“The differences between the iOS App Store and Android Market are a microcosm of the differences between Apple and Google. Apple is a retailer, a purveyor of well-crafted goods that people will line up to purchase. Google is an advertising company that builds popular services that command large audiences.”

He makes a good point on the quality (and type) of apps you find in each store:

“iOS’s best apps could exist for Android but don’t. Android’s best apps couldn’t exist for iPhone. In theory, then, Android could be beating iOS in both regards. Android could be the platform with exclusive apps like Reeder, Twitterrific, Things,Simplenote, Instagram, Calvetica, PCalc, and Pastebot — in addition to the exclusives it already has like Swype and home screen replacements that the iPhone can’t have. What I find interesting is that Android just doesn’t have apps like this.”

“For [the millennial child] the act of knowing something has become inseparable from the act of reaching for knowledge. She searches for what she needs to know; in a moment’s time, the answers are at hand. And anything known to anyone anywhere has become indistinguishable from what she knows for herself.”

Memorizing certain things has it’s value, but if you have the skills to find the answer to anything in 30 seconds using the smartphone in your pocket, what things are really worth memorizing? There are two things we should teach: the skill of searching and finding (ie, how to learn) and the skill to evaluate the quality of your sources. That’s it. Research and critical analysis.

“If the iPhone didn’t exist, I would have the Nexus One in my pocket right now—but then again, if the iPhone didn’t exist, the Nexus One wouldn’t either.”

He talks about how a Nexus One is good for folks that like to tinker, tweak, and modify their devices, but warns that it comes at a significant cost to its usability. If you want something that just works (and you don’t want to hack it “within an inch of its life”) then iPhone is the one for you.

[via Marco]

“The Nexus One seems like a nice enough phone, but it’s nothing revolutionary (it’s got a trackball, for God’s sake). Everyone is still operating inside the same box that Apple defined three years ago.”

On one hand, I’m glad to see some competition for Apple. But I don’t know that most consumers can see what’s happening: Google is playing the Microsoft game. Copy Apple as closely as possible and as quickly as possible. Android will always be a second-rate smartphone (or super-smartphone).

Google’s Android phone operating system will rearrange the icons, change the colors, and maybe even do a couple unexpected things. But the genius at Apple is already working on the next big thing – not trying to copy their competitors.

“In addition to expanded accessibility for those with hearing disabilities, the combination of captions withmachine translation expands YouTube accessibility across the globe. If a caption track is available, it can be translated automatically in any of the 51 currently available languages. As a result, video content otherwise not accessible due to a language barrier can now be understood by a significantly larger user population.”

Next time you search, click on “Show Options” and then “Visited pages”. Be sure to also check out the very currious Wonder Wheel too!

According to my notes from last year, they predicted trends two weeks earlier than the doctors. This year, they’re simply calling it “near real-time”.

“Unlike in the corporate world, no one thinks twice if you IM with your friends in the middle of the day or go out to play volleyball at two. The culture is designed to help employees relax into productivity, not stress into it. . . . To me this seems, well, logical.”

What a simple, brilliant idea. We’re so busy stressing about goals, metrics, deadlines, and doing things the corporate way, that we forget: people are most productive when they can relax at work.

I have not yet heard of the phone version yet, but this is now a reality when you use email thanks to Google’s Automatic message translation:

“you can have entire conversations in multiple languages with each participant reading the messages in whatever language is most comfortable for them. It’s not quite the universal translators we’re so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it’s an exciting step in the right direction.”

1) One phone number rings multiple phones. I want to answer the calls on my work phone, but my cell phone has my address book and thus the functioning caller-id. Now I can see who’s calling by looking at the cell, but still pick up the work line.

2) Keypad-less dialing. It feels weird at first to answer my phone to call someone, but I can search my address book online and click “call”. Google calls me and then connects me to whomever I clicked on. Now I don’t have to punch in 10 digits which I invariably get wrong on the first attempt.

