We figured Skyhook’s business interference and patent infringement lawsuits against Google would turn up some dirt, and we didn’t have long to wait: the location-services company’s complaint flatly alleges that Google’s Andy Rubin ordered Motorola’s Sanjay Jha to “stop ship” on the Droid X because it used Skyhook’s XPS positioning system instead of Google Location Services, a tiff that ultimately delayed the phone’s release while Moto reworked the software and dropped Skyhook entirely. Following that, Skyhook claims that Google then went after an unidentified “Company X” (likely Samsung) and forced it to drop XPS as well — which would certainly explain why Samsung’s Galaxy S phones have WiFi positioning turned off by default, unlike every other Android phone. Ouch.
If you’re thinking that makes no sense because Android is “open,” well, you might have another think coming — Skyhook claims that Google’s decisions to allow access to Android Market and its branded apps are an entirely subjective ruse based on something called the Compliance Definition Document, which can be “arbitrarily” interpreted any way Google wants with no recourse. Skyhook says that Google has now told Android OEMs that they’re required to use Google Location Services, preventing Skyhook from fulfilling its contracts and costing the company millions in expected royalties.
Now, this is Skyhook’s side of the story and we’re sure Google will make a persuasive argument of its own, but let’s just back up for a moment here and point out the obvious: Google’s never, ever come out and clearly said what’s required for devices to gain access to Android Market and the branded apps like Gmail — even though we’ve been directly asking about those requirements since Android first launched. Remember when Andy Rubin told us that there would be full-fledged “Google Experience” phones with no carrier or handset manufacturer limitations? Or when we were told that phones with skins like HTC Sense or additional features like Exchange integration wouldn’t have Google branding? And then all of that turned out to be a lie? Yes, Android might be “open” in the sense that the source code is available, but there’s no doubt Google’s wielded incredible power over the platform by restricting access to Market and its own apps — power that hasn’t been used to prevent carrier-mandated bloatware or poorly-done manufacturer skinning, but has instead apparently been used to block legitimate competitors like Skyhook from doing business. We’re dying to hear Google’s side of this story and fill in some of the gaps — and you can bet we’re digging as hard as we can for more info. Stay tuned, kids.
Playing the Eigenharp, while driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta.
Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road.
Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.
The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.
Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.
But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.
The SPOT tracker uses GPS and satellite signals to let you track our location wherever we go.
The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot’s 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.
Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don’t ask.) I’d hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.
Welsh is a revived language, and it’s thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z’s, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.
In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.
Iridium satellite phone
Camping Gaz car cool box
Eigenharp computer instrument
Handpresso pump action espresso maker
Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
Apple’s design team is known for a lot of things. Buttons aren’t one of them. Steve Jobs hates buttons. Hates them. He hates them with the fire of a thousand fiery, fired-filled suns of fire. Take the iPad, for example. The thing has practically no buttons. Snap one of these iPanels on, and it’s like BAM, button city.
The new device from high-end home automation company Crestron turns the iPad into a control panel, adding buttons galore. The $500 iPanel has 13 dedicated buttons for controlling your home’s music, lights, etc.
$500 seems a bit pricy for a baker’s dozen buttons, but if you really think about it, you’re likely saving a couple thousand bucks off of a dedicated controller. Plus, when the controller comes off, you’ve got an iPad out of the deal. Win-win, really.
Nothing spices up waning interest in an aging console like a special edition, and while one could say that announcing three special editions is something of a stretch for the word “special,” these certainly are some… vibrant color schemes. At its press event yesterday, Sony announced a couple of new, pupil-assaulting two-tone color schemes for the PSP, along with a Monster Hunter edition that left many an otaku fainting in the aisles thanks to its gold highlights and redesigned analog nub. Read on for our impressions of all three noble beasts.
Actor/comedian/intellectual/newspaper columnist/quiz-show host/techno-bibliophile Stephen Fry’s new autobiography The Fry Chronicles is available in several different editions: hardcover, paperback, and Kindle, naturally, but also an enhanced book in Apple’s iBooks store and most intriguingly, an interactive application called myFry for iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad.
This signals something new. The mere fact of bundling a book as an application is old hat; there was a time, after all, before the Kindle and iBooks apps, when most apps for the iPhone were books. As the video above shows, though, myFry provides both the metadata and interface necessary to read the book nonlinearly — a synthesis of the familiar (flipping through the pages, jumping to any point one likes, not just a chapter head) and the new (sorting data by content tags rather than chapter titles or page numbers; following associative rather than sequential threads).
Alas, myFry is currently not available in the US; in the UK, it costs about 8 pounds, or about $12.50. Also, it’s not currently a universal application, meaning that iPhone and iPad users would have to purchase the application separately for each device.
As for other e-book formats, the iBook version of The Fry Chronicles is organized in the familiar manner, but enhanced with video clips, mostly of the author himself, hyperlinks, and other multimedia. The Kindle e-book, like the print versions, consist of the familiar rows of text + occasional images book-readers have come to know and love for ages.
