Engadget Coverage NY Times Bits Blog Coverage

At Google I/O, Googles developer conference, Android got lots of announcements and will be going to many new places – like your tv. In the presentations by executives they spent a good amount of time throwing digs at Apple, and prosthetising their openness.

Some of the interesting bits, first Android 2.2 FroYo and then Google TV (what!?)
Built in tethering, assuming your carrier supports it & wi-fi hotspot capability.

It runs apps 5X faster

Flash 10.1 runs on it – hot and at the expense of your battery say Engadget

Application updates are cleaned up – Update all now supported and can be set to automatically download

Purchase on the Web Marketplace and send to device over the air – very cool

Music store in the Marketplace – not much mentioned aside from downloading being demoed – potential very big deal here.

Stream music from your desktop – iTunes library etc – This is Simplify Media tech, a recent Google acquisition

Google Mobile AdSense – which of course make sense. Multiple ad formats from any support Ad Network, openness.

Google TV – Getting TV and the Web married, another vector for Google Ads, on your TV. Set top box UI is, um, Googley. Is that a mouse pointer I see? Yes.

Put Android Apps on your TV – If the app doesn’t require phone specific stuff it should run today.

And now your regularly scheduled mobile updates ie. non Google I/O stuff

View past graffiti after it has been cleaned up

Graffyard uses QR codes to show the visual history after graffiti has been painted over. Its a nice example of encoding the visual of the city onto itself. One can imagine a future where city walls have a secondary digital presence and all advertising, graffiti and signage takes place via a persistent visual augmented reality system. The city becomes a contiguous blank canvas, a physical platform encoded with embed tags for the reality we want to see. Maybe.

African Churches Embrace Mobile

Reminders to come to services, tithings and sharing of bible passages for study all via SMS

Nokia’s New Strategy

Marko Ahtisaari who heads up design and user experience answers some questions about how Nokia is moving to react to the mobile world that is seemingly running away from them. He focuses on a very narrow definition of mobility, which may be right, or not.

“I still think the whole industry is missing a trick,” said Mr Ahtisaari during a meet-the-press session in London yesterday. “All the touchscreen interfaces are very immersive. You have to put your head down. What Nokia is very good at is designing for mobile use: one-handed, in the pocket. Giving people the ability to have their head up again is critical to how we evolve user interfaces.”

Heads up vs. heads down is a very interesting distinction and one that raises many interesting points about mobile device usage in the public sphere. I think if Nokia can move forward with a singular, focused direction they will be positioning themselves strongly for a good segment of the market. Im not sure if that segment will be a big enough percentage to keep them afloat, and it would represent a distinct turn from the all things to all people position they have put themselves in. What about this though – more than 50% of Nokia smartphones use touch interface ?

UNLIMITXT

Speaking of heads down staring into the glowing screen – A series of photos exploring peoples relationship to their mobiles. More focused than the Flickr Lost in Text pool, which is also quite good.

The dconstruct conference website

Stretch the window down to less than 800px wide and you got the mobile version. Very elegant.

More than a third of Android users rolling on 2.1

Data compiled from a 2 week period of users accessing the Android Marketplace. Please take with a grain of salt.

Airports now on the small glowing screen

More evidence of the trend of mobile screens replacing public displays. Not sure I want to try to download an app while I’m racing through a terminal to make a connection just to see what gate my flight got moved too but, hey.

Mobile Tech Up & Comers

A nice roundup of technologies and ideas that are shaping the products of tomorrow. Links to examples for each in the article. Do note that four of the five listed here have a strong locative component.

1. AR browsers for mobile: Layers of data embedded in the real world around you that you can toggle between. Applications for real estate, food & entertainment, retail. This use of augmented reality will become how we live; not just an app. But will we be holding up our phones for long?

2. Augmented Mobile Profile: A social user interface implementation of your public profile. Real time information about the people around you and their entire “clouded” identity–from business card to playlists, Facebook profile to thought capitol on Slideshare. One of the ultimate social/mobile integrations I’ve seen.

3. The Active Idle Screen: Replaces your current homescreen with personal and valuable information (weather, trivia, sports scores, horoscope, etc.) in addition to advertisements for deals/coupons. Will reach the lowest common denominator audience.

4. QR codes without the QR: Recognizing that camera phones are crappy, we can analyze the photos. Take a picture of something and you receive contextual results around it. Mixed with geotargeting, this becomes very powerful. (Reviews, Where to buy, etc.)

5. Data Conformity: Location-based content and services are the promise of mobile marketing. But it has to work across all devices, content providers, and mobile carriers–one of today’s greatest challenges. When the great aggregator arrives, it will help to bring data conformity and data consistency.

Worldwide Mobile Browser Share

Displayed very nicely as a world map

Location Based Mobile Cinema

The film unfolds as the viewer visits different parts of the city. The more they travel, the more of the film they see. Whats great is the creators have released the technology behind it as open source, in addition to the first GPS film Nine Lives. This has to be better than the lame 3D that seems to be in fashion at the multiplex.

$12.7 Billion by 2014 in Location Based Services
A number thats as good as any and comes from Juniper Research. Whatever the numbers are predicted to be, location based services, hyper local advertising, geo targeted marketing and anything that has to do with exactly where you are at a given point in time – especially when you are not at your desk at work or in front of the television at home – is going to be a big deal. Period.

Helpful Guide for appropriate technology usage

Covers your basic situations of office, home, in car and the great outdoors. For instance usage of MacBookPro in the Great Outdoors should be avoided – the start up sound is bear for “bring it”.

I don’t remember seeing this in particular at the Swiss EXPO.02 but a number of artists working together under the name Waterproof “imagined a(n) (im)possible scenario wherein the water level in Switzerland rises to 1400 meters (4600 feet), turning the landlocked, Alpine country into an island nation, its rocky peaks rising above a vast ocean.”

The series of images over at Pruned show an imaginative take on how the Swiss might deal with their new situation.

via Pruned

New York City of today isn’t exactly as we had imagined it. Through history there have been many possible futures that have gone unrealized. The Museum of the Phantom City presents these Architectural and Urban Design proposals as one moves through the city to the intended locations via an iPhone app that is available no in the app store. The Van Alen Institute is holding a walking tour on Sturday October 3rd, the day the full site launches.

Get the Museum of the Phantom City: Other Futures iPhone app

Longbroading
Seeing a much bigger picture; thinking in terms of higher level systems, bigger networks, longer cycles

Open Authorship
Creating content for public modification; the ability to work with massively multiple contributors

Multi-Capitalism
Fluency in working and trading simultaneously with different hybrid capitals, e.g., natural, intellectual, social, financial, virtual

Signal/Noise Management
Filtering meaningful info, patterns, and commonalities from the massively-multiple streams of data and advice

Emergensight
The ability to prepare for and handle surprising results and complexity that come with coordination, cooperation and collaboration on extreme scales

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and finding the farmers daughter

- Julius Comroe Jr.