On the occasion of amazing new videos of the latest prototype, it’s worth remembering that Android (not the just-barely-open iPhone) is the future of mobile development for the masses. Especially when combined with the hardware support of the Open Handset Alliance and the general propensity for open source projects to kick ass.
PS: where the [...]

Just a quick open invitation, if you are in San Francisco this weekend:
UPDATE: Changed the time to 4pm.
I’m meeting with designer-researchers Niti Bahn and Dave Tait on Saturday, April 19th, at 6pm 4pm at Atlas Cafe in San Francisco (in the Mission). Come have a beer with us! We’re talking generally about designing [...]

So I went to this Street Hacks talk 2 nights ago is here: http://www.janchipchase.com/ (it was awesome, you missed it. Clam Pizza.) And then it turns out Chipchase just got all famous this week, seriously: First a rad video in the Economist:

And then in the New York Times.
Here’s my Reader’s Digest version, [...]

Very much looking forward to this Adaptive Path event (San Francisco) tomorrow:
Street Hacks and Long Wows - An Evening with Chipchase, Burns, and Schauer
How long have you been using your current cell phone? And what happened to your previous model? If you live in a country like India, China or Ghana the answer is [...]

Now this is what I am talking about: A mobile phone based API for doing things like managing quantitative research projects. Supports a bazillion types of phones. Developed by a South African company. You own your own data. Sounds like a brilliant new project and I look forward to hearing more about it.
The [...]

I am obsessed with cell phones right now. Mostly I bloody *hate* them. I haven’t had one for six months, but work made me get one last week. So since they made me get one I am lobbying to get into some cell-phone-type research, partly to figure out my personal issues with cellular voice communication, [...]

Web Designers everywhere are taking a break.
Sometime about 5 years ago people began to realize the frustrating limits of web development because the existing standards were so poorly followed by existing browsers. It was something like what Frost said about “poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.”
Which is to say, [...]

Here’s this:

“The banners and bullhorns of protest are being replaced in volatile French neighborhoods by cellphone messages and Skyblog.”

Read it: French Police Fear That Blogs Have Helped Incite Rioting
(Found on:NYT > Technology.)

How do you make a regular cellphone location-aware? Apparently, you monitor the records indicating which tower the phone is on. Movement from one tower to the next can give highly accurate readouts on the movement of individuals and crowds.
I wouldn’t think that this would give you manageable data that was accurate enough to do anything [...]

Today’s New York Times carries a front-page article about the growth of the cell phone industry in Africa.
The article is as well-written a summary of the communications crisis in Africa as I have ever read — though it is an undeniably, perhaps inexplicably, upbeat assessment of the curent growth trend in cell phone use. [...]

A technology conference yesterday in England was host to a speaker Iqbal Quadir, who has sold about 100,000 cell phones to poor folks in Bangladesh. These are people who otherwise would have no digital communications, and Quadir feels that their new phones are empowering them more than the development strategies of the last 60 years.
The [...]