All Things Digital

Google’s Android mobile platform will become commercially available before year end, just as the company promised. But with one caveat: It will lack some of the features Google (GOOG) first intended. Seems that in order to get Android out the door in time for the holiday shopping season, the company has been forced to defeature it. Google has dropped planned APIs for Bluetooth and Google’s own GTalk instant-messaging service in Android 1.0, according to the Android Developers Blog. Seems there are issues with both APIs that need to be resolved before Google is comfortable releasing them into the wild, and the company couldn’t do that before the end of the year. “… We plain ran out of time,” said Android engineer Nick Pelly. “The Android Bluetooth API was pretty far along, but needs some cleanup before we can commit to it for the SDK. Keep in mind that putting it in the 1.0 SDK would have locked us into that API for years to come.”

Unless you simply kept it in beta for a few years like some of your other products. …

Apple’s much lauded iPhone captured 28% of the smart-phone market in the States by the fourth quarter of 2007–just six months into its launch. Today it holds something less than that–about 19.2%. But to look at the headlines, you’d think it controlled the market in its entirety. A quick search on Google returns 19,035 results for “iPhone”– from Jun. 2, 2008 to today. Why? Because in a few hours, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will address the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, at which he is expected to unveil the next version of the company’s iPhone.

And for Apple’s (AAPL) sake, I hope he does. Because with expectations running this high, I’d hate to see what happens if he doesn’t. Although the new Apple Store housed in a life-size replica of the Golden Gate Bridge pictured in the invite would certainly take some of the heat off …

Anyway, I’ll be live-blogging from inside Moscone West in San Francisco starting at 10 a.m. PDT. Here’s something to read while you wait …

• From Moscone West: This is crazy. They just opened a single door to let cameras in and the media rushed the gate. Its like that 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati.



• The hall in Moscone West is filling quickly to the sounds of Jerry Lee Lewis. From the looks of it media and developers are here in equal numbers.
• Jobs takes the stage. I’m sitting about 20 rows back, but even I can see he’s looking pretty thin from here. He gets right into it, pulls up a slide of a stool and describes Apple as a three-legged company. Macs, music and the iPhone.
• Jobs will spend the morning talking about the iPhone. This afternoon Apple will discuss OS X “Snow Leopard.”

Read more »

Here’s a clever way of streamlining the acquisition process: Become a platform-as-a-service provider and encourage developers to create Web applications using your proprietary database and your APIs (application programming interfaces).

That seems to be what Google (GOOG) has done with App Engine, a new service for developers who’d like to write and run their Web applications on the company’s infrastructure. With App Engine developers can establish their own little Google Labs outposts, building Google-friendly applications using Google’s own building blocks on the Google File System and Google will handle the scaling and fail-over issues.

That’s a compelling proposition–assuming you want Google to control your entire end-to-end development environment. And who wouldn’t these days? What better way to pique the search giant’s acquisitive interests than building a great big Web 2.0 sandcastle in its very own Web 2.0 sandbox? Who knows, you may be the next YouTube or, at the very least, the next Zingku or Jaiku. And if it turns out that you are, how convenient would it be for Google to acquire you, as Dave Winer noted a while back at Scripting News:

How much would it be worth to buy companies without having to transition their technology to their platform? There would be no retraining either, all the programmers in the companies they acquire would know how to work in the environment. Further, can you imagine that they’d charge universities to teach comp sci using their cloud?

“Given the cost of acquisitons, recruiting and training they can afford to blow a lot of money on free bandwidth, storage and CPU to make the buying and hiring process more efficient and increase the hit rate (the percentage of programmers who work out).”

In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): All participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community–determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): Establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

–J Allard, corporate vice president of design and development for the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet,” 1994

In February, Microsoft (MSFT) surprised industry watchers and embraced the idea of data portability, throwing its support behind OpenID, a decentralized digital-identity protocol.

This morning came the inevitable extension of that idea, the announcement of a partnership with five social networks on a new data-portability strategy. LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo (TWX) and Facebook have all agreed to use Mirosoft’s Windows Live Contacts API to, in the words of John Richards, director of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform, “create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services.”

In other words “Windows Live Messenger.” Certainly, it’s hard not to look at Microsoft’s announcement that way, given the simultaneous debut of invite2messenger.net, a new Microsoft Web site through which people can invite friends from participating social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

“In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience,” explains Richards. “We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data. We encourage you to visit www.invite2messenger.net to see these ideas in action, and to invite your Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged friends to join you on the world’s largest instant messaging network, Windows Live Messenger.”

