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This past weekend, I wrote a post wondering if Android was surging in the U.S. market because Apple was letting it? The main thought was that by remaining exclusively tied to AT&T, Apple was driving some users to choose Android, which is available on all the U.S. carriers. In the post, I posed a question: if it’s not the iPhone/AT&T deal, why do you choose Android? Nearly 1,000 people responded, and a large percentage focused on the same idea: the idea of “openness.”

You’ll forgive me, but I have to say it: what a load of crap.

In theory, I’m right there with you. The thought of a truly open mobile operating system is very appealing. The problem is that in practice, that’s just simply not the reality of the situation. Maybe if Google had their way, the system would be truly open. But they don’t. Sadly, they have to deal with a very big roadblock: the carriers.

The result of this unfortunate situation is that the so-called open system is quickly revealing itself to be anything but. Further, we’re starting to see that in some cases the carriers may actually be able to exploit this “openness” to create a closed system that may leave you crying for Apple’s closed system — at least their’s looks good and behaves as expected.

Case in point: the last couple of Android phones I’ve gotten as demo units from Google: the EVO 4G and the Droid 2, have been loaded up with crapware installed by the carriers (Sprint and Verizon, respectively). Apple would never let this fly on the iPhone, but the openness of Android means Google has basically no say in the matter. Consumers will get the crapware and they’ll like it. Not only that, plenty of this junk can’t even be uninstalled. How’s that for “open”?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Earlier this year, Verizon rolled out its own V Cast app store on some BlackBerry devices. This occurred despite that fact that BlackBerry devices have their own app store (App World). From what we’re hearing, Verizon is also planning to launch this store on their Android phones as well in the future. Obviously, this store would be pre-installed, and it would likely be more prominently displayed than Android’s own Market for apps.

Does V Cast have some good content? Probably. But most of it is undoubtedly crap that Verizon is trying to sell you for a high fee. But who cares whether it’s great or it’s crap — isn’t the point of “open” supposed to be that the consumer can choose what they want on their own devices? Instead, open is proving to mean that the carriers can choose what they want to do with Android.

It’s too bad, but there is now a very real risk that the carriers are going to exploit the open system Google set up in order to create a new version of the bullshit proprietary ecosystems that they had before the iPhone came along and turned the market on its side.

And it’s not just Verizon, it’s all the carriers. One of the great features of Android is that you can install apps without going through an app store, right? Well, not if you have an a Motorola Backflip or a HTC Aria running on AT&T — they’ve locked this feature down. How? Thanks to the open Android OS.

Oh, and how about tethering? It’s one of the truly great features of Android 2.2, right? Well, not if you have a carrier that doesn’t want to support it. Google has to defer to them to enable their own native OS feature. It’s such an awesome feature — in the hands of Google. Once the carriers get their hands on it — not so much.

Speaking of Android 2.2, you know it’s out there right? You’ll be forgiven if you don’t because a whopping 4.5 percent of you Android users are currently running it, according to Google’s dashboard. And again, that’s not Google’s fault, that’s all the carriers. Incredibly, over 35 percent of you still aren’t even running any version of Android 2.x. It’s pathetic.

Apple gets crap for not supporting phones that are three years old with OS updates — the open Android system can’t even upgrade phones that are only a few months old in some cases — again, all thanks to the carriers.

The excuses for why this is run rampant. They need to tweak their custom skins, they need to test the new software, etc. It’s all a bunch of garbage. This is an open platform and yet you’re more restricted than on Apple’s supposedly closed one.

What happens when Verizon won’t update your phone to the latest greatest Android software — not because they can’t, but because they want you to upgrade to a new piece of hardware and sign the new two-year agreement that comes along with it? The game remains the same.

My point is not to bash Google — what they’ve created is an excellent mobile operating system. My point is that the same “openness” that Android users are touting as a key selling point of the OS could very well end up being its weak point. If you don’t think Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are going to try to commandeer the OS in an attempt to return to their glory days where we were all slaves to their towers, you’re being naive.

“Open” is great until you have to define it or defend it. I’m not sure Google can continue to do either in this situation.

And before all of you pros storm the comments with how great it is to root your Android phones, consider the average consumers here. They are the ones being screwed by this exploitation of “open.” Anyone with the desire to do so can fairly easily hack an iPhone too. Open is not a reason to choose Android + carrier vs. iPhone + AT&T.

