Marketing becomes new revenue arm

Traditionally, CMOs have dealt with the “soft skills” of marketing. They headed up cost centers filled with branding, advertising and campaigns that were expensive endeavors, producing benefits that were often difficult to measure. In this current shift, CMOs might not bring CIOs to their knees, but if corporate budgets could talk they would certainly favor the CMO. To wit: Gartner predicts that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Why? Mobile, big data and real-time analytics are transforming the modern CMO’s organization from a cost center to a critical revenue-driving arm to reach and engage the customer base.

Realizing that CIOs and CMOs probably hate stories of a battle raging between them, there is actually a peaceful, and logical, middle ground in which the two work together to harness the vastness of big data to create real-time – and importantly, actionable – analytics. While the CMO brings the marketing skills to the table, the CIO has the technical chops to deal with capturing, processing and integrating data to make it useful.

Mobile transition requires new tools

The CMO is in a particularly prime position in the increasingly important mobile channel, as the feedback loop is uniquely personal and immediate. The ability to measure, predict and act upon an end-user action has never been more precise.

However, mobile is a different beast and legacy systems designed for the web rely on cookies to track user interaction. As we go more mobile, we enter a world devoid of cookies. New tools are required to match mobile users to their actions across multiple channels. Along with new tools, there needs to be a new partnership – the CMO and CIO united as a Dynamic Duo – working diligently together to deliver the cloud-based and back-office infrastructure required to pull actionable information from big data across all channels: bricks and mortar, web and mobile.

New focus on data-driven outreach

To get a view into what makes the CMO so potentially powerful, let’s turn to another battle, the one that happens on a quarterly basis across corporate America and beyond: The fight to make the quarterly earnings number. Typically, a CEO faced with a sales or earnings shortfall will turn to the CFO and the head of sales and say: “What can you do?”

The honest answer is: short term, not much. They can jam the channel, which will make the next quarter’s number even harder to achieve. Or shovel product out the door at prices that wouldn’t otherwise make sense. But by the time the word gets to the field and actions kick into gear, there can be quite a lag in results. And, again, these results may have value only for the short-term.

In the very near future – one that has already arrived for some organizations – the CEO turns to the CMO, who looks up from his or her laptop and says: “No problem. We should make that number by noon.”

The CFO and head of sales turn and say in unison: “How?”

“While you were talking I found an overstock of our Zing42 and sent an offer to 234,000 customers who have purchased this in the past, and statistically are ready to buy again, and to another 341,000 customers who haven’t purchased this yet, but show a high probability of doing so at the price point we are offering.”

No hurried sales calls to the field asking them to stuff the channel. No broadcasting of sales and discounts that can tarnish an image or weaken a brand. But rather, an analytically-driven offer to a curated digital audience delivered via a simple mobile notification, or in-application offer, to thousands of people who are analyzed and selected to be eager buyers.

This is the look of the CMO ascending: Powered by a cloud of mobile, big data and real-time analytics.

Rob Lilleness is the CEO of Medio, a Seattle-based provider of analytics solutions for mobile computing. Follow him on Twitter @Robmedio.

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Photo courtesy Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com.

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Google announced that in June, customers can order the handset through the Google Play store. Instead of the phone running Samsung’s customized TouchWiz software, it will instead run on pure Android, just like the Nexus 4. That means it will get future software updates directly through Google and not Samsung or a network provider.

Of course, some of the newest Samsung features won’t be present on the phone: I wouldn’t expect Samsung’s new camera modes to be there, nor would I expect gestures to work for hands-free scrolling or swiping. Still, in light of no new Nexus hardware, the unlocked handset could appeal to hardcore Android enthusiasts.

So without the release of Android 4.3 at Google I/O, does that mean Android hasn’t improved? Not at all; in fact, Google essentially boosted Android’s software without needing to wait for carriers and handset makers to upgrade the software. How did this happen? A large part of the 3.5 hour Google I/O keynote was dedicated to new Android services and APIs, plus a new application called Hangouts.

The new Hangouts app replaces Google Talk and is Google’s effort to unify its messaging platform. The app supports video calls with up to 10 participants, SMS notifications of incoming chat requests when offline, text chat and works across platforms: You can communication with other users on the web or on iOS devices. Hangouts also highlights a great new feature in Android: Support for synchronized notifications. If you get a notification on one device and take action, the notification won’t appear on other devices or in the Chrome browser.

Google also introduced its music subscription and discovery service called Google Play Music All Access. For a $9.99 monthly fee — $7.99 if you start a 30-day trial by June 30 — you get unlimited access to stream tracks thought the Play Music app and on the web. Human curators surface top songs and albums while music recommendations come from Google’s Knowledge Graph and your Google+ circles.

Gaming got a supercharge in Android as well. Developers can use the new Google Play Games services that allow cross-platform gaming complete with achievements and leaderboards. Game progress can also be saved to the cloud, allowing gamers to pick up where the left off, even from another device.

Android also saw one other big announcement this week, but it didn’t happen at Google I/O. The Bluetooth SIG announced that Android will gain support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices in the coming months. That’s likely to be included in an actual Android release as some developers told me that Google will be completely changing the Bluetooth software stack in Android. Regardless, this means widespread support for Bluetooth 4.0 Smart and Smart Ready accessories such as watches, heart rate monitors and other low-powered companion devices.

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Case in point: Yahoo Weather, which rolled out recently, already has what Onavo CEO Guy Rosen calls an “unprecedented” 3 percent market share among U.S. iPhone owners. That’s about 1.5 million users total which makes it the 91st most popular iPhone app three weeks after release, according to Onavo Insights data. That’s very good for a new app, Rosen said in an interview.

Other Yahoo mobile apps including Yahoo Messenger and the Yahoo app are also doing well. “In general, what we found is that although Yahoo has been quiet on mobile, when we look at the top apps, we see quite a few up there. They have a decent footprint.”

According to Onavo stats, the Yahoo app is the most popular of the company’s suite and among the most popular in the App Store overall. In the past three months, active usage has risen to 9.02 percent from  6.5 percent (or to 4.5 million active users from 3.2 million active users.) Not too shabby.

