Posts by Techwriter10

So what you're saying is you don't want companies, artists or anyone else to have an opinion, especially if it disagrees with yours. This is an election year. Lots of people on both sides of the issue consider it extremely important. The fact that some people such as Chris Martin express his opinion is hardly surprising. You don't have to like what they say, but you can't deny they have a right to say it.

BTW, Carly Firorina is an advisor to McCain. She's a widely known figure in the computer industry. Do you have a problem with her expressing her opinion, or is just people who support Obama and Prop 8 in CA?

Ron

Eddie,
Susan Sarandon is actually quite active in civil rights issues. In an interview with the Independent, she is quoted as saying:

“Sometimes I don’t even understand the ramifications of what I say; all I know is that I just can’t live with myself if I don’t say something. I’m aware that I’ve become some kind of joke in terms of my activism but it’s not something I can worry about..."

Sean Penn has spoken out vehemently about free speech issues and publicly called out the Bush administration on policies he disagreed with. He won the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award for his work on protection free speech.

What Apple is doing is in my view commendable. Companies have a right to speak out when they feel there is injustice, especially when it has a profound on affect on its own employees.

I've actually heard from people who are more likely to buy and use Apple products, so it cuts both ways.

But you're right that companies do need to be careful about how they go about this, but it can also work to a company's advantage to do what it considers the right thing.

In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
They're only made of clay
But our love is here to stay
~Ira Gershwin.

These are heady days for Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs. In spite of a world economy that appears to be sliding out of control, and with rumors swirling that Jobs is either retiring, near death, or at least gravely ill; the company he helped found continues to thrive. The iPhone, a mere 15 months after it hit the market, actually outsold RIM, the makers of Blackberry last quarter, selling an unbelievable 7 million units--a fact that Steve Jobs was so pleased about, he took the unusual step of announcing 3rd quarter results himself on Monday.

While Jobs admitted the economy was shaky, he also pointed out that Apple was well positioned to ride out the storm. With an estimated $25B in cash reserves, its not surprising that Jobs is confident in spite of the rash of bad new economic news. While Apple has been raking in the dough, they have also been squirreling it away. Jobs says his company could make some tactical purchases, they could put the money into developing a new generation of products to wow the masses, or they could just hold onto the money. As Macworld reported, the money is not burning a hole in his pocket. Nice to know that Jobs not only runs an innovative company, he's careful with …

Another great post, Lisa. Nice job.

Ron

Very cool, Lisa, but let's hope this isn't a trend or we will be out of business soon. :-)

You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast which is what I tried to do.
~Jane Fonda

Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to have learned Jane Fonda's big life lesson. In fact, dude doesn't know when to shut up, which is fairly odd given that he is the CEO of a huge corporation. Ballmer gave a talk last week at the Gartner's Symposium ITxpo in Orlando where by all reports he let go not one, but two major gaffes (and that's just the ones I heard about), two such incredibly stupid statements for a person in his position to say, that I felt compelled to write about them. One involved Yahoo! The other involved his embattled OS: Vista.

Let's Give Yahoo! Stock a Lift

Let's start with the Yahoo! mess. Ballmer said that while the Yahoo! talks were stalled, a deal would make sense for both companies' stockholders. In fact, Ballmer may be right. It probably does make sense for both companies, at least to me, but I'm not the CEO of Microsoft talking. When I say something, stock prices don't rise and fall. When Ballmer said something, it actually drove up the price of Yahoo! stock 13 percent the afternoon after he made his little slip. Microsoft released a terse statement later on that there was nothing doing between Microsoft and Yahoo!, but the deed …

Yea, funny how that works. I write about content management and related issues including email archiving for Fierce Content Management and funnily enough my Editor's Corner this past week was about email archiving. Turns out a study has found that many companies don't understand the difference between email archiving and backup even though they are legally obligated under eDiscovery rules in the US to have an archiving plan in place.

It may truly be that Palin's office is just incompetent, or it may be that they are trying to make it as difficult as possible. I wonder if the transparent governor of Alaska supports a Freedom of Information Act, which if I'm not mistaken would require the government to give those public emails to anyone who made an official request at no cost to the requestor.

