I plan on doing quite a detailed blog post reviewing the phone and sharing my experiences but for now I thought I’d share the unboxing pics I took. You can view the full set of pics on Flickr over here.

What I will do is give you my initial thoughts which are mostly positive. The Android interface is super sexy and very intuative and for the most part is pretty damn stable. I’ve only experienced one or two freeze ups on some applications but I think that is application specific.

The major problem for me so far is the fact that the Android Marketplace (think Apple’s App Store for the iPhone) is not going to be available in South Africa. I have contacted the guys at Leaf to get more details and once I get an official response I’ll add that to my conclusive review of the phone. The Android Market place is a key element to extending an Android phone and considering the phone will retail for around R8,200 there has to be something to replace it else I’m not sure it’s worth it.

That said, I’ve already played around with Android mobile application development and Afrigator now has a Gatorpeeps Android application which you can download over here. You can see screenshots of the application in action and it was fun learning to do this.

I’ve still got the phone for about another week so I’m going to test it extensively and hopefully my full review will be an unbiased look at how the phone compares to others in the market.

Anyway, imagine my excitement when I received this email in my inbox this morning.

Eager to test the new service out I went to the website, logged in, and can now build my first application.

Currently the service only supports Python so now I have to figure what to do in this space…!

The 100 year plan includes the following key milestones.

• 2010: Choosing a Site
• 2014: Low Earth Orbit
• 2015: Virgle Base 1
• 2016: Flying to Mars
• 2108: Virgle City

A Virgle website has been setup and contains a well thought out plan including a myriad of information that kept me reading for about an hour. The crux of the concept is that Virgle Inc. will put up $10-15 billion over the next two decades and the community (i.e. normal people like you and me) will help build this New New World into an Open Source Planet.

There is a Virgle application test to see if you cut the grade and afterwards you are invited to submit a short 30-second video clip to YouTube explaining why you should be included in project Virgle. After an undefined period of time Virgle will chose 20 candidates to go with Larry, Sergey and Richard to live on Mars and start the first Virgle community.

All of this just seemed impossible to me but the fact that there are two videos, one with Richard Branson and one with Larry and Sergey, made me doubt my initial instincts. The fact of the matter is that Richard is a space pioneer and Larry and Sergey have already stated their desire to have an office on the Moon so while it seemed completely ludicrous it was believable at the same time.

A search on Google for virgle is it real revealed an odd looking 404 – Page Not Found on the Virgle site. Details of which follow below.

oh, all right. Fine. April Fool’s. Ha, ha, ha. It isn’t real. There. Are you happy? Does it please you to drag us out of our lovely little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams? Is that really what you need to hear? Fine, you’ve heard it. Virgle isn’t real. Yet!

I must say I’ve prided myself with being able to spot the various April Fools jokes on the Internet today but this one got me hook, line and sinker.

Paul is an ex-Googler who was the creative genius behind Gmail, AdSense and suggested the company’s now-famous motto Don’t be evil. He left Google in June last year and is now an angel investor and founder of the startup FriendFeed.

The context of Paul’s post stirs up a couple of interesting issues, namely;

• Will you make more money working for a startup?
• Does money make you happy?
• Love what you do – even if you are in a 9-5 job.

There is a lot more to his post but these are the core points of interest I took from it.

Many will argue that money is an object that, while making life a little easier, doesn’t or can’t buy happiness – my view is slightly different and I think I’ve had enough education in this regard.

Here’s my take, in the simplest form:- when I had money life was never better and when I didn’t have it I couldn’t cope with life.

I think it’s very easy to say money isn’t important when you’ve got a lot of it but when you haven’t got it, it’s the most stressful part of living life. Financial burden is the #1 stress in the United States and I would imagine that South Africa is not far off that.

I do subscribe to the notion that money isn’t everything but I also believe that it is a major, critical facet of life today. If we can take the need for money out of our life’s equation then we will be free to live life as it’s meant to be lived but as long as it remains a means for survival nobody can tell me money isn’t important or doesn’t create an immense amount of unhappiness and stress.

Financial freedom = Happiness

Within hours I stumbled upon the follow two websites.

Now this kind of thing is happening almost every single time I post a new item and it’s really pissing me off. Not only is my content being scraped but I’m sure this is having an effect on my Google rank? The only good thing about these above-two sites is that they’ve swapped the order of the words in my heading around so it almost looks unique but still……

I have to figure out a way to stop this but I just don’t know how.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and a SR22 4 seater. You have the option of commencing the game from your current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here.