3) Transcribed voicemail. I much prefer to read a voicemail than listen to it. It isn’t perfect, but good enough to get the idea. And it emails the transcription too, so I don’t even need to “look it up”.

Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

Most people don’t know how much electricity their appliances use, where in the house they are wasting electricity, or how much the bill might go up during different seasons. But in a world where everyone had a detailed understanding of their home energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills. In fact,studies show that access to home energy information results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity bills.

Very cool. I hope it will be available here.

And a great “what is rss” video repost:

Just hold the phone to your ear, wait for the beep, and say what you’re looking for. That’s it. Just talk. Once the App is on, you don’t have to push any buttons to search. [...] And if you’re doing a local search, there’s no need to specify where you are because Google Mobile App now has Search with My Location. Search for “movie showtimes” or “Mediterranean restaurant” and you’ll automatically see results based on your current location.

All made possible by the iPhone’s built in GPS, accelerometer, and proximity sensors. As Tim O’Reilly astutely points out:

Future applications will surprise us by using them in new ways, and in new combinations; future devices will provide richer and richer arrays of senses (yes, senses, not just sensors) for paying attention to what we want.

We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.

Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of P* hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.)

Don’t overplan something. Just do it half-assed to start with, then throw more people at it to fix it if it works. Worked for every successful Google project from AdWords to Google Maps.

[via Kottke]

Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate. It requires waiting on the line, listening to hold music, being transferred and possibly having the call lost, all so you have to start over again. You can’t share a phone call with your colleagues, you can’t get someone else’s input or feedback.

…

We get requests every day from people who don’t think email support will cut it and demand a phone number to call us. Their worries are assuaged when they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes that is informative, helpful and obviously written by a human being. It’s absolutely 100% possible to provide excellent customer care without a phone or phone number, and our company proves that daily.

Their support ticketing system? Gmail.

REDUX POSTS FROM JAN and FEB 2007

Use Flickr to share your digital photos with friends and family

Flickr is a “Web 2.0″ site that let’s you share photos. What I like most about it is that it is really easy: after I import photos from my camera, I drop a few in an email and send it to my flickr email address. The photos are then automatically posted to my page without ever needing to open a browser. Picts of my kids are here.

Gmail: A new way of looking at email

Gmail fundamentally changed the way I approach my email – for the better. If you aren’t using this for your home email, check it out. It’ll be weird at first, and then you’ll quickly wonder how you ever did without it. The spam filtering alone is worth it’s weight in gold (it saved me from reading 1706 spams in the last 30 days).

I’ve been thinking about a redux for some time and as I considered it more, I concluded that the reason wasn’t to simply fill a void*, but that it furthered the purpose for the whole site: I’ve found stuff on the internet that I think you’ll find interesting and useful. I posted about these things once, and more than a year later I still think they are every bit as relevant and important as when I first posted them. If you missed them then, perhaps you’ll enjoy them now. Thanks for taking the time!

* I think a lot of redux’s are to fill a void, and this isn’t my problem: I’ve got a backlog of posts that could fill half a year and the ideas keep flowing as I scan some 2500 articles a month.

REDUX POSTS FROM 2006

* Google News can send you email updates when any new information or recent news articles are posted to the internet on a topic of your choice. Click on “News Alerts” on the left side of the web site to set up the scheduled email. Useful for breaking news or keeping up on any topic you want to follow. (11/10/2006)

* Collaborative writeboards, online notes, a calendar, etc with Backpack. All in the fancy web 2.0 style with AJAX. My favorite feature: set a reminder on the site that will text message your cell phone at a preset time so you don’t forget about something. Originally posted on 12/15/2006, and mentioned again “to keep track of the links” on 11/14/07 and yet again on 12/11/07 as “a way to track your to-do’s and other random data that you want to get done.” I’m still using it every day.

* “[Work] below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.” [Pablo Picasso] (12/22/2006)

But tell me what you think! Do you already use Google News and Backpack? Is this old news? Did you look into them and decide they were no good? What do you use instead?