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In today’s world of copycats and competition, I think most consumers are looking for something unique. After all, why did so many people buy an underpowered, anti-business, cell phone that’s locked down worse than any other we’ve ever seen? Probably because it’s easily the most unique and fresh cell phone on the market and all those all of those issues simply didn’t matter.

Do you see what I’m getting at here?

But alas, all is not lost with Android. By its very nature, Google’s foray into the mobile industry is customizable and allows vendors to use their imagination with their devices. And while I applaud Google for making that happen, I don’t trust any other vendor to truly show us something special the way Apple did.

When I first heard about Android - Google’s “iPhone killer” - I wondered how it would stand up to the leader in the innovative cell phone market. Would it be a best of breed? Would it be a total flop? I didn’t know.

I don’t think so.

Until now.

If there’s nothing new about Android-based phones, I don’t see why anyone would pick those over the iPhone. Now I’m sure some would claim that the carrier matters and that’s partially true, but doesn’t Android run the risk of looking like the second-class iPhone and thus, a piranha in the cell phone industry if it’s just more of the same?

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Android looks like it’ll be the second-rate iPhone if Google doesn’t up the ante soon. And although I was excited about Android for quite some time, I think it has lost its luster.

More often than not, people didn’t buy the first-generation iPhone because it was too locked down, it was on AT&T, and it wasn’t business-friendly. But if Apple and the latest rumors are to be believed, two of those issues will be solved in the next month or so and there’s a possibility that the AT&T partnership could crumble as well. In other words, the three issues we’re all witnessing with the iPhone may be negated in one month’s time - much sooner than the launch of any Android-based phones.

But unfortunately for Google, it doesn’t have that luxury. After looking at what the company and its partners have come up with so far, I’m left wondering why we should care. It has a touchscreen? So does the iPhone. It can make viewing webpages much easier? So can the iPhone. It has a neat little zoom feature? So does the iPhone. You can modify things, add software, and maybe even use 3G? So will the iPhone in a few months.

After reading through the presentation Google made earlier this week, viewing the screenshots, and spending far too much time poring over the videos, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would care. Sure, it’s a great little device that uses some neat Google apps in new ways, but is it enough of an improvement over the
iPhone that people would actually want this thing?

Microsoft’s solo crusade against open source through patents baffles me. It also prevents me from working for them or with them. I’m not alone in this.

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(Credit:
CNET News.com)

I gave up on that quixotic quest, and in retrospect it was the right decision. Sam Ramji, Bill Hilf, and others are doing a far better job of nudging Microsoft toward open source than I would have. But the bigger reason is that Microsoft has placed an apparently insurmountable hurdle in its path to fully engaging the open-source community, and to my ability to fully support its embrace of open source:

Several years ago while still working for Novell, I considered going to work for Microsoft in Europe. (Had I waited long enough, I could have worked for Microsoft while still at Novell, but that’s another story, albeit one that is paying off well for Novell.) I thought I could help the company figure out open source and navigate the thorny issues that prevent it from embracing open source.

Why, Microsoft? Why not act like every other software company in the industry today and engage open source on fair and equal terms? Why not stop this silly attempt to box open source in rather than letting it help you build your business?

All it takes is a softening of your stance on patent infringement. You’d give up nothing. You’d gain much.

I suspect that had Microsoft gone public with its patent crusade before it did deals with Zend, SugarCRM, MySQL, JBoss, etc., it might have netted fewer of these deals, too, because it pollutes the open-source partnerships it touches. It makes everything look like a patent pledge, rather than the interoperability agreements that these companies signed up to complete.

Patents.

It’s unclear to me why Microsoft refuses to back off this issue. It stands alone in its dogmatic insistence on fouling the open-source downstream.

Notice how few open-source partnerships it has announced since its declaration that Linux violates its patents? It signs with also-ran Linux desktop vendors and skittish Asian OEMs, but not with the mainstream open-source startups that are taking open source into the enterprise. It used to sign these partners. Not anymore.

We’re to the point that many commercial open-source companies are making it acceptable to integrate proprietary and open-source licensing into their business models. This means you can, too, without giving up your proprietary revenue stream. So why not engage?

