Android Robot + Mario + Fun = Replica Island

Q: What do you get if you cross the Android Robot with Nintendo’s Mario?

A: A neat little game called Replica Island.

Android and Mario, as one in Replica Island

The game brings the classic retro side-scrolling back to life with it’s cute cartoon graphics and insane midi-style music.

For me, games are important on my mobile phone; they’ll never replace my Xbox 360 but they are there to fill in train journeys, car trips and just general boredom. So I almost cried when I saw this cutsey [is that a word?] little Android bot jumping around the screen on this trailer for the FREE Android Market game called Replica Island. Check out the video below and be sure to visit the site for more information.

[Via http://desirefanatics.wordpress.com]

LG Eve GW620 Slow Email

I haven’t written about Android at all on this blog. From a Canadian perspective I think there is no better blog than Androidincanada. I must check them out about once every few days for updates.  So I won’t try and simply rehash what they are talking about unless I think I have something unique to say, that being said… I love Android.

I own an LG GW620 (Rogers Eve) which runs Android 1.5.  This phone is a replacement for my HTC Magic that was kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to a house across the street from the park I was visiting where it continued to report its GPS co-ordinates until someone changed the SIM card in it and turned off the GPS… but I’m not bitter…. I had it replaced with Rogers newest Android offering the LG Eve GW620. I was initially excited to be getting something with a flip out keyboard and a headphone jack, (Seriously… HTC… I think the whole 3.5mm Headphone jack might catch on.  I’ve seen some company selling these things that people stick headphones into to listen to music… so you might want to look into that, I’m just saying.  Sadly the new phone gives me nothing but grief. (Except for the cool headphone jack)  I am writing this entry in the hopes that other people out there that have had this issue can perhaps point me in a direction to fix it.

The Rogers LG Eve (GW620)

This particular GW620 is the replacement of the original GW620 that I got when it first came out. The first phone I had froze all the time requiring me to remove the battery and restart the phone on about a daily basis. To make matters worse, the email function on the phone was so poor that I could not use it at all for business email. What happens is when I first setup the phone for email I can read email, however, after about a day of using this the process of downloading messages takes longer and longer. At last count it took nearly 20 minutes to give me the most recent list of messages. To make matters worse, upon clicking on any of those messages I am greeted with one of three scenarios.

1 – The message opens (this happens about 1 out of every 12 or 13 tries)

2 – Connection Error

3 – Data Error

The errors don’t seem to be related to the 3G network as the same errors occur when I am on wifi. I have googled this term over and over, and have NEVER gotten a single hit.

Rogers says there is no problem, but this is the second GW620 I have had that does this. As well, my co-workers each have one of these phones and both of them have the same issues as well. One simply uses the gmail feature (this works fine) and doesn’t check his POP3 email on the phone. The other had his pop3 email forwarded to gmail so he could do the same.

The problem I have is that this did NOT occur on the HTC Magic. Both phones ran Android 1.5, both are in bad need of an update to 2.0… (hurry LG) but something I have noticed is that the email client on the Magic was different than on the GW620.

If anyone out there has a solution PLEASE comment and point me in the right direction. I’ll update this entry if I figure one out, or anyone is able to help.

Thanks!

–malocite

[Via http://malocite.wordpress.com]

Browser-Based IDE s (programming environments)

As I wrote about earlier, HTML5 (Javascript, Canvas, WebGL, etc.) is allowing people to create rich, interactive applications that run in your browser and don’t require flash or java. Cloud computing (such as Google App Engine and others) and AJAX are also allowing us to run things in our browser that before were typically run on the desktop because they required quickly saving and retrieving a bunch of info. Google docs, gmail, etc.

So it’s no so surprising that there are now even some programming environments starting to emerge that you can run and develop from inside your browser. These are websites where you can edit code, run your application, and sometimes even instantly share your application for others to try. This is much more convenient than the typical process of downloading and installing a huge IDE such as Eclipse or Netbeans, and then compiling and packaging and distributing an application on your own. However, these browser-based IDEs are still nowhere near as powerful and flexible as traditional IDEs. Bespin is probably the most developed and powerful at this point.

Here are some browser-based coding environments I know about. All are free and most are open source.

