Gmail without the Internet

This is very interesting article from CNN about Google's new gmail application for mobile phones. The new version of Gmail allows users to access their mail while the phone has no network connection. This means that if a phone is in an area with no signal or is on airplane mode the user can still read their email. The application does this by storing the email to local space on the phone's hard drive. It does this every time the user is online. However, this means that when a user is offline they cannot get new mail. Instead they can only read their already stored mail.

This application seems useful, especially for people who travel a lot and might be in and out of cell range. However, I do have some concerns about the memory issues. Since the Gmail is storing the mail on the phone itself I wonder how much memory that is taking up? With the iPhones it will probably not be as big of an issue because they have either 8gb or 16gb of space. But what about a blackberry or some other kind of smart phone that does not have as much built in memory?

Additionally, aside from reading the email the program obviously does not let you send or move any emails so I wonder how useful it will be and if users will get annoyed? Also, does the program delete the old storage file and replace it every time it syncs to conserve room? If that could be a major issue.

I do think it is a good idea for web based email companies to move to a platform that allows users to access mail without being connected, however I think that there are concerns for the amount of memory that it takes up.

Why no Flash on the iPhone

This is an interesting article addressing the issue of why the iPhone does not support Adobe Flash? It is pretty common knowledge that most website use flash for anything from banners to embedded video. So the question is why doesn't the iPhone support flash if it is such a crucial part of the internet? The article goes into several reasons from the technical side about how Adobe Flash and Macs often do not agree. Flash often slows down Macs much more than the Windows counter part. When Apple first introduced the iPhone they said that the full version of Flash was too intensive for the phone and the lite version was not good enough. This sounds like a reasonable explanation, but I think that the politics of it are far more intersting.

For a long time Apple has been pushing their QuickTime format over Flash. I think that this is the more important reason. If Apple gives in and puts Flash on the iPhone it means a forfit of the battle for QuickTime. As it stands right now Apple does not appear close to doing that as the most popular website for flash use is YouTube and Apple has already conqured that battle. They have convinced YouTube to reincode their entire library in a way that would make it compatible for the iPhone's YouTube.app. They also did the same thing with Major League Baseball and their gameday.app. This speaks volumes for the political power that Apple has in the world to be able to convince companies to rework their entire programs just for the iPhone.

However, when you think about it, it does make a lot of business sense. In the couple years that the iPhone has been out it has sold over 17 million devices. There are countless articles out there discussing the move in the business world from Blackberry to iPhone and Apple's ability to get companies to buy into that says a lot about this trend. It will interesting to see where this contraversoury goes from here, but from what I can see no Flash just means that Apple has no intensions of being number 2.

Google Latitude: Is this necessaary?

This article in the New York Times talks about Google's new program known as Latitude. It is a variation on their previously released Dodgeball app. The program allows users to send information on their current location to their friends via cell phone and Google Maps. To me this program is exactly like the one that game out with the iPhone where users could do the exact same thing using the map function. There is also an app for the iPhone called Looped which lets the user update their location and status much like facebook while on the go.

Apple marketed these apps as a convenience tool so that users could quickly find if they had any friends in the area to meet up with for lunch or something to that effect. In the article Google comments on the potential security issues with using such a GPS based program. However, for me I think that the larger issue is WHO CARES?! I might seem a bit over the line but I do not get the point of apps like these. I never really understood the whole status thing on Facebook, so that is probably why I do not understand this. But, honestly it is a tad bit stalkerish to have people knowing what you are doing at every minute of everyday. Now on top of that people can also know where you are. WHY?

The way I see it, if you want to know where someone is to have lunch with them... call them, text them. Make it personal and invite them privately. I think it is entirely ubsurd that people find it necessary to let everyone know where they are and what they are doing all the time. Perhaps I am a little bit harsh, but I just don't see the point.

This mashup is a cool way to track packages. It can auto detect which carrier your package is on from the tracking number, but it can do much more. It supports all the major carriers (UPS, USPS, DHL, FedEx, etc.) and will email, text, or facebook you with updates on your package.

Daily Mashup

This mashup is very cool. Some of the websites I search frequently are digg and flicker for images and cool articles. This mashup combines these and other sites like delicious, furl, and yahoo news into one place. I think this will be a much easier way to waste time and procrastinate.