Why Google wants Android to succeed

After reading a recent online interview with CNET and Andy Rubin I now have a better understanding of Google's persistence with a mobile OS. Since Google aggregates, sorts, and serves up the data we are looking for on the WWW they are seeing themselves as the de facto gatekeeper of information.

Google's Android is a mobile enabler of information. If/when we cannot access information via traditional means of WiFi, wired, desktop,or otherwise then Android will be there for us on many mobile devices.

Since Android is free to OEM's and developers then it can be customized for many form factors as well. This is where the tipping point of Android will be, when the software dominates hardware development and the user is considered primary.

My daughter thinks open source is cool

Being a Red Hat employee I have the pre-req SWAG at the house and it is commandeered by two youngest children as fast as I bring it home. So today I got my 5-year old daughter's play clothes out and after she was dressed she promptly told me that she wanted to wear her Red Hat tee.

After going through her dresser I finally found the one that she likes and coordinated it with her red shorts and her red Shadowman baseball cap. She actually thinks that this stuff is cool and mostly because she knows that I do too. While I sport the occasional Red Hat ballcap and/or t-shirt, I certainly do not wear these items in tandem.

Just goes to show that if this generation uses open source in moderation the next one will use it in excess.

Android 1.5 cupcake

Finally! I couldn't wait for T-Mobile to send the update OTA. I grabbed it here. Anyway, after the initial reboots and navigation to see what all the fuss was about, I happily ran the battery down playing with the OS.

It honestly feels less like an update and more like a new OS. Here's what's new:

• Onscreen keyboards for all applications that accept input
• Portrait to landscape and vice versa in all apps except the home screen
• More widget support that will enable developers to create cool stuff from the home screen
• Some small changes to the GUI but not enough to change the user experience
• Hopefully better battery life to come...we'll see.

It's truly too bad that this was not v1.0 but I understand because Android had to get into the marketplace first to see if it would be a player against iPhone and BlackBerry. It definitely is and it's only getting better. Android is not being rumored on multiple devices with as many form factors. It will not be constrained by a particular ISP or OEM. It is a viral mobile OS that is free and ready for prime time.

Now the hard part will be waiting for the donut update.....sigh.

I'm not a socialist, I just play one on the world wide web

Even though, I am particularly conservative in my political thinking I find myself becoming more and more open in technological terms. This is come about with my exposure to open source development and business processes as well as web collaboration models (more to follow).

The WWW is a strange medium in that it has no ideology or principles. It simply is a means of transport for information, ideas, and commerce. But even more so than its predecessors radio and television. Sure all sorts of ideas are presented to us by these technologies but it is very hard for the average person to have a radio or TV show broadcast much less have it be successful. Enter the blogosphere. Obviously, many of us regard blogs as a way of expressing our thoughts and see them as an outlet wherewith we can make our voice heard and possibly heard by many.

The phenomenon of web collaboration is one that is making distributed people and work more centralized while at the same time lets us be decoupled from the herd. Even though, I work remotely I always feel apart of my team because we frequently call, e-mail, IM, and collaborate on the same work in real time.

The internet lets everyone be an individual contributor to a team while bringing attention to the real star of the show: the produced work.