Hi Alex, in your last paragraph (of “Cloud signals new opportunities for VoIP”), you say the promise of VoIP is free phone calls. I’m not sure I agree with this statement as VoIP costs far more than Google Talk or Skype.
VoIP is now being used by businesses for professional applications, and it certainly isn’t free. Other than that, it was a nice article and very true that it is a cost saver and is great for remote workers. The only issue is making sure they have enough bandwidth to support a good-quality call.
Liz
United States
Don’t blame Android or Google for faulty phones
(Re: “Google’s Motorola buy could ease developer pain points”), again, there are three current versions of Windows in use: XP, Vista and 7. There are three current supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise: 4, 5 and 6. There are two current supported versions of Ubuntu: LTS 8.04 and 10.04.
The problem with Android is NOT that 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 are all currently supported. The problem is that the handset makers put their own UIs on top of Android instead of using the ASOP version that comes with Android. The manufacturers make middle- and low-end phones that are NOT upgradeable, so they ship a phone with 2.1 with low specs that cannot handle newer versions, and they then abandon these phones.
The consumer who locked into a 2-year contract cannot upgrade, so they are stuck. It is not an Android issue, and the fragmentation conversation is the silliest thing ever because the desktop and servers are “fragmented” by your logic. The issue is that the carriers and manufacturers create their own issues by deviating from the norm to lock people in. The carriers insist on tons of bloatware to lock in customers and slow these devices down, and then take forever to approve changes to the OS on the devices. My Thunderbolt is more then capable of running Gingerbread and Sense UI 3.0, but HTC and the carrier (VZW) have dragged their [butts] in upgrading it.
Again, not the fault of Google or Android.
B. Rosenberg
United States