[photo: AP]

Galaxy Tab? Who needs that overpriced prima donna? Here's the tablet the economical among us have been waiting for. Alright, so the Elocity A7 didn't elicit the highest of praise when it made its cameo on The Engadget Show, but let's congratulate its makers on achieving a pair of feats. Firstly, StreamTV has managed to get its Froyo tablet listed for pre-order on Amazon -- which is no mean feat in itself, just ask Notion Ink -- and secondly, it's done so at an even lower price point than promised, with an encouraging $370 tag. Even if you're like us and not entirely blown away by its performance, you've got root for this little slate to complete the narrative and start selling -- if for no other reason than that it might incite others to stoop to the same price point.

Elocity A7 goes up for pre-order on Amazon with Android 2.2, Tegra 2, and a $370 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 04:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dr. Siddharth Shah / Efficient Frontier Insights:
Google Instant: Potential Implications for the Advertiser  —  Google just unveiled Google Instant, where the search engine adjusts results in real time as the user types in the query.  Google claims that Instant Search leads to 2-5 seconds of time savings per query.

The market for web-based translations is estimated to be worth around $3 billion currently, and big markets tend to attract investors. One of the newer companies in that area, Tokyo-based myGengo (which we previously profiled as “Mechanical Turk for translation”), just raised a $750,000 seed round from some high-profile backers.

What’s interesting is that the round was extremely international, as its total of twelve participants cover eight nationalities and currently reside in eleven different countries. Investors include Dave McClure (who made a personal investment earlier this year and now added myGengo to his 500 Startups fund), last.fm co-founder Felix Miller, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, Brian Nelson (CEO at Japan-based affiliate marketing firm ValueCommerce), Pageflakes co-founder Christoph Janz, Benjamin Joffe (CEO at China-based tech consultancy Plus Eight Star), and a number of Japanese angels.

myGengo offers crowdsourced translations in nine different languages. The main bullet points are that all translations (from short sentences to long texts) are handled by certified human translators, entirely over the web and up to 70% cheaper when compared to professional translators. In April, myGengo rolled out an API that allows developers to plug on-demand human translation directly into websites, apps, widgets, social networks, and other products.

The company is on a roll, saying that since April, the volume of words translated per month grew five-fold – just like monthly revenue did. myGengo now intends to use the fresh money to expand its multi-lingual site tool “String”, create API plugins for a number of popular frameworks, and build its US enterprise sales operation.

Christof Putzel breaks down the recent rise in violence and terrorism in Mogadishu, and explains why Al-Shabaab should be taken seriously.

New York Fashion Week starts this week, but watch this before you say the military look is back.

Mariana van Zeller goes undercover to investigate the illegal recruiting of undocumented Africans to play soccer in Paris.WEDNESDAY 10/9c

Renée Zellweger, Rob Lowe, and Josh Groban share the message that ending cancer is up to all of us. FRIDAY 8 Eastern/5 Pacific

Sergio Cilli rounds up his favorites -- from Lady Gaga to Snoop Dogg -- with the help of his cohosts. He even finds time to set Ben Hoffman straight! TONIGHT 10/9c

We knew the T-Mobile G2 (the successor to the G1, the first Android phone) is coming, but we didn’t know much about it – not even its looks. Now, T-Mobile has finally spilled the beans, and while the exact date the device is coming to the market is still unknown, customers will be able to pre-order limited quantities “later this month.”

Will it be as revolutionary as its predecessor? Judging by its specifications, it’s unlikely, but it does have a couple of interesting features. First of all, it supports HSPA+, which makes it the first T-Mobile’s 4G/3.5G smartphone. Furthermore, (we’d never guess it by looking at the front side of the device) it also has a “unique hinge design” that hides a full QWERTY keyboard.

If these features piqued your interest, get ready for the fairly standard (for newer Android smartphones, at least) set of specifications: a 3.7-inch screen, an 800 MHz Snapdragon CPU, and a 5-megapixel camera with a LED flash and autofocus, capable of recording HD (720p) videos. The device comes with 4GB internal memory with pre-installed 8GB micro SD card, and it supports up to 32 GB of external memory. Finally, there’s the 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth, Flash support and that snazzy Swype text input people have been using to break texting records lately.

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Reviews: Android, Bluetooth

More About: G2, smartphone, T-Mobile

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I typically hear from VCs these days when they are either doing a big, growth capital round, a follow-on funding, an investment in concert with a syndicate or.... bleeeeeeeeep (as in not at all). The rise of the "Super Angels", a trend TechCrunch Europe was first to call in 2008, seems to be putting paid to VC's involvement in early stage. Or perhaps not. Venture capital house Eden Ventures appears to be on something of a roll and has taken to co-investing with angels like a duck to water. Today it announces five (count'em) new investments, which range in size from £100,000 to £1 million.

We are fascinated here at ReadWriteWeb about Hadoop. It can be used in so many ways. It gives you that sense of excitement that shows how big data can open up all kinds of possibilities.

