I'm not going to tell you what it says... You have to get a QR-Code Reader yourself.

special thanks to the folks over at kaywa.com

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.

I love demolition in progress. Not for the obvious eight year old child reasons, but because of the unprecedented view of interiors. Interiors of rooms, of walls, of floors. My favorite demo was in Chelsea a few years ago. The former occupant had left posters on the walls. As the demolition progressed and the building was more or less sheared in half you could peer into the rooms as if watching a play taking place in an abandoned apartment.

I am also a big preservationalist - don't get me started about people who paint antique furniture. So demolition is always a bit bitter sweet to me. You may remember my bathroom renovation late last year. Don't get me wrong I like my brand new fixtures but the new bathroom is not the work of craftsmen like the former was. The contractor was in such a hurry to get paid and move on that doing the work seemed an unfortunate inconvenience to him. I wish I had done my own demo actually. The old bathtub they sledge hammered to pieces was worth about $500 (about 10% of the cost of the remodel) intact as architectural salvage.

I am setting up post with picture and email in anticipation of my trip to Vegas next week for the Microsoft web development conference, Mix08. The Saitz stopped by today and talked me through it. This is exactly what I've been looking for to give me that post verite that I am after.

If only I could find the open tag key on my phone so I can do basic html.

I remain impressed with the functionality of flickr but man finding the info on their site
to fully utilize their features is a pain in the ass.

And, yes this is fun for me too.

I had a nice surprise this morning when I arrived at my desk. A yet to be identified reader turn contributor to my blog left a copy of the Wall Street Journal Technology Section on my desk folded to an article entitled Glitches Bug Google's Android Software. The salient few lines for me are:

"Functionality is not there, is poorly documented or just doesn't work. It's clearly not ready for prime time," said Mr. [Adam] MacBeth, who earlier this year helped found mobile software start-up [omitted on purpose]

Looks to me like Mr. MacBeth got himself some free publicity by giving them the quote that they wanted. That being said, I have yet to really dive into the development portion of my Android efforts - still in concept stages. So I don't know how buggy or not it is.

At any rate, Anyone who's been around the block once or twice in software knows that the bleeding edge stuff is always fraught with pitfalls. There is a reason version 2 exists. Dare I tie this in to Agile Software development thinking around deliver something and improve as you go? If you gold plate everything you bloat and you'll never make it out the door. note to self - tell them about the software side project you've been working on for 5+ years because you've been compulsive about doing it all the right way. It's a bit embarrassing.

Thankfully, the WSJ decided to be even handed and get another voice:

Rick Genter a professional software engineer who is writing an Android application in his free time, said that while Google's mobile software is buggy, it isn't necessarily any worse than any other software at such an early stage.

Thank you Mr. Genter.

Thank you also to my reader/contributor for bringing this in. I have purposely not linked to WSJ because frankly, they don't seem to want to let me have access to their content so I won't be giving them my "network effect" love. And I'm not really sure that a story about a new platform being buggy is news.

Anyway, just released in Europe of all places, comes iPhoneFingers, which are made of latex (there goes that imagination again…) and fit over your thumb and index finger, saving you from future cleaning of the iPhone’s screen.

IntoMobile.com has a tidbit about an Android Device prototype reportedly by HTC in the wild. It's not pretty, but prototypes aren't about pretty...looks like they actually got their information from gizmodo.com : Google Android Prototype In the Wild

Our source, a Giz reader, had some feedback to add to the prototype, which he used for a day: Even in early form, it's light and fast, much faster than the desktop emulator at times. And as a longtime programmer, he thinks it's a lot more put together than Window Mobile 5 on the back side of things.

props to Dave for putting this on his Reader share and bringing it to my attention

Just was listening to the Holiday Jazz station on Pandora.com watching the snow come down and saw that it is now available for mobile.  I'm sure it's a major battery suck and either requires some signifianct memory use for buffering or is really subject to the data transfer rate - but it's still cool.  It more or less solves the problems I have with phone-as-mp3-player. 
a) I don't want to carry anything large enough as my phone to make it useful as an MP3 player (although I will admit the iPhone is pushing that limit)
b) I don't want to have to think about what I put on my phone. And since I don't want devote enough carry-every-where-I-go meat-space to something large enough to have a decent selection of music on it, I posit that I would always be unhappy with the music on my device.

But, if I could take all my pandora channels with me where ever I go - killer!  Then again doesn't work on the subway so there goes 90% of my player time. Oh well.
If you're interested in the "Jazz Holidays" station try starting a new station with that as the search term.  Oh and as you'll see below, they also do classical music now.

It's certainly old news that Google has released the Android SDK with a $300K bounty for "the best" app. But there are some interesting posts being made on how Google may actually be slowing development down because there are about 10M incentives not to share your expertise and help other developers out.

Is the $10 million Android contest actually slowing developers down? by ZDNet's Garett Rogers -- People with any level of programming skills and a vivid imagination are looking at Google’s $10 million dollar carrot with wide eyes — but is the contest actually working the way Google expected? I’d have to say it’s not — right now anyway. The contest has effectively caused knowledgeable developers to have an [...]

If an inexperienced Java developer is looking to create something unique, they generally start with examples provided in the SDK. When what you need isn’t covered by those tutorials, the next logical stop is to look at documentation or ask for help. Unfortunately, the docs are a bit dry for developers who learn best by example — this is where user contributed code plays a very important role.

The fact there is close to $300,000 on the line for winning projects is making most people think twice about sharing stuff with the community. PHP-like documentation with associated user contributed code would make developing on the Android platform a dream — unfortunately there is no such thing. Unless you are an experienced Java programmer with the skills to interpret the provided documentation without extra code to look at, there is a good chance you are out of luck.

Truth be told, I'm not going to disclose what I'm developing for my entry. The poker folks will tell you - "the pot odds are right". Then again, I am going to be pretty unrelenting in my efforts to get this product together as are most others I'm sure.