Family of Amazon Android Devices?

Amazon is preparing an “entire family” of Android devices that will launch this holiday shopping season, according to Taylor Wemberly at Android and Me. A smartphone might be among the devices, expected to feature tablet devices of various form factors.

Amazon already has gotten into the Android applications market space and online video rentals, so the move is not far fetched. Amazon has been really good at providing excellent customer service and a well-designed recommendation engine, so you can imagine the possibilities, over time, as those skills are applied to the mobile location feature and the shopping experience.

And since Amazon lives and dies by the ease of "buying something," it might not be too hard to suggest that Amazon is thinking about ways to integrate payments into the mix as well.

PayPal "Most Trusted" Mobile Payments Brand

PayPal was the brand most likely to be trusted with personal financial data by consumers in nine major markets around the world, in a survey by GfK.


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Credit-card brands Visa and MasterCard were the next most likely global brands to be trusted, followed by Apple, Nokia and Samsung.

In a poll of 8603 people in nine countries, GfK found that financial services firms have the highest levels of trust, consideration and preference among consumers, with a score of 48 percent, when it comes to mobile payments, says Ryan Garner, GfK analyst. Within this category, banks come out on top.

Mobile and telecommunication brands receive significantly lower levels of trust when it comes to controlling financial transactions. Just 10 percent of respondents expressed high confidence and trust in mobile service providers, compared to some other ecosystem participants.

"Trust is the biggest driver of service preference and is most important at driving adoption of mobile payments," says Garner.

Overall, 62 percent of respondents find mobile payments appealing. This is higher among certain key groups, including: younger consumers aged 16-24 (75 percent), innovators (74 percent), and current smartphone owners (72 percent). Developing markets in China (82 percent) and Brazil (73 percent) find mobile payment services the most appealing. Consumers in the United States and Europe seem less interested, at about 50 percent.

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Enterprises Diversifying Mobile Choices

There was a time, not so long ago, when Research in Motion's BlackBerry simply dominated enterprise smart phone choices. That is changing, according to Intermedia, which says it is the world's largest Microsoft Exchange hosting provider. By definition, Intermedia operates outside the RIM ecosystem, so its data does not necessarily indicate the extent to which preferences are shifting between RIM and other devices.

It is clear that Android and iOS devices are getting traction, though. Intermedia, which manages 320,000 hosted Exchange email accounts, says recent activations show that 61 percent were iPhones and 17 percent were Android devices

Looking at the installed base of activeSync-based smart phones, 61 percent are iPhone, while 22 percent on 'Other' platforms, primarily Windows, followed by Symbian and Palm. About 17 percent are Android devices.

Intermedia Finds Business Professionals Choosing iPhone Over Android:

Google, Others Hope to Tap Hyperlocal News

Hyper-local news sites, which some say are information sources covering a single city, part of a town or just a neighborhood, have not been the foundation for an entire business, or much of a business, so far. To the extent that an advertising and promotion market exists, it has been lead by direct mail, outdoor media and other ad channels such as flyers delivered by hand to homes. But most of the business has been too expensive for a truly neighborhood-based business to use.

Some ad channels work for local, and by extension for very-local businesses. Retailers and other very-local businesses have used the Yellow Pages, of course, but even where zoned editions are available, there is "wastage," from the standpoint of a neighborhood business.

But Google's new move to allow users to create zipcode-sized mobile news areas could be a breakthrough, allowing advertisers to reach a mobile and fixed access audience that is self-selected down to the level of a zip code.

Can Anyone Actually Tap the $100 Billion Potential of Hyperlocal News? | Fast Company

Cisco, Microsoft CEOs Get Slammed, Is History Repeating?

It might be coincidence that stories about how both Microsoft and Cisco leadership have "failed" for the last decade appeared on nearly the same day.

CEO John Chambers is one of the most revered executives in the history of the technology industry, and Steve Ballmer's badge number at Microsoft is "30." Both have lead their firms for a long enough period of time for analysts and investors to make qualified judgments.

Since talking over as CEO of Cisco in 1995, Chambers has grown the company's revenue from $1 billion to more than $40 billion. For 15 years, he has been a soothing, straightforward presence in the industry, free of the bombast and arrogance that so often characterizes big-league CEOs.

But nobody who follows computing technology can be unaware that no company that has lead in one era of technology also has emerged as a leader in the following wave. That's literally "no company."

And it is possible that despite that recognition, both executives are simply finding that they cannot fight history.

Read more here and here.

How "Old People" Use Media

Google News Goes Local

Google now allows users to view location based news, localized by zip code.

Users who want to take advantage of the new feature can visit news.google.com on their smart phone and enable location sharing to see the “News near you” section at the bottom.

Google News Goes Local On Mobile: Introduces ‘News Near You’

Google Studies Smart Phone Behavior

Smart phone behavior is important for any number of reasons, in particular to the extent that the behavior itself creates the opportunity for all sorts of innovations that can lead to new businesses being created.