• HasCanvas – an IDE for Processing.js. Processing is a very popular java-based development environment, with a free IDE you can download. Processing.js is a port of that to javascript. With either one, you can create animations and artwork and so forth. HasCanvas has a weird interface – hover over the arrows on the left side to show the source code for any animation, and use your mouse wheel to scroll. Click Browse to see other scripts.
• Bespin – an editor from Mozilla that you can use either on their site, or embed into your own site.
• CodeRun – Develop ASP.NET, php and Ajax applications in your browser. Not open source.
• App Inventor for Android – This is unique in that it has a visual designer, along with visual blocks-based language for creating application (similar to that in Lego Mindstorms and Scratch). From this description it does appear to be web-based, although you use it to develop applications that run on an Android cell phone, not the browser. Here’s a course that used the tool last fall, along with the beginnings of a textbook. Unfortunately, it’s still only in private testing and not available to the public. I’ve signed up to use it with students in my multimedia development course this fall. If that works out I’ll post all the resources and videos online, just like all my courses.
• There are also many programming command line interpreters (repls – read-eval-print loop) that work in the browser, such as Lord of the REPLs (lotrepls), which lets you try many different languages out.

[Via http://edtechdev.wordpress.com]

Google TV brings more Google at your home

Google is working with Intel, Sony, and other partners to develop Google TV, a service aimed at putting the Internet search giant’s Web offerings in people’s living rooms, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

Google TV will combine the company’s Android mobile operating system and applications with television devices made for the OS, including set-top boxes, the paper says.

The TV technology will run on Intel’s Atom chips and Google will develop a new version of its Chrome browser for the TV project.

The use of Android for TV could put applications and other software developed for the OS on TVs in addition to smartphones, the devices the OS was designed for. The companies working on the project, which also reportedly include Logitech, “envision technology that will make it easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel,” the New York Times says.

Google will open the TV platform to Android developers as part of the initiative, with a software developer’s kit.

Several companies have already started using Android in devices made for TVs, including set-top boxes and 2D/3D graphics accelerators, designed around MIPS Technologies’ chip architecture. MIPS and its partners have done the development work on Android to tweak it for use in such devices.

Android was designed to work with Arm processing cores, the most popular cores in smartphones, but some companies have ported Android to other chip processing architectures, including MIPS and Intel’s x86 processing architecture.

[Via http://blog.mobileweb.be]

ZumoDrive Comes to Android & WebOS Devices

Over on our sister blog jkOnTheRun, Kevin is reporting that ZumoDrive, a nifty cloud file syncing and backup service, has made clients available for Android (s goog) and webOS (s palm) devices, adding to the existing iPhone (s aapl) app and Windows (s msft), Mac and Linux clients.

Kevin’s been taking the Android app for a spin on his Google Nexus One, and he likes it, particularly the ability to stream audio files — check out his post for full details of the app and his opinions of it. The mobile apps are free, as is a ZumoDrive account with 1GB of storage.

Have you tried the new mobile clients for ZumoDrive? Let us know what you think of them below.

[Via http://webworkerdaily.com]

Android Market now contains 30,000 apps

Normally Google does not give the number of applications in the Android Market, but today the representatives informed  that Google Android Market includes 30,000 free and paid applications.

Three months ago there was an estimation from AndroLib that the Android Market included 20,000 applications. Google at the time matched these claimed stats against its own count, and said there were in reality some 16,000 apps in Android Market in December 2009. And today Google says the number grew from 16k to 30k apps in exactly three months, a beautiful performance.

Google will not say what percentage is paid or free. But AndroLib, a website which keeps an eye on Android Market, says that 39% is paid and 61% free. Interesting is the fact that paid applications are hardly sell well. FADE analyst has calculated that the estimated 8 million Android users from around the globe have downloaded 289 million apps. Of that 98.9 % was free. Compared with other phones, owners purchase relatively low-paid Android apps. This is around 35 applications per user, so that’s quite a bit. Calculate how much the developers earn from this users, then the number is very disappointing: the average user for Android has bought apps for $ 0.50. For the iPhone it is $ 1.

[Via http://blog.mobileweb.be]

Can I upload video to Youtube with my iPhone?

Some of you may know that you cannot upload videos clipss and replies to Youtube in Korea.