How does Onavo get to these numbers? It uses data gleaned from its free iPhone (and now Android) apps including Onavo Extend, which compresses data flowing into and out of your phone; Onavo Counts, which watches how much time you actually spend using a given app; and Onavo Protect, which scans traffic flowing into your phone for malware. Then it aggregates that data (minus the personally identifiable bits) and runs statistics to suss out usage patterns. That data forms the core of reports that the company then sells to app developers.

This data is far more useful to app makers than app store download figures because it shows actual engagement. If your app is the mobile equivalent of shelfware, it’s helpful to know that.

Rosen said “millions” of people use Onavo’s iPhone apps but would not specify further. “We use a panel methodology with our user base as the sample and apply statistical methodologies to make sure it’s valid,” he said in an interview.

The current app stats do not yet factor in Onavo’s Android users, although they will be incorporated in time.

Note: This story was updated at 12:38 p.m. PDT with a new chart on Yahoo app usage growth and additional data on that usage.

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This is no mere transfer of network title, though. Sprint plans to shut down U.S. Cellular’s network completely some time in those two metropolitan regions in the next several months (Champagne, Ill., and South Bend, Ind., will also be affected). And despite the fact that U.S. Cellular’s systems uses the same CDMA technology in the same PCS frequencies, Sprint isn’t supporting its existing handsets. All of those customers must either start over with new devices and new service plans on the Sprint network or go find a new mobile operator entirely.

Sprint Regional VP for the Midwest Kevin Gleason told GigaOM that Sprint planned to make the transition as easy as possible for U.S. Cellular’s customers by offering them plenty of incentive to move to Sprint.

“I believe our recapture rate will be high,” Gleason said. “We’ve already started communicating with them and several of them have already made the switch.”

Sprint has sent out an initial batch of letters notifying them about the transaction but Gleason said Sprint will soon follow up, detailing the timing of the network shutdown and the discount offers Sprint is making to draw those customers under the Sprint umbrella.

While Gleason wouldn’t give any specific details on the exact amount of the discounts, he said they would take many forms: device discounts over Sprint’s usual subsidies, trade-in fees for older phones, porting credits for making the switch and activation fee waivers.

Many customers will be able to get new phones and comparable service plans without having to pay a dime, he said. Many will also be able to upgrade to fancier devices such as the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S 4 for a much lower than price than other customers would pay, Gleason said. He added that switching customers would also have a great deal of flexibility in plan choices, since Sprint is extending the discount offers to its Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid brands as well.

In general, Sprint and U.S. Cellular’s contract plans are comparable, and in the case of its unlimited data plans, Sprint is actually cheaper. But depending on the circumstances, not every customer will be getting an equitable deal.

For instance if you happen to have just bought a new high-end smartphone or tablet, Sprint incentive discounts won’t cover the full cost of replacing it. What’s worse is that brand new smartphone essentially become useless in a few months when the Chicago and St. Louis networks go dead (though it would work on U.S. Cellular’s other networks). Some customers may also balk at the idea of signing new two-year contracts if they want to take full advantage of the discount offers.

Gleason acknowledged that some customers will feel like they’re getting a raw deal, but he expects those cases will be kept to minimum. He pointed out that 60 percent of U.S. Cellular customers in affected cities have let their contracts lapse and the large majority of them use feature phones. Those subscribers are ripe for an upgrade, he said.

That’s one of the main reasons why U.S. Cellular opted for a wholesale replacement of U.S. Cellular’s networks and devices, rather than a gradual phase out like Sprint is doing with its Nextel iDEN network, Gleason said. So many of those U.S. Cellular devices are old or obsolete that it decided to start fresh with phones optimized for Sprint’s new Network Vision architecture, which boasts the most up-to-date CDMA and LTE technologies.

We’ll know more details about the sunset timeline and the specific discounts in the next couple of weeks. And if you’re a Chicagoan, you’re probably wondering what will happen to the name of U.S. Cellular Field, the home of the White Sox, now that the carrier is leaving the city. Well, it won’t become Sprint Field. Gleason said U.S. Cellular is keeping the naming the rights.

U.S. Cellular Field hoto courtesy of Shutterstock user Alan Mars

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The Verge says Apple is still “bogged down in licensing talks” with music publishers. Two of the big ones are still holding out, Sony/ATV and BMG, according to the Verge’s sources. That’s partly because what Apple is trying to do is not the same as Google Play Music All Access. Google’s service is a standard subscription service, like Spotify, and it will cost users $10 per month. It’s also not clear what the music catalog will look like for that service because Google has not yet announced which publishers have signed up.

iRadio is reportedly more complicated because of what Apple is trying to build and how it likes to do business. iRadio won’t be a straight-up web radio service; there will also be some on-demand aspects to it. And Apple also isn’t willing to pay music publishers an advance for access to their catalogs. Instead, Apple has agreed to give them a share of ad revenue, per-play fees and a guaranteed minimum payment, according to the Verge.

Apple already makes billions from its current content service, iTunes. It’s not essential that Apple have its own streaming music subscription service as answer to Google in a few weeks. But the company does need to acknowledge that times and habits have changed when it comes to music ownership. The developers conference seems a perfect place to debut it, but a fall event later this year when new hardware is set to be announced would be fine too; three more months doesn’t make that big of a difference at this point.

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Aruba has acquired Meridian Apps, a Portland, Ore.,-based startup that uses Wi-Fi triangulation to determine location indoors where GPS signals can’t penetrate. (The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.) Meridian is one of many companies using Wi-Fi signals to gain its bearings, but Meridian, like its competitor Wifarer, also builds apps for businesses that want location-awareness to be key part of their mobile offering.

Meridian has designed museum guide apps for the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History. It’s built department locator apps for Macy’s and incorporated casino floor plans into the Bellagio’s mobile app.

While this kind of kind of technology can be used to bring the usual bevy of location-based services to building interiors, it has the potential of making those services much more granular. For instance, many of the museum apps developed by Meridian and Wifarer are able to determine not just what room you’re in, but what exhibit you’re actually looking at — the app can immediate populate your smartphone screen with details about the wooly mammoth or Van Gogh painting you’re admiring. This kind of hyper-local content is attracting the interest of the big mobile services players, including Apple and Google.