According to TechCrunch, Searchme’s Music selection uses Imeem’s catalog of licensed songs by employing its widget, which can be embedded anywhere on the Web. Searchme grabs an Imeem widget for each song in the search results page and displays them in a Cover Flow-like layout to help users pick songs.

Unlike some services, like Yahoo’s music search, which will only allow users to play 25 streams each month, Searchme’s music streaming is unlimited and generally provides a better design for music searching. But with a slew of competitors that offer streaming, like MySpace Music, Grooveshark, and Imeem itself, it won’t be easy for the visual search engine to cement itself in the market, given its relatively small audience. But by offering free streaming, the company is doing all it can to capitalize on a growing trend in the marketplace, which could help it funnel more users into its Web search.

Searchme, a visual search engine, on Monday launched a free music streaming service that allows visitors to search for their favorite songs and listen to an unlimited number of tracks. Each song on Searchme provides a link to buy it on Amazon.com, eBay, or iTunes and can be added to a “search stack” or playlist, which can be accessed at any time. The Searchme Music page also features cover art, which users can flip through to choose songs.

CIO.com suggests that open source may be the future of enterprise innovation, echoing the Bank of New York Mellon’s comments on the subject last week. The question is not why use open source, but how to best use open source.

Riffing off the Eclipse Foundation’s Mike Milinkovich, CIO.com writes:

[I]f you develop in an open source model and other companies adopt what you develop, you have a higher chance of longevity in the code base. In other words, you can develop a custom solution to a unique business problem with less fear that your solution will turn into a dead-end legacy system when things, inevitably, change in a few years. Milinkovich also sees more CIOs banding together with industry peers to develop common open-source solutions to standard industry processes, thereby saving money by sharing costs and ensuring interoperability.

Amen. Proprietary software is all about vendor-driven innovation. Open source is all about user-driven innovation, collaboratively married to vendor innovation. It’s a two-way street, and it’s much, much better for both vendors and users.

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Read the full reviews of the Nikon S230 and Panasonic FX500.

Nikon Coolpix S230 photos

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 photos

The Lumix DMC-FX500 was once the flagship FX-series compact from Panasonic and carried an MSRP of $399.95. With the FX500 follow-up coming soon, it can now be found for more or less half that price. If you like shooting flexibility and don’t mind a little slow performance, this is definitely a lot of camera for the money.

Its features are pretty basic, but Nikon adds the requisite face, smile, and blink detection I expect to find on cameras in its class. You also get the advantage of the touch-screen interface for things like a touch-based focusing system and writing/drawing directly on photos. The suggested retail price is $230, but it is in stores for less.

One’s an easy-to-use, fashionable point-and-shoot, the other’s an advanced shooter with just as many manual-setting options as auto modes. Both have 3-inch touch-screen LCDs and 10-megapixel resolutions–and you can have your pick for $220 or less each from reputable dealers.

From its stylish S series of ultracompact cameras, the Nikon Coolpix S230 is the follow-up to the very popular S210.

Further, Mr. Trisko neglects to mention that almost 90% of Ohio’s electricity generation comes from coal — and yet that hasn’t prevented dramatic economic deterioration in the state. Is it possible that the same mentality that led Ohio to put virtually all its energy eggs in the coal basket is the same type of thinking that has led to the pervasive economic stagnation in Ohio? Is more of the same — stay the course, keep betting on coal — the way to go for Ohio’s economic future? Hmmmmmm.

Here in Ohio, ABEC has launched a series of billboards and newspaper advertisements promoting coal, implicitly at the expense of other energy alternatives. Particularly objectionable to me is the ad that illustrates (as if algebraically) “Coal = Ohio Jobs”, suggesting not-so-subtly that a shift to other non-coal forms of energy will cause a loss of jobs. I was compelled to write a counter-response, which appeared last week as an editorial in The Plain-Dealer.

In the wake of setbacks to new coal powerplant construction in the face of likely carbon legislation, the coal industry has mounted a serious PR blitz, led by a group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC).