It is because Korean law that requires every internet services with more than 100,000 users per day should confirm users’ identity to upload a posts  or replies. Once you identify yourself, then you can write  with your nickname.

Rather complying with Korean regulations, Google Korea chose to block uploading from Korea in April 2009 when it approached the 100,000 user bar. “Don’t be evil.”

But don’t worry. You can upload videos or replies by simply changing your ‘Country Preference’ to another countries other than Korea.

Still annoyed? Then why don’t you take a shoot with your iPhone and send it to Youtube? It is no problem to send a video clip from your iPhone.

Nobody cared whether you could upload a video to Youtube with iPhone in Korea, till Google removed Youtube upload function from Motorola ‘Droid’, the first smartphone with Google’s Android OS in Korea. Google removed the functions over the concern for the Korean user-identifying regulation.

After the iPhone-to-Youtube issue aroused, KT, the Korean carrier which provides iPhone, considered blocking video uploading from iPhone. KT also postponed launch of new Android smartphone from LG Electronics because it had the direct Youtube uploading function.

But the chances are it ends up with just a silly fuss, as Korean Communication Commission (KCC) does not take it seriously. “Youtube is not subject to the Korean regulation that requires user identification because videos uploaded from iPhone go directly to Youtube global site, and Google Korea does not participates the operation of Youtube,” said an official of KCC.

[Via http://hahn32.wordpress.com]

HTC Touch Pro

The HTC Touch Pro (also known as the HTC Raphael, AT&T Fuze, XDA Serra or MDA Vario IV) is a smart phone from the Touch series of Internet-enabled Windows Mobile Pocket PC smartphones designed and marketed by High Tech Computer Corporation of Taiwan. It is an enhanced version of the HTC Touch Diamond with the addition of a left-side slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a microSD card slot, and a camera flash. The Touch Pro smartphone’s functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player in addition to text messaging and multimedia messaging. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. Depending on its market, it is a Quad band GSM or Quad-band UMTS phone with GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, and HSUPA or a tri-band CDMA phone with 1xEV-DO Rev A. All versions feature TouchFLO 3D – a new enhanced version of the TouchFLO interface, unique only to the latest Touch series. In March 2009, HTC announced a new version, the Touch Pro2 which has a larger screen (3.6″) and a redesigned slide out (and tilted) qwerty keyboard with spaces between the keys.

Specifications

The following specs are for the retail version of the Pro. Carriers may sell versions of the Pro with specifications that vary from this.

Screen size: 2.8 in (71 mm)

Screen resolution: 480×640 pixels at 287 ppi, 3:4 aspect ratio

Screen colors: 65,536 (16-bit)

Input devices: resistive touchscreen interface and slide-out QWERTY keyboard

Battery: 1340 mAh, user-accessible

Battery has up to 6.98 hours of talk and up to 462 hours of standby.

3.2 megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and flash, .3 megapixel front-facing camera for video calling (Raphael 100 only.)

Location finding by detection of cell towers and Wi-Fi networks and with internal GPS antenna

Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201A(GSM) MSM7501A(CDMA) (528 MHz ARM ARM1136EJ-S processor)

RAM: 288 MB DRAM (192 MB for the Verizon SKU)

ROM: 512 MB flash memory

Removable Media: microSDHC, supports up to 32 GB.

Operating System: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900)

Quad band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA UMTS 850) ,(UMTS 900, UMTS 1900), UMTS 2100)

Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)

Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

Mini USB 2.0 (HTC ExtUSB)High speed (480Mbit/s)

TV-Out

FM 87.5 – 108MHz (Only on GSM)

Size: 51 mm (2.0 in) (h) 102 mm (4.0 in) (w) 18 mm (0.71 in) (d)

Weight: 165 g (5.8 oz)

Price

399.99 to 918.90 Depending on service packaging

An excellent device for your mobile needs.

[Via http://isomorphicryu.wordpress.com]

Prankdial For Android and iPhone

Ever thought you wanted to prank call your friends but didn’t know what to say? Well PrankDial for android can help you out. PrankDial for Android allows you to prank call your friends no matter where you are. But remember this is for US only. They have numerous amount of selections you can make to prank your friends and family. After you have pranked someone you can share the recorded prank call with your friends and family. Why not send it to the person who’s been pranked too. I’ve tried this app out and heres how it sounds like.  Actual Prank Call. You can get PrankDial for Android and iPhone as well.