Aruba’s particular interest in Meridian probably has something to do with the fact that its technology is largely infrastructure-dependent. As Meridian CTO Nick Farina explained in his blog, even though smartphones have the ability to sniff out their own locations by measuring Wi-Fi signals, Meridian’s technology relies on access points to make those measurements, thus sparing the phone’s battery and allowing it to work on more restricted devices like the iPhone.

Aruba is the No. 2 enterprise WLAN supplier in the world, supplying networks for every manner of hospital, corporate campus, convention center or mall. You can imagine that many of those customers would be very interested in buying not just a network from Aruba, but also a means to use that network to provide location-aware content and services to their employees and customers.

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For example, rural Kenyan farmers can easily spend 30 percent of their income on fertilizer, but 80 percent of that fertilizer can be wasted because there is little data collected about the best places and times to use it. The lack of info isn’t just from the farmer’s perspective. Aramburu says when he met the CEO of a major fertilizer company recently, he asked him what he knew about his customers — his response: “very little.”

Re:char CTO Luke Iseman (L) and founder/CEO Jason Aramburu (R) showing off an early prototype of SoilIQ

A soil data cloud in the sky

The two young entrepreneurs latest project emerged from this black hole of information. Working within French telco giant Orange’s first accelerator program, called Orange Fab, Re:char plans to build a $5 plug-in device, called SoilIQ, for an Android phone that can read the moisture levels in soil. During our interview, Iseman takes a very early prototype of the device out of a pouch and shows me how it plugs into the Android phone and taps into the phone’s computing power to detect moisture levels between two screws.

Down the road such a gadget could be developed to pick up other soil data, like fertilizer-level readings. Iseman, an avid gardener, schools me on NPK — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — which he says are the holy grail of fertilizer readings. When SoilIQ is a commercial product, farmers could buy the gadget to take these types of readings, and enhance their farming productivity and the efficiency of their fertilizer use.

But the real value of such a system will likely be in the data collection, and the data analytics and services. The hourly and daily micro readings, which are coded with GPS data, could be used to create a cloud-based location data map of the quality and details of the land. This information could be used to launch data-focused services for both farmers, fertilizers companies, government groups, and others.

Re:char envisions using the data to launch a subscription service for farmers that can alert the farmers to the most fertile land, or even if there’s the danger of crop disease anywhere in the region (maize rot is a huge problem in rural Kenya). Fertilizer companies could use such data to offer better products to farmers, and potentially learn more about the end farmer customer (fertilizer can change hands ten times in Kenya until it reaches the person who will use it, says Aramburu).

Such land data could even be valuable outside of the farming communities. A massive data soil map in the cloud could help determine things like land values, or land ownership issues.

SoilIQ is part internet of things, part sustainability, and part data analytics. The entrepreneurs are actually very focused on developing tools that encourage the more efficient use of resources, which could (and should in my opinion) be the next-generation of cleantech focus.

The core concept also reminds me of what Safecast has been trying to do with its grass roots nuclear radiation sensors and data mapping in Japan. Safecast is bringing that concept to air pollution in L.A., too.

Orange interest

For telco Orange, which has a substantial presence in Kenya, such a system could help them increase mobile data use among customers. The Android devices obviously send the data to the cloud over the cellular networks. And Android phones — as Google announced this week at Google.io — are being used by 900 million people globally.

But potentially even more important is the branding involved. As Orange’s Executive Director of Business Services, Vivek Badrinath, told me in an interview at the Orange Fab event on Monday night, the mobile phone is often times the first branded product that a customer in a developing country has. That brand in turn has a unique ability to transition into offering core services, like mobile banking, and credit.

Orange has a mobile payment system, Orange Money, that is growing nicely and Re:char could plug into it for its planned services. And if SoilIQ becomes a killer app for the bottom of the pyramid, Orange would have a key position in it. Orange is interested enough in Re:char’s new idea that it not only brought the company into its accelerator program, but is investing in its angel round.

Re:char hopes to close an angel round by the end of the program, and later this year raise a series A round. By the end of the three months, Re:char also plans to have its soil moisture-reading gadget developed enough to move it into production.

If you’re a backyard composter or gardener — like Re:charge CTO Iseman — you’re probably wondering if you can get your hands on SoilIQ one day. Aramburu and Iseman tell me that they’d like to make it available in the U.S., too, so the gardening hobbyist could collect their own data.

Clearly, the team is in the very early stages of making SoilIQ, so a lot of their plans will hinge on these next few months. They plan to keep running the kiln bio charcoal business, and think SoilIQ could even help grow that business, too. They also might split the businesses in two down the road.

Ultimately if they can deliver a simple, easy to use, and cheap device, and convince Kenyan farmers to start using it, they could be on their way to unleashing data from Kenya’s rural landscape.

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As someone who spends a lot of time playing with connected home and personal devices this is fabulous news. I had started gathering research for a post about how as an Android user I feel like many of the popular connected devices are leaving me out in the cold with lame apps, while iOS users get sparkly interfaces and more functionality. The Hue app, the WeMo app, the BlueBulb app and the FitBit are all examples of this iOS first and foremost (and sometimes only) mindset. Or when it comes to specific devices such as the Wahoo Blue heart rate monitor my colleague Kevin Tofel wrote about last year, the Android support only extends to a few devices.

But one reason for the focus on iOS for many devices, especially those containing Bluetooth, is that native support and easy integration between the radio and the app wasn’t there. But with this announcement, which means developers will find it easier to build Android-based apps for connecting to Bluetooth devices, all that changes.

Then app developers building software for Bluetooth enabled gadgets no longer have an excuse. Although, as seems to be the case with Hue and WeMo which both work with Wi-Fi, perhaps they just think iOS users are more likely to buy their gear, so they’ve skimped on Android resources for the time being. Hue lightbulbs are also exclusively sold in Apple stores, which may also contribute to the meh nature of its Android app.

Bluetooth is serious about the internet of things.

While the Android news is great for the growing number of people toting those devices, it’s just one element in The Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s plans to make the radio technology ubiquitous for the internet of things. Bluetooth is already making huge strides in personal area networking compared with other standards I covered as far back as Jan. 2011. Bluetooth radios are set to be in 2.5 billion new devices this year, according to Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, who I met with on Wednesday. That’s one fourth of the 10 billion Bluetooth radios that have shipped in the lifetime of the technology, according to ABI Research provided by the Bluetooth SIG.

