Posts by Jeremy Anderson

Google contradicts self, confirms own Googlephone

Interesting but...

I'm not sure if I see an inherent contradiction in Google's statements and their actions.

Once upon a time, I was locked in the basement of a Taiwan mainboard factory. If you ever opened a box on a board and saw wacky English saying "To avoid electron discharge incident, careful inputting happy golden fingers in socket." Yeah, that was probably me getting mine back at the bosses.

At that time, mainboard manufacturers did not design mainboards from scratch. They would take a "reference design" which had been provided by Intel, Opti, SiS, or whomever the chipset manufacturer of the week was, and would then tweak that design based on what marketing thought would move mainboards.

Building a concept phone to show off the Android platform makes perfect sense. I'm not exactly sure why Google would be interested in getting into the phone retail business. It seems a lot less profitable than selling advertising.

Google: Kill all the patent trolls

Use it or lose it. Good, but only in theory

Aubry,

I'd like to thank you for putting forth a bold idea.

Unfortunately, I don't think it works in that big jungle known as the marketplace.

Before my current job, I worked in a company that was in the medical industry. They had some good ideas, and in my mind, were doing all the right things.

Unfortunately, in the course of five years, they had only sold two copies of their software. This was not for lack of trying or talent. It was a combination of the business cycle (the product was ready to sell in late 2001, a very bad year), and the market they were playing in (medicine -- don't get me started. lots of profanities will follow)

A reasonable outside observer would look at this company and conclude they were a patent troll. The company had a skeleton staff, was being sustained on Other People's Money and made only enough sales to look like they were playing the game.

Inside, there were 7 people who were sweating bullets every day trying to sell software. Unfortunately, we had larger, better armed, and better funded opponents and were playing in a hostile and very conservative market.

I got depressed and moved on, but it was the market that discouraged me, not the company.

While I think NTP (RIM's nemesis) and MercExchange probably really are in business just to create lawsuits, I am skeptical that there is a clear-cut legal test that could weed out legitimate (if quixotic) businesspeople from the trolls.

Brit makes world's highest mobile call

Should I be impressed or annoyed?

I'm not sure.

One part of me thinks that having a cell phone tower in the middle of the Himalayas is WRONG.

The other part (the part that sees my cell phone connectivity go to zero when I turn a mile off the Interstate) thinks this is so freaking cool.