Features:

• Library of hilarious prank calls
• Record the prank call
• Easily share your prank call with friends
• Login with your token id with tokens purchased from prankdial.com
• Receive free 3 token per day to prank call your friend

[Via http://fiercetechnology.com]

A long time ago....

I won’t finish that line since I’m fairly sure George Lucas would sue me…

Hello all my faithful readers, it has been nearly 1 year since my last posting, and even longer since I posted anything relevant to the blog.  Allow me to bring you all up to speed on my life (as if you care…)

Last year, around March / April I was given a sizable promotion at work.  This lead to a huge increase in my workload and sucked away any semblance of free time that I used to have.  A year later, with things looking up,  I have made the decision to take BACK my life and start blogging again.

I stopped for two reasons, one was the massive new load of work I inherited.  The second was a seemingly dull and unintersting landscape for my topic, Canadian Telecommunications news namely consuming television online in Canada.

Over the last several months a lot has happened however.  Canada welcomed a new Wireless Carrier in the form of Wind Mobile, Bell Canada scored a huge victory in being able to skrew Canadian’s everywhere, and Rogers released their first Android Phones.

Add to that massive bandwidth caps popping up everywhere and Rogers, Bell, and now other major Canadian telcos providing online television viewing through the barrier of a paywall, and you end up with a country ripe for discussion and change.

Lastly, the Conservative Government of Canada finally doing something Conservative (while technically Liberalizing Canada’s investment laws) and announcing plans to begin opening the Great White North to foreign investment in the telecom sector.

It’s an exciting time for Canadians (although many don’t know it).  The world is about to change (again… no one sees it, or cares) but I am going to be here, standing between the darkness and the light…. (sorry I am having a Babylon 5 moment)  Over 145,000 of you have read my blog, and I am humbled by so high a number.  I’ve updated the look with a new theme and will be writing more over the next few days.

–malocite

[Via http://malocite.wordpress.com]

My HTC Hero (Euro) Running Android 2.1 Reviewed

My HTC Hero running 2.1

So there I was, sitting in front of my desk gripping my phone, contemplating throwing it against a wall. Actually, let me step back a bit. I got my phone in November 2009. Initially I noticed a bit of lag while switching screens and going through settings and such, after a while it was atrocious. So I decided to Root my Hero and install Modaco’s custom rom, which at the time was based on 1.5 still. At first it was bit snappier, but after a short time I noticed that lag again, in fact it had gotten even worse.

I dealt with it for months, all the while contemplating buying an unlocked Milestone or maybe a Nexus One. A 2.1 rom leaked back in December 2009, but it was buggy to the piont of being useless, so I never even toyed with it. recently however, a much more stable 2.1 rom has been leaked from the Eris, and was quickly ported over to the Hero. So now I am happily running Villainrom 3.2, with 3.3 having just been released.

I now have the new market, google goggles, voice nav, 3d gallery (with a hiccup), and various other new features such as the ability to zoom out to all of my desktops for quick navigation. when my phone booted for the first time with that colorful X animation I was excited, once it booted completely to 2.1 I think I fainted.

The phone is so much more responsive, it’s retarded. I have yet to experience a freeze or a significant FC problem. I notice that programs are managed much better in 2.1, which I’m sure can be credited for some of the speed improvements.

The ability to zoom out to all 7 desktops is awesome, and the transition is exceptionally smooth, even on the Hero’s limited hardware. It used to take me minutes, literally, to get into application management through the settings menu, now its mere seconds. The keyboard is more responsive, and seems to support multi touch.

That’s not to say that there are not draw backs, such as the crappy battery life. The 3d gallery works fine in either portrait or landscape mode, until you rotate while in the gallery. It then goes crazy and you have to back out. Navigation through google maps w/voice works well enough, but the actual navigation application that comes in 2.1 does not seem to be working. GPS works, but you might have to turn it on, and then restart before it actually turns on.

do keep in mind that this is a custom rom based on a leaked Eris rom. It is NOT an official rom, and its fairly new, hence the issues that it has. I imagine the official 2.1 update, due sometime this month if I’m not mistaken, will undoubtedly be far more stable, probably even snappier, and should not have any of these problems. But that said, I am using this rom as my day-to-day rom, and have no intention of abandoning it until a better custom 2.1 rom is released, or the official update comes out. I won’t be going back to 1.5. Thanks to 2.1 I can now live with my phone, for now… but I want a Nexus One :p

here is the link to Villainrom if you would like to download it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=622468

and if you’re phone is not already rooted or you don’t know how to load a custom rom, let me know and I’ll point you in the right direction.

if you have any other questions, leave them in the comment box.