Clearly Bluetooth is popular, and the acceptance by Google of the overarching Smart Ready application development framework will enhance the experience for more consumers, but Powell also detailed plans to create a secure end-to-end network layer for Bluetooth. That technology could ensure that communications between certain devices stay private, an important consideration for medical or personal data.

He also said that in addition to the profiles for data that the SIG had developed for formatting data (for example, it has a running profile that tracks the data associated with steps so an app developer doesn’t have to figure that out), it’s beefing up its service discovery layer. This will become more important as we get more connected devices and want them to talk to each other without human intervention. For example, if you have four connected Bluetooth lightbulbs in a room, you might want to turn them on all at once instead of individually programming them.

This is a concept I explored with Mike Kuniavsky, a principal in the Innovation Services Group at PARC, in a podcast in March. Powell also noted that in addition to the low energy specification the SIG released it’s working on extending the range of Bluetooth in some flavors beyond 100 meters. That means it can be used in the home, and not just as a personal area network, but for devices communicating between rooms. Combine that with the end-to-end security and suddenly my Z-wave door locks look like the wrong choice.

However, I won’t sweat that just yet. Even as Bluetooth beefs up for the internet of things, it won’t become the sole radio technology connecting my gizmos and gadgets to the web any more than Wi-Fi is my sole means of accessing the internet. However, Bluetooth has really grown up and moved well beyond its early days as a connection technology for wireless headsets and computer peripherals. Even if I’m not bullish on the future of the Bluetooth mouse, I’m bullish on Bluetooth.

This story was updated on May 16 to reflect that Bluetooth is extending the service range beyond 100 meters.

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Although it was widely expected that Google would introduce Android 4.3 during Wednesday’s Google I/O keynote this week, it didn’t happen. Instead, more than three hours were spent talking about new services — a music subscription and multiplayer gaming — with developer tools that tie Android and Chrome together. These services and new developer tools actually help Google to update Android many of the 900 million Android activated devices without adding more fragmentation challenges brought by new a new software version.

Android enthusiasts are likely disappointed by any news on the Jelly Bean software front, leaving people like Computerworld’s JR Raphael wondering: What happened to Android?

I try to be as platform-agnostic as possible, but I’m certainly considered a member of the Android enthusiast crowd. And like others, I was disappointed when no new Android version appeared. I also felt let down with a lack of new hardware, but that’s another story. But I’m a consumer, so these thoughts make sense. And Google I/O is a developer event; not a consumer conference.

It turns out that every developer I’ve informally spoken with at Google I/O is actually relieved that Android 4.3 doesn’t exist yet. Note, it likely will arrive soon, as an updated Bluetooth stack for Android is coming arriving in the “coming months” with support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices. So why would developers be happy there’s no new Android version?

I can think of a couple of reasons. First, with a new Android version would come what Google calls an API level. Typically, new APIs and services are supported in the new version and these aren’t supported on devices with older software. But by offering new APIs and services now — which is exactly what Google did during day one of I/O — existing devices can take advantage of the new features. The new Hangouts app, Google Play Music All Access, and Google Cloud Messaging are good examples. Sure, some of these will require at least Android 4.0 but none of them require Android 4.3.

Second, developers told me they’re tired of taking heat for their apps not being supported on certain versions of Android. Adding another version would only make things potentially worse in that area, not better. Simply put: the features that Android is lacking, according to developers, are getting added through the new services that Google is releasing. And these new functions aren’t adding to any lingering fragmentation challenges.

Frankly, Google has iterated Android relatively quickly in order to make it comparable to iOS in terms of design and usability. That’s good, but it came at a great cost: The pace of software change has been faster than hardware change. I don’t mean in the power and functions of hardware: Chips of all kinds have improved just as quickly as software. But consumers don’t switch devices that quickly, often waiting 18 to 24 months to upgrade a phone, for example.

Google can slow the pace of Android versions while improving the platform at the same time with this approach. And it can also allow more time for hardware makers and carriers push Android updates out, helping to get more users on the most current version of Android. While all this happens, consumers will also help the process, by upgrading to newer phones with Android 4.0 or better. Looking at the situation this way, it was actually a smart move for Google to focus less on the version of Android and instead improve the platform for developers and consumers with better APIs.

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In a blog post, Twitter said you can now tweet photos from Glass to your feed — the update will include the hashtag “#throughglass” — and see your other tweets by turning on in-Glass notifications. The service is now available and users can activate the Twitter app on Google’s MyGlass portal.

Facebook’s Glass implementation is also live, though for now you can only share photos, not post status updates or view your newsfeed. You can, however, set privacy levels and add descriptions to photos you post using Glass’s speech recognition features.

Evernote doesn’t yet have an app per se, but it is integrating with Glass’s sharing menu, allowing you to capture a picture or short video and save it as a note in your Evernote account. It is also giving users the option of sending notes (from its web app) to the Glass timeline so your grocery list or crib notes are right in your line of vision.

At I/O Google revealed three other companies taking up shop on Glass. CNN’s app will put news alerts in front of your retinas. Elle is providing content from its magazines that can be viewed in the Glass display or read aloud. Tumblr lets you post content to your personal blog and get updates from Tumblrs you follow.

These companies join Path and the New York Times as the only official third-party apps on the Glass. For now Google is being rather conservative in its Glassware efforts, placing restrictions on the level of access to platform and banning ads or any other monetization scheme.

Still, once Google fully opens up Glass, it likely won’t have any shortage of interest. Smaller developers are already clamoring to get on board. For instance, Open Garden wants Google to expose Glass’s networking functions so it can link the headgear to its crowdsourced mesh network.

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Its $60 and $70 prepaid plans still aren’t exactly cheap, but you get a lot more data value out of them. The $60 plan now includes 2 GB of data (up from 500 MB), while the $70 plan includes 4 GB (up from 2 GB). Both includes unlimited talk and text, but as with the previous plans prepaid customers don’t get access to the LTE network. If you want a 4G connection, you’ll have to sign a contract.

