Smartphone Stuff

Today we talk smartphones.  Microsoft recently released its new mobile phone operating system, Windows Phone 7, and it’s been pretty well received so far.  We’ve yet to see reliable sales data but the phones themselves are nice and fast and user friendly with big bright buttons.  As long as software developers get behind it and increase the size of the relatively small app marketplace, it will do well.  Meanwhile phones based on Android (Google’s phone operating system) continue to do very well with more and more quality apps being written for it.  I’ve just ordered an Android based HTC Desire as it is nice and fast (I thought about Windows Phone 7 but it’s not a good idea to buy anything new in computers within the  first six months while the bugs are sorted out).  Google has now released Aussie Google Maps Navigation (beta) which gives all Android phone users a proper built in GPS in their phone for free.  Google says that you can “type a business name or even a kind of a business, just like you would on Google.”   You can also “search by voice and speak your destination instead of typing”, so you could easily say "Navigate to Taronga Zoo".  Directions are naturally spoken to you on a turn-by-turn basis, upcoming turns are displayed using Street View images, street names are spoken and your destination is show using Street View too, making the navigation process as ultra-modern and easy to follow and understand.  Exciting stuff.