Original Message:
Hello, this is the card activation Department of WaMu this is not a telemarketing call. We’re calling about your ATM or debit card ending in XXXXX . Please have Felipe Oduardo Sierra return our call at (866) 553-1745. For your convenience, we’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Once again, that number is (866) 553-1745. Thank you.

Transcribed Message:
Hello, this is the car to activation Department of lawn mover this is not a telemarketing call we’re calling about your A T M or debit card ending in XXXXX. Please have for the day, what you are. Does Sierra return our call at 86655361745 for your convenience. We’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week once again. That number is (866) 553-1745. Thank you.

The phrases in italics are the ones it got wrong, and it had marked them in gray meaning it knew it was a guess. Pretty cool, interesting, and 100% unintentionally funny. I will start calling myself ‘Fortheday, what you are. Does Sierra’ though.

For those keeping score at home thats:

Felipe = ‘for the day’
Oduardo = ‘what you are. Does’
Sierra = Sierra

Here are five things I believe Google needs to do if it is going to survive

1. Get Mozilla intrested in the platform
   Have Songbird, Thunderbird and Firefox have plugins that make syncing with Android a breeze. It is the only way to take on the iTunes stronghold.
2. Hulu, Amazon and e-Music should all jump on the opportunity
   Build services that you can use straight from the device just like the Mobile iTunes store. If not, Open Source developers should build such an application, a media service that does everything. Hmm maybe the Netflix integration and movie/preview intergration that some iPhone apps have now.
3. GRAND CENTRAL
   I have no idea what Google is doing with Grand Central but they are really missing the biggest of opportunities. VoIP on a phone right out of the box would force competition and really start a new wave of devices and ideas flowing through this saturated, bloated market.
4. Google Push service
   Just like the Palm Pre joins all the information you need in one simple page from around the web. Google needs to jump on this same idea and do it better. Setup push services for all its services and make it only available to Android devices. Push Calendar, Push Email, Push Contacts, for free. Add online storage/streaming in a Amazon S3 fashion where you pay as you go, or are able to pay up front for a set cap.
5. Software and Hardware are not mutually exclusive
   The Google Android team should have some visibility into the devices and they should have a design standard. I am not saying to police the OS, that would be impossible. Make a ‘Google Certified’ badge and every phone that has the Google logo on it should have gone rigurous testing so that it is a polished product. The G1 could have been great but the hardware and the software didn’t seem to agree with each other at many points. If HTC wants to launch that, they can, they just don’t get to print Google in the back. The Palm Pre, the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Storm are all systems where one team was in charge of both sides of the device, and it shows. Google needs this, NOW.

   -=BONUS=-

6. Make the OS available: All Networks, Set-Top Boxes, Phones, Netbooks, Refrigerators, Toasters
   The more Google pushes the OS outside the ‘Open Handset Alliance’ the more closer the connected home will become. The closer that becomes the more information Google and its partners can organize, sort and monetize. Forget the whole network lock, don’t promise exclusivity to any of the carriers. Sell unlocked phones even if they cost more. The availability of the OS is the most important thing. If my refrigerator knows I’m missing milk and it texts my phone when it knows im close to a supermarket. If my phone can manage my set-top box to record a movie tonight, and edit my Netflix Watch Now queue. If all this works with other OSes like OS X and Windows. Wouldn’t that be a killer app?

What I am proposing is not a platform to replace any other platform. I am proposing a platform that interfaces between them all and becomes the way devices communicate with one another. Hell, thats what Sony promised my PS3 was going to do years ago… Google has a shot at making it so.

Blackberry just released their best phone ever (The Blackberry Bold) and some half-thought out device that kind of does everything but doesnt (The Blackberry Storm). Where is the wi-fi. No, seriously. Where? This is fine however because I believe that Blackberry can get their house in order and make the Storm a way better device through software updates. At the end of the day, it is a Blackberry, It will still have that following and RIM will do whatever it takes for it to succeed.

The T-Mobile G1 however… is a disaster of epic proportions.

The first thing I talked about was how I really thought it was a bad idea that the phone did not have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Not only that but it apparently did not even ship with the adapter until recently, it just shipped with headphones that used the proprietary jack. Which is fine, unless you have $100 headphones you want to use, in which case, you’d have to purchase the adapter separately. This seemed to be a bad decision, and then the first reviews started coming out and it was shown that the G1 has no native video support. Yes. The T-Mobile G1, has no native video player.

The phone’s hardware can handle multi-touch but it was apparently disabled. The phone has an on-screen keyboard but was also, apparently disabled. Then there’s the abysmal battery life, typing anything anywhere getting executed, and the fact that turning off data roaming, seems to be a vestigial switch, since applications can turn it on by themselves. (Links to these are after the post)

It just makes me want to stop talking about the T-Mobile G1.