I’ve noted before that Verizon is getting a lot more aggressive in the prepaid space – a market it has historically ignored. But Verizon has always been all over the premium smartphone subscriber, and increasingly those customers are moving away from contract plans to prepaid services. In the first quarter, nearly one-third of all smartphones activated landed on a prepaid plan, according to The NPD Group.

While the bigger data buckets are only available to current prepaid customers, Verizon said it will extend them to new customers on June 6.

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Let’s be positive

Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum.

Except Microsoft is not playing ball

The Web is not advancing as fast as it should be. Certainly, we struggle with companies like Microsoft. We would like to see more open standards and more people involved in those ecosystems. I wouldn’t grade the industry well with where we have gotten to.

And that other Larry is just greedy

We’ve had a difficult relationship with Oracle, including having to appear in court. Money is obviously more important to them than any collaboration.”

Google has been fighting with Microsoft for a while and well, Oracle is a tough adversary, especially when it comes to Java.

While I am complete agreement with Page’s general sentiment about opportunities and the importance of being positive, I think Larry (and all other technology industry leaders) should actually practice what they preach if they want others to follow.

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Community Manager for Hangouts and Chat, Dori Storbeck, confirmed in a Google+ thread that SMS support is “coming soon” and is one of the most requested features. The Verge also noted that the new Google Play Services supports SMS, likely to receive or send game play requests to other users.

After installing the new Hangouts app for iOS and also using the service on my Chromebook Pixel, bringing Chat, Talk and Hangout features all together is a welcome experience. And one that’s long overdue as Google has had several overlapping message services not long after Android arrived on the scene. Oddly, at least to me, is that Google Voice hasn’t been talked about in any of the message unification efforts.

This addition of SMS for Hangouts, which makes sense, is what has me wondering where Google Voice fits in to Google’s grand plans. Since it’s not a true VoIP service, maybe its outside the technical bounds of Hangouts. But traditional SMS is handled by cellular networks and it’s clearly in the scope of Hangouts if it’s coming soon. As a result, Google Voice still feels like the unloved child in Google’s family of services.

I actually use Google Voice to make calls through my computer when working, which essentially are VoIP calls, at least for part of the transmission; the calls originate on my Chromebook over Wi-Fi or LTE. I do this through what used to be Google Talk — there’s a phone icon to place the call.

Perhaps Google is simply leaving well enough alone with Google Voice until data networks mature further and voice over LTE takes root. For now, however, the service just seems left behind while all other Google messaging features are growing up.

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The problem is there are a lot of people who don’t realize their phones will link to their home networks — they either can’t figure out how to configure their devices’ Wi-Fi settings or they’ve disabled their Wi-Fi from the get go. Devicescape on Thursday said it has developed a new bit of software that attempts to lure those customers onto their own home networks.

Called Personal Curator, the smartphone client utilizes Devicescape’s radio management and network detection technologies, along with a machine-learning algorithm, to identify when a user is at home and a wireless network is available. If the smartphone’s Wi-Fi radio is disabled, Personal Curator will activate it and prompt the user to connect, walking them through the device configuration process.

Devicescape claims that as many as 30 percent of smartphones never connect to an available home Wi-Fi network, which would mean an enormous quantity of traffic that could easily be shunted onto a cheap broadband connection is instead heading toward the cell towers. That number seems high, but it’s not entirely out of the question. I’ve configured the Wi-Fi settings of many a friend or relative who never bothered to do it themselves.

Devicescape is selling Personal Curator to carriers, who would pre-install it on the smartphones they sell and have the biggest vested interest in coaxing customers on to as many Wi-Fi networks as possible. Devicescape estimates operators would save $631 in lifetime network data delivery costs for each subscriber that it can lure onto a home network.

Frankly, that figure is a bit absurd. It assumes that customers who don’t use their home Wi-Fi today will wander the world blithely unaware of Wi-Fi for the rest of their lives. It also assumes all smartphone users are created equal (More technically savvy users who consume more data tend to be more aware of their device’s networking capabilities).

Still, for Devicescape’s core customers, Personal Curator could be a very attractive service. The company’s whole business model is designed around the idea of providing cheap ubiquitous Wi-Fi to carriers. Through crowdsourcing, it has identified and mapped 12 million open access points around the world, and its client software automatically links to those nodes whenever they’re available.

It counts among its customers MetroPCS (now part of T-Mobile USA and mobile virtual network operators like Republic Wireless, which offer subscribers cheap unlimited data plans. Any packet those operators ship over the unlicensed airwaves is a direct cost savings. And once connected to home Wi-Fi, smartphone owners would likely use the heck out of it. A recent Sandvine report shows that 20 percent of all traffic traversing home broadband connections comes from a phone or tablet.

Devicescape has grown considerably in the last year. It now sells its products to eight carriers in North America and Europe (including U.S. Cellular and Bouygues Telecom). It has also struck deals with Intel and Microsoft to embed its software directly into the former’s Ultrabook and tablet connection manager and the latter’s WP8 software. Devicescape revealed today that it has now managing 1.5 billion Wi-Fi connections monthly, a 50 percent increase in 12 months.

Based in San Bruno, Calif., Devicescape hopes to draw more attention to itself next week at North America’s biggest mobile trade show, CTIA Wireless. It’s releasing an Android app called Magnifi CTIA that will let anyone connected to thousands of Las Vegas access points in its curated virtual network for the duration of the show.

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This is a big win for Spain-based Telefónica, which is trying to get as many partners as possible to plug into its BlueVia billing API. It’s previously managed to get Google, Facebook, Microsoft and BlackBerry to agree to play along, but Samsung is the first major phone manufacturer to sign up. It also happens to be the world’s top phone manufacturer, having shipped 70 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year.

Carrier billing makes it easier to sell smartphones to people, particularly in emerging markets, who lack a bank card. Telefónica has 315 million mobile customers around the world, and is particularly strong in Latin America. The fact that Google Play is already plugged into Telefónica’s billing API means that, without this deal, Samsung was risking its cardless Android customers finding it easier to buy through Google’s storefront than Samsung’s.

As Lee Epting, vice president of Samsung’s Media Solutions Centre Europe, said in a statement:

“Samsung is committed to ensuring that our customers have choice and convenience when purchasing content on our devices. Our partnership with Telefónica Digital allows us to deliver yet another easy and convenient purchasing experience to our Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps customers.”

