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May 12, 2009: Iphone Market Expands to Fargo

It’s hard to beat discussions of the weather in this area, but this week opened with the announcement that AT&T would purchase 79 new markets from Verizon that included North and South Dakota and more importantly, Fargo.

April 10, 2009: Custom Google Latitude Video

Several months ago, Google released a cool yet slightly creepy feature for mobile devices that essentially reports your current physical location to Google Maps. This service, Google Latitude, also adds the expected privacy controls so only friends can share this information.  I have installed Latitude on my mobile but have yet to really integrate the service into my life. Still, I remain optimistic that social, proximity aware applications will find their niche and start adding value to our daily lives.

February 23, 2009: Sundog Releases New Lead Routing App for Salesforce

Sundog will release its latest lead assignment utility for salesforce.com’s AppExchange today. This new and improved version called Territory Lead Routing Enterprise, automates the process of lead assignment for your Salesforce organization. As leads arrive from various sources, they are routed by predefined territories based on postal codes, states, countries, or types. The app conveniently allows lead assignment to queues, users or partner accounts and manages assignment notifications.

February 05, 2009: Google is Watching You

I’ve been playing with Google’s latest mobile innovation today called Google Latitude. This new location broadcasting software is built atop the Google Maps application and is available for your computer as well as several mobile devices including the G1 and Blackberries.  Latitude is a simple yet impressive solution for sharing your location with friends without compromising your control over privacy. In short, Latitude uses your phone’s GPS to update your physical location stored on your Google account (e.g. your gmail.com address). You can easily setup sharing with others and customize the rules for what they see.

January 05, 2009: Google Wants Your Ideas

With the new year finally here, it’s a good time to look back at the impressive mobile industry innovations of 2008 with Google/T-Mobile’s release of the first Android handset, Apple’s release of the iPhone 3G, or Research In Motion’s first touch phone, the Blackberry Storm. It’s also a good time to think on what could be in store for 2009.

The pace of innovation seems to be accelerating after several years of stagnation. Every day brings another app on the App Store and another handset announcement by one of the world’s carriers.  Evolution appears to be happening before our very eyes. For this basic scientific process to run its course, it requires an ecosystem that is not yet satisfied with the resulting products.  The fittest producers in this new environment have recognized a tipping point that requires a good source of user feedback in order for their innovations to win out. 

November 30, 2008: Your Linux iPhone Is Here

I can’t say that I am surprised to hear that the Linux operating system has rammed its way through yet one more door. This time however, the threshold is Apple’s flagship mobile device the iPhone. This weekend, iphone-dev.org announced that after considerable reverse engineering by the unofficial iphone development team, a limited Linux OS in now available for iPhone and 1st gen iPod Touch (no touch screen drivers, sound, or WiFi / cell radio support).

This would seem to be a significant milestone for a growing number of developers, users, and enterprises interested in greater openness in the mobile ecosystem.  Even today in its limited state, Linux on the iPhone may catalyze some competition through linux-based mobile alternatives like Android.  As Android stabilizes on the iPhone device, users will have choice of where to buy music and more importantly, where to buy applications.

September 23, 2008: Android Lives!  T-Mobile G1 Official Announcement

If there was ever any doubt that Google could breath life into the new mobile platform Android, today’s announcement should put the debate to rest. T-Mobile held a press conference this morning in NYC to officially announce the release of the world’s first handset powered by the Android platform. The simply named G1 will be in T-Mobile stores around the world on October 22nd selling for only $179. The two data plans mentioned at today’s event appear equally affordable at $25 for unlimited data and limited messaging or $35 for unlimited data and messaging. Factoring in the required voice plan put this phone at a similar price to the iPhone and other smartphone options.

August 21, 2008: Android closer to final release

It’s a big week for Android. Google finally released a new version of the Android SDK that is reported to be close to what developers can expect from the final 1.0 release later this year. Just after upgrading to 0.9, our own application busted just as the release notes warned it might. Our application is still fairly small so porting to 0.9 was trivial. It’s a small price to pay for what we get with Android 0.9 SDK.

July 31, 2008: Sundog Releases Territory Lead Routing for AppExchange

Sundog recently released a convenient application to customize the lead assignment behavior within salesforce.com’s Partner Relationship Management (PRM) application.  The new app, Territory Lead Routing 1.0, is available for no charge on the AppExchange for organizations using PRM.

June 23, 2008: More Delays Reported for Android…Depending How One Counts

There seems to be no hiding this story today.  The short of it…Google is experiencing some delays with its roll out of Android and the first devices that will support it. Google had stated earlier this year that the first Android phone would ship in the second half of 2008. Today’s report from the Wall Street Journal reported a slow down which quickly down spiraled to reports of delay and “A Blow to Google’s Mobile Ambitions”.  The apparent frenzy around the story appears to be short lived as more blogs are now clarifying the state of Android and restating that late Q4 still falls within the second half of 2008 where Google predicted devices would first emerge. As far as Google is concerned “We remain on schedule to deliver the first Android-based handset in the second half of 2008 and we’re very excited to see the momentum continuing to build behind the Android platform among carriers, handset manufacturers, developers and consumers.”

May 30, 2008: Short But Sweet At Google I/O

If you’re like me and missed your opportunity to attend Google’s premier developer gathering this week—Google I/O, you where likely following your favorite Google blogs rather obsessively on Wednesday and Thursday, trolling for early insights before the inevitable mainstream analysis. Google did not disappoint with two days of nearly 100 sessions on AJAX & JavaScript, APIs & Tools, Social, Maps & Geo, and Mobile. An opening keynote by Vic Gundotra (VP, Engineering), kicked off discussion with three key themes: the Cloud, Connectivity, and the Client.

Vic’s keynote also answered a common question regarding Google motives…What is Google doing hosting a developer conference if Web is the platform?

April 14, 2008: Last Day for Android Developer Challenge

If you’ve followed the mobile scene in the last 6 months, you probably heard about Android—the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. Android offers a free software development kit (SDK) for Java developers with key built-in features such as an integrated browser (Webkit), SQLite datastore, GPS, and a full stack of platform essentials missing from many mobile systems.