In the video below, Fry justifies his (and his publisher Penguin’s) approach to e-publishing, and articulates his vision of the future of books: “I think the point is not why I’ve done this, but really why anybody wouldn’t do it now.”
Fry’s embrace of electronic reading is significant in no small part because of the depth of his knowledge of the history of print. In 2008 he made and starred in a BBC documentary on Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press, titled The Machine That Made Us. He’s also a novelist, a journalist, and a celebrated narrator of audiobooks. There are few public figures with the kind of total media experience that he has, both as a performer and thinker.
The myFry application does have its critics. Gavin C. Pugh, a writer for NextRead and FutureBook, complains:
I like a book to look like a book. I like the text to be formatted paragraphs that are indented unless you need to show a scene-break. If they are formatted like a webpage as Penguin have chosen to do here it changes the flow, at least for me. I also like to see each page turn.
Instead each section is presented as a webpage not only in formatting but in scrolling. And it does spoil the flow. Readers tend to scan webpages but absorb books (or things that look like books). How do I know the difference? I downloaded the sample Kindle and iBook versions. I didn’t feel any connection with app but when I started reading the Kindle version my finger ended up hovering over ‘buy’ option
The Kindle version, too, can be read on any device that supports the Kindle app; Pugh appreciates the multimedia enhancements of the iBook version, but laments that it’s limited to iDevices. Chris Matthews at TeleRead adds that the myFry app “does seem a bit expensive for what you get.”
It’s no longer only print aficionados who are resisting the next generation of e-books; experienced digital readers are protesting too, in the name of price, cross-platform portability, and book-specific standards. Meanwhile, other digital readers are waiting for something new; a book designed specifically not only for digital reading but for their device, that takes advantage of all of its strengths to present an innovative reading experience.
I see one potential solution to this impasse: transmedia bundling.
By transmedia, in this instance, I mean simply that different or derivative versions of the same object exist in different media formats. In this case, it’s printed books, audiobooks, enhanced and plain-vanilla e-books, and software applications. It could also include web sites, video games, posters, licensed merchandise, and so forth.
The movie industry has been extremely savvy about bundling its transmedia products — at least after films leave the theater. You can buy a deluxe edition of a film and receive a DVD, a Blu-ray disc, a booklet, an interactive game, a digital file of the film for your computer or media player, and other accessories, for a single price, usually not significantly more than if you had purchased just the DVD.
The book publishing industry hasn’t followed their lead. Instead, every product is treated discretely, released along different production schedules. Moreover, the industry has generally assumed that every e-book sold is a print sale lost — that the few readers interested in reading a book in both a print and electronic version will gladly pay full-price for both.
Now, however, we’re at the point where iBooks, iPad, and Kindle are not offering different scans of the same book, but genuinely different products — each of which may appeal to different readers, but also to the same reader differently depending on context.
The devices — especially dedicated e-readers — have also reached the point where it’s not uncommon for users to have a personal computer, a tablet, an e-reader, a smartphone, and a print library. But there is no way, short of purchasing a book and scanning it yourself, to read the same book in even a handful of those distinct contexts without spending a fortune.
Suppose instead that Penguin offered a deluxe hardcover version of Fry’s book for $35. Or even $50. (Amazon UK is currently selling the hardcover for 9 pounds, or about $14.) With this, you would get:
A handsome slipcover;
A finely printed book;
An audiobook, on either CD or mp3;
An e-book, in the format of your choice;
A software application, for the OS (mobile or otherwise) of your choice;
A commemorative flag, T-shirt, poster, and/or pin.
In other words, instead of punishing your transmedia collectors, reward and embrace them. Let bibliophiles strive to outdo one another with the audacity of cinephiles. Make the release of a new book an event.
Ripping compact discs provided a natural way to enjoy music anywhere; DVDs quickly did the same for movies. Now even Blu-ray’s DRM days are dwindling. In all of these cases, the industry lagged and fretted about privacy while users found and shared solutions on their own.
That’s already beginning with books. This won’t be the end.
RIM isn’t shy about drumming up excitement for its annual BlackBerry Developer Conference later this month. Here are hints at what the smartphone-maker has in store. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20016836-85.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Dialed In/a/p
Oregon’s Willamette Valley produces some of the country’s best wines. But it’s also subject to the infamous “Pineapple Express”—heavy rains blowing in from the Pacific that can ruin grapes. Unless you’ve got a vacuum. More »
HP‘s just outed a new camcorder, the 1080p loving V5020u. Among its other attractions, this camcorder boasts full HD 1080p video recording at a resolution up to 1920×1080, a built-in gyroscope for image stabilization, 10x digital zoom, a 5 megapixel sensor, a motion detector, a 2-inch LCD, and an SDHC slot for extra storage capacity. This bad boy, which we think is pretty good looking, will be available in October for $159.
When Ford releases an iPad app for the Fiesta, we expect to see some cool features. Instead, we get a digital brochure. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20016837-48.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Car Tech blog/a/p
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Daring Fireball | 
Skyhook Complaint (PDF) | Email this | Comments