The “direct-to-bill” option will roll out first to Telefónica’s O2 business in Germany, during the coming months, then to its other operating businesses in a phased deployment.

We’re going to be seeing more of these carrier billing arrangements in the future, and that’s a good thing for all concerned. Not only does it mean more apps and content will be sold, benefiting their producers, but it also means the telcos themselves aren’t shut out of the value chain.

And, if the carriers manage to be involved beyond the provision of basic data services, it may stop them complaining about returns on their network investments and trying to do heinous, net-neutrality-shredding things like charging content providers for their traffic. Everyone’s a winner.

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Yet Vigano, who is the CEO of Heapsylon, a startup based out of Redmond, Wash. and wears Armani shirts (casual Armani, but still Armani), thinks he has a solution to wearable computing that people will find, well … wearable.

At first glance Heapslylon makes a pair of smart socks that mimic many of the data gathering functions of any other fitness tracker on the market. Except that they are socks. And it’s tough to imagine one wearing the same pair of sensor-packed socks each day or even wearing socks every day. How is this a good idea? How is this the future of fashion and technology?

The Sensoria smart sock and anklet.

But just as the Kindle Fire is merely a vehicle for Amazon’s real ambitions, as opposed to the sum of them, Heapsylon isn’t really in the sock business. The socks are made of a special material that the company developed — it is reportedly comfortable, washable and packed with sensors. And that material is the crux of what Heapslyson has developed. The socks are both an effort to put the new material through its paces with the hardest-working piece of clothing in a person’s wardrobe, as well as an application to showcase what the material can do.

Heapsylon was started in October 2010 by three former Microsoft employees: Davide Vigano, Mario Esposito, who is the CTO at Heapsylon, and Maurizio Macagno, the VP of development at the company. Both Macagno and Esposito worked on the Kinect, but all three left Microsoft to pursue this vision of combining technology and fashion in a way that could advance both industries.

“The outfit is the computer,” said Vigano of their vision. But after they quit, and started playing around with tiny sensors and conductive fabrics they realized that there was a gap between what they wanted and what technology could provide. So they set about researching materials. The result of that is the fabric that they have since turned into socks.

“Quite frankly we thought it would easier,” said Vigano. “The materials research has been challenging to say the least.”

The anklet for the Sensoria smart sock.

The sock and they accompanying hardware that tracks the data from the sock’s sensors are called the Sensoria Fitness smart socks. There will be two or maybe three pressure sensors in the sock that will share exact data on how many steps a person takes, their stride, whether they tend to turn in or out when they run, and maybe even weight change. The socks come with an ankle bracelet that gathers the data from the sock and transmits it (see above.) It will eventually be possible to use the socks as a scale to track your weight once Heaspylon gets the algorithms down.

Vigano said the company plans to launch the package of the socks and the hardware via a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo within the next month or two. While at first it will be targeted at the hard-core running market, the socks might find a home in other sports such as golf, where tracking the weight on the ball or heel of the foot can help improve performance. The price for the package is yet to be determined. And he declined to share the cost of the sensor-rich fabric.

But perhaps most important for the future of Heapsylon, and the future of fashion-forward wearables, is that Vigano aims to license the fabric technology and the data it gathers from its socks for other uses. For example, the material could be used in football helmets to measure the incidence of concussions, or the exact footfall data from the sock might supplant the general data provided by a pedometer for a person’s run. And other companies might use the socks to develop data profiles around other sports, like the golf example above.

The Heapsylon employees and founders.

There’s also no reason to stick only with pressure sensors. Other sensors could be embedded into the Heapsylon fabric, although the company hasn’t focused on that as a small startup with a relatively small and undisclosed amount of angel funding. Vigano hopes to seek a formal venture round after the crowd-funding campaign proves (or disproves) the market opportunity.

For now, the five-person startup is heading toward a production version of the Sensoria Sock hoping that it will be the launch of a revolution in wearable computing that goes far beyond the smart watches and accessories available today. If Heapsylon’s vision of making technology disappear into fabric gains ground, then perhaps Vigano’s future Armani shirts might not just look good, but they could do good by sharing relevant data that monitors his health or his whereabouts for loved ones.

Of course, such data could also be used for less-then-noble causes, or the market may never buy into the idea of smart socks. But as someone who looks at the intersection between technology and fashion, I welcome anyone who wants to develop a product that emphasizes the form, the function and the feel of the wearable tech as opposed to just the tech.

Not everyone wants to look like they just got off the Caltrain at Mountain View.

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A later version of that code became the base for LEGO Mindstorms and a variety of other connected projects. But Dunkels realized that to truly build a platform for connected devices he needed even lighter weight code. So he built Contiki, an operating system of sorts of the internet of things. And now he’s commercializing all that he’s learned in a startup called ThingSquare. In the podcast we discuss the history of the internet of things and when we reached the tipping point that made the internet of things inevitable.

(Download this episode)

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Show notes:
Host: Stacey Higginbotham
Guest: Adam Dunkels, chairman, co-founder and chief architect of ThingSquare

• How connecting a hockey team in 2000 helped him learn what the internet of things needed.
• Why he build LWIP, microIP and later Contiki as an OS for the internet of things.
• The factors that led to a tipping point for the internet of things.
• Dunkels tells me to stop looking at the future and to pay attention to the present. Because the internet of things is here today.

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How the internet of things may make parents less worried but more neurotic

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What the Internet of Things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings

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It remains to be seen whether Google really manages to pull this off in an uncluttered way, particularly on smartphones, but the changes do look promising. However, Google’s mobile maps do present one problem, particularly for those travelling in foreign climes, and that doesn’t look set to change anytime soon: they only offer limited offline functionality. Maps for specific places can be easily pre-cached for offline use, but you won’t get search or routing functionality without a data connection.

Enter Skobbler with its new Android app, GPS Navigation & Maps. A couple of weeks ago, the Berlin-based startup heavily revamped its iOS ForeverMap app to bring it in line with the more advanced Android version of the same, and now it’s moved the Android app on significantly – so significantly that it’s even renamed it.

