Macbook Wheel - Notebook With No Keyboard

Innovation getting better ...

- No keyboard
- Hummingbird battery that powers the laptop for full 19 mins before it needs to be re-charged

What's puzzling is how to type using the wheel to scroll to each alphabet. Looks cumbersome ....

Will wait for the next generation ...

Google Grows

Google is growing. Recent post in NYTIMES talk about how Google's share in search market grew.

The research firm Hitwise, which measures Web audiences, said that Google accounted for 58.3 percent of all searches in the United States in March of 2006. By November of 2006, Google’s share had grown to 61.8 percent, and by this November, to 65.1 percent. That’s more than triple the share of its nearest rival, Yahoo, and more than nine times that of third place finisher Microsoft.

Microsoft has been trying out and out to kill Google's growth. To an extent where they are paying corporates for using Live Search and trying to raise concerns over Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.

NewYork times article has also mentioned that:

“As long as Google’s competitors are aiming to be like Google or almost as good as Google, Google will continue gaining share,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “It has more resources and engineers focused on search. It is an arms race that they’ve won by a landslide.”

Competetion is going to grow, but with speculation about Google's intention to launch Androind powered phones in February can leave competetors way behind.

Year 2007 was about iPhone. Year 2008 will be about Android.

Updated: Here is an article at slashdot.org which portrays Google and OSS as big threats to Microsoft's survival. Linux is increasingly being used and market share is growing. Unless, Microsoft revisits it's pricing and "openness".

Google Phone <> iPhone

I have been reading articles comparing Google Phone with iPhone. Infact, they are comparing Android with iPhone and I feel it is unfair.

Android is an open source mobile platform and iPhone is Apple's product preloaded with the OS. When people are comparing iPhone's look and feel with Android, they are not thinking that it is the capabilities that you need to compare.



While I accept the fact that people who have been Apple users and who are interested in look and feel, iPhone will be really impressive. But Android is for people who love features.



iPhone does not allow users to write applications and deploy them whereas Android does. But Apple is planning to provide these capabilities by February '08. Like I mentioned in my previous post about GPhone, free texting, flash support, VOIP, video conferencing, photoshop your pictures, editing video on your phone, you name it. If you can dream it, developers can make it happen.

Android is evolving and is open source which means we can see hell lot of improvement in usability by developers who want to improve features and user experience unlike cases where developers are paid to develop features which they might not be interested in.

iPod 4GB Nano

My recent buy is iPod Nano was a gift to my brother in law. I was under this impression that it will be like the old nano. But it took me by surprise.

1. It's unbelievably sleek
2. iPod's new classic two paged interface. Super cool
3. Quality of sound that everyone knows of
4. Radio - people in metros rely a lot on radio

What I need to find out is how many accessories are available. Also, he can load iPod linux and check how games work. I was not really impressed with 4GB. I would expect to see atleast around 8GB if I am giving 8.5k.