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Rumors spread last week that there is going to be a Google Phone. Soon after, Google Officials from Spain confirmed the rumors saying employees are sparing some of their time on a Google Phone. Now, a top Google Executive (who definitely didn’t like the previous comments) said there is no work being done for a mobile phone, and rather than entering this large market they prefer to work closely with Motorola and such. A striking comment that collides with it’s successor, but it’s not a surprise to me. The surprise to me was that Google announced early in the game they are spending (some) of their time on a Google phone. The statement seems clear it is still in experimental phase, in which case Google sure would not want to expose their internal experiments to the public. I am not sure how did some Google officials make the statement without permission, I am sure there is some work happening, but Google is not sure how it will end up and do not want to give promises right now.

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Google Executives in Europe have confirmed that some of the engineer’s time is being spent on the yet called Google Phone. No official details are made yet, but some people with inside link have posted the new phone will be a C++ based operating system and optimized for JAVA, and would offer VoIP. It doesn’t need much thinking that it will come bundled with Google Maps, and perhaps light weight Google Earth as well. There are no signs of the release date however, and from the way it’s said, it doesn’t seem like a top priority project for them, but rather a testimonial.

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Probably not I would say, but this post has lots of hints and solid facts suggesting it could really be true. If so, I would like to wait for it before choosing between i and G Phones. But even Google might not be able to succeed managing all those variant technologies they keep acquiring, and in the mobile world, you have to keep producing and improving all the time. It would be interesting to see what they might come up with though. Rumors has it also that Google are working on an operating system based on Linux as well. You can read more about the story as well at Search Engine Journal.

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My brother in-law forwarded an email to me that he received from Epocrates, a mobile drug guide used by doctors. The email was a proactive information to the end user that currently Palm OS and Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) OS software applications, including the Epocrates applications cannot be installed or synced with Windows Vista computers as of now. The email urges users to postpone upgrade of Windows Vista until a solution is in place. The company also says they cannot commit to a deadline as the fix requires changes from both Palm and Microsoft. Below is a copy of that email:

” Dear …,
We think it’s important to let you know that many Palm® OS and Windows Mobile® (Pocket PC) OS software applications, including all Epocrates products, cannot at this time be installed or synced via computers with the new Windows Vista operating system.

We strongly recommend that if at all possible, you postpone installing Vista or upgrading to a new PC with Vista installed.

Since resolution of this problem depends upon software changes by both Palm and Microsoft, we regret that we cannot give you a firm date for a fix.
If you are already using Windows Vista, please review our FAQ for the latest recommendations from our customer support and engineering teams. Read FAQ »

Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Sincerely,
The Epocrates Team”

This is a really bad image for the new OS. New OS should be backward compatible as much as possible, and I do understand sometimes change is unavoidable. But with Windows Mobile, they should be more proactive to avoid such messages. Same thing happened with XBox 360 which was not backward compatible. I heard there are ways to make old games run, but still, it was not ready by it self to do so.

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My friend just updated me on this about the Kuwait Takes on VoIP. The Kuwait Ministry of Communication is arranging with all the ISPs in Kuwait to come up with lower rates international calls and VoIP using mobile phones. So the M.O.C. wants to utilize the new technology for it’s own advantage, and double charge the user to drive in more money!

An english translation of the article is here.

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In the world of developing countries, invention is a foreign word, and technologies are only acquired from the western countries instead. This becomes hard to swallow for many, but we can live with it. The problem gets bigger when they become selective on what is a useful technology and what is a harmful one. Few years back, the Ministry of Transportation arranged with all ISPs in Kuwait to block porn sites and other sites they find harmful. You can expect how many eligible sites got banned on the way. MetaCafe and YouTube got affected recently, and some Kuwaiti Blogs even were blocked. So it seems we are becoming more and more like China. Now they want to ban the VoIP sites that allows people to make international calls, simply because it’s costing them money! To put it in another way, the new technology will save people 20 million KD that the government prefers to keep to it to itself instead. It’s a pretty shame for the people who spent their time and money to make this VoIP dream a reality.

It is worth mentioning however that while we pay around $650 annual 256 kbps DSL registration fees (in advance), and not very rarely the network is extremely slow and you can do nothing about it, you start having to use a Proxy eventually to by pass what government does not like you to see. The proxy ofcourse becomes the bottlenick here, not to mention other possible browsing issues. The government wants to control and protects its people from harmful content, so they blocked porn sites. However down all shops you can find the pirated uncensored film movies for 3 bucks, and even original ones in major store like Virgin. Original DVDs are available there, and no one is doing anything against it. $55 Showtime TV subscription is also available to show all the uncensored movies, but since it’s a business with money in, no one is doing anything about it. Whenever the money might go out, or there is harm without money in, government wants to take action. One of the other great services not available in Kuwait also is PayPal. I am not sure now whether this is from the ministry or not, but it definitely opens the door for some real nice services like Skype and eBay.
Now, instead of investing in upgrading the ISP networks, giving us more stability and faster bandwidth, they would like to monitor and control our browsing more. For the past 4 weeks I have not had two consecutive days with stable connection. Even though I paid for the media, when it is available in good shape, the government wants to restrict my use of that media. Right now, if you are traveling and someone gives you a ring on your roaming phone, you get charged per minute even if you don’t answer it. So a ring is worth $3 sometimes. I saw a full real big bill of missed calls the customer got charged for just the missed calls. If the government wants people to follow what they call the legal ways, they better try to make it in reasonable prices.

You can find a translation of the news article from Al-Watan Newspaper here. Original source for Arabic readers is here.

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LG have announced their new KE850 touch screen only mobile phone, very similar in look to the iPhone. Is this by chance? Is it a tradition that people copy Apple interface? Or is it the other way around this time? No reports seem to have been made so far. What is interesting however is that the new LG phone might beat the iPhone to the market. Whether that is good to LG, or bad to them since Apple fans will keep waiting, we will know the answer soon.

oneCompare has more on the news with a photo of the new phone.

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