All in one

To be precise, Skobbler’s new Android app combines two previous apps, one of which was for maps (ForeverMap 2, whose users will get this upgrade for free) and the other (Skobbler Navigation, shut down a year back) for turn-by-turn navigation. The company claims, rightly I believe, that the result is the only Android app to combine both these functionalities for both online and offline use. What’s more, open-stuff fans can revel in the fact that GPS Navigation & Maps is based on the crowdsourced and highly accurate OpenStreetMap project.

The fact that the app is priced at just $1 shouldn’t hurt either, although buyers should be aware that this comes with only one free downloadable country for offline use. Beyond that, cities will cost $0.99, states $1.11, countries $2.22, continents $4.44 and the whole world $7.77 – not only is this way cheaper than the likes of TomTom Navigation or CoPilot Live, but it also provides the opportunity to download specific areas rather than entire countries or continents: a useful option if you’re concerned about storage.

A separate free version gives you full online maps for the world, along with a 14-day trial of the turn-by-turn, voice-aided navigation functionality.

Skobbler’s iOS maps app allows you to download any country for offline use for free, but turn-by-turn functionality comes in a separate app on that platform. Like that app, though, GPS Navigation & Maps acts as a showcase for Skobbler’s zippy NGx map engine – the company is keen on selling its technology to partners, particularly those in the automotive industry.

Anti-Google opportunity?

Skobbler’s app has clear appeal for those travelling abroad – data roaming charges are still eye-bleedingly high in most cases – but what about customers who are just looking to use it locally?

There, the company may find a willing audience in the shape of the anti-Google resistance. One peculiarity of Android is that, being Linux-based and ubiquitous, it’s the platform of choice for the open-source crowd while also providing a growing privacy threat, of the kind that horrifies the same people.

The mapping updates that Google announced on Wednesday are clearly designed to make Google Maps more of a personalized interface for everyday movements. This should manifest itself in a particularly tightly integrated way on Android, as the lines blur between Maps and Now and everything else Google is baking into the same pie. A lot of people won’t like that.

It’s unlikely that anyone will completely replace Google Maps for Android with a service such as Skobbler’s, as Google’s in-house location infrastructure is probably too baked-in these days to avoid. But, in terms of consciously firing up a mapping app to negotiate the world around them, some people may find value in choosing a non-Google option, so that their often highly personal location searches don’t get fed into the Great Google Data Stew. For those people, GPS Navigation & Maps could provide a tantalizing alternative.

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Unification was the big theme

As I tweeted during our live blog, there was a very common theme throughout the keynote and it had absolutely nothing to do with hardware:

If I could describe #io13 in one word it would be "unification". Same features, services, UI and experiences on Chrome and Android.—
Kevin C. Tofel (@KevinCTofel) May 15, 2013

Any thoughts of Chrome merging with Android in the traditional sense can be dismissed based on what I heard at the keynote. Instead, the two distinct platforms are sharing services, APIs, and design cues. What does that mean? Whatever Google services you use on an Android phone or tablet can be used on a desktop or laptop in Chrome, for example. For the first time, Chrome as a browser is good enough to be the glue that ties user experiences together between mobile devices and traditional computers.

Where are the commonalities between web, tablet and phone now?

How so? Take a look at the new Google+ stream. It appears more card-based — akin to Google Now — and looks the same whether you’re viewing it in Chrome on a Windows PC or on a Nexus 10 tablet. And although it’s a smaller screen, the same basic view appears in Google+ on an Android phone or an iPhone for that matter.

The phones only show a single column of information and you can have the exact same Google+ view in Chrome, or you can set the browser to show two columns. (Hint: Click More in Google+ on Chrome, scroll to the bottom of the menu and you’ll see the Stream Layout option)

Here’s another example (and one I’m very happy to see): not only can developers take advantage of Google Cloud Messaging for push notifications in apps or web, but Google is synchronizing notifications. So if you get a new Google+ comment notification on your Android device and read the comment, that same notification won’t appear in Chrome. Or vice versa, of course. Many of the the same services — including the new Google Play Games services — are supported Chrome, Android and even iOS, now so Google is unifying the experience, making it irrelevant whether you’re using the web, a phone or a tablet.

Google definitely has a two platform approach

Google has said in the past that we’ll see a merger of sorts between Chrome and Android. Now it has shown what it means: Iterate and mature the browser with new technologies that can provide the same experience as some native apps in Android and iOS. It won’t matter what you use in the future in Google’s world: Chrome is the realm of the desktop and laptop while Android (which also has a Chrome app) will power phones and tablets.

The services and APIs that Google offers, however, will allow developers to extend their reach across both of these platforms. With the new Google+ single sign on service, for example, users can get access to a web app or its Android counterpart. In fact, I was most impressed when Google demonstrated a web app that, upon signing in, asked if it should remotely install the Android application on a phone. These services are the glue that will tie Google’s two platforms together.

So what about the next version of Android and hardware?

Frankly — and in hindsight — I’m not sure Google needed to introduce an Android update, a refreshed Nexus 7 tablet a new Nexus phone. The story today was about making the experience better and seamless on existing hardware. And we still have tens of millions of devices that haven’t been upgraded to the Jelly Bean version of Android: Iterating it again only exacerbates the Android update challenges. Instead, Google has provided developers new tools to further improve their web and Android apps at the same time.

I can already see the benefits on my Chromebook Pixel: Google+ is already better, the new Hangouts messaging is improved and my preview of the updated Maps app is incredible. Using the touchscreen, I could zoom out to see the Earth with real-time cloud cover, see the stars where they’re supposed to be and then zoom back in to view panoramic virtual tours of historic locations. The new photo editing in Chrome is on my Pixel, as well, and Google’s cloud power is making my photos look better automatically.

Do I wish there was new hardware? Perhaps, but that’s just the gadget geek in me speaking. Software and services are just as important as hardware and, so far, I like what I see there. As long as Google continues to unify the Chrome web and Android experience in a positive way, I can live with my old phone and tablet.

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Hotspot maker Ruckus Wireless, however, has developed a kind of ad-hoc security system for open hotspots, which it plans to release next week with the next version of its access point management software. Called Open Secure Hotspot, the technology automatically generates encryption keys for any user who logs into an open Ruckus hotspot, granting them a secure connection within moments, Ruckus VP of marketing David Callisch told GigaOM.

