed up in Mountain View, California campus of Google, doing something. No one knows what, but since Android was focusing on mobile, it is safe to assume that he just might be involved in Android. Danger, as you might know has become a multimillion dollar business based off the “compress web and take it mobile” technology developed by Rubin and others. Businessweek had reported that Android was working on a cell phone operating system. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones. … In a 2003 interview with BusinessWeek, just two months before incorporating Android, Rubin said there was tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences. “If people are smart, that information starts getting aggregated into consumer products,” said Rubin. For Orange, this could be a valuable asset in its triple play ambitions. The company owns broadband businesses across Europe, and has access to 3G networks, and is owned by France Telecom. It could use Google’s web expertise to take on its rivals, by offering web-mobile hybrid phones, and at the same time get a slice of mobile advertising revenues. I know, sounds far fetched, but not out of the real of possiblity. Your thoughts?

Microsoft invests $240M in Facebook, as Facebook develops ad product By Doug Sherrets 10.24.07 Updated Microsoft has snagged a deal to invest $240 million into popular social network Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion — a 1.6 percent stake. Microsoft has also agreed to advertise on Facebook in international markets. We listened in on a well-staged official press conference call that the two companies did this afternoon — you can read most of the same information in the press release. Here are some highlights: Microsoft needs the international ad agreement because Facebook says nearly 60 percent of its 50 million active users are based outside of the US. Facebook also claims to be gaining 200,000 new users per day, worldwide.

Facebook’s emergence into a major Internet player has been compared to Google’s rocketship rise a few years ago.

Paul, Jake and I were chatting a few weeks ago wondering how we can establish an ongoing dialog with our peers in product strategy and capture the innovative ideas they have for our future products. We thought of several ways to do this: Having conference calls to exchange ideas on a regular basis Inviting our peers to collaborate on a Google doc Build a simple website to track their ideas Obviously, 1 and 2 are bad ideas, so we opted for 3. What we needed was a site where people can submit their ideas, tag them, have them be rated by their peers, and allow comments to be entered. I like to call it “The Wall” — throw your ideas up on the wall and see if they stick… the community will decide. The real name of the site is “IdeaFactory”. A pretty simple site, really. It follows the same principles as most Web 2.0 sites today — folksonomies and feedback systems (ratings/comments) to facilitate community building. So, that night I set out to build it. As you know, I’m a rails fanboy now and so building it with RoR was a no brainer for me. I already knew that there were rails plugins for most of the features we needed (tagging, comments, search, etc.) My job would be to just tie them all together. To start, I gathered together the best plugins I knew about to build this site (I used agilewebdevelopment.com to help me). I ended up with these plugins: acts_as_commentable — for comments integration acts_as_ldap_authenticated — this is a variation on acts_as_authenticated with LDAP authentication support. In the future, I think I’ll migrate the LDAP code in this plugin to the restful_authentication plugin. I needed this plugin to tie into Oracle’s LDAP system so that users can just use their Oracle userid/pwds to get into the site. acts_as_taggable_on_steroids — for tagging support asset_packager — not necessary, but does a nice job of combining and minifying my javascripts and stylesheets minus_r — not necessary, but I hate the way rails treats javascript (they make you code your javascript in ruby… lame). Also, I wanted this since I prefer to use jQuery instead of Prototype. permalink_fu — not necessary, but gives me nice readable URLs acts_as_rateable — enables a five star rating system tiny_mce — enables WYSIWYG text editing which allows people to enter their content with some basic formatting. The beauty of using rails is that over the past few years, it’s become a popular choice for building “2.0″ style apps. And so, lots of the features of a “2.0″ style web application have been turned into rails plugins which makes building stuff with those features dirt simple. It’s also a framework that has a huge (and growing) community of developers who love to share their knowledge and code. When I started building the IdeaFactory, I had no idea that I would have a working version within 24 hours with all the key feature (tagging, ratings, comments, and LDAP auth). I’ve built a few rails apps before this one, but none that were really that interesting. The IdeaFactory is something that was interesting because it was badly needed by our teams — too many ideas weren’t being shared and critiqued by the general Oracle ecosystem. So, we knew that if we built the IdeaFactory, it would get used a fair bit and would help Oracle product strategists be more collaborative. I started coding on a Thursday night and by mid-day Friday morning, I had the general pieces in place so that data can be entered. On Friday afternoon, I requested a new hostname (http://ideas.us.oracle.com — intranet) which came alive by Saturday. I made a few enhancements over Saturday and Sunday and by Monday, the site was live! Since then, the site’s taken off (thanks to the additional boost by Justin). It’s become such a popular site internally, that there’s talk of putting together a public facing IdeaFactory site for Oracle customers — I’m hoping that happens. While many of us in development have been used to the whole process of requirements gathering, writing a BRD (business requirements doc), FDD (functional design doc), and TDD (technical design doc) — which I’m intimately used to doing over the years, it’s refreshing to be able to just roll up my sleeves and start building something and have a working product within hours of starting. I can’t wait for my next project. Stay tuned… you’ll hear about it here.

Litigation 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) Arrives By Gene Albert Should your firm consider using a SaaS litigation support application? Gene Albert discusses the benefits to small and medium-sized firms, and what firms should expect. New approach Offers Ease-of-Use, Low Cost and Less Onerous IT Demands Software as a service, or 'SaaS', refers to web-native software that the service provider both develops and supports. Customers do not buy the software but rather pay to use it, often on a monthly basis.  SaaS applications have become popular in a number of industries because of its ability to provide robust functionality while not requiring from the user an upfront investment for hardware or software, or ongoing support. While the SaaS acronym is new, the idea is not.  Lexis and Westlaw pioneered the online delivery of legal research in the 1980s.  What is new about SaaS is how it's done, with new applications designed from the ground up to work over the internet. Both established and new companies have begun offering litigation SaaS applications and promise law firms the ability to manage their litigation matters anywhere from a web browser. This article will discuss why firms might want to consider using a SaaS litigation support application, benefits of the SaaS approach for small and medium-sized firms, and what a firm should expect from a SaaS provider.

Monday, October 29, 2007 The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream Continued from page 1 By Kate Greene Print E-mail Audio » New! Listen - Flash Listen - MP3 Subscribe to podcast What is this? Powered by Share » Digg this Add to del.icio.us Add to Reddit Add to Facebook