10 things the Google Phone needs to kick the iPhone’s ass!

There must have been thousands of rumors about the iPhone in the past few months. But has this provided the perfect quiet development time for Google to roll out its own phone? Here is a list of what the gPhone needs to makes the iPhone just another smartphone. Is it just me or are there too many phones in that last sentence…

1. Touchscreen - Well that much is obvious! One of the iPhone’s main selling features is that it has a good touchscreen. Any phone planning on over taking it will need as good, if not a better and bigger touchscreen.
2. Google Apps ready to roll – Gmail, Google Calendar, Maps, Search, gTalk, etc. all pre-installed and ready to use out of the shop. Enough said here.
3. A full OS installed – The iPhone has Mac OS X, the Google Phone should have Ubuntu! And what better time than when Ubuntu is developing a version of its OS just for mobile devices… Also in Google HQs, Google employees use specially adapted Ubuntu distributions. Why not adapt the mobile version as well to suit Google’s needs?
4. 2.9GB of an inbox! – And I don’t just mean email inbox! All text messages you receive will be stored in Gmail for viewing anywhere in the world with or without your gPhone. You’ll never have to clear out your SMS inbox again or realise you deleted that important text message from a friend or collegue confirming your meeting time and place. Of course if you still had the message and didn’t recognise the meeting place just select it and map integration will provide driving directions if you need them.
5. EDGE!? Google laughs at EDGE! - Or at least it will when it buys the old 700MHz wireless spectrum which is up for auction soon. Basically with this Google could supply broadband to every device on the network (which it already does in San Francisco with Wi-Fi), which kinda kicks EDGE in the pants! Along with the iPhone! With this network Google could, if it wished, supply unlimited data for free (if you haven’t noticed it likes giving lots for free, think Gmail, Google Earth, etc.), or a high bandwidth for free and then unlimited for a flat rate. Of course, any search or homepage on this network with either be Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.fr, Google.au… You get the picture.
6. What a phone without Talk? Google Talk? – With this network Google could supply anything up to and including streaming video and audio i.e. Youtube (which it now owns) and iTunes Music Store integration. Possibly even video calls in a new and radically improved Google Talk, which hasn’t seen an update since January 1st! This update would bring SIP compatibility, video conferencing abilities, Skype and AIM communication and a linux version (if the gPhone is indeed linux-based). This new and improved Google Talk could also provide the voice calls to landlines and other mobiles not just other Google Talk users.
7. More flashy than the iPhone – meant literally, the gPhone will need Adobe Flash player installed to compete with the iPhone. Rumored to be included in upcoming updates to the iPhone (or at least eventually installed onto the iPhone by a hacker) Flash will have to be installed from go or easily installed onto the gPhone.
8. Full screen, stereo and all that jazz in many formats – The gPhone would of course include a media player possibly designed by Android, a company acquired by Google some time back, that would do all the usual things a media player is required to do. The iPhone does a pretty good job on video playback but isn’t it a pain when you have to re-encode your video whenever you want to put it on your phone? The gPhone could make life easier and support multiple formats and take up where the iPhone left off.
9. Lets have a party! A 3rd party! – The iPhone only allows web apps to be run on it which for developers is like smacking them across the face and saying your doing it for their own good. A Linux-based gPhone would have endless development possibilities and have a low security risk due to its secure nature.
10. And see that dotted line, don’t sign it. – Last but not least, the gPhones needs to be available without a contract to AT&T or any other network. It’s the first thing hackers tried to get around when the iPhone came out, and something that is putting many people off getting one. Tied to AT&T, it will cost you at least $1439.76 for the two year contract and that’s without the price of the iPhone. If the gPhone was contract-less, there would be no reason not to get one, unless of course your tied to your iPhone contract!

Of course the gPhone would also need proper Bluetooth support (on the iPhone you can’t send a photo over BT), Wifi, 2MP+ camera, Video recording (which the iPhone doesn’t have), MMS (again lacking on the iPhone), games, voice recording, 4gb/8gb options, and good battery life.