You can read my Ed. Corner here:
http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/

My colleague Joe Brockmeier takes exception to my post on his Community, Incorporated Blog on ZDNet. Good counter point. Well worth the read. Thanks, Joe.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/?p=120

Hi Sean:
Well, they famously started in a garage, but they are clearly in more comfortable surroundings today. I'm not sure it was the analysts who were complaining about the lack of firewire, so much as a group of committed technical users. I'm not suggesting that firewire isn't superior technology to USB, but let's face it, USB has won the battle. How many devices have USB support? How many have firewire? I think that's the way that Apple had to look at it, from a business perspective.

Thanks for the comment.

Darn, forgot about that one. Thanks for pointing out another bold move on Apple's part.

There's been a lot of hullabaloo this week on the internet about Apple's audacity to announce the new Mac Book line without [wait for it] a firewire port [gasp audibly]. I know, it's a bold move on Apple's part, and it didn't help matters when Apple reportedly deleted a thread on its site critical of the action, but people, I know you're angry about this, but isn't it time we trust Apple's judgment? Throughout its history, Apple and its fearless leader, Steve Jobs, have correctly read the technology tea leaves again and again. Why can't you have a little faith this time too?

Think back to the time when Apple delivered a computer without a 3.5 floppy drive. Everyone thought it was the mark of a crazy company, that they had lost all sense of direction, that common sense had gone out the window in Cupertino, but you know what? They rightly predicted that the floppy drive was obsolete technology. It didn't make the folks with a box full of them on their shelf very happy at the time, but in retrospect it was the right move.

Remember when the iPhone came out and everybody wanted to know where the keyboard was? C'mon admit it, you thought this touch screen typing idea was just a bit loopy didn't you? But use it for a half hour as I did (Before You Get an iPhone, Be Sure You've Got the Touch), you'll find that it's actually more …

Right. We wouldn't have anything to complain about if the did it right. Not to worry. That's not likely to happen. It is more likely it will ship as you described in your last paragraph. :-)

Thanks for the lengthy comment. You're obviously as annoyed with Windows as I am.

John Dvorak at PC Magazine, a grand old curmudgeon who never pulls any punches created a wish list for Windows 7. It got me thinking about my own wish list, so here goes:

1. Don't Make Me Wait Forever at Boot Time

Nothing aggravates me more than waiting for Windows to boot up. It takes forever and seems to take longer with each passing version. I remember some time ago Bill Gates ordering his programmers to speed up boot time. They seemed to have missed the memo because it never happened, and if anything it got worse.

2. Gives us a Little Credit about Security

Don't dumb down Windows 7 like you did Vista. Give us a little credit, so that the computer is actually useful. Don't ask me if I'm sure if I want to load a program, and after I click that it's OK, certainly don't keep asking me again and again.

It shouldn't be a chore to install software and certainly the OS should get the hell out of the way. Vista is constantly in the way and it's so annoying, it makes me want to scream every time I have to interact with it. It's madness and if you want to make me happy, just let me install the damn software in Windows 7. Thanks.

3. It's My Stuff, so Let Me Use It

Why is Microsoft so concerned about protecting the RIAA and the MPAA? …

With no end in sight to the economic malaise and a good chance that this could be lasting a while, it's time to find ways to cut your IT budget. Just today OpenOffice.org announced that the Release Version of OpenOffice 3.0 is available on its web site, and it's proving so popular, that the servers are having trouble keeping up with demand. With this in mind, it might be a good time to think about moving some licenses from pay to free.

Free is Good, No Really

OpenOffice, the free alternative to Microsoft Office, is a sterling example of all that is good about the open source concept. You have a team of dedicated programmers from all over the world working to generate free software with much of the same functionality as the pay versions. I downloaded it for my 13 year old son recently. He couldn't afford the cost of a Microsoft Office license, so I told him to use OO instead. He wanted to know how they could give it away for nothing? It's a fair question and not easy to explain, but there are people who want to help build free software, to be a part of that and to prove it's possible.

Part of the challenge open source faces, especially in the enterprise, is a perception that if it's free, it must be inferior or they would be charging for it. Some enterprise CIOs have the same confusion as …

So I once again prove the danger of blogging about rumors. There is in fact, no $800 Mac Book or even $899. It appears there will be a sub-$1000 notebook, but just so at $999, hardly what people had in mind. Still the new Mac Books do look very interesting. They're just not as cheap as rumored or hoped for.

