DARPA to develop iPhone and Android Apps

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/darpa-looking-to-develop-iphone-and-android-apps-app-store/

If the military thinks that leveraging an App Store platform would be the best way to distribute software to soldiers in the field, then I say go for it.

However, I would question the architectural control that an open App Store would have. The military is a highly organized and coordinated organization, so an App Store should not allow any old user to pick and choose what applications they feel like playing with.

Also, I think the debate over commercial vs. consumer phones is important. The designers of consumer phones are not thinking about their average user as a soldier, so design should not be overlooked by technology.

Google Reader Play

Google came up with a new service called Google Reader Play. This application brings together best stuff from Google Reader. Google also claims to personalize the content based on your browsing habits, although I did not see any evidence of it when I played the application. One thing, however, I can say that it has high correlation with some FB posts I was today...

Frankly, I am not sure if it will be a widely used application though...

"Bicycling" layer on Google Maps!!

Google maps has included bicycling directions. “This has been a top-requested feature from Google Maps users for the last couple years,” says Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps. “There are over 50,000 signatures on a petition.[link]”

Interesting points: Apart from providing congestion info to cyclists, it also provides a feedback mechanism[link]. Also I found the mechanism to estimate time very interesting -- from Google blogspot: Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on. Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you’ll require and the speed you’ll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion [link]. Please view the attached sample map.

Google Broadband

Google has its hands on just about everything. Google will now be directly competing with Verizon in broadband-starved areas, offering faster connection speed. But Google has already partnered with Verizon to offer Android OS for Verizon's network. Where does Google draw the line of partnerships and competition? Does it make sense for Google to offer broadband to these broadband-starved areas?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2010/tc2010032_027253.htm?link_position=link1

The Internet? Bah!

In 1995, Newsweek's Clifford Stoll predicted in his column that the Internet would never take off. Now, with publications going all digital and brick and mortar stores moving to e-businesses, he's had to eat his words. One of his most sarcastic comments predicts "We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservation" with an implied "yeah, right". Meanwhile, today, 15 years later, I can't imagine doing either one any way besides starting with my computer.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554

App for Boston Bump!

Will Boston University students bother? Will this really take-off? Please do post your reactions?
Boston.com had an interesting article that caught my eye.
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BOSTON MAYOR Thomas Menino, a notorious technophobe, looks at Chris Osgood and Nigel Jacob - his two-man research and development team - with a mixture of pride and mystification. Menino appreciates their skills, but he is clueless about what they are up to half the time.

Osgood, 33, and Jacob, 35, create computer applications to improve the delivery of city services. In October, they launched Citizens Connect, an iPhone application that allows users to alert city officials to graffiti, potholes, street light failures and other urban aggravations. Snap a picture on a phone equipped with GPS, hit send, and let the nearest public works yard worry about it. Other cities host similar applications that make it easier for tech-savvy residents to report urban eyesores. But Boston may be the first city that transfers that data directly from the citizen to the DPW yard, without a stopover in the City Hall bureaucracy. By June, the application should be available for Android smartphones.

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what new features and functions would you recommend? 

Google Public Service Ads on our Class Blog

I've been noticing a lot of "Public Service Ad by Google" on our class blog, which caught my attention as someone who is interested in the intersection of the IT and the non-profit sector.

The questions that immediate came to mind were:

Q: Who controlls advertising content on Blogger blogs? It is Blogger (i.e. Google) or the the creator of the individual blog?

A: I'm not 100% sure, but it appears the the creator of individual blogs have to enable AdSense (http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42534)

Maybe we're going to have a sweet end of the semester party with all the ad revenue our blog rakes in :)

Q: How does Google AdSense decide to show public service ads instead of normal ads?

A: According to Google, its public service ads (PSAs) are "non-profit organization ads that are served to pages when targeted ads are unavailable, or when Google is unable to gather content from the page. Publishers do not receive earnings for clicks made on PSAs."

Specfically, the following reasons lead to PSAs being shown instead of more targeted ads according to Google (https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10035):

• Our system has not yet crawled all the pages of your website.
• Your page may contain sensitive content for which relevant paying ads will not be displayed.
• Your account may be disapproved or awaiting review.
• Your site has restricted access using a robots.txt exclusion.
• Your website is using session IDs in the URL.
• Your website is using frames.
• Your ad unit is set to display image ads only.
• Your webpage may not contain enough content.
• Your site has content which doesn't comply with our program policies.
• The AdSense ad code was placed within an IFRAME.
• Your webpages are behind a login.
• Your ad code has been modified.
• Your page contains a refresh tag.

Any guesses about which reason applies to our class blog?

Q: How does Google choose the non-profit organizations that are advertised in its PSAs? Does Google charge those non-profits or it this a CSR-type initiative.

The public service ads by Google are part of the Google Grants program, which upon researching further, I have officially decided is awesome!

One of my pet peeves is businesses that do CSR initatives that have nothing to due with their core competencies or line of business and therefore have much less impact than they could.* On the flip side, I love when businesses are as innovative about their CSR / charitable initatives as they are about their business activities. Unsurprisingly, Google is in the second camp:

Google Grants is a unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. If you want to learn more, check out their site (http://www.google.com/grants/), but here are the highlights:

• The Google Grants program empowers over 4,000 organizations to achieve their goals by helping them promote their websites via advertising on Google. Google ads appear when users search on Google. For example when you search for "world poverty" on Google, text ads related to world poverty appear on the right hand side. When you click on one of the ads, you are brought to the website being advertised.
• Non-profit organizations must build a Google Grants AdWords account and be responsible for managing their account, just like commercial clients. Grantees have access to the same metrics and analytics as commercial customers as well.
• Just like commercial customers, Google Grantees are charged a "cost-per-click" and have the ability to bid on keywords. However, the money they use comes out of the Google Grant (up to $10,000 in free advertising per month).

*More than one of you have probably heard me complain about that stupid BU Alum from Deloitte who spoke at our orientation last year (remember, the one who was born in an Igloo or something). She went on and on about how awesome Deloitte was because one day a year they all went and picked up trash in parks or something. All I could think about was home much more useful it would be if they provided accounting, finance, audit, consulting, etc. services to non-profits instead.