As everyone has probably already heard today, Google placed a big eclair on their lawn next to the giant cupcake and donut. Cupcake was the first platform fix of Google’s Android and donut was second recently released update. The big eclair is a sign that the third update must be coming out into the dev world in the near future:
It troubles me a little to say such a thing about men, especially beardless ones, but this video is true beauty. I imagine this must have been the sort of thing that Greek nobility were accustomed to viewing on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I cannot embed the video as Youtube does not allow embedding this first video.
You can view it, by visiting this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPRtIImYJg
And if that wasn’t impressive enough, check out this less exacting, though more animated show:
This would be such an incredible feat if only they had beards. Maybe next time they will grow out some facial hair and make a truly beautiful performance…
This is so wild. Knox and a troop of men carried about 120,000 pounds of cannons 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in 2 months. Because of this amazing feat, the American troops had cannons to surprise attack the British.
The map below isn’t the exact course, but follows the approximate path of Knox and his troops. They carried the cannons over Lake George on boats. Then, they pulled the cannons on sleds over snow and over frozen rivers. There is a lot more to this. Read “1776″ by David McCullough for more details. (I haven’t finished the book, but McCullough is an awesome storyteller.)
Here’s the link in case the route doesn’t show on the map below:
Map
Is it finally here? Yes it is. Well… Almost… And what is it? Only the greatest thing since smart phones, that’s what. Its gonna turn your smart phone into a true full fledged wireless mobile media device.
Its flash video for smart phones – its the Adobe Flash Player 10.1.
And just like last November, its almost ready, but not quite. (http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2009/01/25/g1-android-and-adobe-flash-player/) But its definitely sounding a lot more realistic this time around.
It was announced earlier today on October 5, 2009 at Adobe MAX as a part of the Open Screen Project, an initiative to “Enable consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere.” (www.openscreenproject.org)
A beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is expected to be available for some devices by the end of 2009. You can sign up to be notified about this release here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashplayer10_signup
The Flash Player is expected to be fully available for the first half of 2010, whatever that means.
You can read all of the technical details about the new Flash Player here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.html
I couldn’t be more excited for this.
I guess 3G service providers will have to start instituting policies for bandwidth usage, as bandwidth is already being strained without mobile devices having easy access to streaming video content. Apple users have been complaining about bad and slow connections for quite some time now on the AT&T coverage they are required to use.
The big question for me, though, is how’s this all gonna work on T-Mobile’s Android phones?
Not surprisingly, the day before Adobe’s big announcement Google made a little announcement of their own. Google announced that they are joining Adobe on the Open Screen Project. (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/teaming-up-with-adobe-and-open-screen.html)
I’ve been wondering for quite some time what the hang up is with getting the Flash Player to run on a wireless mobile device seeing as us Android users have had Youtube accessibility for quite some time now.
It will also be interesting to see how this affect’s the smart phone market as this version of Flash Player is not expected to run on the iPhone. Adobe is giving developers tools in CS5 for developing iPhone video applications in ActionScript3. CS5 will be available by the end of this year. (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/)
Perhaps Apple is planning to come out with some new device that outshines all smart phones including the iPhone and if they can get it onto Verizon’s awesome network maybe they would be in business. But for now, I’m gonna stick with my T-Mobile G1… (Although, the up-and-coming Android based Motorola Cliq sure is sounding tempting. http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-CLIQ-US-EN)
Go Adobe! We’ve been ready. We’re ready now. And when you put it out there, we’ll all be there ready with big smiles and glassed over eyes (from watching too many videos, of course).
T-Mobile’s new myTouch Google Android Phone presale will begin on July 8.
http://www.t-mobilemytouch.com/
No hard keyboard, but Android now has a touchscreen keyboard since the Cupcake upgrade. The size looks great.
Apparently the Tmobile G1 Android update I got earlier (http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2009/06/01/g1-firmware-upgrade-to-slick/) is the infamous long awaited Cupcake update.
Some more feature updates that I’ve noticed on my G1 phone:
The camera can now shoot video.
The browser zooming has a button to return to the standard zoom.
The browser zoom box magnifier is better.
An onscreen keyboard with autocomplete that you load by tapping on a text field.
The camera loads up a little faster than before and has two onscreen buttons. In the top left corner is a small thumbnail of the last photo or video you shot. And in the top right corner is a button that you can use for taking photos.
Still missing zoom on the camera (though technically you don’t need it cause you can crop it later and its a high enough quality photo that cropping is feasible).
If you don’t have the updates, yet, those are some of the things you can look forward to getting in the near future.
As far as when your phone will be updated with G1 Cupcake update… I received the phone the day it came out and I received this update at about 8am PST. Two of my friends who have the G1 have not yet received the update. The first friend got the Tmobile G1 in mid-November 2008 and the second purchased it in Febraury 2009.
After I wrote all of that I discovered a full list of the new Android features here:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.5-highlights.html
The firmware upgrade today on the new G1 seems to have taken the phone from cool to slick. It still does not feel as smooth as the iPhone, but lots of things are better.
The desktop widgets have nicer smooth shiny gray borders.
The screen seems to come out of standby faster than before.
When programs/apps load, they fade in and out more smoothly and quickly.
The buttons on the built-in gmail app are much prettier and not clunky like the old ones.
Also, there are now checkboxes on the gmail list of emails, so that you can apply an action (such as archive) to multiple emails. This is familiar from the traditional gmail.
And there just seems to be nice font, border and background improvements throughout.
One issue that I encountered was that on the first restart after the firmware update, all of the icons on the desktop were missing. This resolved itself when I restarted, again.
What else did people notice?
Originally, it sounded as though Wolfram|Alpha would be able to answer any question under the sun – and perhaps that is the eventual goal. For now, it seems as though Wolfram is capable of answering only Factual questions. In other words, unless there is an exact answer to your question, Wolfram cannot answer.
For example, type in Thomas Jefferson. You get a few dates and the fact that he was “head of state”. But it does not tell you that he was the President of the United States of America, nor that he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Something cool to note is that there is a link at the bottom of the page that tells you where the information most likely came from. It says, “This list is intended as a guide to sources of further information.” Then it follows with, “The inclusion of an item in this list does not necessarily mean that its content was used as the basis for any specific Wolfram|Alpha result.” In other words, it seems like Wolfram Alpha checks a variety of the most respectable and accepted sources of knowledge to find the correct value.
Tell me more. This thing is cool and will only get cooler.
I am curious what will happen once there is too much information about a specific topic. How will it get organized on a page. A simple example of this is entering the names of 3 public companies:
Dell Citigroup johnson & johnson
It gives you quite a lot of information for that question. But it is still nowhere near the length of a long Wikipedia article. But what will happen when you ask it an extremely complex and convoluted question? Will it spit out a 100,000 line answer that your browser will barely be able to load? Or will it find some beautiful way to organize the information?
Tell me more, please.
Here are a few fun questions to ask Wolfram Alpha about itself?
Wolfram Alpha might be the most useful innovation on the internet since Google’s search and page rank algorithms. Wolfram Alpha organizes human knowledge in a computable manner so that you can ask it a question and it will give you the answer. Rather than showing you search results like Google would do, Wolfram|Alpha actually tells you useful answers to your question.
Wolfram|Alpha is being released in May 2009, so we should be able to see it any day now. In the meantime…
See and hear the sneak preview:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram