Countdown... 4 more days...

I'm so excited... I know you guys are too. So, what happens on November 12th, you ask? The preview version of Android's SDK will be released!! OMG, I can't hold in the excitement! What the hell am I talking about? (I'm sure Jeanne is thinking I'm such a freaking geek.) Well, three days ago the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) announced their goals to develop open standards for mobile devices. This is a big deal, since the OHA is a consortium made up of about 30 members. Keep in mind, these are big names members including Motorola, LG, and, most notably, Google. (i.e., the company behind the mythical GPhone) I believe that this push will change the mobile paradigm all together. More importantly, at the same time OHA was announcing their mission, the group also unveiled Android. Android is an open source mobile phone platform based on the Linux Operating System. Let me repeat that... it's an OPEN SOURCE mobile phone platform based on the Linux Operating system. When it’s released the platform will be available under the Apache License. Do you know what this means? Anyone can write an application to run on any Android based mobile device. If we start to consider coupling existing phone features (i.e., camera/photos, gps, sms, mms, wifi capabilities) into an open source platform along with Google’s number of other applications the possibilities are endless. For example, this website claims to have leaked photos of the first wireless app for the Android OS. It’s a tool called What’s Open. And as you can probably guess, it’s a little application that tells you where places are and their operation hours within your general vicinity. So, at 2:00am, you’ll never have a problem finding that 24 hour Donut Shop with free WiFi. Here’s some cool ideas for a magic phone: Will this be the beginning of the end for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile? Or how about the iPhone? Doubtful, but we could always hope.