ABEC is a national non-profit organization with a claimed membership of 150,000, whose acknowledged primary funding source is “America’s coal-based electricity providers” — including such big-boys as American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), First Energy (NYSE: FE) and Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Not to mention large coal companies such as Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) and CONSOL (NYSE: CNX), and railroads such as Burlington Northern Sante Fe (NYSE: BNI) and CSX (NYSE: CSX).

Richard T. Stuebi is the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, and is also the Founder and President of NextWave Energy, Inc.

In tandem with the Ohio media program, ABEC released a white paper written by “energy economist” Eugene Trisko — identified on the white paper as “Attorney at Law” but otherwise silent on his representation of the United Mine Workers of America (did someone say “coal”?) for over 20 years — entitled “The Rising Burden of Energy Costs on Ohio Families”. Mr. Trisko points out correctly that Ohio’s manufacturing-based economy has suffered mightily in recent years, and argues that “developing an energy supply strategy that maximizes the use of Ohio’s local [low-cost coal] resource could help to reduce the impact of future energy supply and price shocks.” In other words, Mr. Trisko stresses that Ohio should use more coal, because it’s so cheap — that is, as long as carbon emissions aren’t taxed or stringent carbon controls aren’t required.

Quite aptly, Sourcewatch refers to ABEC amusingly as an “astroturf” support organization: “apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.” Given the corporate interests listed on the ABEC website, it is hard to call ABEC a true grassroots organization.

However, if you can identify the tracks on P2P systems enough to sample, you can identify the tracks enough to block and filter. So why not give copyright owners that right? The Portfolio.com story seems to say that Warner Music Group intends the system to cover all the world’s music, but that must be a typo, for Warner Music obviously can only speak for its masters and the compositions they administer (even that is subject to artist and writer consent in many instances).

We have only been focused on issues affecting artists and songwriters, but ISPs and P2P operators will likely have many other negative reactions to the plan. I can’t imagine the Pirate Bay signing up for this.

In addition to these problems, if you go down the route of amending the Copyright Act, which seems to be the only realistic way to accomplish what Griffin desires, there are people who say such an amendment would violate the U.S. government’s treaty obligations, such as the Berne Convention, the TRIPS Agreement, and NAFTA.

Jim Griffin’s idea sounds very much like the Lawrence Lessig-William Fisher “alternative compensation scheme” that has been around for a long time. Griffin’s proposal is voluntary, like the version proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, (which advocates for Internet rights).

Guest post:
Editor’s note: Music attorney Chris Castle is all for finding a way to boost the music industry out of its current nosedive. But bundling music charges into ISP bills is not the way to go, he says.

If you are going to divide up the disaggregated sum collected the Griffin’s system on a method not based on sampling, then what exactly would that be? I call this the “Carl Sagan Scheme” because it promises “billions and billions” of dollars to the creative community. It also ignores what I think will be billions in the transaction costs of implementing the scheme–ISPs won’t do this for free, and will want protection from copyright infringement claims of any stripe.

In order to be effective, Griffin’s plan would require amending the Copyright Act. A voluntary plan is unlikely to attract a sufficient number of copyright owners. But without all copyright owners, ISPs and their users would still be exposed to claims of copyright infringement. If you think that gaining relief from prosecution is an incentive for ISPs to adopt this complicated plan, then you would, I think, assume that ISPs would want to protect their users from all claims for copyright infringement.

First, Griffin’s plan produces a disaggregated chunk of money that is collected based on headcount, not based on music usage. One way to divide up that money that advocates often raise is based on some kind of sampling of usage (I think I’ve heard the Electronic Frontier Foundation talk about the sampling method used by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers as a proxy. If you are going to sample peer-to-peer or BitTorrent files, you need to identify tracks. That can be done with fingerprint technology, and there are several companies out there that do that.

Castle, a former executive at A&M Records and Sony Entertainment as well as a former attorney at Wilson Sonsini, one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious law firms, takes issue with a proposal making big headlines after it was outlined on Portfolio.com. Jim Griffin, a former executive at Geffen Records is working with Warner Music Group to come up with a plan whereby consumers would pay their ISP a monthly fee for unlimited access to music. Similar plans have been around for a long time, and plenty of music industry executives have floated similar ideas in the past. But Castle says few of them have been able to overcome the litany of legal issues involved. This one, he says in a guest column, doesn’t either.