YouTube’s going white label. This morning the online video outfit published APIs (application programming interfaces) giving publishers the ability to offer YouTube’s services directly to their own users. The move allows for the creation of so-called “chromeless” players–tailored to a publisher’s specifications and outfitted in their own branding–through which videos can be uploaded and viewed without ever visiting YouTube’s site. From the announcement:

YouTube’s latest API offerings allow anyone building a Web site or software application that is connected to the Internet to upload videos straight to YouTube; let users comment, rate and favorite the videos; and customize and control the Flash player in which the videos are played. This can be used in conjunction with the existing APIs, which launched last year and which provide the ability to view videos on other sites and to search for videos on YouTube.

“The enhancements to the YouTube APIs and Tools offering are free and easy to use, giving YouTube users yet another way to engage the world of video and actively participate in the YouTube community wherever they are, whenever they want.”

Of course, these enhancements also give YouTube and, by extension, Google (GOOG), another way to engage the world of advertising. In the API’s terms of service, YouTube reserves the right to serve ads through a publisher’s API Client, but prohibits publishers from selling their own. Two relevant excerpts from the TOS:

I. Definitions
“API Data” means any data or content, including but not limited to YouTube video content, obtained from YouTube using any YouTube API, including advertising content that YouTube may, in its sole discretion, provide along with or insert in data or content obtained from YouTube using the YouTube API.”

4. Commercial Use. You agree not to use the YouTube API for any prohibited commercial uses, which include the following actions taken without YouTube’s express approval:

• the sale of the YouTube API, API Data, YouTube video content or related services, or access to any of the foregoing;
• use of the YouTube API for the primary purpose of deriving revenues from your API Client, such as advertising or subscription revenue or the sale of copies of the API Client;
• the sale of advertising, sponsorships or promotions targeted to, within or on the API Client or YouTube video content.

Ah. So that’s how it is: YouTube doesn’t just broadcast you, it broadcasts advertisements as well.

UPDATE: YouTube product manager Jim Patterson tells TechCrunch that the API is open to YouTube Partners, who will share in the advertising generated by their players.

We are not introducing any fundamentally new way to monetize. Any video that is uploaded through our API is treated exactly as on YouTube.com. In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.”

We’re telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting (iPhone use in) the enterprise. This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities and it’s important that it be recognized as such.”

–Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, July 2, 2007

Today’s an important one for Apple (AAPL). The company is hosting a “town hall” meeting to discuss an iPhone software roadmap. Presumably, this event will see the release of more details about the eagerly anticipated iPhone SDK, but perhaps not the debut of the SDK itself. Certainly, that’s the impression given by the invitation to the event–”Please join us to learn about the iPhone software roadmap, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features.” Enterprise features? Ready to eat your words, Dulaney?

But whether the SDK is released to developers today or not, this event promises to be a watershed one. Because it heralds a vast new addressable software market for developers. After all, the iPhone and iPod touch run OS X, and presumably most future iPod models will as well. Which likely means that applications written for Mac in Xcode–Apple’s development toolset–will be deployable on any OS X device. They’ll be “write once, run anywhere”–anywhere there’s OS X, that is. And word on the street has it that we may see a few of them as early as today.

The event begins at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). Updates to follow …

UPDATES:

• The event’s begun. You’ll find streaming video of the event here.
• The next iPhone software update will include support for Push Email, Push Calendar, Push Contacts, Global Address List, Cisco VPM, Certificates and WPA2/802.1x, Security Policies, Device Config, and Remote Wipe. Wow.
• Responding to customer demand for Microsoft Exchange on the iPhone, Apple has gone ahead and licensed ActiveSync for the device.
• Exchange will be native to the iPhone. Jobs must be muttering multiple “BOOMS” from backstage.
• Nike and Disney have been testing Exchange for iPhone and are pretty happy with it.
• Scott Forstall is now taking the stage to talk about the iPhone SDK. Apple giving developers the same tools and APIs it uses to develop iPhone apps.
• Apple took Cocoa and created Cocoa Touch, a new framework for building apps.
• The OS X kernel is the same for desktop and iPhone.
• Xcode has been expanded to support iPhone. It will code complete APIs for the iPhone SDK. (See? What’d I tell you: write once, run anywhere there’s OS X.)
• SDK includes Interface Builder and iPhone Simulator that allow developers to run their apps on their desktops. “It runs on a Mac and simulates the entire API stack on your computer,” Forstall says.
• Forstall builds a quick “Hello World” app, drops it on the iPhone and runs it. Quick and easy.
• “This is an app I just built in two minutes. But we wanted to see what we could build in two days. So we built Touch FX,” Forstall says. It’s an image editor that allows you to warp photos by pinching them.
• Forstall then demos Touch Fighter, a point-and-shoot game.
• Did I mention the SDK is available today? Good luck downloading it …
• Whoa. Travis Boatman from Electronic Arts takes the stage and demos an iPhone version of Spore. They’ve already ported 18 levels. (Hope SDK includes tool for building spare batteries.)
  

