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I was over at GigaOm and came across a post from the man himself. It was about the new calendar sync application from Google for BlackBerrys. Just to give you a quick background here, Google has been rapidly releasing mobile applications for the BlackBerry platform, for its favorite services. So they support GMail, Search, Picasa, Maps and News. They launched these services in early December.
So the calendar sync impresses me the most. They have smartly integrated the native BlackBerry calendar with the Google Calendar in a bi-directional fashion. So any entries added to the Google Calendar online shows up on the handset within the native view and anything added within the native view is updated online.
The news around GPhone has heated up in past few weeks. There have been several reports of Google working with wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint. WSJ even reports that the announcement can come as early as Monday.
So it will soon be evident as what Google has in store for us. Until then we can speculate. So in this final post of the series, I look at two major components of the GPhone ecosystem, the “Application Ecosystem” and the all important “Revenue Enablement”.
This is the second part of my three part post on the GPhone. If you haven’t read the first part, please go read it here. This post takes a deeper dive and analyzes the possibilities around Messaging, Media and Productivity applications. Remember these are simply my analysis, as if I was building the phone. This is no indication of how Google may do it. Surely, I hope that I end up being pretty close to their thought process.
So without further ado, let’s begin with the Messaging.
Messaging
It goes without saying that Messaging is such an important function of our Mobile lifestyle. Pretty much all mobile devices attempt to innovate and improve the messaging offerings. SMS, MMS and Email are commonplace now on all phones. That is not to say that they have become simpler or intuitive. Any typical off the shelf phone offers multiple modes of messaging and involves a decent learning curve. It does get complicated for a mainstream user to navigate through this.
In my opinion, the GPhone can improve mobile messaging by leveraging its exemplary messaging portfolio.
Most of you know about Google throwing in the gauntlet in the wireless game. I have extensively covered some of that in this blog. Read the first four posts here:
Now things had been going hunky dory for Google. FCC had accepted two of four Google’s demands and most of the blogosphere was pretty happy with the results. However as one can expect, the big boys of wireless weren’t quite happy with the results. AT&T reacted with strong words. However Verizon the true veteran in this space had other ideas.
Verizon with its barrage of lawyers and access to unlimited knowledge of wheeling and dealing in the wireless space sued the FCC itself. They weren’t happy with the two options around open devices and open applications (surprise surprise!). As usual they want to lock the devices and offer limited access to the consumers.
Google has been pretty disappointed with these moves and has reacted strongly on their blog. RCR Wireless is also accusing Verizon of behind the scenes lobbying. All this has many worried and it seems like FCC may end up revising the rules. Google is standing by their views and are in constant conversations with FCC. Google has also claimed that if they win the auction from FCC, no matter what the rules say, they will open up the devices and applications.
Verizon who I had covered recently as the rejuvenated company, is looking as the bad guy in all this. Given their moves and public statements I am sure they aren’t making any friends. Certainly not Google.
I am definitely in favor of open policies. After all we the consumers here in the US will suffer if these rules aren’t changed. Frankly we live in the “third world” of wireless and will continue on that path if the incumbents had their way…
I finally know what I want for this Christmas. No not the iPhone or the iTouch, but iCache. Well if you are planning to buy me a iPhone, I am not going to stop you
iCache is a device solving a problem, which has been around for a while and no one has figured out a good way to handle it. In this day and age most of us carry multiple credit cards and customer loyalty cards. Every retailer I go to has some sort of a loyalty program, which I end up taking up for its benefits. Even if it doesn’t have any monetary benefits, some retailers mandate a card (like Blockbuster and Costco) for normal transactions.
Now if you are like me, over time you must have collected 8 to 10 cards. This is after I tried consolidating last year using my drivers license. So my wallet has gotten bulky and quite frankly has become a pain in the a**.
iCache has solved this in a really smart way. They have developed a really thin device which smartly stores a generic card with a magnetic stripe. Using their service, one can load all existing credit and loyalty cards. Then they can use their intuitive menu to select the card they want to use at that moment. The device temporarily enables the generic card’s magnetic stripe with the data for the card you selected.
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