700mhz vs Satellite

Stephen Brandau | February 25, 2008

Confused what the big deal about this whole 700mhz auction is? Engadget provides a good explanation as to where the band comes from (soon to be decommissioned TV signals) and what it could be used for. (Cell phones, wireless internet, etc.) While I was originally rooting for Google or another company with 'open' aspirations for the project, it looks like there may be other, more cost effective alternatives like launching a super-fast internet satellite. It only cost Japan $480million; at that rate Google could launch ~10 of these satellites for the price the 700mhz frequency is expected to fetch.

Text Multiple People at Once

Stephen Brandau | December 31, 2007

While there are many mass-texting services out currently, there seems to be something to this NetworkText service. With 30,000 new users in the last week, it's no doubt a company to keep your eyes on. Here's the low-down straight from their founder and CEO, Derek Johnson, for those of you who haven't heard of the service:

"The concept is very simple. We have created a website that allows any type of group to easily store contacts and send out text messages to all their group members at once. We started out focusing on college groups and now have expanded into churches, businesses, club promoters, PTA organizations and even sports teams.

The service is completely free to use and send text messages. We can offer the service at no charge to our users because we subsidize the cost of sending the messages with small 30 character advertisements at the bottom of all the text message that go through our system. Some of the companies inserting ads include Chevrolet, Borders Books, Free411, NBC and Philips.

We have seen a tremendous amount of growth in the past few weeks adding around 30,000 new users to the site in the last week. We have seen a significant amount of the traffic come from the fact that we now allow group administrators to upload phone numbers straight into the invitation system, where it used to be just emails. We see the growth trend continue as we add features such as a keyword text in which will allow anyone with a cell phone to text in a group name and be added to a text messaging group."

It's easy to find uses for this service and the guys at Network Text are extremely helpful, if not overzealous, when it comes to uploading all your contacts.

More Reasons Google Might as Well Run the World

David Davin | November 5, 2007

Following up on Google’s open social: Tech Crunch has a great report on how now Myspace has joined the long list of social networks choosing to use Google’s common APIs. This is only more good news for Google, which is now the fifth most valuable company in the world. It’s not all good news for Google though. It turns out the first OpenSocial application was hacked in 45 minutes.

As I’m posting this blog engadget has live coverage of a conference call with Google as they announce the launch of a mobile OS. The OS is called Android and will expand mobile phone functions significantly according to google. It will finally give mobile phone users a valuable internet experience. From the coverage: “the quick way of saying it, as a result of this platform you can do amazing things with mobile devices.” While Google hasn’t announced the release of any sort of Gphone, they have said if they did release a Gphone, it would run the Android OS. Android is open source like Google’s OpenSocial so developers will be able to create all sorts of apps. Phone developers like Motorola and T-Mobile were mentioned as partners of the initiative in the article, with T-Mobile releasing a phone which will run Android in 2008. I personally can’t wait to get my hands on one.