Um, there's a problem with your logic. If you consistently do the following:

1. Search using Google
2. If you find your desired result, you stop. If not, then you:
3. Search again ('resort to") using Bing
4. Find what you want on Bing!

Then Bing (or any other search engine) will magically seem better, because you only use it when your first option fails!

To truly determine quality for yourself, you'd have to choose the search provider in some kind of blinded randomized fashion...

This is a smoking gun to any pirated or "borrowed" music in your collection. Let the subpoenas begin! Or, you can leave the music at home and use something like Subsonic, which provides almost all the functionality of GMusic ... the client just needs some love and polish.

And the reason? Telus: 1900MHz WCDMA Rogers: 1900MHz WCDMA Bell: 1900MHz WCDMA In the space of two years, Canada has gone from way behind the US to way ahead, just because of inter-compatible, and thus competing, networks. We even get the iPhone unlocked up here with no need for stupid CDMA versions. Long live 3GSM!

This is great if you want to buy whole new slabs of glass. But why isn't someone making a photovoltaic film that can be applied to windows, providing a nice light tint and generating electricity in the process? Sure, it would probably have to be based on amorphous tech and still pass some light through so the efficiency wouldn't be super great, but it would be a cinch to apply and if it could generate enough electricity to charge my mobile phone every day or run my wifi router, that would be great!

Apple = red herring.

Even worse, there's a huge elephant in the room. The crux of TFA is that fragmentation is the price paid for "the pace of innovation." But the problem is not new releases -- it's the failure of Google's Android Market (app store) to keep up with the needs of the marketplace. This has caused a bunch of carriers, hardware makers, and iTunes-wannabes to create their own app stores -- each with their own requirements and generally making life hell for developers. The reason is that Google's own Android Market was slow to launch internationally (especially to support paid apps), has an infamously poor UX, and -- shocking for a company called Google -- poor search capability.

New hardware and OS releases are generally welcomed by developers. But if you're an Android developer, what's insane is having to support multiple app stores for the SAME hardware and SAME OS -- just because Google didn't bother to support paid apps in Canada until two months ago, for example. And don't even get me started on the joys of trying to make an app for China.

Hey Andy, before you pass off fragmentation as a necessary part of innovation, take a stroll down to the department responsible for creating Android Market and tell them to start innovating to rein in the chaos they've created.

I coulda sworn I saw this on Slashdot some time ago, but in any case, this "news" is at least two years old...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/04/14/beaver-park.html

Mod parent up. What happens when you leave an inkjet printout in the sun? Those dyes fade pretty quickly, and natural dyes are probably even more prone to fading. But if they can get the technology cheap enough to be disposable, or maybe reprintable, maybe there's still a useful niche.

Keep your WRT54G, and just upgrade the wireless to 802.11n. I did it with an AirPort Express connected to one of the ethernet ports in bridge mode. In the real world, 802.11n rarely saturates the 100baseT ethernet, so you get almost all the speed, without having to reconfigure everything from scratch. As a bonus, you can still host a separate 802.11b/g network on the old router to support legacy devices without jamming up your N network.

That could be a valid argument, IF this Vodafone app store was indeed "to fill in the European gaps where Google hasn't yet launched the official Android app store" -- as the summary says.

But that's false. According to TFA, ALL of the countries targeted by Vodafone are ALREADY supported by Google Market. That is (from TFA): The Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

Android apps can be downloaded in an executable format, just like desktop apps. So why the need for an app store?

Answer: Every good MBA is salivating at the thought of owning the eyeballs, billing, becoming the search engine, and slapping their brand on top of other people's apps. Remember the early days of the web when a gazillion "portal" sites tried to copycat Yahoo? It's the same situation here, a land grab of wannabe Apple iTunes imitators. To them, it doesn't matter that they are late to the party -- they propose some incremental benefit over Google's store and try to get everybody to come to the party at their house.

The actual innovators in mobile are the app developers, who are flat-out competing on ingenuity in a very difficult marketplace. Yet these overlapping app stores are trying to pit developer against developer in an attempt to control the market. It's a classic divide and conquer strategy, and the big loser is the user.

"Android fragmentation begins"? I don't think so. It's in full-swing.

Seems like every week some marketing dweeb comes up with the brilliant idea to create yet another app store. Motorola and Lenovo have their own, as does China Mobile. That's not even counting the dime-a-dozen independent entries with names like Handango, Cellmania, AndAppStore, MobiHand, GetJar, Nexva, SlideMe, etc. etc.

I am an Android developer, and get an email every week from yet another app store. Each has its own custom requirements and contract overhead, and they expect us to do the work for free for the "privilege" of joining their flock and whatever scheme-of-the-day they are concocting as their business plan.

No thanks. I dump those emails and stick with the Android Market. For all its flaws, developers need to show solidarity and work towards improving it. The alternative is to give away your work and place it in the hands of the likes of wireless carriers, who will continue their land grab game at the expense of the developers, innovators, and consumers.