But here’s another theory to throw on the heap.

I think Google has some surprises up their sleeve. The whole point of not releasing the SDK to everyone is they want to keep these surprises a secret as long as possible. As close to the release of an Android phone as possible. There are screenshots of the new SDK, and they look noticeably different than the current SDK release. Check it out:

Android SDK screenshot	Limited Release Android SDK photo

An opportunity presented itself earlier today. Robert Scoble tweeted that he was hanging out with the Google PR team, and did anyone have any questions. I tweeted him back to have him ask Google PR about the Android SDK, and when will the general developer community see a new release?. Now I don’t know and have never met Robert Scoble, so my chances are slim that I would get any response. Time will tell. Looking through the other questions people submitted, not a lot were asked about the Android SDK. There is a nice discussion going on over on FriendFeed about Scoble asking Google PR questions. When Robert Scoble posts about the questions he asked, it will be in the FriendFeed comments or on his website at http://scobleizer.com/

Will Google release a new version of the Android SDK soon? I doubt it. At this point, they are focused on working with their top developers, and with handset makers to get a device out the door by the end of the year. Releasing a more current SDK will just slow them down. My prediction is Google will not release a new SDK until after an Android device ships. I hope I’m wrong.

UPDATE 1: Join in a discussion on FriendFeed.

UPDATE 2: Google to release new SDK on August 5th according to the Android Google Group. I’ll write a new post when the new SDK is released.

This post is a test of that app. And I have to admit — I love it! Well designed and easy to set up. It is easily able to manage multiple blogs.

I love the ability to take a picture and insert it into a blog post! I took the screenshot shown to the left and was able to insert it very easily by tapping on the photo icon in the bottom bar. I hand edited the HTML to put the text below to the left of the image, and change the size shown.

You can preview your post before it is published too. Now if Apple would give us copy and paste, editing would be a whole lot easier! This is what I’ve been waiting for since I got my iPhone!

The app did crash on me once after I saved the first draft of this post locally, but when I came back into the app, everything was there, so no harm no foul.

Great job WordPress team, and thank you from WordPress bloggers everywhere!

UPDATE: This post was mentioned on Digg at: http://digg.com/apple/WordPress_app_released_for_iPhone

Why is this important? Having a service like XMPP available in the OS means that developers wanting to use this in their applications have to implement it on their own, or include someone else’s install in addition to their application. One of the hottest areas of application development are in instant messaging and location-based services, such as Twitter, BrightKite, Loopt, Jabber, etc. Since this is an extendable protocol, additional abilities like VoIP can be defined and added. If you want more background information, you can read about it on TechCrunchIT here and on Google here.

OK, that’s the background of the issue. Here is the political reality. Yes, political.

Cell carriers make a lot of money on text messaging, which we all know should cost nothing, like voicemail or a power cord. They charge either per-text or a monthly fee for hundreds, thousands or unlimited texts. I have a teenage niece that sends an estimated 7500 texts a month. That’s 250 a day. More than I send in a year.

Think if the cell company were to have this source of extra money impacted by a free, internet based messaging service, well, they would not be happy. If people were to start ditching their texting plans, those contracts would lose a quarter of their value in many cases. For example, my plan is $39 a month for 450 minutes, with a $20 a month unlimited data plan (the iPhone plan, which includes 200 text messages), and $20 more for unlimited text messages. $80 take away $20 is 25% less. If a user has a higher minute plan than this, and since XMPP can support VoIP, there is another potential reason for people to lower their plan minutes, further reducing the value of the contract.

What I see is the cell phone companies putting pressure on Google to remove XMPP from Android, to keep these revenue killers from eating away at their contract dollars.

Now the dumb thing is that nothing prevents XMPP from being implemented on an Android device. Since it is open source, you can add your own. Where that gets to be a problem is multiple implementations potentially being on the same device for different applications, and not being as resource efficient as it being part of the OS.

While discussing this on FriendFeed here, I made the point that if XMPP inclusion is delaying the release of Android, by all means lets get Android released, and add this in a future release of the OS. Yes, this is annoying, and slows down development of applications. But, the competition to Android — iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry — are available and growing more users daily.

