Is anyone sick of hearing about all of these trumped up so called iPhone killers like the GPhone? I mean we hear new rumors about the GPhone everyday now. We have not seen any official action, all that we hear are rumors and a blurry picture of a neat looking Google app’d phone. So my question for the day is does the so called Google Phone have a place with the other all in one devices?

I honestly think it does, I am only basing this decision on rumors though. If I was to believe the rumor mill then it would lead me to believe that the Google phone would really compete with the iPhone and other large contenders. This device could only be three things though, a business tool or a device aimed at the younger generation like the Sidekick series. But it could very easily be both. Google has the younger generation tuned in, and the business world is always following Google’s every move. The only way I see them releasing this to the business world is if they start making some traction with Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Gmail. In the past when we first heard the rumors of the GPhone I thought Google was the type of company to leave the OS open to the 3rd party vendors, but as days go on I am starting to think that they would not allow it. They are all about control now, and I really think that would hurt this device if that was the case.

But I want to break it down with what will hurt this device if released with out these options.

A. Google does not have an official “Media Player”.
B. Google Docs & Spreadsheet’s are limited, not very big in the business world (So far).
C. Google has no media marketplace anymore.
D. You can POP Gmail but their is no easy push features for Gmail, yet.

If Google does not have of these options and software resolved or fixed then in no way will it be competitive with any market. If it has no true media player or marketplace it won’t compete with the iPhone. If it has no true business application support it will not compete with Windows Mobile device or Palm. If it cannot build up an infrastructure like RIM for push then it won’t compete with the Blackberry devices. If it wants to compete with all of them then it really needs to be strong in all of those categories. Or does it?

Maybe Google will go back to the good old days before they were a publicly traded company, by leaving everything open! It could be revolutionary. Have it not tied to any carrier or any type of network. All that they would release is an OS and a slick piece of hardware. Load it with open office mobile, and an open source media player like Helix. They would supply preferred apps, but leave everything else open to anything. It would change the game, and Apple and Microsoft would be forced to fill that middle road. Where Microsoft messed up with the whole consumer base OS and phones, but they had great success with the business world. Apple has great success with the consumer market with the iPhone and does not have a great business backing due to the limited business software compatibility.

Now the new Palm Centro, Treo 800, Gandolf, Frodo phone or whatever Palm is calling it nowadays is soon to be released as well. Can we compare it to the GPhone on simple rumor base? The answer is simply a loud no! But if we did I would honestly say the GPhone would be more a Palm Centro device, aimed at a youth market with a $99-$150 price point before the carriers get a hold of it.

Honestly none of us even know what the GPhone is, no specs, no official info of any kind, it’s probably not even going to be named the GPhone. So why do we all get excited? Would it run proprietary software not compatible with most business/client side applications (Exchange, Outlook, Domino, Notes) or would they play nice? No one knows.

I do not understand what Google’s advantage would be to have a phone. I don’t even know what type of a company Google is anymore? I personally think they are moving to fast, and I pray and hope they don’t invest a lot of money into this project. I will most likely be shot in the foot again; just like what happened to me over the whole iPhone unlocking debacle (the masses still don’t have their paws on the software though. I’m still right!). I actually hope I am wrong about the Gphone though, it would be interesting to see what Google comes up with, but to me it just seems like they are trying everything to generate more revenue, when they should be concentrating on their meat and potatoes. Granted Google makes some great software, and we all know that the software makes or breaks a device.

So I ask this last question to anyone that will listen. If Google releases this phone is their a real spot in the vast marketplace of smart phones for another contender?

For me my answer is in two parts, if they can fill that middle ground where Microsoft and Apple cant, then my answer is yes. If they go it alone, then my answer is no.

I wish good luck to Google.

Once upon a time the Internet was a haven for freedom. You could say what you want, when you wanted, to whomever you wanted. Well all good things must come to an end. Because today another chunk of online rights have been ousted right under the feet of the Chinese people and possibly coming to a search engine near you!

Today Yahoo and MSN and various other companies signed a code of conduct rule for their blogging services in China. China says “this code of conduct has been put into place to protect the interests of our Chinese state.” The “Self-Discipline” pact, under which they pledged to “safeguard state and public interests,” according to the statement from the China Internet Society.