Below is a short video of my first experiences using the flight simulator. I took off from San Fransisco airport and landed, well… you’re just going to have to watch but I can say it was a very bumpy ride.

Paul argues that

“Although Social Media is only just picking up steam here in South Africa, if you read the feeds on blogs and news sites in the United States and Europe it is fairly obvious that the whole thing is running out of steam.”

Now I’m not sure what news sites Paul is subscribed to but the ones I read tell the exact opposite but don’t take my word on it, let the evidence talk.

Robert Scoble, A-List blogger and Vice President of Media Development at PodTech.net, recently argued that social media sites Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years.

Michael Arrington, another A-Lister and owner of the popular Techcrunch blog, also linked to Scoble’s article and points out that

Scoble argues that the search results from sites such as Mahalo will appeal to more people due to their ability to be socially constructed as opposed to Google’s computer generated results.

While Arrington doesn’t necessarily agree with Scoble he’s also not disagreeing with Scoble’s thinking.

I’m pretty sure that while these are some good examples that Social Media is here to stay many will say that this only relates to the ever changing face of search and doesn’t really equate to any level of social networking or social media.

Silicon Valley start-up investor Esther Dyson appeared on the Charlie Rose show where she discussed her current projects in the technology space. During this interview she was asked if Facebook is the new Google and to that Dyson replied

“[It is] if you think Google is the next Microsoft.” So, is Google the new Microsoft? Dyson said, “It could well be.”

From my perspective I have to say that Social Media is changing the way we communicate on a global level. Search is becoming more relevant because of social media and will continue to do so for many years and social media sites are giving us a platform to communicate, share and evolve.

Paul goes on to claim that

All the new launches are reinventions of Social Media companies that have been around for years now or are simply new applications of existing tools. There is no real innovation in this space. Social Media has climaxed. It is all downhill from here.

Facebook’s recent emailing capabilities allow users to now replace traditional email communication and their Book Swap feature highlights how social media can relate to real-world practical uses so I’m just not sure about this statement either.

Is Social Media dead? I think not.

Clicking the Upgrade link brings you to a Google Checkout page with various upgrade options.

Some of the key problems I’m faced with today is centralisation and sharing. What I mean to say is that I have so many different email accounts that I’ve really struggled to manage and having some accounts download on a computer while others I check online is not ideal to say the least.

With the recent introduction of Gmail’s POP access you could now check up to 5 other email accounts and have those accounts mail imported to your Gmail account but this just wasn’t cutting it for me. The main reason this system is flawed is evidenced by the fact that Gmail only checks your other POP accounts every 45 – 60 minutes and in my world this just isn’t good enough. I need email immediately – end of story.

My other problem is the ability to share documents, calendars and other information with people in my family which up until Google Apps was a mission.

About two weeks ago I decided to try out Google Apps and went through the process of setting up a new domain, hartmanlife.com, to use with the service. This is a pre-requisite by the way so if you don’t have your own domain or can’t administer your domain name then Google Apps is not for you.

I’ve been very pleased with the results thus far, even despite some inherent flaws with the system and the following is a quick howto on setting up the interface and using Google Apps.

Create a Google Apps Account
Setting up a Google Apps account is as easy as any other process on Google and this really doesn’t need any special mention. You should be able to figure this one out by yourself. The only complicated process when doing this is choosing a domain name to use as your primary Google Apps domain and then verifying that the domain is actually yours but Google really help you through this process.

For my test I registered www.hartmanlife.com with GoDaddy and in doing so I was able to setup my domain to use the full power of Google Apps.

The Dashboard

The Apps Dashboard provides not only an overview of your account usage but also contains a Services settings section which allows you to make quick changes to the services available on Google Apps.

Service Settings

I decided to point all of the available services to sub-domains on my account so I had to login to my domain control panel at GoDaddy and make some changes to my DNS settings. Here is a screenshot of what changes I had to make.

By adding these settings for my domain I can now access the various services at the following locations:

• Email (Gmail): http://mail.hartmanlife.com
• Start Page (iGoogle): http://start.hartmanlife.com
• Calendar: http://calendar.hartmanlife.com
• Docs & Spreadsheets: http://docs.hartmanlife.com
• Web (Google Pages): http://www.hartmanlife.com

User Accounts

By accessing the User Accounts menu you can easily add a new account for the domain as well as edit an existing account. You also have the option to deny access to any/all of the Google Apps services for a particular account so certain users can essentially have limited access. There is also a nice usage graph so you can check how much space accounts are using on the server.

