My heart goes for Palm

I am crying not only for it sank to $ 3 but for the fact that Palm Centro is one of the best phone on market. What a waste.

Yes it is still the best despite iPhones and Blackberries of the world. I can vouch on it - I have all three:-). Its not coming from a quick hush hush review of 15 mins , I been using all three from last six months. There are many things that you realize only after you spend some time and sleepover few nights. I use Blackberry as my standby laptop, my daughter has an iTouch and she uses Palm Centro as a phone. Technically I end up using all three coz she is (in her own lingo ) a noob :-)



Just to give you a feature by feature

1. Best speaker .. iPhone and Blackberry can't even come close. The best rival is Sony Walkman

2. Best Design - The white Centro is a piece of art. iPhone may boast all the design credits but Centro beats it right on key pad

3. Touchscreen - Yes iPod is better here but Blackberry doesn't even have a touchscreen. It beats iPhone coz it has both touchscreen and keypad. The best part is that little hole for a stylus. How else would you use a touchscreen while eating or repairing an engine or painting or ....No wonder iPhone folks spend most their time in Nails. Guess what , you can literally sketch on Centro. You can write on top of photographs. Now that is one thing I didn't see in any of the phones thus far.

4. Video - I was so astonished to find Blackberry Curve can't record a video. Even Sony walkman does it.

Now the question is why it didn't click. One obvious reason is they came up too late. They kept on with that bulky hammer like Treo with weird antenna just too long. Blackberry had already grabbed the market with its style.

Whatever be the reason , its just feels bad when a good product fails for want of a good strategy.

Yahoo! to Go

Yahoo! Mobile. Introducing Yahoo! Go 3.0.

Yahoo has uppped the ante with "Yahoo to Go" mobile package. I installed the product on my Blackberry Curve this morning. Installation went good ...only one issue though ... it kicked all the links in my Apps folder (Blackberry and Google ) out to main screen . For a second I thought may be I lost all my applications , but I found them back pretty soon .. No heartbreak :-)

In terms of interface , its definitely one step ahead of Google mobile Apps. The violet theme and PS3/ PSP type horizontal bar makes it looks of next generation. Frankly , it was an iphone kind of thing on my Blackberry.

I tried maps , finance and "one Search". Everything worked fine. One search comes with a voice activated search which means you can press the call button and yell into your phone to search "Pizza". The search results run in a YTG browser interface which is pretty sleek. You can search for ticker symbols and add the stocks from search to you portfolio. The mail interface is pretty much like gmail on blackberry though gmail appears to be lot faster. The GPS (my location) on maps came with in a meter of accuracy. The good thing , I could see all my old destinations saved on yahoo maps. Didn't get time to try Flickr as most my pics are on Picassa.

Now the more interesting part. Yahoo to Go comes woth Yahoo "Blue print". The Development environment for mobile Apps



Developers can download free development kit. Yahoo provides a free QA environment and ton of code snippets.. but who wants to write these widgets any more ? I still don't know a soul who made a living writing widgets......

Slashdot | Motorola To Hire 300 Android Developers

Slashdot | Motorola To Hire 300 Android Developers

Almost all of us know the secret success sauce of Microsoft , but no one ever imagined if any other company would ever be able to replicate that. Microsoft focused on operating system , remained away from hardware (up until Xbox and June) and provided deep incentives to manufacturers using their Windows platform.

Google is repeating the same. A brilliant execution of strategy. They remained away from the lure of having their own handset (so far) and I hope they don't indulge in it. They are building an alliance of vendors around their platform and guess what they are giving the whole enchilada free of cost.

Last week we saw t-mobile unveiling the Android based handset and here you have Moto adding 300 heads for Android development. Moto has potential to do same with Google what Dell did with Microsoft.

One thing is sure, its going to redefine the future of computing and new theme is just around the corner. A success like MS can only be built whenever obvious is redefined. Microsoft got that opportunity with emergence of PC. Google can do the sme with emergence of smart phones.

White Space

When I think about white space (the spectrum that lies between two TV channels) , the first thing that comes to mind is the license raj in India. Before 1980s , most of commodities (cement and steel) were licensed by government. Back then , cement was one of the most scarce resource in India. You need to stand and wait in ques to grab a bag of cement and many times request local politicians / officials for a favor.

The net net was, very poor rate of development , corruption and inferior quality of construction. In a span of 20 short years after deregulation of cement , India today is one of the largest producer of cement and fastest growing economy in world. Private organizations produce best quality cement at a fraction of price.

It kinda made sense to regulate spectrum back in early 19th century when technology was not mature enough to avoid interference. Today more than a billion devices work perfectly well on junkiest 2.4 GHz.

FCC can argue it might lose little revenue for not being able to lease those small chunks of spectrum . How lame !!! revenue can very easily be made up by the new economic activity that will come in by opening up . Imagine a billion wi fi based devices in an year. I guess government makes more money in taxes and other ecosystem activities of 2.4 Mz than it makes by leasing rest of the best quality spectrum to likes of AT&T and Verizon. And goes without saying there is no price for invigorating innovation that we all need so desperately to keep the boundaries of knowledge and human endeavor expanding.

Once again , Google has done the right thing in standing up to the monopolies of our age. This is what makes them a real leader.