I can only speculate of course, but my guess is that it will be available in all markets eventually with a similar discount applied for currency differences. As for performance, and again purely speculating on my part, I would expect at a minimum it has a Core 2 Duo chip and gig of RAM. I can't see anything less that running Leopard. I imagine you might see them saving on hard drive size, perhaps 80 MB instead of 160. There is also talk of this new manufacturing process, which is also supposed to result in cost savings. But the bottom line is we'll all learn this together on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see what they offer for the money (if indeed the rumor is true because we've seen this with every Apple announcement and there's usually some truth to the rumor, but they often get at least part of it wrong).

Good thought, but my guess based on all the rumors is that this is going to be an entirely new model. By most accounts it will be a light weight aluminum case and I'm sure whatever it is, it's optimized for OSX 10.5. So I doubt Apple would simply repackage an old machine. I think it's going to be one of those announcements that get people to stand up and take notice (again).

Hi:
Thanks for the comment. I think Apple might have figured that they needed to get into the sub-1000 game whether or not they knew about or anticipated the recession. Regarding the stock, I don't give advice, but I've been wondering the same thing. :-)

Thanks again for the great comment.

Rumors are flying this week ahead of Apple's big Mac Book event on Tuesday that it will announce the long rumored sub-$1000 notebook. In fact, my friends at The Unofficial Apple Weblog are reporting that someone has gotten their hands on a price sheet ahead of the announcement suggesting that there will be an $800 Mac Book. If it's true, and nothing is official yet--Apple tends to be tight-lipped about announcements, as you are no doubt aware--it comes at perfect time as consumers are hungry for lower prices.

Apple Stock Price Nose-Diving

You might have noticed that the stock market has been tanking this week and Apple's stock price has been caught up in the downward spiral. Some analysts are saying this is a natural fall-out of the economic storm that's been brewing this Fall. The argument goes that if consumers stop spending money, then it's natural to expect that Apple products might fall down the list of priorities on the family budget after, you know, food, housing, heat, that sort of thing.

It makes sense, but as I wrote a couple of weeks ago in this space in What Does the Economic Downturn Mean to the Tech Sector?:

Mac User reported recently in article called Economy down, Apple up, that in spite of the economic situation, a survey by Changewave showed that people were still willing to spend money on Apple products, even though overall consumer electronics spending was …

Over the last week or so, I've been exploring cloud computing. My basic thesis through this series has been that as the economy sours--it's darn close to curdling--cloud computing gives you access to sophisticated applications without expensive hardware.

Sounds like a smart play on the face of it, but when Richard Stallman, the Dean of the free software movement weighs in that it's actually stupid, it's going to make you stand up and take notice. So to get yet another view on all of this, I had a chat with Rishi Chandra, the product manager for Google Docs Enterprise.

Perception Versus Reality

Not surprisingly Chandra has a polar opposite view of cloud computing from Richard Stallman. Google is one of the preeminent cloud vendors, so that's hardly surprising. In fact, Chandra had quite a bit to say on the subject and he believes that many of the fears of cloud computing are related more to perception than reality, a misplaced belief that your data is less secure, less accessible and less available. He would argue in fact, that your data is more secure, and as for ownership, well in Chandra's view, the data belongs to you and you can always take your ball and go home if you're not happy with the service.

Simpler Collaboration Model

Chandra says the obvious value argument for Cloud Computing is the one that I've been making, it costs less. "I think it's a …

Well I think this one is that case, Guy. From what I've read, this guy is in serious trouble. As I say, anyone who uses the title journalist, regardless of whether they put the word citizen in front of it is still subject to the same rules. By the way, I think your posts qualify you to remove the citizen designation.

Note that the first sentence should read, an untrue rumor began circulating that Apple CEO *Steve Jobs* had...

My apologies. This systems shuts down editing after 30 minutes so there is no way for me to fix it.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
~Mark Twain.

This week we learned what can happen when Citizen Journalism runs amok when an untrue rumor began circulating that Apple CEO had suffered a severe heart attack. As soon as the original report hit the CNN Citizen Journalism site, iReport, the rumor spread like wild fire around the internet. Within the hour, however, some professional journalists made some phone calls and learned it wasn't true--Jobs was fine. The SEC is now investigating the citizen journalist who wrote the piece--who goes by the name Johntw--and John is quickly learning that being a journalist carries with it some grave responsibilities. As my colleague Ryan Satterfield writes in his DaniWeb blog, you have to check your facts. (Interesting side note: Johntw's profile has been removed from iReport.)