Domain Settings

The Domain Settings tab allows you to setup vital information about the primary domain and more importantly it also allows you to add multiple domains to your account.

One of the really cool features is the ability to add your own logo to Gmail and Google Calendar & Docs and while I haven’t yet done this myself I have changed the title bar of my browser so it doesn’t read as Gmail when I’m accessing my mail.

Adding Multiple Domains

You can also add multiple (or alias) domains to your account under the Domain Settings tab. Adding an alias domain allows you to send and receive email for that domain and it means that as email arrives it is delivered to your Apps Gmail instantaneously – a much better option to POP access.

Physically adding the domain to the control panel is easy however actually making it work is another story. As with your primary domain you will need to modify your Mail Exchanger (MX) settings in your DNS in order for you to be able to receive email. The good news is that Google have created step-by-step howtos for almost every single domain registry company including Cpanel which I was very impressed with.

In my case however I had to manually edit my DNS zone file and below are the required changes I made to an alias domain I’ve added.

Something to note about using multiple domains is that if you change the MX records for your domain all email will be sent to Google Apps. This could be a problem if for example you manage a domain that has multiple email accounts but you don’t want to create accounts for those users in Google Apps. Every current email account will need a user account in Google Apps for your users to continue to receive uninterrupted email for an alias domain.

That said, if you have multiple email accounts that forward to one primary account for an alias domain then you can setup a catch-all account in Google Apps that will catch all the email sent to a domain that isn’t associated with a Google Apps account.

Advanced Tools

The advanced tools tab is very simplistic and only provides a tool for importing multiple accounts to your new Apps account. I would assume that the advanced tool tab increases when you upgrade to a Premier Account but for the Standard Version it leaves much to be desired.

Service Settings Tab

Apart from the quick access functions you have on the Dashboard Google have dedicated an entire menu to Service Settings and clicking them will take you to… you guessed it the settings for that service. I’m only hoping that in time more of Google’s services will be added to this menu.

The Applications

The Start Page application is really cool and modeled off iGoogle. It seems though that a lot of iGoogle’s functionality has been stripped for Start Page so I’m looking forward to future releases that allow true iGoogle interaction

Email, Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets function exactly as the free community counterparts associated with all Google Accounts. However there are a few marked differences.

• The customised Title bar and Logo across all these services allowing you to maintain your brand across the platforms.
• User accounts that belong to the domain are already shared across all the platforms. In Email this means you’ve got all users of the domain as a contact and they’re already authorised as Google Talk users. For Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets there is a function to share calendars and docs across the domain accounts which means you can now manage family/group life with all your members.

Google Talk just can’t be tested unfortunately. I don’t have a PC and the only way to link up your Apps account in Gtalk is to use the PC-based application. I tried at length to add my Google Apps account to the normal Jabber servers but it would appear that Google Apps domains won’t yet work with Jabber, unlike Google Accounts.

Web Pages seem to work fine. I played around with this briefly for my domain but as I won’t really be using this service I’ll leave the decision-making process up to you on this one.

My Conclusion

While I initially thought Google Apps was a waste of time I have to admit to being very wrong. As a family or social group Google Apps can be a very nice tool to collaborate with and it has already allowed me to streamline my communication with my family in a centralised and managed place.

My only real criticism, and potential deal-breaker for some, is that Google Apps accounts don’t work like a Google Account. I was expecting to now login to Analytics, Groups, Reader and other standard services I use on Google with my new Apps account but this is not possible.

There is no migration tool to move an existing Google Account to Apps and this is seriously lacking IMHO. I’m sure that Google will move to this direction in the future but at the moment it’s really complicated having to log into certain services using my old Gmail details and others using the Google Apps details.

Migrating email from my Gmail account was also a little bit of a pain and the only way to achieve this was to setup POP Access in my new account and allow Google to import my old Gmail email which took nearly a week and a half to complete. It didn’t cost me any time however you should be able to merge the two accounts together as I’m now running two Gmail instances.

The one final thing I’d like to see change and I’m sure it will is the ability to setup different accounts pointing to one Google Apps account. In my case my primary account is justin@hartmanlife.com and any email sent to justin@aliasdomain will come to my hartmanlife.com domain. The problem with this is that I can’t setup say info@aliasdomain to forward to justin@hartmanlife.com which is a small but irritating problem.

So while I’m largely pleased with the Standard Edition I’ve been thinking about a possible move to Premier Edition. For me the $50 per year is a little steep just so I can have more disk space, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24-hour technical support. These benefits are more suited for corporate organisations but I simply can not see how a company would want to use this service.