[Via http://fonefrenzy.com]

Researchers build mobile botnet using Android and jailbroken iPhones

To help raise awareness about third-party application security in smartphones, a pair of security researchers were able to build an 8,000-strong botnet using an innocuous application for weather to gain control of Android and jailbroken iPhones.

A botnet is a collection of or network of computers that run distributed computing software that usually are used for nefarious reasons, such as the distribution of malware.

The researchers distributed the software through clearinghouses that offer applications to Androids and jailbroken iPhones. The term ‘jailbreak’ means to allow any code to run on an iPhone or iPod Touch as opposed to only code authorized by Apple. It should be strongly noted that the pair avoided the iPhone app store because of Apple’s strict security process regarding submissions.

The researchers stated that this proof-of-concept code have no plans of releasing the application.

More information

[Via http://freemiumtech.wordpress.com]

Cardboard Androids

Who needs expensive acrylic based, microcontrolled robots with only a few sensors available when cardboard and an Android cellphone will work much better  for much less in cost! The team over at Cellbots have done just that. While they did cheat a little by using a laser cut cardboard for exact measurements and including an Arduino to control the servos, they certainly attained their goal of “cheap” (assuming the already had the cellphone). We’re just wondering why it took them 4 weeks for a little CAD and code.

Regardless, one idea that immediately comes to mind is thousands hundreds a few little cardboard swarm bots ravaging homes everywhere, just don’t step on them.

[Thanks Mashable]

[Via http://hackaday.com]

Biweekly Links - 03-05-2010

1. Building a Better Teacher

A good article from NYT which talks about a quest to make high school teachers better and more effective . The article had some interesting points. For eg it implied that improving existing teachers is better than hiring better teachers. (partly because there are 1 Million+ teachers in US alone and finding so many good ones is hard). One of the ideas was that to be effective a teacher to grab student’s attention. Overall an interesting read. Although, it made me think if there is any similar studies made on university level education (especially graduate level). Andrew Gelman’s thoughts about the article is here

2. Top five gadgets from Microsoft’s research labs

I saw many interesting prototypes from TechFest. My favorite was Microsoft’s Translating Phone. Most of them were real cool.

3. Google News

Google had some nice posts this week and my favorite was Hopping on a Face Manifold via People Hopper. The application is very interesting. The problem is a real hard problem (even if you forget that they are handling millions of photos) and they seem to have done a decent job ! I noted that all people in Orkut are automatically opted in. Yikes .. Looks like another buzz like privacy controversy is in the making.

A polyglot Google Chrome beta, with new privacy features is a new feature in Chrome to automatically translate pages in foreign language. Cool !

Some cool applications for Android smart phones – Android app can recognize a person, pull up his status updates and Microsoft’s Tag Links the Physical World To the Internet . The concept of Microsoft tag looks pretty interesting !

Talking about Smartphones, NYT had a nice graph on who sued who on mobile patents – See more at An Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits .

4. How To Improve Chat Roulette

A nice article on improving chat roulette.

5. At Last — The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded

A controversial and conspiracy theoryish article on how facebook was founded. Not sure how much to trust or what to make of it.

6. Spring 2010 jQuery Talks

Jquery recently has become one of my favorited libraries. I find using it pretty delightful ! This page has some slides that give a nice overview of JQuery.

7. Don’t Look Back

An interesting commentary on a book by Taliban’s Abdul Salam Zaeef. Had some interesting aphorisms. Another interesting but disturbing article from Joseph – The Karachi project.

[Via http://saravananthirumuruganathan.wordpress.com]

Apple, HTC, And A Few Good Patents

I read a contrarian view of the Apple/HTC lawsuit that wasn’t like the articles about invented sub-plots and psychoanalysis of what’s “really” going on. The odd thing is the latter articles don’t agree, so there’s no consensus from this group about what’s supposed to really be going on anyway.