Unfiltered and Unedited
The site that published the rumor is billed as 'Unedited, Unfiltered News.' Maybe that was part of the problem. Before I go too far, I have to say that I'm a huge fan of Citizen Journalism. I believe that that blogs and publishing outlets that give citizens a way to report on the world around them help promote democracy and a more informed society, but like any concept, it has its pros and cons. Unedited news can in fact result in serious consequences as we have learned. It's one thing to send photos …

Thanks for the comment. I think a lot has been said about security and privacy, and there are certainly legitimate concerns, but I think that the big players have addressed this and it will be less of an issue in the future when we begin to think of computing in the terms Newton described.

I'll talk about this more next week in my interview with Rishi Chandra from Google. I don't want to minimize the security concerns, but I also think you have to know that keeping data secure has to be the biggest priority for these companies. If word leaked out that data was being accessed by anyone other than the data owner, people would leave the service en masse.

If you start to think about computing as a commodity like electricity, that it's always there, then it makes sense. You don't worry about plugging in something in. I think that's the part you missed focusing on his answer regarding the rms comment.

Readers checking this via RSS reader, note that original feed had a typo in the title. That has been fixed.

My post the other day, Does Using Gmail Mean You're Stupid, produced some thoughtful comments from people that made me me think harder about the advantages and disadvantages of Cloud Computing. There are security risks and data ownership issues that you have to take into consideration. To get another point of view on the matter, I talked to John Newton, who is the Chairman and CTO at open source content management Alfresco, a company I've written about frequently over the last year. I asked him about his views on some of these issues.

Tech Treasures: As IT budgets inevitably tighten over the coming year, how can Cloud vendors take advantage?

JN: There have been a number of companies that have not been willing to look at cloud computing for fear of moving information beyond the firewall. This is mainly the fear of the unknown, although many companies have a legitimate reason to not put information outside the firewall. The credit crunch putting limits on capital access and the slowing of the economy put constraints on spending will get those who wouldn't have considered cloud computing to go ahead and give it a try. A lot of companies will probably find that it gives them much greater value for money.

TechTreasures: What benefits do Cloud computing offer companies looking to cut costs?

JN: The cost of infrastructure is definitely subject to economies of scale. Cloud computing can provide computing …

I did a follow up post to this one where I interview Alfresco chairman and CTO John Newton and ask him his views on the Cloud. Please check it out:

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3285.html

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts in such detail. I could probably give a counter argument for each of your points, but I will say this, for small businesses, Cloud computing and SaaS makes a lot of sense. Most small businesses don't have the IT staff and it is more cost-effective to go with a service leaving the business owner to deal with running the business instead of worrying about computer infrastructure management.

Thanks again for your detailed comments. This is turning into a great discussion about the pros and cons of Cloud Computing. And as I say, in the form of a tease, expect more on this subject in the coming days.

Great points and I don't disagree with you. Perhaps that's what he was getting at, but I don't see any company giving up total control of all its data to the Cloud. It's not going to happen. There are privacy laws. There are other laws such as HIPPA and Sarbanes Oxley that wouldn't allow that as currently written (even if a company wanted to do that, and I don't think many would).

I think in time we will see the cloud as one piece in the computing arsenal. I don't see it as the be all and end all of data collection, but I do think it's a certainly a valid approach. I sent John Newton, who is CTO at Alfresco, an open source content management vendor, some questions the other day about the future of Cloud computing, and I plan to post his answers some time soon. He has some interesting ideas on how to address these issues you bring up. Thanks again for your thoughtful answer. I appreciate you taking the time to leave such a detailed comment.

Hey Ken. He's out on front on a lot of things, but I agree, he is off base with this one. I know there are privacy concerns, but the Cloud isn't going anywhere. It's just too convenient.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, stated the other day that he thought Cloud Computing was stupid and we were all being duped by the cloud vendors. Specifically, in an interview with London's Guardian newspaper, he said, ""It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian. I was surprised by this response because as the economy worsens, it seems to me the Cloud is actually a safe haven where you can continue to operate without worrying about expensive infrastructure investments. On a consumer level it gives you access to free web-based apps like GMail, which by the way millions of people including many Linux users, are happily using. Sounds like a worthy trade-off, and dare I say, smart, doesn't it? Well, Stallman isn't alone in this belief.

