Archive for October, 2008

Is the gPhone better than the iPhone?

Posted October 8, 2008 * Comments(4)
is the gphone better than the iphone

Google have a strong pedigree of taking on other large players in a number of markets. Yahoo! and Altavista (and a host of others) and in search, Microsoft in software (and latterly, with its Chrome browser, in surfing the Web), and now Apple and its iPhone. Google’s gPhone is the latest in Google’s series of challenges to these established names. In the name of creating competition in marketplaces, we say long may this continue.

But is the gPhone – proper name the T Mobile G1 — really a competitor to the iPhone? Perhaps not. Just from the look of the thing and the feel of Google’s Android platform, the gPhone is aiming at a completely different market altogether. With the full QWERTY keyboard and a roller ball for control, the gPhone has a rather traditional feel. This, for better or for worse, is certainly not something that the iPhone can be accused of.

It is Google’s newly developed Android platform that is the real interest here, though. Android lets you use pretty much all the Google services including YouTube, Google Chat and Gmail on the gPhone without any problems. Of course with the QWERTY you can get down to communicating with your home boys and girls much easier.

Ares Rocket will fly

Posted October 5, 2008 * Comments(17)
ares rocket will fly

If I were an astronaut (I’m not, which is why I’m writing this blog post…) then I’d make sure that everyone was putting every effort into making sure my future ride was absolutely bullet proof. I would realize that it was impossible to test the rocket before I used it to power quickly into the cold dark reaches of space, but other than this final step I would expect that every bit of possible effort were expended. This is my life at stake here.

What I would be pleased to see would be the current effort that NASA are putting into the Ares I rocket. Ares is the rocket upon which the Orbit shuttle will rely. Both components are critical for the success of NASA’s Constellation project that is due for launch in 2015. Preliminary design reviews have been successful, but these guys are not risking just one go at making sure it is right: this first stage is the first of many in a long line in an iterative approach to getting the Ares rocket absolutely perfect before it is put together. There really is no alternative for a rocket like Ares which carries so much hope, so much cost and so much human life with it.

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