This is really exciting stuff in the mobile space. I recently got an iPod touch, and I have to say it is a pretty compelling device. I interested to see how two players in the web enabled smart phone space drives innovation.

NYTimes: Technology: Smartphone Is Expected via Google
By LAURA M. HOLSON and MIGUEL HELFT
Published: August 15, 2008
T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google’s Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans.

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google’s Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.

Executives for T-Mobile, the nation’s No. 4 wireless carrier, declined to comment on the new phone except to say it was on track to offer it in the fourth quarter. HTC, which is based in Taiwan, also declined to comment, although executives there have said they expected to deliver their phone by the end of the year.

Alley Insider is on about this as well.

So now we know that the first GPhone is indeed coming this fall.

Will it be a hit? It's hard to tell much from the supposed spy photos we've seen floating around on the Web, like the one to the right.

Chumby has landed in the US.

So, I guess I've just never had anything shipped to me directly from China, but this is kind of interesting. Here is the latest tracking data and a map of where we've gone so far.

(If you're catching up here is the first post and the second post)

View Larger Map

You may remember me blogging about wanting a Chumby day before yesterday.  Well, I couldn't resist and I ordered one, a latte one.  Then last night I get a shipping notification, my Chumby has shipped.  So of course I click through to the tracking page on UPS.  I guess I've just never seen an item direct shipped from Shenzhen, China, but there it was 7:18 PM today (wait, that's the future) it departed.  Come to think of it this makes two firsts, I've never had something from the future.   Here is the UPS tracking page:

Okay, I'm trying to to gush here cause my wife only emailed me this about 30 minutes ago and I'm in love.  I'm sure she saw the appeal from a lot of angles, not the least of which is I use my cell phone as an alarm clock and it has an annoying alarm sound. What I'm gaga for is the Chumby and I've really on begun to investigate.

I'm not going to last the week without ordering one.  Here is what Small Space Living (where my wife found it) has to say about it:

Chumby is tricky device to classify. There are not many other devices that have the multifunction of Chumby.
Chumby is a small Wi-Fi compatible device with a 3.5 inch touch screen and a soft leather case. The Chumby is intended to replace your clock radio. But to call it a clock or radio would be so short sighted. It can be loaded with a number of widgets — the list grows daily.
There is no end to the multifunction goodness of Chumby. The Chumby can be a clock or an internet radio. It can track EBay auctions or display photos form your Flicker account.
The device sells for $179, which is the hardware break-even point for the manufacturers. It’s an unusual thing for a manufacturer to sell a product for no profit, but the intention is to make money by selling advertising on the Chumby units.
Chumby could fit well into your small space life — it’s little and has a multitude of uses.

I've created a virtual Chumby here to get a animated look see. But you really should click through and see what their site shows about this little sucker.

Just FYI, I have no association or relationship what so-ever with the Chumby, I'm just loving the concept

In the open space area here at Mix08 they have Demo's of MS Surface.  You know that multi-touch table-top thing Microsoft rolled out as a concept doo-dad a while ago.  Well, I'm a huge fan of Multi-Touch and ever since Minority Report I've dreamed of the world where I can interact with a computer with my hands in a gesture driven touchy kind of way (think iPhone).   And there is a lot of academic work and some really cool YouTube videos of same.  This is the first time I've seen something like this (on this scale) in the flesh.  This is really cool and a nice step toward the dream of ubiquitous computing.

A little insight on what you're seeing in the photos.  The pictures of the phone (HTC Dash for T-Mobile) lying on the surface.  The surface has identified it as a Dash and shows you information about the phone (via blue tooth I think) and let's you interact with that.  The one over the map of Seattle lets' you see cell signal coverage in a given area.

The cell phone bits were pretty cool, but the thing I loved was the photo interaction.  The guy giving the demo picked up a digi-cam pointed it at us, took a picture and then set the camera down on the surface.  The pictures tumbled out and several people were able to intact with them (move, resize, rotate) simultaneously. It was really cool.

