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Android flies high, desserts that start with J and a new strategy for selling tablets
#31 | 5:22 |
Wednesday September 21, 2011
Android Weekly
Wednesday September 21, 2011
On this week's show, Android flying high powering seat back entertainment on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, what comes after Ice Cream Sandwich and save a tree, get a tablet.
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Android takes to the skies
Android activations have long since outpaced iOS. With deals like the once recently announced by Boeing, it's clear that Android is about devices other than just phones and tablets. Android is the OS that will be powering the next generation of seat-back entertainment on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jumbos.
Typically, seat-back entertainment is built on a no doubt well-intentioned but all too often screwy proprietary platform. Using an open source OS to build out applications like this is a great idea. Airlines can focus on getting the latest movies and TV shows to entertain us as we jet set and can leave the heavy OS lifting to Android.
If you've ever played (or rather, attempted to play) a game on a seat-back entertainment system, you might see even more potential. With the wealth of time-waster games available on our platform of choice, it seems a logical fit. Rather than giving us crappy Tetris clones played on a resistive touch screen, the next gen of seatback entertainment might actually keep you engaged for the entire flight.
And with more and more airlines offering in-flight wireless Internet access, you might even be able to check your email or send one of those annoying "guess where I'm tweeting from?" messages that seem to be the thing that springs to every passenger mind when they learn of their new in-flight access.
What comes after Ice Cream Sandwich in Google's Android naming convention?
Like it or hate it (we're of mixed minds) Android iterations have been named after desserts. It all started with Cupcake. next came Donut, followed by Eclair. Then we got Froyo, now we're using Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Ice Cream Sandwich hits later this year on the Nexus Prime.
Ice Cream Sandwich will represent the biggest single change to Android since, well, since Android. It will bring together tablet and smartphone development which until now have been very separate builds; 2.X for smartphone and 3.X for tablet.
So, Android 4.0 is Ice Cream Sandwich, and we're excited, but we're already wondering what comes next.
We're into the J's now. Jellybean seems the current favorite as a potential name... but a jellybean is not a dessert. Jell-O would seem a good choice... were it not for the trademark. That said, Jell-O is at risk of genericide. That's when a word is deemed to be used by the populous to mean the generic equivalent more often than it is used to refer to the tradmarked item. Basically, if you're so successful that your trademark becomes synonymous with the product you make, you lose your trademark. Weird. Maybe Jell-O will succumb to genericide before Android needs to hit the Js.
Perhaps the English equivalent, Jelly, would be a good choice. The Android news feed on butterscotch.com has a few other suggestions for J-words. If anyone from the Android team is watching (and I can't imagine why they wouldn't be), this should be a front-runner: Jalebi. It's an Indian dessert and it's as tasty as it is nice to look at.
Want a new Android tablet? Subscribe to an old newspaper.
If the HP TouchPad fire sale showed us anything, it's that people will buy just about any tablet if you slap a sub-$100 price tag on it.
That seems to be the thinking behind the Philadelphia Inquirer's digital subscription gambit. The Internet has long been the bane of the traditional newsroom. With so much news information available for free online, the old pulp and paper model just doesn't make as much sense as it once did.
Philadelphia Media Network, the owner of the Inquirer, is offering 5,000 Android tablets at 99 bucks a go. That is, assuming you're willing to sign on the dotted line for a two-year subscription to the digital version of their newspaper for another $9.99 a month. All in, you're paying about $340 for a tablet and two years of the paper... minus the paper. Never mind the fact that you can get the pulp and paper equivalent for two years for $80.
It's a solid idea and it will be interesting to see how many takers the media group gets. My thinking is that people are willing to pay for quality curated news content, it's just that no one has stumbled upon a winning formula for delivery. Perhaps this is it?
Android activations have long since outpaced iOS. With deals like the once recently announced by Boeing, it's clear that Android is about devices other than just phones and tablets. Android is the OS that will be powering the next generation of seat-back entertainment on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jumbos.
Typically, seat-back entertainment is built on a no doubt well-intentioned but all too often screwy proprietary platform. Using an open source OS to build out applications like this is a great idea. Airlines can focus on getting the latest movies and TV shows to entertain us as we jet set and can leave the heavy OS lifting to Android.
If you've ever played (or rather, attempted to play) a game on a seat-back entertainment system, you might see even more potential. With the wealth of time-waster games available on our platform of choice, it seems a logical fit. Rather than giving us crappy Tetris clones played on a resistive touch screen, the next gen of seatback entertainment might actually keep you engaged for the entire flight.
And with more and more airlines offering in-flight wireless Internet access, you might even be able to check your email or send one of those annoying "guess where I'm tweeting from?" messages that seem to be the thing that springs to every passenger mind when they learn of their new in-flight access.
What comes after Ice Cream Sandwich in Google's Android naming convention?
Like it or hate it (we're of mixed minds) Android iterations have been named after desserts. It all started with Cupcake. next came Donut, followed by Eclair. Then we got Froyo, now we're using Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Ice Cream Sandwich hits later this year on the Nexus Prime.
Ice Cream Sandwich will represent the biggest single change to Android since, well, since Android. It will bring together tablet and smartphone development which until now have been very separate builds; 2.X for smartphone and 3.X for tablet.
So, Android 4.0 is Ice Cream Sandwich, and we're excited, but we're already wondering what comes next.
We're into the J's now. Jellybean seems the current favorite as a potential name... but a jellybean is not a dessert. Jell-O would seem a good choice... were it not for the trademark. That said, Jell-O is at risk of genericide. That's when a word is deemed to be used by the populous to mean the generic equivalent more often than it is used to refer to the tradmarked item. Basically, if you're so successful that your trademark becomes synonymous with the product you make, you lose your trademark. Weird. Maybe Jell-O will succumb to genericide before Android needs to hit the Js.
Perhaps the English equivalent, Jelly, would be a good choice. The Android news feed on butterscotch.com has a few other suggestions for J-words. If anyone from the Android team is watching (and I can't imagine why they wouldn't be), this should be a front-runner: Jalebi. It's an Indian dessert and it's as tasty as it is nice to look at.
Want a new Android tablet? Subscribe to an old newspaper.
If the HP TouchPad fire sale showed us anything, it's that people will buy just about any tablet if you slap a sub-$100 price tag on it.
That seems to be the thinking behind the Philadelphia Inquirer's digital subscription gambit. The Internet has long been the bane of the traditional newsroom. With so much news information available for free online, the old pulp and paper model just doesn't make as much sense as it once did.
Philadelphia Media Network, the owner of the Inquirer, is offering 5,000 Android tablets at 99 bucks a go. That is, assuming you're willing to sign on the dotted line for a two-year subscription to the digital version of their newspaper for another $9.99 a month. All in, you're paying about $340 for a tablet and two years of the paper... minus the paper. Never mind the fact that you can get the pulp and paper equivalent for two years for $80.
It's a solid idea and it will be interesting to see how many takers the media group gets. My thinking is that people are willing to pay for quality curated news content, it's just that no one has stumbled upon a winning formula for delivery. Perhaps this is it?
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