google

Hard to believe that I didn't make any predictions in 2009 (my 2008 predictions)!

Herewith again some randomly ordered Mobile predictions which are worth what you paid for them!

Mobile

1. Google will introduce a "comes with data" mobile phone featuring an easy environment to write HTML5 & JS apps
2. A Canadian mobile phone carrier will actually sell mobiles other than the iPhone that have current software & aren't 6-12 months old :-) The current "sell old phones with old firmware with bogus customizations" model of Rogers, Bell and Telus will be over in 2011.
   
3. Apple's tablet will be introduced, it wil be big seller and a great creator and consumer of multi-media and it will be closed and have the iPhone App Store model rather than the Mac app model.
4. Nokia will deliver Maemo 6 and an N900 successor but it won't be good enough for the mainstream but will be awesome for me & other mobile devs because mobile Firefox will offer superior HTML5 and JS experience (yes working for Mozilla I am biased :-) !)
5. The next iPhone will boast a 5 mega pixel camera and other still and video imaging improvements which will be more than good enough for old cameraphone snobs like me and accelerate Nokia's decline among mobile multimedia creators.
6. Mozilla Messaging (my employer!) will introduce a version of Raindrop that doesn't require you to do geeky things like install things like CouchDB yourself and it will rock on Android, Maemo and any other modern open mobile web  environment (sorry Blackberry, iPhone and Symbian but you lose since you are all neither open or modern or both :-) !) Just kidding, it will rock on any modern mobile web browser open or closed methinks :-) !
   

I hope this means my friend Andy Smith who works for Jaiku gets money++ to do more cool things. Go Jaiku go!

From Official Google Blog: Reach out and message someone:

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Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone. Current Jaiku users can still use the service normally, and new folks can sign up for an invitation to the service when we're ready to expand. We plan to use the ideas and technology behind Jaiku to make compelling and useful products. Although we don't have definite plans to announce at this time, we're excited about helping drive the next round of developments in web and mobile technology. We wish a hearty Google welcome to Jaiku, and are looking forward to working together on new and innovative ways of keeping people connected.

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Using the Mac OS X Google Video Uploader, I tried to upload a 31 minute 691 MB MPEG4 640x480 30fps video I took with my N93 of today's 1st session of Drupal Training held by Bryght and Raincitystudios and Google claims the video uploaded but I don't see it anywhere in my uploaded video list. Very frustrating!

The N93 Video is impressive but it takes a lot space. 100MB for 5 minutes. So, it's quite the chain of pain to get the video and share it (yeah I know you could compress it but that takes too much time!) since most sharing services e.g.blip.tv and revver only accept 100MB videos. My 5 minute video above of the Skyte is well over 100MB. Luckily, Google Video has no limit (but the average non techie non geek person is not going to go through the hoops that I went through to post on Google Video; they'll want something easier like YouTube; now that Google owns YouTube perhaps the limits will be raised!).

Nokia needs to address this in future video phones probably by running a companion web service (or partnering with one) and also doing more compression in hardware.

[Cross posted from Bryght with title changed because I like Kris's better :-) than mine!]

Vancouver students: Want to earn $US 4500 while working on Drupal Google Summer of Code projects? We've got free WiFi, desks for two students and Drupal culture that you can soak up in spades (as well as Bryght guy Adrian being a SOC mentor) from us here at the Vancouver Bryght offices at 525 Seymour.

What's the catch? Well you have to apply by May 8th. Don't got any ideas? No problem. The Drupal community has plenty of cool ideas for software development projects. Apply online today! More info here on the official Drupal Summer of Code 2006 page as well as some tips on getting accepted.

One last thing: we'd love to have a Summer of Code student or two with us for the summer who's working on projects related to our other two open source software passions: Jabber and Identity

FROM Google Summer of Code - now accepting student applications | drupal.org:

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Hey college students, want to spend your summer writing Drupal code while getting paid by Google? Sign up to participate in the Summer of Code 2006 program and that's exactly what you could be doing.

As of May 1, Google is now accepting applications from students. You've only got until May 8th to get them in, so you'd better get on it.

Make sure to check out the list of proposed Drupal projects for inspiration. Your personal project ideas are also very welcome, so don't hesitate to deviate from the published list.

The Drupal community is absolutely dedicated to your success, and each student accepted to work on a Drupal project will have two personal mentors to work with. There is also a team of people standing by to answer your questions or help you with your application.

Make sure to read the tips and guidelines for applying.

Good luck, and may your summer be filled with great Drupal coding!

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It seems like only yesterday that I first started using Writely. In fact it was back in early October 2005, five months ago. Since then it's become my default cross platform way to create rich documents collaboratively despite its bugs like the fact that it can't pass the "Roland and Troy nested list test" (but then no web writing app does!). Congrats to the Writely folks.

To the fine folks at Google a few humble pleas: Please don't pull a Blogger. Keep adding features such as fixing the aforementioned nested list bug. Keep Writely competitive unlike Blogger. And finally consider picking up Dabble DB as your spreadsheet web app.

From Google? Yep, Google! .:

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Writely is now part of Google!

Yes, we've been acquired by Google, and we're really excited about this for many, many reasons. But I can hear you saying, "I don't care why YOU'RE excited - I want to know how this change will impact ME!"

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Fun!

From Ego Food: Google Earth for Mac.:

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This is an important step: Google Earth for the Mac is out.

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