• Apple really pulling out all the stops on this one. Chuck Dietrich from Salesforce.com onstage now.
• Salesforce ported one of its automation tools to the iPhone, one that graphically displays how salespeople are performing against their goals.
• Next up: AOL. AIM for iPhone. Took five days to build.
• Larry Ellison takes the stage to announce Oracle Database 11g for iPhone.
• Kidding.
• Epocrates demo. Clinical reference app for doctors.
• Ethan Einhorn from Sega up next.
• Ha! Super MonkeyBall for iPhone. “This is not a cellphone game. This is a full console game. … We had to fly in a developer to upscale the art for the iPhone,” Einhorn says.
• Jobs back onstage. Announces the iTunes App Store. “You’re a developer who just spent two weeks or a bit longer writing an application. What’s your dream?” Jobs asks. “To get it in front of every iPhone user.”
• Apps can be downloaded wirelessly or sideloaded via iTunes. “This is the exclusive way to distribute iPhone applications,” Jobs says, adding: “We are controlling distribution.” (We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The iTunes App Store.)
• Developers price their own apps and they get 70% of the revenues they generate. Apple takes 30% for running the App Store. ” … To be clear, we don’t intend to make money off the App Store. We’re basically giving all the money to the developers, and the 30% that pays for running the store, that’ll be great.”
• Apple plans to release an iPhone 2.0 software update in June that will include enterprise capabilities, App Store, etc.
• One more thing …
• Oh, look: It’s KPCB’s John Doerr. Must be here to demo i’MRich for iPhone.
• Doerr announces the iFund for iPhone developers.
• $100 million to start. Boom.BOOM. BOOM! “That should be enough to start about a dozen Amazons, or even four Googles! … If you want to invent the future, the iFund wants to help you build it,” Doerr says.
• END

(Spore photo courtesy Gizmodo)

We have taken the proposal Microsoft (MSFT) delivered to us very seriously. We made a public statement why we have not accepted the proposal. In many ways it has been a galvanizing event for all of Yahoo.”

–Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Feb. 25

A galvanizing event, indeed. Jerry Yang has about 20 days to convince Yahoo (YHOO) shareholders that they’re better off saving the company than selling it, and he is pulling out all the stops.

Last night Yahoo officially launched Buzz, a social news service where “buzz-worthy” articles are ranked according to user interest. It’s essentially Digg (if Digg was purple), redundant and three years late to the social news market.

“You cast your vote on the most interesting Web stories, images or videos about anything and everything–from a late-breaking political story on a major news site, to the coolest photo of the lunar eclipse, to a shocking celebrity-gossip blog post that shouldn’t be missed,” Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat explained in a post to Yahoo Anecdotal. “The best part is that the stories with the highest Buzz Scores–determined by combining your votes with organic search popularity rankings–may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage, giving you the power to influence what millions of people see on Yahoo!.” (And, yes, that us a Yahoo Buzz! icon appended below. Be sure to click it on your way out and “Buzz” this post up to Yahoo’s homepage.)

Also debuting from Yahoo today, Search Monkey–a set of open-source application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow publishers to annotate search results for their sites. “… Our intent is clear–present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from ‘to-do’ to ‘done,’ ” Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search, wrote in a post to Yahoo Anecdotal. ” … So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time, users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in Web sites.”

So essentially, it’s like Google’s Subscribed Links, but purple and two years late to the market.

Microsoft (MSFT) made a “significant” company announcement this morning, one thankfully unrelated to its bid for the much diminished Yahoo (YHOO) Inc.

But what is there for the software giant to talk about these days other than Yahoo, really? Why that old saw, software interoperability, of course. In a statement issued this morning, the software giant announced changes to its technology and business practices intended to “increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors”–which translates roughly as “appease European antitrust officials.”

Among the key changes:

• Microsoft will make the protocols and APIs in its high-volume products openly available to the developer community.
• Microsoft will indicate which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will issue licenses to those patents on “reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, at low royalty rates.”
• Microsoft will implement a covenant not to sue open-source developers for development or noncommercial distribution of implementations of those protocols.
• Microsoft will support open standards and work with developers and standards-setting bodies to enable the transfer of user data from Microsoft applications to apps designed by third-party developers.

“Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,” Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, said in a statement. “By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.”

Quite a move for a company whose leadership once likened Linux to “cancer” and derided open-source licensing models as “Pacman-like.” Though it’s not like we haven’t seen this all before.

“They are not making the source codes open, but they are opening the gates that allow you into the compound,” said Matt Asay, a general manager at open-source management company Alfresco. “It’s a great first step. … It’s a bold move by Microsoft. It’s a good indication of Microsoft’s self-confidence that it feels it can open up what effectively are its crown jewels and not lobotomize its company at the same time.”