Call waiting…

With the eagerly awaited Google phone (Nexus one) now officially in the wild, I sit here wondering what could have been and saddened that we are not seeing the new dawn of mobiles but simply another very good handset.

Google, I am guessing , didn’t want to have to do a deal with an operator for this. Just as we saw with the Sat nav market, get involved, get what they want then launch their own product to usurp the competition. The campaign for Google taking over the mobile world started a few years ago.

It was the quest to get free wifi across the US and other major cities. Free wifi means no need for operators. Google voice and the recently acquired Gizmo5 would allow Google to host the whole conversation without needing to rely on the network operator and really threaten the system.

We saw a brief example of what it could be like when Google was able to sponsor free wifi at the majority of US airports over the festive season. As it is, wifi coverage isn’t yet good enough and the affectionately termed ‘dumb pipes’ (the operators) will continue to be involved for the time being as a point of necessity rather than anything else.

Oli Newton is the head of emerging platforms at i-level

Is talking the new writing?

CNN technology posted an article two days ago stating that Vivox, a US based company that provides an online integrated voice service for gaming and social virtual worlds, is going to launch its services on facebook. Vivox, who currently have over 15 million users, will probably be able to expect a massive user growth, and facebook users will be able to experience their favourite social network in a completely new way.

But Twitter is not late to follow its main rival. Yesterday the web based phone service JAJAH released news about their new service. Through typing “@call @username” Twitter will prompt both phones to start ringing on a secure line, through Twitter. They are also true to the Twitter brand through keeping the conversations to a 2 minute maximum.

I can’t help to think about some problems that this will bring. Both Facebook and Twitter are currently being flooded with information, and to a large extent spam. This opens up for another way for us to get targeted by all the litter out there. Are we going to get this spam through our phones now?

Also, some people have hundreds, others thousands of friends and followers, that actually post or write them messages every day. Imagine that coming as phone calls instead.

from teaberryltd.com

So now that we are actually going back to talking to each other again, will this mean that in a not too distant future we are also going to start meeting each other in person?