Here’s my comment on FriendFeed: “It [no XMPP in Android] was like printer services (or complete lack thereof) in Windows 3.1. Every program that wanted to print had to implement it on their own, along with drivers for all the different printers. A real mess. But with Windows 95, print services were implemented. If Google is in the position of not being able to release Android for x number of extra months because of a service or three, I say lets get it out ASAP, and get that stuff in a later release of the OS. Babies [and OS's] aren’t born fully grown.”

Getting back to the political nub of this story, what needs to happen is for the cell carriers to get over the idea that they should charge individually for services on mobile web devices, and just have a flat rate for internet service, and have everything you need use that the mobile internet connection. Your broadband internet at home doesn’t charge you separately for email, web browsing, iTunes downloads, etc. (not that they don’t want to!) Because the next wave of wireless (like WiMax) is going to kick cell carriers in the hurty places, when you’ll have another means of getting wireless internet. We’ve all seen many examples of trying to hold on to a business model too long that technology is taking away. Get with it and LEAD the charge, don’t try to slow down innovation because it is inconvenient to your way to doing business.

UPDATE: Discussion on FriendFeed and on Moopz.

There are some tricks you will need to know to get your iPhone from 1.x to 2.0. These instructions were developed and tested on Windows XP SP2. (Don’t worry — I’ll post the Mac version soon.)

First, some quick definition of terms:

• ‘jailbroken’ means the iPhone is opened up to install software from sources other than Apple
• ‘unlocked’ means the iPhone is able to use any cell phone carrier that uses a SIM card
• ‘activated’ means the phone is able to make cellular calls
• ‘DFU mode’ is the iPhone screen showing the cable with an arrow pointing to the iTunes icon (see below)

These are the things you will need:

• iTunes 7.7 – download it here
• iPhone OS 1.1.4 – Apple download site 1 -or- Apple download site 2
• iPhone OS 2.0 – Apple download site 1 -or- Apple download site 2
• iPhone OS 2.0.1 – Apple download site 1 -or- Apple download site 2
• ZiPhone jailbreak/unlock software – download it here
• the iPhone and the cable to connect to your computer

This is the summary of the update procedure.

1. Gather and install all software listed above.
2. Connect the iPhone to your Windows PC.
3. Open iTunes 7.7 and sync your iPhone. Be sure to use iTunes 7.7! See why here.
4. Now backup your iPhone by right-clicking on the iPhone in the left sidebar and clicking backup. See screen capture here.
5. Open ZiPhoneGUI.exe and change the iPhone to DFU mode. It’s under the Advanced Features. Click the button that says DFU Mode. Big scary warning is OK.
6. In iTunes, select the iPhone in the left sidebar, and shift-click the restore button on the Summary tab.
7. Find iPhone1,1_1.1.4_4A102_Restore.ipsw and click Open. A jailbroken iPhone must be restored back to 1.1.4 before going to 2.0 — THIS IS IMPORTANT! iTunes will give you an error if you try, but won’t hurt anything as far as I know.
8. When that finishes, iTunes wants to restore your backup. DO THIS!
9. In iTunes, select the iPhone in the left sidebar, and shift-click the restore button. YES AGAIN.
10. Find iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw iPhone1,1_2.0.1_5B108_Restore.ipsw and click Open. NOTE: This step took a reaaaaaaaaly long time to finish.
11. When that finishes, iTunes wants to restore your backup. DO THIS AGAIN!

Like any good geek paranoid about security, I had set up the account with a strong password randomly generated on the internet.

So I enter account, tap ok, enter password… Hey! Where’s the backsquote? (also called the backwards single quote or left single quote — it looks like this ` — on most keyboards located above the TAB key and to the left of the 1 key.) I’m left stranded because the password I used had a backsquote in it. Grrrr! Arrrgh!

This is probably not going to affect many users, but there is no workaround for this one. Not a serious a missing feature problem, but still very annoying to anyone that has no alternative to the backwards single quote. `

Please, please, please Apple, give us full keyboardity!