This pact “encourages” the internet firms to register the real names, addresses and any other personal details of the bloggers, and then keep this information. The companies have to delete and “illegal or bad messages”, according to a copy of the pact posted on the society’s site.

Along with sex and violence, China’s communist rulers have also deemed that opinions critical of it or the spreading of democratic ideology are not allowed.

US Internet companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have previously caused uproar abroad for bowing to the Chinese government’s demands by agreeing to censor websites and content banned by the nation’s propaganda chiefs. They have repeatedly insisted that they have no choice but to follow local rules and regulations in China.

The question I have is how long until this type of “pact” gets pushed through here?

In the yet-another-Google-phone-rumor department, Rediff.com is reporting that Google is just “a fortnight away” from launching its Google Phone.

According to Rediff Google is in talks with service providers in India for an exclusive launch. The Gphone will launch simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe.

Ummm. That’s was fast. I have my doubts on this one. Google must have the most tight lipped employees in the world of no one else saw this coming. Just seems odd to me. I’m putting my money on it that this does not happen anytime soon. But I have known to be wrong many a times. I guess I’m not the only one that is thinking that this is a bit of a farce.

Maybe it’s the fact there’s a Google Phone rumor every other week or so. Perhaps it’s the unnamed sources.

According to Rediff.com Google only needs FCC approval and it’s ready for lift-off. That’s a pretty big hurdle for a launch that’s supposed to happen real soon. And then there’s the whole partnering with wireless carriers thing Google has to work out for the Gphone.

I think this would be a neat new gadget for the market, but honestly does anyone really believe this?

When Google Earth came out, one of my first thoughts was how cool it would be to have an application like this for the sky. Google Earth is massively useful, and a planetarium app would be too.

Well, today, Google has released a version of Google Earth that maps the sky.

I don’t like it.

You read that right. I don’t like it. Well, to be clear, I don’t like it yet. I think this version is lacking some basic necessities, but once they (and some tweaks) are added this will be a pretty cool app.

For one thing, when I clicked the button to start it, it said it was loading the sky above my current location. However, it doesn’t tell me what that current location is. It doesn’t tell me what time of day it’s using — the sky moves, so time is crucial. It doesn’t move the sky in real time (or provide that option). It doesn’t tell me if the Sun is up or not. It doesn’t tell me where the horizon is.

These are all relatively simple things to put in, and I’m sure Google will install them eventually. But it seems odd not to have them available in the first release version.

There are some oddities. When I click on, for example, the Owl Nebula (a classic planetary nebula in Ursa Major) it displays an almost illegible image of the object. The description is fine, but the icon says it’s a globular cluster! Oops. That was the first image I clicked. How many more are there like that?

The red dots marking objects tend to actually cover the objects, making it hard to see them (in the Crab Nebula it covers the pulsar, so I can’t see it without making the dot disappear, and it’s not obvious how to do that). It’s not obvious how to zoom in and out (turns out it’s by double left and right clicking, but I found that by accident — that must be a feature of Google Earth in general I didn’t know about).

In the search box, if I type in my home address and go there, it sends me to a location in the constellation of Auriga. I suspect that’s what is directly overhead right now, but it doesn’t say!

There are some nice things, of course. Lots of objects from Hubble are integrated into the maps, for one, as are images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (some odd image artifacts got in as well that should have been cleaned up, for that matter). The star maps are not bad, though patchy in spots. There are ctalogs of objects as different layers, which is useful. Zooming in and out is too slow for my taste (I’m impatient) but the way the stars appear and fade during zooming is nice, and that’s not easy to program so I’m impressed with how they did it.

But still, I’m scratching my head over why they left out so many obvious and necessary features in the first release. I think Google Sky can be a great tool, I really do, but to be a useful planetarium app it needs work. The enormous benefit of Google Earth is twofold: it allows you to interactively examine the Earth, and it allows people to add homemade features to it if they know how to code them or where to find them.