For example, 71 percent of smart phone users search because of an ad they’ve seen either online or offline.

About 82 percent of smart phone users notice mobile ads. Some 74 percent of smart phone shoppers make a purchase as a result of using their smartphones to help with shopping. Also, 88 percent of those who look for local information on their smartphones take action within a day.

Blogger Outage Caused by "Data Corruption"

Google's Blogger service was restored on April 13, 2011, after a global outage that lasted at least 20.5 hours.

"During scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior," the company says on the Blogger blog. "Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages."

A small subset of Blogger users (Google estimates 0.16 percent) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts.

All day April 12, 2011, Google put Blogger in read-only mode while restoring content. As part of the repair process, Blogger rolled back to a Wednesday May 11th version, leading to deletion of material on a temporarily basis.

In the afternoon of April 13, Twitter is reporting service disruptions as well.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back

Now Twitter is "Having Stability Issues"

Experiencing site stability issues 1 hour ago

We are currently experiencing site stability issues. There may be intermittent issues loading twitter.com and Twitter clients.  We’re working to fix it as soon as possible.

   
Google "Blogger" has just been restored, after a global outage that lasted more than 24 hours. Now Twitter says it has an outage.

How "Open" is Android?

Engineering always involves tradeoffs. Smaller size might be an advantage, but smaller size limits input and output options. Bigger smart phone screens are a plus, but at the cost of battery life. More features can enhance user experience, but means more complexity. "Open" systems encourage innovation, at the cost of standardization and interoperability.

Observers have faulted Android for its fragmentation, over the last year, for example, a somewhat inevitable result of allowing choices. But Android seems to realize it has to limit the amount of freedom developers have, in order to ensure that users and customers can be sure "Android" apps and devices actually work on the devices they buy.

As it turns out, Android code is made available without charge to device manufacturers, but those manufacturers must adhere to a “compatibility” standard determined by Google. Some will complain about the threat to "openness." Others will cheer the consumer interface advantages, among them the assurance that software and hardware actually works.

Skyhook Wireless v. Google Case Yields E-Mail Insight - NYTimes.com

Dish Network Might Offer "Early Release" VOD

Dish Network is considering offering an "early release" video-on-demand for films that are about eight weeks out of theaters, similar to what DirecTV already offers. The DirecTV offer shows new-release movies about eight weeks after they have ended theater exhibition, for a $30 price.

Dish is in negotiations with Hollywood studios and no final decision has been made on whether to introduce the service.

Dish Network in Talks to Offer Premium Video Rental Service - Bloomberg

Google Launches "Google Guides" Program

Apple has for decades made quite a decent business supporting the education market, and then reaping benefits as those users moved along in life.

Google is trying something similar, launching a program to turn its college Google Apps users into evangelists as they hit the workplace.

"If you attended a university that’s “gone Google” or just sought out Google products on your own, you’ve learned how to use Apps to collaborate and communicate with your professors and peers," Google says.

"With this in mind, we’ve created the Google Guides program to help you take your Google Apps expertise to your future job."

"When you become a Google Guide, we’ll equip you with resources to introduce and implement Apps in your workplace."

Official Google Blog: Graduate with Google Apps

HEAnet, Juniper, ADVA Demo Automated Router and Optical Layer Provisioning

Communications networks are not loosely-coupled systems, as a user's PC, tablet or smart phone is loosely coupled to that user's web services, local applications, peripherals

HEAnet, Juniper Networks and ADVA Optical Networking have successfully demonstrated the automated setup of optical circuits between Juniper Networks routers using an ADVA Optical Networking Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network, using a common signaling protocol.

The typical end user of services won't care. The carriers that have to create and maintain services will care quite a lot.

Using the control plane, HEAnet was able to provision end–to-end circuits between the routers over the optical network, using equipment from multiple suppliers. That typically is harder than first appears.

The deployment of the control plane enabled the initiating router to discover, reserve and then build an optical circuit across the optical network without any user intervention beyond the original user commands on the initiating router.

Rapidly growing traffic levels in both metro and core networks are driving many network operators to deploy a new network architecture based on integrated packet-layer routers and optical-transport systems, the companies say.

That is the optical core network equivalent to the requirement that retail service providers likewise operate their networks at lower cost as well.

“This is one of the first customer GMPLS interworking tests between router and optical equipment manufacturers,” said Eoin Kenny, project leader, HEAnet.

Sprint Offers Switchers $175 to $75

Sprint is offering up to $175 to business customers who switch from other wireless carriers, and $125 for individual customers who buy a smart phone. Sprint will pay $75 for individuals who buy a low-end "feature phone."

The credit is meant to "give customers a chance to try Sprint without having to worry about fees or charges for terminating their contracts with their current carriers," Sprint spokesman Lloyd Karnes said, according to CNN.

To get the credit, all accounts must be ported from existing contracts, and they must remain active for 61 days. A two-year contract is required. The offer began May 4.

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