There must be.

Which leads to the second problem. In order to get that global protection for users requires amending the Copyright Act. Without amending the Copyright Act, you will always have the “lone gunman” problem, or the copyright owner you missed getting permission from. It’s tough enough to amend the Copyright Act on things that people agree on, and you’ll never get anyone to agree to amend the Copyright Act on things that people are bitterly opposed to, such as Griffin’s system.

There are a lot of smart people at Warner Music, and I’m sympathetic to their desire to keep an open mind about possible new business models. But this one is old news and has not been well received in the past, so seems unlikely to bear fruit.

There are many problems with the system, but here are three:

Also, it’s likely the rest of the world may have a problem with Griffin’s system, even if it’s a voluntary system. A similar system was resoundingly defeated in the French Parliament, and President Nicholas Sarkozy has clearly come out against any such ideas. One reason is that it is hard to put a border on the plan, but this is really a worldwide solution that Griffin seems to be proposing.

It’s a head scratcher, that’s for sure. I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than has come out in the exclusive interview.

It’s also important, for obvious reasons, that the company holding the data be “Swiss.” I doubt that the labels would allow one of their number to control it, and a joint ownership scheme would face an inevitable antitrust challenge if the others were involved.

In any case, with the white 3G version that yours truly got, people stop and notice and ask questions like they did last year. Today, I’ve already had two people stop and ask about the iPhone when they noticed it wasn’t the typical one that we all have grown accustom to seeing. Sure, they’ve seen iPhone before, but when they spotted this one, which is different (it’s white for Pete’s sake) they stopped and asked to see it and the new applications with a lot of attention paid to the GPS-maps feature (deservedly so).

iPhone 1.0 say hi to iPhone 3G

The fact that people stop, look and ask, and that there are still long of people willing to spend part of their weekends in line is pretty fascinating - even given the tough economic that 2008 had over 2007. As the Field of Dreams quote goes: If you build it, people will come.

(Credit:
Kevin Ho)

Was it worth the wait? The 5-hour phone service/text/data outage? Do you really have to get the new
iPhone on the first day? The first weekend? From a rational point of view, the answer is probably not. But, from an admitted early-adopter Apple-phile, a resounding hot tamale train YES is the answer. But, this is not without caveats of course (battery life, hassle, and jittery/buggy application crashes). Overall, the new iPhone 3G is slick. The applications (which work 90 percent of the time) are even slicker (many worth special attention to come in the next few posts). Sound quality is much improved. The handset feels bigger, but is lighter. It’s more than a refinement over 1.0, but I wonder if that has to do with the 2.0 firmware update that allows those long-awaited, legitimate third-party application bringing in outside innovation.

How good a deal is that? I did a little price-checking: CVS charges $1.49 per (plus sales tax in most states); dotPhoto, $0.89; and Shutterfly, $0.99. Snapfish even beats Wal-Mart’s price of $0.58.

If you’ve snapped some mantle-worthy photos of a new baby, a recent graduate, a weekend wedding, or whatever, don’t settle for puny little 4×6-inch prints. From now until June 28, you can get glorious 5×7s from Snapfish for just 19 cents apiece.

To take advantage of this deal, you must enter coupon code PRTS1908 when you check out. Oh, and if you have a Michaels arts-and-crafts store near you, they’re having a big sale on frames this week. (I know, prints and frames are so analog–I just haven’t found a good digital-photo-frame deal to post. But I’m looking!)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

(Credit:
Snapfish)

Want!
Waiting for revamped iPods
Have no need for it
Taking a wait-and-see approach
I’ll stick with my ‘82 Walkman

This week, Microsoft let more Zune HD details out of the bag. The black 16GB version of the upcoming touch-screen media player will sell for $219.99, while a 32GB version in a “platinum” shade will cost $289.99.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

So now that you know what to expect when the Zune HD shows up in September, what are your thoughts? Vote in our poll.

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Among the device’s features are its OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display and multitouch Web browser. It will be able to send video in 720p to an HDTV (using a dock, sold separately).

CNET News Poll Gotta have it?
What are your thoughts on the upcoming Zune HD?