As for me, I have no problem suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Apple thinks their IP is being stolen and is suing for it.

In any case, the contrarian article made me think of a certain speech from a movie we all know; I’ve modified it as appropriate below. Sure, it’s over dramatic, but then again…

Apple: You want answers?

Bloggers: We think we’re entitled to them.

Apple: You want answers?

Bloggers: We want the truth!

Apple: You can’t handle the truth! Boys, we live in a world that has patents. And those patents have to be protected by men with briefcases. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Mr. Pundit? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for “competition” and you curse the lawsuit. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that this lawsuit, while unwanted, probably saves innovation. And its existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves innovation. You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want those patents. You need those patents. We use words like IP, innovation, design. We use these words as the backbone to a life spent producing something. You use them for page hits. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very ecosystem I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I’d rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a new device/SDK and start writing. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.

Posted via email from The Small Wave.

[Via http://thesmallwave.com]

Apple vs. HTC: What the experts say

There’s a lot of second-guessing in the second-day stories

On Tuesday morning, Apple (AAPL) announced that it had sued Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC for, in Steve Jobs’ words, stealing Apple’s patented technology. See Apple strikes back.

By Tuesday afternoon, the experts had begun to weigh in, although few seemed to have any familiarity with the 20 patents named in the complaints. We’ll get to what they had to say in a moment.

For now, the closest thing we have to an expert on these particular patents is Engadget’s Nilay Patel, who did a thorough teardown of No. ‘949 –  so-called iPhone patent — last January. That’s when Apple COO Tim Cook, referring to the Palm (PALM) Pre, first threated legal action against “people ripping off our IP [intellectual property].”

In a long Engadget post filed Tuesday, Patel walked through the 20 patents at issue in these cases and concluded, as most observers have, that Apple’s real target is Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system. (The company seems content to let the Pre run out of steam on its own.)

Apple has “organized its attack very carefully,” Patel writes, splitting the case in two and filing it in two different courts.

Broadly speaking, the 10 patents brought before a U.S. District Court in Delaware cover the way users interact with a touchscreen — unlocking a device by swiping the image of a lock, for example, or setting in motion a list that seems to have its own momentum and bounces a little when it hits bottom.

The 10 patents filed before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington are older, operating system-level patents — some dating back to NeXT — that cover such details as how an object-oriented programming language exchanges messages or handles multitasking.

The older, OS-level patents brought before the ITC, Patel says, would traditionally be considered stronger. But either court could issue fines or stop HTC from selling the phones named in the suits.

“The real question now,” he concludes, “is how HTC is going to respond — and whether or not Google is going to get involved.”

The rest of the experts — the ones who don’t seem to have read the patents — are more concerned with strategy and precedents.

Kevin Rivette, a patent lawyer and former vice president for intellectual property strategy at I.B.M. (IBM), told the New York Times‘ Brad Stone that the lawsuit “is the opening shot in a war”:

“Apple is island-hopping, attacking first the Asian companies. Then it can go after Motorola, gradually whittling away at Google’s base. They want to break the Android tsunami.”

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, agrees, and told the Times‘ Nick Bilton that it’s not too late for Apple to drag Google into the case:

“It clearly involves some form of litigation strategy of picking off the weaker members of the herd first,” Mr Zittrain said. “They can always add Google to the suit later on.”

Several experts pointed out that these cases can go on for 5 or 10 years, which is why most of them — estimates ranged from 90% to 95% — are settled out of court. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research, seemed pretty sure that this one would too.

“No one will be prevented from importing their phones into the country,” he told BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl. “It’s just a matter of how much money flows to which party for the rights they end up swapping.”

But none of these experts have dealt with Steve Jobs, who can be very stubborn, or Apple legal, which as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, is better known as a counter puncher.

“Off the top of my head, this is the first time I can recall Apple filing a patent lawsuit against a competitor except as a counter-suit (e.g. against Nokia). I can’t speak to the hardware and ‘architecture’ issues, but I despise the idea of ‘user interface’ patents.”

Eric Von Hippel, a professor of technological innovation at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, agrees.

