My primary phone has been an Android phone for a long time. This is mostly for philosophical reasons as I highly value general purpose computing. The ability to easily execute any code on a device that I have purchased is extremely important. Of course this comes with the potential downside that the device is harder to secure. Last night I discovered for the first time that I had a piece of malware on my phone. It affected only Chrome and was adding links to page content, for instance taking ...

So earlier this week while in SF, I was trying to get some work done on my way from the city to Sand Hill road. As per usual I turned on tethering on my Android phone and started up my laptop. Within seconds my wifi had connected to the hotspot, I fired up a browser and …. nothing. No connection. Open up terminal, ping google.com and times out. Huh? Turn off the phone, wifi, etc and restart just to clear out any wonkiness. Still nothing. Then I remembered that between my last tether and now I...

There is a rumor that Amazon today will announce an Android based smartphone tomorrow. And despite repeated denials there is also a persistent rumor of a Facebook phone that might be Android based. In China there are already several custom phones based on Android, such as the one by Xiaomi. Some people are seeing this as further evidence that Android will fragment to a point where it will be no longer be a single platform. While that’s is a possibility, I actually think that it speaks to the ...

Google has been showing off a lot of neat goodies at Google I/O. But the most interesting announcement as far as I can tell of the day is the availability of Chrome for Android. The existing Android browser is relatively wonky and not exactly fast. It also is surprisingly behind the iPhone browser in the adoption of some of the HTML5 javascript APIs. Chrome could really change this equation and as a by product make HTML5 apps a reality far more quickly. My best guesstimate is that we are stil...

Google buying Motorola is a strong defensive move against both Microsoft and Apple on two fronts: patents and user experience. Apple is vertically integrated and Microsoft controls Nokia (without having had to buy it). Between that and having filed or acquired a lot of patents, these two pose formidable threats to Android. Buying Motorola lets Google fight both of these threats in one go. As Larry Page’s blog post makes clear, Motorola has a huge trove of mobile IP, having invented the first ...

Much as I admire the well rounded user experience on an iPhone (leaving notifications aside), there are some kinds of innovation that simply aren’t possible on the iPhone today, as it doesn’t let developers hook in deeply enough. One example is the games discovery app recently released by our portfolio company Heyzap. Once you install the Heyzap app, it notices when you launch game apps and gives you an opportunity to “check in." Checking in broadcasts your gameplay to the Heyzap network and ...

If there was any doubt, the iPad is a huge winner for Apple with 7.3 million units shipped in the last quarter. Casual observation from flying a fair bit has made that obvious over the last few months. You can’t walk through a packed air plane (and they are mostly packed these days) without seeing a ton of iPads. Most people are watching movies on theirs, some play games and very few do anything else (some email, some web browsing). What one doesn’t see at all – so far – are Android tablets. ...

So I have still not switched permanently to an Android phone. The main remaining reason has been that I simply have no cell coverage in my house. With my T-Mobile Blackberry I have been able to roam seamlessly onto my Wifi network at home for several years now, using UMA. Well, T-Mobile has finally announced that they are introducing UMA for several Android models, starting with the new MyTouch and the Motorola Defy. Not sure I like either of these very much, but T-Mobile is planning to add m...

It doesn’t really matter whether it is Android’s growth or the FTC’s investigation, but Apple has officially rescinded some of the most onerous restrictions on developers for iOS by allowing third party tools. This is an important change from a developer perspective as it makes cross platform development easier. Not just across mobile devices, but also across the web and mobile (of course HTML5 pushes in that direction as well). Just as interesting though is the increased transparency that Ap...

Yesterday evening I wanted to bone up on the racing rules in sailing after having had a close encounter while rounding the leward mark last Thursday (which elicited quite a blue streak from the skipper of the other boat). I really wanted to see some animations of different situations that one might encounter to test my understanding of the rules. After a quick search I wound up on the UK Halsey site, only to remember that I was on an iPad and none of the animations would work because they are...