Okay, this is both intriguing me and weird-ing me out.  I am fascinated by the possibility of huge visual variety, but at the same time, what will I see in the crystal ball come screen saver that big brother has lovingly made for me?

You all judge for yourself.  I'm still deciding. I'll let you know if I go for it and please let me know if you give it a try.

SurveillanceSaver is a screensaver which shows live images of over 400 network surveillance cameras worldwide. Yep, when your computer is idle you’ll get to see a live feed of what’s going on in other parts of the world. It’s quite fascinating because of the voyeuristic element involved but also surreal because it compresses time-space.

Something is happening right at the moment elsewhere and you are a witness to it. It is real but since it’s only an image, you tend to question its verity a little more than what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I can’t bear to look away from the screen because I’m always expecting something to happen just that moment, maybe a car accident or a cute girl would enter into the frame.

It’s these thoughts that make this screensaver (and surveillance) quite an intriguing process.

I feel like I've seen something like this in a Sci-Fi movie, but I can't remember which one. At any rate, this sounds great. My building is plainly to small for a virtual doorman and as a consequence I have packages sent to me at work and have to lug them home. I guess the security considerations are not really my primary concern.

Virtual-doorman systems can range from very basic services with a few cameras and an Internet connection that allow the operators to watch a front door and accept packages, to space-age operations with biometric readers that scan fingerprints for entry or electronic tags that don’t even have to be taken out of a pocket to open a door — an E-ZPass, of sorts, for humans. Depending on the level of sophistication and the number of cameras, the services cost $10,000 to $70,000 for installation and $6,000 to $30,000 in annual maintenance.

But Matthew Nerzig, a spokesman for the doormen’s union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, argued that “while cyberdoormen offer building managers a way to cut costs, they obviously can’t compete with actual doorman when it comes to providing professional service and security to tenants.”

Toby A. Ten Eyck, a sociologist at Michigan State University, said the growing acceptance of virtual-doorman services says something about urban living. “We’re always in crowds in the city,” he said, “so people are always watching us at a certain level. Now technology allows us to have cameras everywhere watching what we do, and what’s interesting is we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t care that we’re being watched. We actually like it.”

Which is why residents can find it reassuring when a virtual doorman they have never met calls them by name and opens the door for them, he said. “It’s the ‘Cheers’ mentality of being somewhere where everybody knows your name,” he said, referring to the television show about a Boston bar and its regular customers. “Especially in a city where you’re pretty much an anonymous figure, you just feel good when people know who you are.”

Still, I think this is pretty cool and is a great way to increase quality of life for the people in the building at a fraction of the cost of a person on site. I'm reasonably certain the folks who have a doorman now aren't going to run out and replace them with an "eye-in-the-sky", but this definitely will bring "doormen" to more buildings.

gigaom.com has a piece that was picked up by the NY Times technology bits blog about Ribbit a newish player in VOIP who is taking a more platform approach to telephony and the web.

Can Ribbit Finally Bring Web & Voice Together?

If you strip away the hype (meaningless blather such as the company’s claim of being Silicon Valley’s first phone company), what they have done is built their own Class 5 softswitch and back-end infrastructure and married it to front-end technologies like Flash and Flex from Adobe Systems (ADBE).

Accordingly, Ribbit is offering API (Application Protocol Interface) access to much of our switch today, allowing third party developers to create rich integrated telephony applications without previous knowledge of telephony. Currently, the Ribbit API is optimized for Flash / Flex developers because of the pervasiveness of the technology (Flash is resident on 98% of the world’s computers). This means that Ribbit communication applications written in Flash will run without the need of a client download.

I'm starting to futz with video and video conferencing and voip. I got myself a Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooksand have been having a blast. tokbox.com let's you do p2p video without any software install. And we use Adobe Breeze / Connect Pro at work and it is fantastically easy to use and has pretty good video support.