“It’s a bad scene right now,” he told the Times‘ Bilton. “The social value of patents was supposed to be to encourage innovation — that’s what society gets out of it,” he said. “The net effect is that they decrease innovation, and in the end, the public loses out.”

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

[Via http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com]

Reflecting this Moment

A couple of weeks we went out to the local bar with some friends. A buddy of mine got a new phone and I really liked the look and feel of it. The next day, after getting fed up with my Palm Pro not receiving calls for hours at a time, I decided to see if I was eligible for an upgrade. To my surprise, I was. So I loaded up the kids and went to my local Sprint store and got myself a new Samsung Moment with Google.

The phone itself has a bit of bulk to it weighing in at 5.67 ounces, but Ipersonally like that. It’s not huge or very heavy but it does feel sturdy in my hand. Part of its bulk is attributed to its slide out QWERTY keyboard. More on that in a moment. I like the screen although it does feel a bit plasticky, which it no strike against it because it is responsive, just that the glass screen on theiPhone is so nice to the touch. The few physical buttons and overall construction is sturdy, I don’t feel like its going to break under my fingers.

This is my first experience with the Android OS from google but it by farbetter than the Windows Mobile my old phone had. At some points there is a moment of lag between tapping a command and it getting executed. I attribute that to the 800MHz ARM11 processor and 512mb of memory. If it had just a touch more I’m sure it would fly. All the services work like they should. Calls don’t feel bogged down by the os, text’s and MMS’s come and good just fine. And all these default apps can be replaced from apps in the Android Store.

I love the AMOLED screen! It’s bright, crisp, clear, and beautiful. Animationsare nice and smooth. It does  both portrait and landscape modes but it feels like the transition from one to the other is clumsy.

The keyboard is in my opinion the weakest part of the phone. The slide function feels like it should, strong and built to do its job but the keys them self don’t feel right to the touch. All the keys are separated, back-lit, andrecessed with the keys bubbling up just slightly. They feel like they are made of cheap plastic. I am a little concerned that these keys could tear under my fingers with normal use.

The WiFi adapter does what it’s suppose to do with no problem. I love that on/off widget I found to handle it. The bluetooth works perfectly with the Sync system that’s in my new car, look for a post about that in the near future. Other notable features are a 3.5mm headphone jack, which should be standard on all phones. I’m talking to you designers! Lithium Ion battery with5hours of talk time. The battery does drane very fast when Im at work and trying to use it like a micro pc to stave off the boredom. 3.2 megapixle camera that does support video and has a nice led flash. Finally it came with a 2bgmicro SCHC card.

Service through Sprint has been almost flawless… almost. As long as I’m not in my plant service is great! No problems. Data is fast and reliable. When I enter my plant my connection drops through the floor. I don’t  think it’s Sprints fault as it seems anyone around my work area with Sprint just suddenly started to have connection trouble within the plant.

My opinion? I love this phone. It does everything I want it do and if it doesnt, I can more then likely  find an app on the store. integration with my google account was seamless and flawless. Automatically downloaded my contacts and colander information, which is expected when you get a google powered phone. Id defiantly recommend the Moment to anyone looking for a smartphone on the Sprint network.

Check it out and get more details here.

[Via http://geekalacarte.wordpress.com]

Whitepaper - Desktop Sync Options for Android

CompanionLink has published a whitepaper that explores the options for syncing Android to the desktop. Compare features and benefits between Google Calendar Sync, the Microsoft Outlook plug-in for Google Apps Premier, HTC Sync and CompanionLink’s wired and wireless sync options. This can be extremely helpful when looking for a solution to sync contacts, calendar, tasks and notes to an Android device. Feel free to download the whitepaper for your own reference or to distribute to friends and clients.

You can download the whitepaper here.

[Via http://companionlink.wordpress.com]

Introducing Native Applications of Epocrates Rx for Android and Palm Pre

Epocrates Rx, the free version of the Epocrates clinical drug information application, is now available for the Android and Palm Pre platforms as a beta release. This release is fully functional with multiple clinical tools (drug information, product identification, medical calculators, drug interactions); however, the clinical content will not be updated until the full version is released. For download details, see

http://www.epocrates.com/products/rx/

[Via http://thenewalchemist.wordpress.com]