Interactively examining the sky is nice, but Google Sky needs work. It’s more of a gee-whiz photo album than a real piece of interactive software. IMO most folks will play with it for a few minutes and then stop using it, since at the moment it isn’t much more than a clickable way to look at objects on the sky. Once real interactivity is built into it — a way to see what’s up now, or tomorrow night, or on my trip to Alaska at 2:00 a.m. — it will begin to realize its potential.

Imagine if users can add their own images, for example. Or it displays satellite tracks in the sky, or where deep space probes are, or where Hubble is pointed right now, or where Jupiter will be in October. Google Sky will be an incredibly cool tool and will have real staying power… but it needs some more basics first. Until then, I’d rather go straight to the Hubble site to view images, and if I want to know what’s up now, I’d rather use some free apps to map the sky.

C’mon, Google folks! I know how smart you are! Get this rolling. Add these basic features, and you’ll find people using this software in droves. And you can add me to that list.

Via BAB

Companies that want to bid in the FCC’s upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction had better be prepared to pay up. The agency has just released a first draft of its detailed auction rules, which include reserve prices that must be met before the auction becomes valid. The coveted C block licenses (which feature the new open access conditions) will require bidders to meet a $4.6 billion reserve; for all licenses combined, the reserve is $10 billion.

The auction date has now been set for January 16, 2008. We already knew that the bidding would be anonymous, but the bid procedures are now spelled out in excruciating detail. The FCC rationale for the move is made clear: it wants to “reduce the potential for anti-competitive bidding behavior, including bidding activity that aims to prevent the entry of new competitors.”

Five blocks of licenses will be offered (A-E), with several blocks broken into hundreds of smaller, regional licenses. In total, 1,099 licenses are on offer, but it’s the 12 C block licenses that have drawn particular attention. These are being made available in three packages for companies that want to offer national wireless service and want easy, one-stop shopping. One package will cover all 50 US states, a second will cover US Pacific territories, and the third will cover Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The whole C block has an aggregate reserve price of $4.6 billion, but nearly all of the cash will go toward the package of US national licenses. This portion of the spectrum is also the only one encumbered with two open access conditions (any device must be allowed to access the band and any application can be run across the network), but if the reserve price isn’t met, the auction will be rerun without these two conditions in place.

Hopefully that won’t happen. Remember that Google earlier pledged to bid $4.6 billion if the FCC would apply four open conditions to the spectrum, and presumably the C block will be worth even more to incumbents now that only two of those conditions have been imposed.

Consumer: 1, Google: 4556788890

“I guess they made it official today.   Let’s examine what this means:

- Google made $10B in 2006 revenues, 99.9% from search.
- If Google could generate revenues from another revenue stream, it would welcome it.
- Google could not generate meaningful revenues from paid downloads, so it is going completely free.
- By buying YouTube, Doubleclick (not closed yet) and Feedburner, it has already decided what its next billion dollar revenue stream will be: more ads, but in lieu of it all coming from paid search, it will be videos, display/banner/rich media and feeds/emails.

Folks, mark this week as the week where consumers made it official and defeated paid content.  Both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal this week announced or considered making their sites free (or more free).

Part of this, of course, has to do with there not being a viable micropayment system.  But maybe because advertising is shifting so aggressively online is the reason why we don’t have a viable micropayment system, and not the other way around.

This is why all of those projections about the future of paid content are, for lack of better words, full of it.”

Via Hip Mojo Via Ashkan Karbasfroos

Gina Trapani over on Lifehacker pointed out that Google had accidentally deleted its company’s Custom Search Blog. You can read about the whole thing on Yahoo! News. Apparently Blogger’s spam detection flagged their Custom Search Blog as a spam blog and decided to do away with it.

While the incident is quite amusing, it does showcase Google’s investment in keeping their Blogger blogging service clean and free of spam blogs and what not. However I certainly hope the accidental deletion of blogs is something that doesn’t occur too often because if I was a user of Blogger and found my blog had been flagged as spam and deleted - I’d be pissed.

This is why I prefer owning my own domain and running the blog myself versus depending on someone else to do it.