Politics Make Strange Bedfellows
When they say politics makes strange bedfellows, never was there a truer statement than as the Guardian article points out, Stallman was actually echoing an earlier statement from none other than Larry Ellison of Oracle, two fellows who couldn't be more different. Yet Ellison, who probably has more at stake than personal philosophy referred to the Cloud in these terms. "...Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?" Wow, and here I was thinking that GMail was pretty …

It's probably worth noting that I wrote this post Sunday afternoon when things looked a lot brighter than they do at this moment on Monday evening, but obviously the situation is fluid and subject to change from one moment to the next. Short of doing nothing, which seems unthinkable, at least to me, I still believe there are parts of the technology sector that will continue to thrive in a down economy. Obviously, if the Congress continued to do nothing, then all bets would be off, but let's hope common sense prevails for all our sakes.

You can't go back
and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you
then the lightning will
~The Grateful Dead.

Gloomy economic reports continue to pervade our daily news. It has me wondering if the problems on Wall Street will eventually trickle down to the tech sector or if by some miracle it will somehow escape the current crisis. Certainly, if the credit crunch were to continue, it would begin to wear on every business, regardless of the sector, but if the bail out passes and credit loosens technology could be just fine.

In fact, content management vendors could come out of the crisis doing very well. I wrote an Editor's Corner last week for Fierce Content Management called From the ashes of the economic melt down, ECM could thrive. The reason for my optimism is that the current bill expected to pass Congress includes strong oversight provisions. The last time we went through economic free-fall, it involved companies like Enron and WorldCom and Sarbanes Oxley, which called for strict SEC oversight of company accounting policies, was passed and gave rise to a whole new market for content management vendors. A similar dynamic could be at play here as the government demands more accountability in exchange for the billions of dollars it is handing over to Wall Street firms.

Mac User reported recently in article called Economy down, Apple up, that in spite of …

Guy,
All excellent points. Great post.

Ron

Check out this related article I wrote called Watch Out iPhone, Android is Coming in which I interview Rob Jackson, who has been writing Phandroid.com, an Android news blog, since the very day Google announced Android.

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3175.html

Hi Lisa:
Thanks for the comment. I suspect as we see more phones with Android and the platform develops more, it's going to put some serious pressure on Apple to be more flexible. As I said, the iPhone is a single phone, Android could be on many phones with many different approaches. As this happens, it will be interesting see how the cell phone market shakes out as a result.

Hi Char:
Thanks for the comment. All good points. And you think they would include that modem as an incentive to get the few customers they do have to switch to the G1.

And honestly, no disrespect to T-Mobile (well, a little), but they are a distant fourth in the US provider market and I was just pointing that out (forcefully). :-)

I agree there's plenty of time to sort out the Android market. Why buy 1.0 technology.

Everyone is all ga-ga this week over the G1, the new HTC phone from T-Mobile, which is the first phone powered by Google's Android phone OS. On one level, the geek in me certainly shares the excitement. It's open source. It's Google's first entree into the phone market. I'm not denying it's big news, but I'm having a hard time getting too excited over it. The G1 aint the iPhone folks. I'm sure if you asked people on the street if they knew what Android was, most would look at you with blank stares. By now, sure, they know there's a Google phone, but that's about it.

So to temper the excitement a bit and get back to reality, I came up with a list of 5 reasons not to get the G1. Here we go...

It's too expensive
At $179.00, the G1 costs too much. If Google and T-Mobile really want to compete with the iPhone, they would have come out with a phone under $100. Let's be real here. It's freaking open source. I thought one of the advantages of open source was it lowered the cost of the phone.

It's T-Mobile
T-Mobile runs a distant fourth in the cell phone carrier race in the U.S. Before Europeans get all up in arms, I know T-Mobile is a worldwide force, but in the U.S., they are nothing much, nothing much. Why would Google choose the also-ran to be the carrier for …

I think it's unrealistic for us to expect that Apple will hit a home run with every single announcement. The iPhone and iPod continue to be wildly popular. At this point, what can we really expect from the iPod and iTunes, but incremental upgrades devoid of the Wow! factor. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Grammar Girl, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :)

Over the past year or so, Twitter has become a full-blown communications phenomenon. For those of you who don't follow every social networking trend. Twitter is a micro-blogging site where you enter your thoughts, whatever they may be, in 140 or characters or less. Experts say if you aren't paying attention to Twitter, your business may be missing out on more than you think.

