The newest super-powered Android 2.1 phone on the block is the Acer Stream, a 1GHz Snapdragon fuelled, 3.7 inch multi-touch WVGA AMOLED screen sporting, HDMI port having smartphone that easily compares with the Nexus One and Droid Incredible. Hold on to your hats, kiddies, it’s been cleared by the FCC and is heading to the US all soon-like (no word on Canada though).
.jpg "Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 border")
The Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 actually is sold under two monikers – the WebCam Pro 9000, and the QuickCam Pro 9000. If you want to stream high quality video, this is a great camera. I love this one so much that I bought one for my parents, and for my nephew. Although your internet connection may prevent you from streaming the full 1600×1200 HD quality of the video during a Skype video call, the video quality is still excellent. My parents upgraded from an old Logitech camera, and the difference is like night and day when I have a Skype chat with them.
About a month or so ago, I came across a few articles about Salmon Protocol – an open protocol that allows for communication beyond the confines of social networks; as well as a centralized conversation that brings comments from everywhere home to their source. Imagine, if you will, being able to communicate with people on Facebook from Twitter, or on MySpace from Facebook – and without having to join multiple networks. Wouldn’t that just make life peachy? Or maybe you are a blogger and would like to know about conversations that have sprung up around your post on the various social networks out there. Salmon Protocol plans to take you there – and may well be the future of the web.
We haven’t done much in the way of gear and gadget reviews here at 40Tech. That’s about to change. In the near future, we’ll be debuting 40Tech Picks, where we’ll spotlight gadgets that we REALLY like. At the present time, we don’t receive review units, so this will be gear that we use on a regular basis. We’re going to try to make these spotlights and reviews easily digestible, and from the perspective of "real users" – people who will use the gear like you and we would use it.
Pretty soon, you’ll also notice a "40Tech Picks" section on the navigation menu, above. Clicking on that will take you to a page where all of our picks are listed. We’re going to start by populating it with the handful of gear reviews that we’ve already done. Future picks will appear on the front page of the site, but also in that section.
Google vs. Apple: Who is More Open?
“Open” is the new buzzword du jour, with a few of the major tech companies claiming to support open standards. Two of those companies are Google and Apple. How open are they?
First of all, what is “open?” As Wikipedia notes, there is no single definition of an “open standard,” and interpretations vary with usage. Even the companies themselves seem to have differing definitions of open, depending on the setting. Let’s take a quick look at Apple and Google, and at how “open” they are.
Apple
Apple went one step further in closing the iPhone ecosystem recently, changing its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement so that developers must use Apple’s proprietary software if they want to get their apps approved for the iPad and iPhone.
So Apple is closed – end of story? It’s not that simple. As Steve Jobs pointed out in his somewhat disingenuous dissertation on Adobe’s Flash, Apple at least supports open web standards. And Apple’s website describes its support for the Open Source community, and its use of Open Source tools and programs. So in some areas, at least, Apple is open.
Google
Google has a reputation for being “open.” Android, for example, is open to the extent that anyone can develop for it, and release an app. And with Wave, Google has announced plans to release most of the source code as open source software, and has already made an open-source release of some Wave components.
At the same time, Google isn’t all about being open, either. While many of its products are open to some degree, its core product, search, is not. As any SEO guru will tell you, Google’s search algorithms are shrouded in mystery (albeit with parts that are known to be important, such as a page’s title). Why is Google so open in some respects, but not in others?
The Rub
Google seems to be more open, but the one area where it is most closed, search, reveals the the answer to openness for both Apple and Google. In short, both are large corporations, and both must make money for shareholders. As a result, both are open when it makes financial sense, and closed when it helps the bottom line.
For Apple, part of the financial success of the iPhone is due to its ease of use and reliability. That reliability would be difficult to achieve on an open platform. For Google, its search business is the core of its existence, which is why we’ll likely never see Google disclose exactly how it works. Google has said before that the more that people use the internet, the more money Google makes. If opening products, like Wave, leads to more people using the internet, then we can’t necessarily ascribe altruistic motives to Google’s open ways.
If you are a fan of either company, keep that in mind. Apple is more closed than Google, but at the end of the day, both Apple and Google are just trying to make a buck.