So we got a tad excited tonight when we ran across a post by Mike Pearce about "10 Hadoopable Problems: or in other words, 10 things you can do with Hadoop. But excitement turned to disappointment when it reminded us of how limiting we can be when thinking about big data in standard terms.

We won't go into detail about each of the 10 ways Hadoop can be used. You can go check out the post yourself. Instead, we'll highlight a few and provide our own little view about big data, the failings of geek culture and the role information plays in our interface culture.

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Hadoop is a transforming technology that through its analytic capabilities, can change the way we interface with the world. We use the term interface in deference to Interface Culture, the book by Steven Johnson that explored the Web's interactive elements and technology interfaces. He looked at buttons, links and metaphors such as the desktop and traced them back to medieval planning, Victorian novels, early cinema and the rise of our modern culture.

The interface culture we develop out of big data will spawn new works that help guide us into unfamiliar spaces as much as novels helped the Victorian era make sense of the new, industrial world.

Hadoop is a tool increasingly used to make sense of a new world that automatically creates data in overwhelming amounts. We manually create our own data through gestures on Facebook, from the images we post to Flickr and the tweets we post religiously. But data is also created automatically by intelligent agents who do the work on our behalf, sending information from machine-to-machine, analyzing itself along the way, increasing in intelligence through APIs or forking into new realms as its manipulated and turned into apps, recommendation engines and the rest.

Transforming data helps us make sense of an information universe, By analyzing it we create our own interface culture and in the process, better understand our world. New art, new intellectual movements and new societies will emerge from the data we are just starting to learn how to chisel into new shapes, new scuptures if you will that tells stories about who we are.

Unfortunately, the 10 examples (from a Cloudera presentation) don't draw us into a new world of possibilities. Sure, fraud detection (number seven) is important. Goodness knows how often we hear about it. I am sure there are lots of surveillance geeks out there who love the idea of monitoring trade with Hadoop as pointed out in number 8. Ad targeting comes in the four spot. That's a familiar topic. Search quality is ninth. More yawns. You get the picture.

All of these examples explore what we have become accustomed to in geek culture. Possibilities for how big data can be used in a strictly commercial sense or as a way to optimize processes or the technologies we have already developed.

It's implausible to believe that we will see any kind of diversity in geek culture if we continue grinding down this technically oriented view of the data around us. Focusing on incremental improvements in processes has been done for generations. It will make people a lot of money but its impact is minimal in the world we live. It will create jobs. We will without a doubt see a new generation of data analysts but there is more to this big data, right?

Perhaps it is too early to expect a renaissance. It's like we are medieval artists who are struggling to move beyond the concept of flat images. We are too consumed in the technological marvels of what we have created to fully understand the implications of what we have discovered and with it what we can create.

We will admit it is getting simpler to develop technologies and easier for people to use. More people are making apps. We have a new generation of developers who have taught themselves by following the principles of the view-source culture. More women are making inroads. We can thank open standards for that.

It's the software that mixes and cooks up that data which will truly transform our world. When that data is as accessible as flour is for baking or clay for sculpting then Hadoop and other analytics technologies like it will have real meaning.

And perhaps it is the ability to discover data and perform tricks with it that opens up this marvelous world. A world made from the big data we shape into images that help us realize an interface culture of a new modern era.

Discuss

A few months back, word came out that Netflix was wheeling and dealing behind the scenes to build up its young streaming video catalog. But given the relatively low revenue from the streaming catalog, content providers (movie studios) were reluctant to offer much in the way of content--so Netflix made them an offer.

Other venues, including the likely bankrupt BlockBuster, would have exclusive access to movies in their first 28 days (at least from Warner Bros.). In exchange, Netflix would be able to secure a larger, deeper catalog to entice more customers and offer an improved service.

Despite a few scatteried protests, the public has generally agreed that Netflix made the right decision. But the decision isn't exactly final--the relationship between Netflix and the studios is fluid, ebbing and flowing with changes in technology and consumer taste, and nothing's written in stone. That's why it's not totally surprising that Netflix negotiated a deal with a studio to secure first-run films.

That studio, Nu Image/Millenium, is certainly on the smaller side, but it's not exactly a garage-run operation, either. The studio is responsible for lots of top action movies, like The Expendables, Rambo, Righteous Kill, Son of No One, and Stone, as well as doubtless clunkers like Today You Die (a latter-day Steven Seagal vehicle).

The deal proves that Netflix is willing to keep trying new things, to renegotiate deals, and to continue to make Netflix the best movie distribution service the world has ever seen. Perhaps the larger studios will see how profitable this particular deal can be, and come around on their own. Either way, it's good news for Netflix subscribers (particularly if they're fans of the Jean-Claude Van Damme ouvre).

