I don't know the financial breakdown, but it's worth noting that Bandwidth.com — the company behind Republic Wireless — actually runs the VoIP backbone that powers Twilio, Google Voice, and other services. So I'd imagine they get a better rate :)
"Bandwidth.com, Inc., a privately held telecommunications company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, announced today that it has signed a commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies under which the parties agree to terminate each other's VoIP traffic at a rate of $0.0007 per minute."
This is for landlines, but still a much lower number than I was expecting to see.
I'm sure. There are hacked versions of Gingerbread out there for the original Droid, even though it was officially deemed too underpowered for it. Given the number of hacker types that own a Nexus One, I'm sure it'll be on the way.
I hope Cyanogenmod or someone else will release one. Cyanogenmod version of 2.3 for N1 and other phones, came out as 'nightly' release ages before the official Google release.
Does anyone know what are the hardware limitations to adapting ICS?
it will be built off of android open source project essentially the same thing that the nexus prime will be running. With no new hardware requirements, I don't see any indication of why it wouldn't run as well.
It might be able to run, but the performance is just so subpar that Google feels uncomfortable releasing it. I doubt it would go over well if they release ICS for the N1 and the phone is barely usable.
CM, on the other hand, will appear on any device that somebody is dedicated enough to bring it to. So if somebody really wants ICS on the N1, then they'll do it.
The N1 has 512MB of internal space, and doesn't guarantee that the user has a MicroSD card inserted. Many Android apps (including Google-provided ones) only install to internal storage, and require janky hacks to work from the SD card. If it's impossible or impractical to update or remove ICS features to fit in a half-gig, it's impossible or impractical to port ICS to the N1.
Gingerbread runs fine on the N1 and ICS has no higher hardware requirements (per Google themselves). Other than driver updates for hardware acceleration, there's nothing about the N1 that really disqualifies it from being able to run ICS just fine.
He or she is saying that some people who were not looking for the advanced features bought the iPad because it was the only tablet available beyond some minimum.
My mom (she's a minister) just got an iPad, when all she needed was a handheld device with which she can scroll the text of a eulogy, when she's at a grave doing a funeral. The lowliest of tablets can handle this task, but "iPad" is all people talk about. If Amazon can generate buzz -- and I think they can -- then it would certainly erode sales such as my mom's.
Yeah, a lot of people think they know this market and what people "would" buy, and all of them except the guys selling iPads have been wrong so far. Batting average of everyone else: .000.
"Easy-to-use", which is far from a given on a non-iOS device, doesn't mean anything if there is not an attractive application base.
A lot of price comparisons are based simply on initial purchase price. If you take into account pre- and post-sale service and support, build quality, longterm reliability, resale value over time, to name a few, it's harder to simply compare purchase prices. I think there will also be some people who will end up with Kindle Fires who probably - secretly - wanted iPads. Santa will be able to save a few dollars this year...
The majority of people (that I know) with iPads are using them for consuming content or playing games - something they could easily do for $300 less with a Amazon Fire.
No 3G, not much storage space, lower resolution (as soon as Apple releases iPad's with retina display) and lack of an Apple logo make the Fire inferior, but with a much lower price it could make things interesting.
I doubt Facebook would build a hardware device. Instead, I think they'll do a 'social OS' that uses Android for all the low-level stuff, but with the Google apps all replaced with apps that have deep Facebook integration (messages, contacts, photos, etc.).
Microsoft Bing apps (e.g. Maps) could round out the features that FB doesn't build themselves, and they could use Amazon's Appstore in lieu of Android Market.
But to your point, it's possible these designers are at work making this social OS beautiful. Android in the back, iOS in the front.
Meh, they control it to an extent. The core open sourced Android (gingerbread atm) is clearly "good enough" that all anyone has to do to credibly fork it and still deliver a high end device is bring as much to the table as Google itself does.
That's not a herculean task although only a handful of companies qualify and most of those are better off jumping through Google's hoops to get the full experience anyway. Facebook probably isn't one that wants to jump through Google's hoops though.
I'm not saying the FB phone will be a success. Clearly some people want it. Let's go benefit of the doubt and say it will be technically awesome. Well so were a lot of other flops. I think a FB phone is one of those things on a knifes edge that could be a Vista/Zune/Edsel level flop or could be the iDevice killer every tech pundit has been waiting on for the last decade.
Google allowed Facebook to import your Google Contacts via an API for years. Last fall it blocked Facebook's access to that API, saying that they'll restore it when Facebook offers reciprocity (i.e. if Facebook begins to allow users to export their FB contacts using a similar API, then Google will reactivate Facebook's access to the Google Contacts API).
Facebook's argument has always been that it doesn't think you have the right to export your friends' contact information (or at least, they're endlessly pondering whether you have that right). Which is a ridiculous argument, because, as has been mentioned elsewhere, they already allow Yahoo Mail users to do exactly that.
On the other hand the valuation is merely based on the fact that they are the "one and only social network". They are dependent on this monopolistic behavior or they are screwed and can forget an IPO.
Zuckerberg himself with this "i just try to connect people for the rest of my life" seems to be under this bias. He is no Steve Jobs who was able under almost any condition to create value.
This social network stuff has the biggest lock-in of all internet services, but he can't prevent people from moving by force.
My concern about Zynga is that they're going to burn through users.
People will pay for things in a game and have fun doing it. Then they'll get sick of that game and move on to the next one. And they'll buy more things there, and then they'll get sick of that game and look at the next one and realize that, hey, this one is pretty similar. And maybe it isn't worth investing hours upon hours tending to some sprites. Or forking over real money.
I'm not saying this is guaranteed, but as someone who has played a lot of games growing up, I had it happen plenty of times. Zynga needs to release some games that feel totally different from Farm/City/Frontierville.
I know they're famous for Farm/City/Frontierville, but they seem to have done a good job acquiring popular games/studios (i.e. Words with Friends..)
And while I haven't played it yet, I've heard that "Hanging with Friends" is a lot of fun as well (which is the result of them acquiring NewToy when they got Words...)
Personally, It's nice to see Zynga attempting to keep "fresh" and not sticking with just the *villes. However, I do think that increased competition (for instance, on the iPhone Zynga Poker pales compared to Pokerist.com's Texas Poker) will make it interesting for Zynga.
I'm sorry you don't like the show. You seem to be in the minority, though.
FWIW there are some things I think we could improve on as far as polish goes (a title/intro sequence would be a start). But I'm not going to change my personality.
They don't need gimmicky intros or polish to sell them because they're interesting as hell, I love watching them and seeing how other startups are doing, especially ones that are all ghetto and scrappy like the rest of us instead of 'normal' offices.
Are they a little rough around the edges? Yes. But aren't the software and companies we're creating from scratch also a little rough around the edges? It gets better with time as it evolves.
Some of it seems a bit staged/awkward but the majority of it seems authentic, off-the-cuff, which is good. Being able to easily pick out the staged parts is good, too.
Then i would really like to never see one of these posts make hacker news ever again.
This video was an unlikeable, meandering, and largely contentless mess. If your goal is to inform hackers and geeks about interesting workspaces and/or the workspaces of real programmers, i can't say that you've achieved your purpose. If on the other hand your goal is just to bother employees with a camera and tell pointless anecdotes about yourself in a variety of settings, then i question the entire endeavor, even beyond the unpalatable packaging (cribs? seriously...?).
tl;dr: Not enough lifehacking/productivity investigation, way, way, way too much jkincaid.
I ended up going through several of the TC Cribs videos last night and really enjoyed them. Not sure why others are being so negative, but keep up the good work!