Last July I became aware of the power of Twitter when I wrote a post called, Trouble with Your Vendor, Try Twitter. During an interview with Brent Leary, a partner at CRM Essentials, for an article I was doing for InsideCRM on how to get your CRM vendor to add a feature you want, Leary surprised me when he suggested that you should put the problem on Twitter and see if someone can help you or if you can get your vendor's attention. It was at that moment I realized that Twitter was much more powerful than I had thought and companies needed to be paying attention.

I have to admit when I first encountered Twitter, I really didn't get the appeal, but over time I've found it serves several purposes. It's a publishing outlet for sharing ideas in discrete chunks. You can use it for publicity to let people know what you're up to. You can use it as a social tool to connect with like-minded people and you can use it as …

Chris Sherman from SearchWise (http://www.searchwise.net/news.htm) suggests taking a look at EveryZing (http://www.everyzing.com/) for a company doing some very interesting work in the video search space.

Absolutely, it's huge and it's been a huge gap on the internet to date. Lots of video, but no efficient *mainstream* way to search inside the video to get to the bits you really need or want to see.

If they pull this off so that they can index video audio tracks as quickly and efficiently as they do text, it will enable us as searchers to search across media without regard to whether it's text or video and that will be a major leap forward. But still a long way to get there. This is just a first step.

Google quietly introduced an audio search tool called GAudi this week in Google Labs. For now, Google is using to the tool for experimentation purposes to index political content on YouTube videos, but chances are they are exploring this for more than good citizenship points and will expand it at some point in the future. Arnaud Sahuguet, the Product Manager for the Google Audio Indexing project explained to me exactly what this new development means.

Up until now, only a few small multimedia search companies have been able to index audio effectively including Nexidia and TVEyes, two pioneering companies in the audio indexing space. In fact I wrote about these companies in a Streaming Media Magazine article last year called The Search is On. These companies are able to index with incredible speed with Nexidia building a phonetic index and TVEyes using a hybrid approach of phonetic indexing and using a library of known terms.

According to Sahuget, Google Audio Indexing uses speech technology to transform spoken words into text and uses the Google indexing technology to return the best results to the user. "The returned videos are ranked based -- among other things -- on the spoken content, the metadata, and the freshness of the video. We periodically crawl the YouTube political channels for new content. As soon as a new video is uploaded to YouTube, it is processed by our system and made available in our …

Great report, Ken. Wish I was there with you!

Check out this related post I wrote called Five Reasons to Forego the G1:

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3242.html

Hey James:
Thanks for the comment. You may be right. It will be tough to take on the success of the iPhone, especially with T-Mobile as the carrier, but I think as you see Android on more phones, you will see a burst in popularity because of the openness.

Just a quick note: I wanted to get this published as soon as possible, so there may be a typo or two throughout. My apologies, but in my rush to publish, I took less time to proof read the piece as thoroughly as I normally do.

I know that T-Mobile is a major carrier in Europe and this could help them gain some market share in the US with people looking for an open source phone. You may be wise to be worried about Google having too much information, but I think this OS more about getting mobile ad revenue than any sinister plan to collect information about mobile phone users.

After months of speculation, TechCrunch reports that the first Android powered phone, the HTC Dream is set to be released in the US by T-Mobile on October 20th. T-Mobile did not return my calls to confirm or deny this rumor, but one thing is certain, the iPhone is no longer the only player on the block and this will increase interest in T-Mobile for the first time maybe ever.

Android is the open source cell phone operating system that has been developed by Google over the last year or so. I asked Rob Jackson, who has been writing Phandroid.com, an Android news blog, since the very day Google announced Android. Jackson is a self-described "mobile nut" and when he couldn't find any Android resources, he created a site himself. After creating the blog, Jackson started AndroidForums.com as a place to share his enthusiasm about Android with like-minded individuals and as a place to eventually answer the inevitable questions about Android phones, applications, pricing, capabilities and so on. Jackson is as excited as anyone about the TechCrunch rumor and he took a few moments to answer some questions:

RM: What is Android and why is it important?

RJ: Computers typically have Windows or Mac Operating Systems. Phones, on the other hand, usually have an operating system that the phone carrier (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) put on the device. They make money by creating their own applications/software for your phone such as GPS Navigation, …

Thanks for the note. You should try dual booting. If you're using a lot of open source tools anyway, you could probably make a smooth transition to Linux. And by dual booting, you could play with different Linux flavors until you find one that suited you. Then you could strip Vista out of the equation altogether.