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Continue reading Droid 2 R2-D2 boot animation, live wallpapers leak out at light speed

Droid 2 R2-D2 boot animation, live wallpapers leak out at light speed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ok, so not only is Google Instant rejiggering how we think about search, but it is also a clever way to create instant music videos. We saw this with the official Google Instant version of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (where the lyrics on the flash cards get typed into Google and create a stream of related results).

But now the same thing has been done with the “Instant Elements” song in the video above. The lyrics to Tom Lehrer’s song, “The Elements,” are typed into Google Instant, and it creates a visual accompaniment to the song, showing search results and images for each element like magnesium, silicon, and gadolinium. I think we have a meme here. You can do this for any song, and now people will.

The video was created by ad agency Whirled, the same one behind the famous Pulp Fiction Google Wave video.

Earlier this week we looked at the upcoming launch of Google TV. It's slated for this fall (U.S.) and will be integrated into a new line of Sony Internet TVs. Meanwhile a Swedish company has just launched its own Internet TV, built on top of Google's open source Android Operating System.

The company is called People of Lava and its new line of Internet TVs is called Scandinavia (in the same way that Sony has a line of TVs called 'Bravia'). With the tagline "Window to the World," the Scandanavia comes in 3 sizes: 42", 47" and 55". The new product was unveiled this week at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin.

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Firstly, to clarify that Google TV is a software product built on Android. It will be integrated into televisions (like the Sony Internet TV) and set-top boxes. It appears that People of Lava plans to integrate Google TV into its TVs too, but for now it has gotten a jump on Sony by building its own Android-based Internet TV software.

The People of Lava TV will come pre-loaded with applications, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, email client and a web browser. The browser is custom built, based on Webkit (the foundation of many modern web browsers, including Safari and Chrome). The company says that it will launch a "People of Lava App Store," but no time frame has been given. Also included in the TV package is a wireless keyboard with a pointer/mouse.

Right now the TVs are only available to purchase in Sweden.

How Will it Compare to Sony Internet TV?

It will be interesting to see how this fares against the Sony line when that's released in the fall, as Sony has the benefit of having the official Google TV software integrated from the get-go. Sony is also of course a well established TV manufacturing brand, whereas People of Lava is relatively unknown.

People of Lava is clearly trying to get a jump on Google's anointed partner Sony and establish a name for itself in Internet TVs. However it's likely to be short-lived glory, as Sony's offering will surely be more advanced due to the inclusion of Google TV. So the question will become: how fast can People of Lava iterate to compete?

Discuss

According to a recent post from Twitter infrastructure employee John Kalucki, the highly anticipated User Streams API product will be moved from a closed beta to an open beta testing period quite soon.

Twitter first announced User Streams at Chirp, where Twitter Director of Platform Ryan Sarver told a crowd of eager developers about a new feature and API that would get data in real time and without rate limits. Onstage at the conference, Sarver pinged content from Twitter.com onto TweetDeck in real time. The API was made available to devs for a brief period during the conference, but any apps or features created around it were not shown to the general public.

However, the company did open the API to two partners in July: TweetDeck and Echofon. At that time, Twitter also announced a new Streaming API product called Site Streams.

Today, Kalucki took to Google Groups to let developers know that the User Streams product launch “is moving along as planned.

“We haven’t had any downtime, and we’ve only had a few subtle functionality problems to refine. In short, all is going very well… We intend to move this product into an open beta test period soon, and then on into full production shortly thereafter.”

Originally, the open beta was slated for late August; still, we’d be just as happy to see a smooth launch in September.

Twitter’s roadmap for User Streams includes an at-scale launch in Q3 or Q4 of this year.

What do you think of User Streams so far? Are you excited about the potential for user applications?

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Jimmy Eat World didn't concoct the masterpiece that is The Middle for nothing, you know. In yet another example of the middle muddying up the waters for everyone else, DisplaySearch has found that the vast majority of systems sold in America fall into the 15.6-inch category, despite the fact that many offer no gain in resolution over 12- and 13-inch ultraportables with 1,366 x 768 panels. The reason? For one, supply and demand. The sheer quantity of 15-inch machines on the market pushes prices south, and on days like Black Friday, rarely is any size as discounted as the tried-and-true 15-incher. The numbers here would show an even greater difference if the tablets were yanked, but what's made clear is just how little interest is being shown by the masses to the outliers. In fact, Laptop found that MSI is officially putting the kibosh on its plans to ship the 13-inch X360 stateside, and a number of other manufacturers are mulling similar decisions (though "off the record"). So, are you helping to jumble up the middle, or are you a loud-and-proud 5-percenter?

Lessons in Bell Curves: 15-inch laptops still king, despite wealth of portable alternatives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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