Chairman of the FCC Kevin Martin

Eh…. Not really. Wow that was by far the longest title yet. Well so it happened today, we all new it was going to happen, the 700mhz frequency was approved today by the FCC . The 700mhzland has been long sought after frequency for the great distances it can reach. Since Google wants to melt there doughy little hands into every aspect of every market they said, “Hey lets buy a Radio frequency”. Don’t quote them on that, they probably said something a lot more sophisticated and in-depth.
Now all in all this approval really isn’t that bad, but only if the FCC keeps to its “Open Access” plan. But the FCC being a part of our government we never know who’s hand might get greased to push a vote or favor through. A total of 60 megahertz will be auctioned off, with twenty-two of them “open,” and another 10 set aside for a “national public safety” network. The auctioning off of the frequency is expected to raise as much as $15 billion for the federal treasury.

The auction begins sometime early next year, and so it begins…..

I wanted to give a little info out about Chairman Kevin Martin, and who he has worked for, and what he did in the past. Here is the excerpt about him from the official FCC website:

“Chairman Martin was nominated by President George W. Bush to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on July 3, 2001. He was designated chairman by President Bush on March 18, 2005. Chairman Martin was re-nominated for a second term as commissioner and chairman by President George W. Bush on April 25, 2006.

Before joining the FCC, Martin was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and was Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Martin was an advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He has also served in the Office of the Independent Counsel and worked as an associate at the Washington, DC law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Before joining Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Martin was a judicial clerk for U.S. District Court Judge William M. Hoeveler, Miami, FL.

Martin received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.”

Now Chairman Martin is no virgin when it comes to ethic scandals, does anyone remember the Bellsouth & AT&T merger?

I never try to mix politics with technology but sometimes they just mix , and a lot of the time it ends up in a negative manner. So that is why I am so skeptical of this “Open Access” plan. Now I am not saying Google even has the cash flow to play the game, if it stays open I hope they have the cash on hand. I just hope the FCC plays nice with everyone and does not play favors.

Can anyone give me a reason to not think like this?

Dave Winer writes a post on why Feedburner is in trouble after being acquired by Google. I never really looked at Google’s acquisition of Feedburner in the same light Dave does and I’m glad he wrote what he did as it is certainly a real eye opener in regards to the level of control Google is “acquiring” on the internet. By the way, Dave is the RSS God. Anyway, here’s quote from Dave that really creeps me out:

“So now someone at Google “owns” Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone.”

So my question is should we begin using Feedburner here on this new site? We’re still in our infancy but if Feedburner is going to cause us problems with our readers in the future - I think its better to fight those problems now rather than when we build up readership in the future. If we choose to ditch Feedburner, all of our RSS subscribers would then have to re-subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed after ditching Feedburner. It could be a mess. So I am asking what readers we do have currently - should we ditch Feedburner now and avoid any problems that may arise in the future?

A lot of people know how much I hate Google’s Adword system, but the thing is they make money and they help business’s make money, thus it is good business. I just don’t like the whole process probably because we here at TheGeekery are poor, their are lot of rumors around the net about foul play with Adwords and how Google manipulates the system as well but that is still under investigation. But I simply don’t understand this one….

Google is in the process of acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, but for some reason the FTC is already investigating them on antitrust violations just for this attempted acquisition. I understand that Google already has the largest market share for ad based e-marketing, but when Yahoo proposed its acquisition of Rights Media was proposed not to long ago it flew through the antitrust regulators stamp of approval process. The same thing happened when Microsoft proposed the acquisition of aQuantive a DoubleClick rival, no one complained no one whined. Why is Google taking so much flack for this, this is capitalism, this is big business.

The answer is in this quote

“Google, which dominates the business of placing text ads alongside search results and on sites across the Web, is expected to capture 27.4 percent of the $21.7 billion in United States online advertising in 2007, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The acquisition of DoubleClick would turn Google into a dominant player in the business of serving banners and other graphical ads that appear on Web sites.”

Yahoo, AT&T and dare I say Microsoft are afraid, very afraid. Google is starting to scare me as well, I just don’t understand how a company can spread the spectrum so wide across so many industry sectors.

Google, even though I do not enjoy some of your business models I do salute you for the massive kahoneys you have.

-TheGeek