I was reading about all that and wondered.. XMPP is distributed, you can accept peoples, see there picture and status. For sure you can chat and create private rooms to share a chat. There is not much missing. Maybe a wall and pictures. So I typed "XMPP has social network" on google. I have tonnes of responses.

Maybe that's what google wave was trying to be. But google wave was too complicated. It offered too much and nobody except google had an implementation.

Any thoughts about this?

I found http://onesocialweb.org/. That is maybe what I was looking for.

I first read "They buy fiction".

Which was much more fun and probably very true also ;-)

reading your post I thought that turn by turn was finaly working so I rushed to my G1.. but sadely I still have a "road not available" message. But the good news is that the hacked application (google maps brut) is still working like a charm. :-D

Photons have no mass. That's one of the things that define them. There is a nice article on wikipedia about it :-)

Your imagination seems limited ;-) I'll begin to say that I don't agree with the reason I'll give but it's easy to imagine it's the main point.

They want to be capable to trace illegal activities the best they can. Open access points are more anonymous. So illegal activities can't be tracked easily there. If somebody steal a bank through an open access point, it's easy to say that it could be made harder.

Where I mostly do not agree is what is considered illegal activity. It's probably to protect big copyright owners. And I don't think peoples not doing any money while sharing data should convinced of wrongdoing. But that's another matter.

* An android phone with SIPDroid shoud do the trick for number 1.
* Number 2 is ok also with android.
* No 3 is ok if you buy an used HTC G1 on ebay. They go for an average of 165$ right now.
* 4 is also ok woth android.

Buy an used Android phone.. best bang for the buck!

Offer a solution. If you go to your boss's office and tell him he is a thief he's not going to be happy. But if you get in there and offer a free alternative it should be a good way of bringing things up.

Openoffice can do the job if everybody switch together. 7-zip is a good replacement for winzip. I'm pretty sure lot's of software has free (like in open source) alternative. Try, you'll see where it lead you. :-)

It's closed because the handset builders have to buy it and enter in a contract with Microsoft to offer it. For a programmer a good API will never be like having access to the source code. I know because I lived throught both.

It's like the 80s and the begining of windows all over again but for mobile devices. The question is what will be the OS that can use the most software. Right now there are: IPhone OS which is very closed. Windows mobile also very closed and not sexy. Android which is open and has lots of backing by lot's of different builders. Many other smaller options. Moblin look very open too but.. when it will show up, Android should already available from every cellular providers.

What is funny in that mobile war is the position of Apple. Pretty much like when the first Mac came by at the begining of the 80s. They have a great product. But they are too closed. So it's going to be everybody against them. They can't win. Dell, HTC, Lenovo, Motorola, Philips, Samsung, Sony Ericson (on the open side this time) , and many others already have android phones.

I predict that soon when you'll want to build a mobile application, it will have to run on Android first. That way it will be available to everybody. The rest will be second thought. Just like the market for computer right OS now with windows. But this time the winner will be the open platform because it's been early in the market and the manufacturer will simply find it easier then going for windows mobile.

Like everybody knows.. almost nobody use Microsoft OS.