Last Week In Short, OpenSocial, Google Mobile Alliance

Well, I did it again. It has been over a week since I posted here at WebbyOnline. Other than being extremely busy, you can head on over to PC Mechanic for the long story. The short version is that I began using a Mac last week. The conversion to Mac has not exactly been hassle free. The system is working fine, however it is a near total environment change from what I am used to. Various work tasks therefore take longer to complete. It will be temporary and I am already able to speed up my work flow considerably under the new OS. But, it is still a work in progress.

OS X Leopard is a good operating system. I don’t have much to compare it to in the Apple world simply because I have never used a Mac before now. Some people are complaining about the new OS, other say it crashes and/or blue screens. I can tell you from experience that OS X is not crash proof. Anybody who says OS X never crashes and Windows does needs to grow a clue. Perhaps it is blamed on Leopard, but either way my Mac has crashed more than once here.

But, aside from my switch to the Mac, some interesting items have hit the news in the last week.

For those of you Mac users who like Twitter, Twitterific 3 was released. It offers a few improvements, but my experience is that it still crashes once it downloads several tweets (around 40). I tried out Snitter as well and I actually do like it better. Snitter is based on Adobe AIR, but the interface is a little better and it, so far, does not seem to crash.

The social networking arena has been abuzz over Google’s announcement of OpenSocial. OpenSocial is the new API which Google has created to allow companies to create applications for social networking sites. Sound familiar? Yes if you know about Facebook (and who doesn’t). Facebook sent a tidal wave through social networking it released it’s own platform for developing third-party applications to run inside of Facebook. It was revolutionary. Well, Google, as usual, likes to be the big elephant in the room. Google’s own social network (Orkut) isn’t exactly making any waves, so Google created this new API and got a bunch of other social networks on board. The effect is that any application designed for the OpenSocial API will be able to work on any participating social network (and site which uses the OpenSocial API).

The effect is that this pits Facebook up against many of the other social networks out there, including Myspace, Orkut, LinkedIn and others. Its a big gang up on the big man – Facebook. Is this going to result in a shake up? Too early to tell. There are no indications that any end users are changing anything as a result of OpenSocial. It might make the developers excited, but end users don’t care too much yet.

And in more proof that Google controls the tech news, the other big story has been Google’s move into mobile. There has been a lot of speculation about the Gphone. Was Google going to create it’s own cell phone? Well, maybe. But now the emphasis is more on an alliance than a piece of hardware. Google has announced a new mobile cellphone alliance with 33 participating companies including Samsung, T-Mobile, Sprint and Motorola. What’s the point? Potentially a lot…

Android is the name of the platform which is being promoted to this alliance by Google. Google bought a company called Android back in 2005 – now it is clear why. The idea is to provide a common operating system for cell phones which will allow open source software onto the mobile phone. This will allow the cell phone to become more like today’s PC where it can be used to easily surf the internet, do social networking, etc. Obviously this could mean a lot more ad revenue for Google, but it also represents a wider sea change in the cell phone industry. This represents a shift from today’s world where each cell phone carrier determines the type of phone you have as well as the software you are allowed to run on it. Under Android, the phone will turn into a much more flexible device where the user is free to do more of what they want.

Talk is that we can begin to see Android powered phones mid-2008. I wouldn’t hold my breath about the entire industry changing overnight. Cell phone companies will all be operating in their own financial interests and sometimes that will be an impediment. Some companies will be slow to sign on, such as AT&T because they have secured the deal as exclusive service provider for the Iphone (one of the dumbest moves Apple ever made, BTW).

So, perhaps rumors of a Google handheld device were wrong. Perhaps instead of a phone built by Google, we’re seeing Google throw its weight into the existing field of manufacturers to open up the field of mobile devices.

And for us web publishers, this just means we need to pay even more attention to our sites on mobile devices than before. This Google alliance actually had the potential for a much wider change than a mere Google Gphone.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 12,000 people who receive exclusive online business and blogging tips, and get a FREE COPY of my eBook, Six Figure Blogger Blueprint (PDF and MP3)! Just enter your name and email below: