This is part of the tech that drives some Google products you may be familiar with: AdWords, AdSense, Checkout, Blogger, Analytics, Reader, etc.
Just don’t tell the guys on Twit that it’s Java. 
November 12, 2007 – 12:54 pm
OK, well after seeing the latest videos of Android, there is much less uncertainty as to how the platform itself will turn out. Specifically, the primary concern I linked to in yesterday’s post seems to not be so big of a deal, at least up front.
It’s certainly looking good so far, especially the Java SDK. At first glance, it appears that it might give Windows Mobile a run for it’s money in the ease of development arena, since Windows Mobile has been the leader as far as that goes for quite a long time with the .NET Compact Framework.
I still have concerns with the licensing model allowing for locked-down released implementations, but it is encouraging to see that both T-Mobile and HTC are participating, since I’ve had very positive experiences with HTC handsets from T-Mobile which were not limited or crippled in any way. Hopefully they will continue in that tradition of not encumbering anything on their devices with their first Android release. If so, I’ll likely continue to be a customer.
November 11, 2007 – 8:35 pm
I haven’t posted yet on the Android announcement, mostly since I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. My take at the moment is that I’m hopeful but not optimistic, if that makes sense.
Here’s a brief excerpt from a post by Steven Frank that neatly summarizes the main reservation I have with it:
A 34-company committee couldn’t create a successful ham sandwich, much less a mobile application suite. It’s going to be some half-baked turd undoubtedly based on GPE since that’s, you know, better than starting from scratch, right? (Wrong.)
For heaven’s sake: Find someone, ONE person, with a unique vision. Lock them in a room with some programmers and a graphic designer. Twenty people, tops. Change the world. Quit re-hashing the same old bullshit and telling me it’s new, exciting, or in any way innovative. Be ready to fail, many times, but for love of all that is holy take a stand on something.
The thing is, most of the time really great products (especially software) are pioneered by a small group of people who try something that ends up working. Larger teams are sometimes appropriate and can be productive, but only if the initial “vision” (for lack of a better word) is set and everyone else rallies around that to make it happen. Having that many companies involved will more likely than not result in a product that has too many built-in compromises, designed to make everyone happy. which can’t be done.
October 31, 2007 – 10:01 pm
In the second “old news” post of the day, I’m really liking the IMAP support built into GMail now, since I can now use the native mail client on my phone rather than going to through the browser (and I prefer both to the GMail java app that is available for the phone itself).
I could do POP with GMail before, but POP has many drawbacks that IMAP does not. This feature is especially important to me, since I get a lot of mail and I’m often (sometimes all day) in places where my cell phone does not get service, so it’s handy to be able to sort through stuff offline and then sync everything back up when a connection is available.
October 10, 2007 – 10:18 am
I received yet another e-mail yesterday from Text-Link-Ads notifying me that they were not detecting any ads showing on my site and asking me to fix it. Of course, it makes sense that the ads are not being displayed since I CANCELED MY ACCOUNT IN JULY!
I know it’s probably just their faulty system blindly sending out these notices and not distinguishing between canceled and live accounts, but it’s still pretty irritating. I still occasionally get messages like this (or worse, notices saying that they’ve sold yet another ad on my site, long after I deactivated my account). I always quickly send them back an e-mail reminding them that I canceled, and also giving them a guilt trip / lecture about continuing to sell ads to their customers when they know they will not be displayed on my site.
Today I decided that maybe instead of just e-mailing them back to complain, I should post a negative story about TLA every time this happens. So, here’s today’s dose of TLA bashing, from a story on The Stanford Daily:
Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from a PR9 when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That’s a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some others were also reporting PageRank drops. So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.
In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well.
September 24, 2007 – 6:14 pm
I just noticed that GMail updated their mobile UI with some helpful new features.
Although they’ve had a separate mobile application (for phones that actually allow that sort of thing at least) available for a while now, I’ve always preferred the web UI, which I find more useful as long as your phone has a decent browser. Now it’s just that much better.