iPhones are using a lot more data

A&T proves that iPhones use more data than blackberries, by a margin of about ten times. iPhone users use on average "'well over' 100 MB per month (compared to Blackberry around 10 MB)" (see this article. It just proves that the easier technology is made, the more people will use it and the more often it will be used. However, the main thing to look at here is not the higher volume of people, but the more time people are spending on the mobile internet. Mobile internet usage is no longer a chore, and when people start enjoying technology instead of waiting for things to load, squinting to try to read size eight antialiased text, and restarting after crashes (Safari has them too, unfortunately), technology starts to seem so much more personal and accessible. This then translates into more use, which AT&T has been seeing. However, their revenue per iPhone user has been about double that of a normal mobile phone user, due to the data plan involved.

Android VOIP?

Because Android is completely open, it has very few regulations on the OS. Even if it does, what's to prevent someone from swapping out the regulation program, just like swapping out the dialer?

I bring this question up because I just thought of something: Apple prevents people through its app store from running VOIP applications over EDGE to save AT&T the horror of losing money just due to iPhones. What's to keep android phones from running VOIP over a data network? If it is their method of app distribution, couldn't that be swapped out as well? If not, open source software is easily modified. It's just a thought, but...

What people don't realize about SOA and Web Applications

Nearly every analyst thinks that web applications are the next big thing in computing. However, they tend not to see the other side of web applications, and all of the turmoil and strife that may come with them.

1. If you have temporarily lost your internet connection, web apps are useless. Gee, this is a big one. Web apps cannot be used when not connected to the web. Although people using Google Gears and Adobe AIR may beg to differ, web apps rely on an at least somewhat constant internet connection. If the internet evolves into two seperate networks: a network of web pages for information, and a network of integrated runtimes under something such as fluid. Then, a browser can return to being just a browser. However, do standards bodies like the W3C want to tie the web to one proprietary standard? There just might be a format war over the web.
2. Web apps have no room for abandonware. When a company goes bankrupt or a software project gets abandoned on the desktop, normally the world moves on. However, in the wonderful world of web apps, when a piece of software gets abandoned chaos ensues. In a world of nearly entirely web apps, do you think people are going to have fun downloading all of their files and either working on them locally or uploading them to another web app service? How about your grandmother? Will people even be able to get their files after a web app goes offline?
3. Web apps using integrated runtimes tie users in to proprietary standards. When you use Google Gears or Adobe Air next, or even play a flash game, consider the company that is providing you with this technology, and consider how they make their money. Do you think that after web apps become ubiquitous the companies are going to let any one write a web app? If this happens, be sure the Free Software Foundation will have something to say about it.
4. Most web apps require a monthly fee. The current model of software can be compared to a candy bar. With a candy bar, you buy it, and you own that candy bar, free to give it away, and if you give it away you no longer have the candy bar. The same is true for software currently. When you buy a piece of software, either in a box or online, you are presented with a license agreement, which absolves the software company of all responsibility for anything you do with the software and anything the software does. With the current model for online services and web apps, you either get something for free and see ads, or pay a monthly fee. This is because the bandwidth and costs for running the app cost money, and the software company does not want the software it sold you to cost it money. With web apps, you cannot easily give software away, you can just use it for yourself.
5. Web apps have an unfamiliar user interface. Web apps do not easily integrate with the theme of the operating system, so users have to find their way around them on their own, with little to no consistency between one interface and the next. Completely cross platform interfaces do not work well either, as can be seen when one tries to launch a java app on a Mac or on Linux. Once again, if your grandmother is used to one interface at the moment, will she be able to navigate the five of the five different web apps she will be using.

Web apps are not always what they are cracked up to be, and it seems that people are willing to look past those flaws to point out the advantages, such as someone else being responsible for hard disk failures, and the fact that web apps provide a convenient way to inspect all of your data and keep it virus-free, the latter being a topic that may become irrelevant soon. However, in the next few lines I am going to make my biggest prediction yet. I believe that we are in the middle of a web app bubble, and that there will be a web app bust similar to the dot-com bust. Look at all of the people investing in companies such as Google and Yahoo, and look at all of the companies trying to implement web apps, such as Microsoft. However, eventually the web apps may bust, for the reasons outlined above or for a different reason, and when that happens, prepare for the latest fad to become really uncool.

iPod Touch + SDK = Tricorder?

The iPhone SDK should be out in June. However, the thing that most people don't realize is that the SDK also applies to the iPod Touch, and the myriad of practical uses. For example, the medical database shown off by Steve Jobs when he announced the SDK. Say your doctor walks in. He looks at your current health, and says he needs your health records. He can now either go off to an archive and find your file, or use his iPod Touch to search for you in a medical database, which will tell him your hereditary dispositions, your past diseases, and the treatments prescribed before for those diseases. Of course, this would require your hospital to have wireless, which most hospitals already do. It also requires a centralized storage database - a potential security risk for your health and identity records. However, if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, it could work.
One of the reasons I think the iPod Touch is more attractive to businesses than the iPhone is because most businesses already have a phone system, possibly running VOIP over their wireless network. A company's phone system represents a significant investment, and while replacing all of its phones with iPhones would be a great undertaking, the iPod Touch fits into a different category. While mobile phones have absorbed some of the PDA market, they provide clunky interfaces for handling data. The iPod Touch's data interfaces are more sophisticated.
All in all, businesses may see the iPod Touch more as a tricorder-like device, good at managing data like a normal iPod manages songs. A few forward-thinking companies may adopt iPod Touches in a PDA-like capacity, and as the iPod Touch grows and evolves (possibly to allow add-ons in that 30 pin docking port), companies will see the value of having all of the data at your fingertips in less than the great amount of time it takes to use a phone.

On iPhone cell tower triangulation

Did you know that the clock on the iPhone home screen is intelligently synced to the triangulation feature in google maps. A general estimate of location is good enough to set the time zone by. However, triangulation does not work well in a building. Right now my iPhone tells me that it is 2:23 PM. It is currently 10:23. Cool feature, it just has a little trouble with buildings.
Apropos, I have found Google maps triangulation to be present in one other aspect of the system: the pane of the weather widget when the program is started is synced to the location, but only if you have that location in your weather places.