It’s true, all the rumors. All of the reports that claimed that Android was not ready for the prime-time. All true. What’s worse, Android is buggy because they tried to do too much. Instead of limiting the functions to a specific set of them and polishing them to no end like Apple did.

Apple’s phone is missing a lot of features. When they add them you’ll be thankful they did. The T-Mobile G1 can do pretty much anything, and you pay for it. The most interesting application I have seen for the G1 was one where it would know where you are, and if  you were close to your house it would respond in a way and differently if you were away. It was so inventive. It was such a great idea. They then said ‘This can ONLY be done on Android’. They were half-right. They were talking to Mobile OS X not being able to do it, because you cant have background applications running on it. But then they didn’t explain that the application pings the GPS servers every few seconds. Making it a huge resource hog.

Let’s stop talking about the T-Mobile G1.

Let’s stop talking about Android.

Let’s give Google some time to get their act together on what seems to be a great idea that somehow did not translate to a great device. They can take their findings from their phone which has sold a lot of units, and make some updates that can really matter, make the G2 or whatever the next device will be called, what the G1 should have been.

If we keep mentioning the G1 and Android, people will get curious, and they will see a product that is honestly flawed. Google needs to get Android more resources and try and get the handset manufacturers to understand the spirit of openness that’s inherent in the OS.

Let’s reboot Android and for those of you with G1s, thanks for beta testing.

Battery Life? What Battery Life?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/cell-phones/?p=208

Type Reboot, I dare you!

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49299782,00.htm

All your data are belong to us

http://gizmodo.com/5100952/t+mobile-g1-net-access-cant-be-turned-off-results-in-huge-roaming-costs

and it’s follow up:

http://gizmodo.com/5106844/t+mobile-g1-apps-turn-on-data-roaming-by-themselves

Here is what Sprint has to say: Android is “not yet good enough to put the Sprint brand on”.

I’m sorry, what?

I couldn’t hear your statement over the sound of all the cash registers collecting money from G1 sales for T-Mobile. Did I mention T-Mobile is only selling the G1 in limited markets? Yea, if you go to a T-Mo store in the outskirst of a big city, they wont even sell you the damn thing.

Can we discuss what you mean by ‘Sprint brand’? The same Sprint that last year posted a 29B loss and attributed it to impairment of the company’s goodwill (read: loss of customers)? Add this to the fact that you did so well in keeping customers so far this year. I just dont know. They are basically taking a page from Microsoft and spending all their money on advertising and not on fixing the problem. Their network has fallen behind, their merger with Nextel confused and was generally not well recieved with corporate customrers, and their service is abysmal (just like the other carriers so I guess theyre up to date there).

I may not be impressed with the G1, but I will sure prefer it before I pick up any Sprint phone. I find it so ironic that the ‘Now Network’, doesn’t think the new OS is exciting enough to back it early on. If there’s something that Sprint needs is a nice new outlook. Something they can brag about. Something that shows they are ready to really compete and that they are done with the draconian network lock-ins that plagued AT&T with their MediaNet and T-Mobile with their T-Zones.

Sprint is part of the ‘Open Handset Alliance’ so they will eventually come out with an Android phone, which they will inevitably make look like a Samsung Instinct, and people will immediately hack to take away all Sprint branding. Open handsets, for all.

It features an area where you can pick between different arrival times and you can also select different alternative routes if the one it suggested is not to your liking for some reason.

What is really exiting however is that it seems like this feature is here to stay with the inclusion of the feature on Google Maps for Mobile. Again, about a month before the iPhone update hits Google Maps for Mobile is updated with something that the iPhone would really be able to push to the limit. I am kind of hoping that the App Store brings an updated version of Maps that brings this awesome feature to the iPhone.

NOTE:

I know somebody is going to email me or comment that this feature can be accessed on the iPhone right now. I can’t confirm this first hand. Joe Hughes at the Headway Blog posted that he was able to access this with his iPhone late last year. I have honestly not had such luck. The link that he provides actually just shows a header and no map so any search I do is lost. When I try and work thorugh the normal Google Maps it also kind of hangs. I have an iphone with version 1.1.3 of the firmware (not the latest 1.1.4). If anybody can figure out a way to get this to work it would be awesome. If not , I am sure an update is coming soon. Feel free to send me pictures of how it looks on the iPhone if you actually get it to work. I’d love to post them on the thread.

Joe Hughes, from the Headway Blog, posted a comment below (first post!) with an updated url, when I tried that new url it worked like a charm. Here it is in big bold letters:

http://google.com/transit

Just make sure in your iPhone it gets redirected to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/transit?output=html

Thanks Joe!