I think Google could pull this off. If they did, I could see the craze of calling things iSomething going out of fashion pretty quick. gPod anyone?

Obviously Bebo doesn’t respect my privacy. At least not when money is involved!

Having spent the past few days trawling through Bebo’s source code trying to create a Firefox extension for the site (not helped by the lack of an API or the backwards table based site design :rolls eyes:), I noticed something very unusual: Bebo letting my personal information visible to all! Even after me telling it not too! Why? Money I suppose…

So lets pretend I’m 13 (the lowest age you can join Bebo) for a second. Bebo won’t let me display my age on my Bebo Profile (which I can display publicly to anyone [although I'm warned not to unless I'm over 21. Come on Bebo like kids these days are actually stopped by that!]). Which is good because if I’m 13 and my profile is public, anyone weirdo could contact me and you know how the story goes.

Come out of my fictitious story now and cut to me today trying to make my extension stop Bebo FlashBox’s from automatically playing when the page is loaded. Youtube videos are great as they wait to be click to start playing but VideoEgg videos have the option to autoplay which can be really annoying as certain users like to play some em… dodgy… music. It is this auto play variable that I was searching for and trying to tame but I found more than I expected.

The line of code in question is:

var origtitle=document.title; document.title=escape(document.title); var VE_api = VE_getPlayerAPI('1.2');var myMoviePath = '/gid329/cid1124/4S/G3/1177411571YvJRDMJCSa1cBF45TaJh';VE_api.embedPlayer(myMoviePath,355,298,false,'','FFFFFF',true,'site=bebo&area=userhomepages&vl=IE&va=17&vg=M&pa=18&pg=F&channel=Humor','');document.title=origtitle;

This line firstly requests the video:

var myMoviePath = ‘/gid329/cid1124/4S/G3/1177411571YvJRDMJCSa1cBF45TaJh’;

Then the Width and Height that the video should be:

355,298,

and whether it should AutoPlay:

false,

This is the good bit. The site its displaying on so it can place a watermark on the video (i.e a Bebo logo) logo and what part of the site its on (i.e a user homepage):

site=bebo&area=userhomepages

But it also includes what seemed like some random letters at first. Turns out they aren’t so random.

vl=IE&va=17&vg=M&pa=18&pg=F

vl stands for viewer’s location, Ireland here.
va, viewer’s age.
vg, viewer’s gender.
pa, player’s age and pg, player’s gender.

Why would a video player need all those details!? For advertising and statistics! Basically money. There is really no need for this and it appears to be only for VideoEgg videos.

Funny thing is that even if you set your age to hidden which anyone, of any age, can do, it still shows here right in the source code! Not really hidden is it? Also remember the madeup 13 year old at the beginning of this blog post? Yes you guessed it! Anyone can see his age even though he doesn’t have the option to display it on his profile himself!

So lets call on Bebo to remove this blatant invasion of privacy, at least to protect those who don’t (or can’t) display their ages on their profiles!

Update: I have now contacted Bebo on this mattter and I am awaiting a response.

“Hello Bebo. I would like to draw your attention to a privacy flaw on your website. You can read about it here http://alanrice.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/obviously-bebo-doesnt-respect-my-privacy-at-least-not-when-money-is-involved/
Basically you are letting personal information slip to VideoEgg about the viewer and the player of the video, which is ok as its not identifiable info but anyonce can look at the source code and use it to find out if a person is under 16 (as these users are not allowed to show their age on their profile).
I would consider this a major flaw as theu reason for hiding a minor’s age is for their own protection yet you display it freely in the source code for all to see!
Please remove this code from your site or at least protect those who have their ages hidden or are under 16.
Regards,
Alan.“

Update: Bebo has replied to me saying:

“Hi

Many thanks for taking the time to let us know. I appreciate it. We take our member’s privacy very seriously and I have now forwarded this to our technical team for them to look into.

Please contact me again if I can be of further assistance.

Kindest Regards
Lupita”

Hopefully the matter will be sorted soon.