It is a great tool for non-commercial purposes but to roll this out into an organisation posses a huge security and privacy threat. Why would any company want their private communication, business strategy documents and vital financial budgets located on someone else’s server and then pay them to do so?

I’m lost, however I’ll continue using Apps with much joy.

It’s no secret and it’s been out for a long time but iGoogle is really starting to amount to something. Previously known as Google Personalized Homepage the team at Google are now officially calling it iGoogle. Simply put iGoogle allows you to customise the Google homepage with relevant Gadgets that you can add such as Gmail, News, Weather and a lot more.

The screenshot above shows my new iGoogle page which I’ve customised to suit my needs and for whatever reason is really groovy in my opinion.

What’s really cool is that I decided to write a Gadget for iGoogle, using the Google Gadgets API, that pulls in the RSS feeds of Afrigator so now I can stay in touch with what’s happening on Afrigator just by visiting Google.

I don’t know if any of you will find this useful but I’ve made this Afrigator Gadget publicly available and you can get it by visiting this link or you can just click the Add to Google button below.

It’s version 1 so I’ll still make some more changes to it as I pick bugs up but you can completely customise this Gadget in any way you like plus it functions in almost an identical way to Afrigator by allowing you to preview a post before visiting a blog site. You can also add the Gadget multiple times to have color coded feeds which means you have full control over which RSS feed you want to display on your iGoogle page.

Let me know if any of you find this useful.

In January 2006 Tectonic reported that local search engine Jonga had been removed from the Google search results for about 10-days. When I first read it I wondered about this but now a second similar incident (that I know of) has happened in the US which has now resulted in a lawsuit against Google.

KinderStart a parenting site/vertical search engine complained that it’s ranking has been intentionally lowered by Google and while I normally would have brushed this aside it is all starting to look a little fishy on this front.

On reading and investigating a little further I found that in July 2006 a Google lawyer was explaining Google’s PageRank technology. The lawyer decided to argue that Google’s index was subjective – i.e., that Google made editorial decisions about each site’s quality.

When I first read this I was astonished because this is certainly not the perception Google want us to believe and in their Technology Overview Google make it very clear that “PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages” and that “there is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.”

Sounds about right? Well read on.

David Kramer, a Wilson Sonsini attorney also representing Google, said the search giant's PageRank system is subjective, using a combination of reviews into whether a Web site is adhering to its guidelines and is worth a user's time to view.

"Google is constantly evaluating Web sites for standards and quality, which is entirely subjective," Kramer said.

The judge probed Kramer on the topic of whether Google engages in misleading behavior, and whether it uses objective criteria to evaluate sites--rather than solely relying on subjective reasoning.

"What if, say, Google says it uses facts one through 10 to evaluate a site, but actually uses number 11 to decide its rank. Isn't that misleading?" the judge asked.

Kramer, however, said Google readers understand that the site's ranking system is subjective and based on Google's opinion about whether a site is worth viewing.

Ok, but that aside, let’s assume Google are in their best intentions trying to keep search engine results objective and not subjective. Why then do I see a subtle, yet alarming increase in questionable decisions made by Google?

Stefano Sessa recently blogged about Google’s latest Tip box being blatantly deceptive and in his post any search for the word blog in Google brings an advert for their Blogger.com service disguised as a tip.

And finally let’s not forget how Google agreed to work with the Chinese Government to censor certain websites on the google.cn website.

People ask me why I’m not trying to make money out Grabble – here’s your answer.

The Google Firefox Extensions page gives you a long list of various add-ons for Firefox but the one which I recently discovered and now find invaluable is the Browser Sync extension.

Browser Sync continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

Now I have my Apple iBook laptop which I use mostly for all my personal stuff including the various personal projects plus I have a PC at the office and an additional PC at home and all three are running either Ubuntu or Debian and of course Firefox.

The Browser Sync allows me to use all three machines and continuously stay up to date with my browser history and passwords saved which for me is very important. Google however claim it synchronises your bookmarks and while this is true for the very first time you setup the Browser Sync extension on a machine it doesn’t seem to continue syncing the bookmarks after the initial install.

To solve this small issue of the bookmarks syncing I use a different extension called Foxmarks. This extension does the job of syncing bookmarks excellently and I’ve been using this extension for a year or so now.

I find that both the Browser Sync and Foxmarks extensions are critical to my productivity and I recommend trying the combination to anyone who runs on more than one machine. There is of course the small issue of privacy and security running with these extensions but I don’t mind too much.