iConverged

So yesterday, Google finally announced it is getting into the “OS” business with Chrome OS.

Similar to Google Wave, this one is also just an announcement (gee, it doesn’t even have a front page yet  )

But anyway, here are my predictions on where this will go:

• The core OS will continue to be Linux based, with a Webkit layer built into the kernel, or, more likely, a priviledged layer (thus making “reaching to the web quicker” as google suggests) [okay, my bad, I did not need to predict this - I re-read their post - they already state "Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel"...]

• Even though Google says this is different from the Android initiative, and choice is good, from my perspective, Android is an SDK, while Chrome OS is an “OS”. The former can, and will, eventually ride on top of Chrome OS (in other words, Android SDK will be ported to Chrome OS, which itself will be based on linux) - thereby making Android apps more ubiqutous

• Android will be just one SDK on top of Chrome. Others will be available for environments where Android may not be ready yet (again, the OS vs SDK difference)

• Palm’s WebOS took the earlystep, though not from a general purpose WebOS way, more from mobile WebOS way. There is no question now “Web” close to kernel is going to be a common way ahead for may of these companies.
• Eventually, they will integrate an HTML/CSS/JS programming interface on top that Chrome will execute natively (or, well, faster)
• The usual tools like Google Gears et all will obviously be tightly integrated into their OS layer

Like all the apple fanboys like to squeal and shout, here is my obligatory squeal of delight on having my phone shipped out today. Let me join the ranks of the ‘I feel so proud that apple condescended to ship me something I paid for’ list with the obligatory, but totally useless details:

When did I order: July 11, 6:44AM PDT to be exact

What did I order: Iphone 3GS, 32Gig, Black as an AT&T upgrade

Where did I order it from: Apple Store (online)

When did I get my “shipped” status: June 18, 2009, 2:14 PM ET to be exact. Interestingly, I happened to be on the appstore site hitting refresh so I saw the status change from ‘Prepared to ship’ to ’shipped’ (Another squealing shout relevant only to me)

What does the fedex tracking status say:

Picked up from Memphis TN

Delivery on: Jun 19, before 3:30PM

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On my flight back home  from CTIA Wireless 2009, I was on a southwest flight (one of only 4 in southwest) that offered free Wifi over satellite as a test. Here is a quick test of how it performed

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Hi folks, as promised (over and over earlier we finally have an initial version of the IMS UA ready for download. The IMS system we used was Open IMS

Grab the IMS UA code from the HSC Open Source webpage here

(look for IMS UA for Google Android Entry)

The test bed looked like this:

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I noticed quite a flutter on several blogs and news sites on a new service from Trapcall that allows you to “see” Caller ID even if the caller blocks the caller ID.

A layman description: Jack is an agressive sales person who loves calling his prospective customer Bob with his caller ID blocked, so that Bob will be forced to pick up the phone and have a chat with Jack.  This is a good ploy, because Bob may otherwise ignore the call if he recognizes Jack’s number. (There are of course more serious situations like domestic abuse etc. reported on other sites)

So what does Bob do ? Well, Bob sets ‘Call Forwarding on No Answer’ and/or ‘Call Forward Busy’ etc. on his phone to point to a Trapcall 1-800 number. That’s all.

So what happens ? Jack calls Bob. Bob gets an incoming call without an ID. He ignores it. This makes the call route to Trapcall’s 1-800 # which does  its ‘Voodoo’ and routes the call back to Bob, who gets an incoming call again,  but this time with Bob’s caller ID !! So he can now really ignore it.

How does this work ?

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I’ve always believed the concept of location is important to an application, but it does not really define an application. Continuing that line of thought, I think many companies who join the ‘LBS is a killer Application’ idealogy have it completely wrong.

Location is NOT going to be successful as an Application. It is going to be super successful as a tool. Let me justify my stand.

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Some more goodies from HSC.

MSRP for Android and RTP stack for Android. And yeah, these releases don’t have additional documentation answering stuff like ‘how do I install’. We hope you know that already And if you need docs on how to use the stacks, please refer to the original open source efforts.

Get them here.

Hola,

continuing the “season of giving” for Google’s Android, HSC has also ported the popular java stun stack, JSTUN for the android platform. Download it here. 

Folks, my company just released an updated version of the SIP stack and UA (MJSIP) ported for the latest SDK 1.0r1. This is the same SDK that G1 uses. This is an update to this post.

The new SDK changes several things in the UI and well as some APIs. Kudos to the team lead Nitin Khanna (first.last at hsc.com) for continuing the commitment to android. 

Grab a copy of the latest version from here.

So the rumors of many years ago were true. Google finally did release a browser. Naturally, I downloaded it and took it for a test drive. Here is the short of it.

Version reviewed:

Google may be rolling out updates regularly (For example, I suddenly see evident popup blocking), so to put it in context, this is the version I am reviewing

Installation:

The installer is just around 470K to download, but of course that is the ‘pre-installer’. Once you grab the pre-installer, it downloads the rest of the browser from the net. As of now, in its first release, focus seems to be on super simplicity. It does not even ask you where to install it. I am OK with that, but it really does choose a weird location to install it (in Documents and Settings!)

(click on any image to see a full size version)

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