Ruckus started out as a supplier of IPTV wireless streaming nodes and enterprise wireless LANs, over which security measures were much easier to enforce. But as Ruckus’s public access network business grew it found itself supplying more Wi-Fi gear that enterprises and service providers simply wanted open to the public, Callisch said. Those customers didn’t want their open networks turning into playgrounds for Firesheep, man-in-the-middle attackers and other internet nasties, Callisch said, so they pressed Ruckus to develop a secure form of open Wi-Fi.

The rather confusing diagram above details how the security software works, but here’s what it boils down to: Anytime an unknown user connects to an upgraded Ruckus hotspot he or she will receive the option of establishing a secure connection to the network. If the user opts in, Ruckus’s network gateway will generate what Ruckus is calling a dynamic pre-shared key, randomly generated for each device. Users can either input the key by launching an executable file sent by the gateway, or they can manually enter the key into their Wi-Fi settings.

It may not seem like the most elegant way of getting online in a hotel lobby or public square, but Callisch but it’s still a relatively simple process, and it beats the alternative – surfing the internet over a naked connection or installing virtual private network (VPN) software on the fly.

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PingMD, a New York startup, initially launched a few years ago as an app to help digitally-savvy parents communicate with their kids’ pediatricians. But after analyzing how tens of thousands of patients and doctors were communicating during their pilot, they decided to expand their scope. This month, they relaunched their app for iOS and Android as a service that enables doctors to securely communicate with their patient, as well as peers. And on Wednesday, the company said it had raised $2.5 million from angel investors, including Matthew & Stewart Greenfield, Ernest Pomerantz and Jessica Nagle. The round follows $1.33 million raised last year.

According to a 2010 New England Journal of Medicine study analyzing communication in a Philadelphia doctor’s practice, the average doctor in that practice took 24 phone calls a day and wrote 17 emails on top of seeing a full load of patients, processing their prescriptions, reviewing lab reports and completing all the other tasks that come with the territory.

“There’s a lot of call volume going on,” said CEO Dr. Gopal Chopra, who co-founded PingMD with his wife Dr. Manju Chopra. “And the indirect cost is the time spent trying to get you [the patient] an answer.”

Even though electronic medical records and digital practice management tools can enable doctors to look up patient information and history more efficiently, Chopra said the call volume can be difficult for doctors. And that’s especially true for those doctors who are open to emailing or messaging with patients through mobile phones or other more secure services.

Through PingMD, doctors can enable patients to securely message them with text, as well as relevant pictures and video, and they can easily loop in other doctors and nurses in their practices as well as other specialists.

For example, if you have a weird rash on your arm, you could send a note and picture to your doctor and then she could reply with her feedback, as well as add a dermatologist to the circle.

While Chopra estimates that response times on email and other secure messaging systems tends to average 72 hours because the message is routed through an administrator and then the doctor, the average response time on PingMD is an hour (although it can take from a few seconds to several hours depending on the severity of the case).

To make money, PingMD takes a software-as-a-service approach, billing itself to hospitals and physician networks as a way to gather data about how doctors are communicating and spending their time and how the hospital should allocate their resources. At the moment, Chopra said they’re piloting PingMD with several institutions and physician networks.

The startup is one of several companies attempting to help doctors improve their productivity and prepare for an influx of new Obamacare patients. American Well and Sherpaa, for example, work with employers to help patients and doctors connect via video chats and phone calls. HealthTap targets consumers with a service for messaging and querying a network of doctors. And Ringadoc offers doctors a simple service for handling after-hours calls and streamlining patient communication.

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Starting this fall, it plans to offer teachers across the country an education-focused Android app store, called Google Play for Education, which has been in pilot testing with various schools.

“There’s a big part of all of our lives – and the lives of our kids – that mobile technology hasn’t touched. When I visit my kids’ classroom, it looks pretty much like it did when I went to school,” said Chris Yerga, an engineering director at Google. “Google Play for Education was built from the ground up to meet the unique content needs of educators.”

Through the new store, teachers will be able to search for educator-recommended apps appropriate for their grades and subjects. And, as long as each student has their own Google account, teachers can deploy their app selections to the tablets for an entire class or grade from their own account.

Apple is also pushing aggressively in education — last year, it sold 4.5 million iPads to schools and reported one billion downloads for iTunes U. But Google is clearly getting ready to take on its Silicon Valley rival in the education market in a bigger way. Google’s existing school presence through its Apps for Education, which has more than 20 million users, could help the company in its latest effort, as could the seemingly teacher-friendly management features built into Google Play.

Ahead of the launch this fall, Google said it would start accepting app submissions from developers this summer.

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Jonah Jones, Lead Designer, Google Maps

When compared side by side with early versions of Google Maps, the difference between the maps of 2006 and 2013 is the equivalent to the difference between a Rio MP3 player and an iPod. “We originally created the draggable maps and now we sat down and basically wondered how were we going to reinvent the mapping experience,” said Jonah Jones, lead designer for Google Maps, who has spent the past seven years at Google working on maps. “It wasn’t as much dissatisfaction with the current maps, but more about how we can do this better.”

The new Google Maps marries data, social and the concept of hyper-personalization, tastefully layering those principles on top of beautiful and detail-rich maps. Google used the popular Google Earth app to enhance the Google Maps experience itself.

In doing so, Google is acknowledging that today we live on a much faster internet; we work on personal computers that have a lot more muscle and as consumers we have an expectation that everything should be personal to us. “There was more and more information which was being layered on the maps and we wanted to simplify and personalize that,” Jones said. “We think this is what next generation of what mapping looks like.”

Instead of delivering graphic tiles that have traditionally made up the base layer of a map, Google now uses vector maps and is using data as a stream, processing it on the graphical processing unit (GPU) of the new fangled computers and creating a brand new map, which is personalized not just based on a Google account. Like a chameleon, it changes personality and redraws itself based on what you want to focus on — venues, driving directions or recommendations.

It’s about the data stupid

And though it will be sometime before the new maps offering finds its way from the desktop and Google’s Chrome browser to the mobile devices, it really is the sign of the times and where mapping is headed. Since the introduction of Google Maps, Microsoft, Nokia and Apple have all introduced maps and mapping products. The enthusiasm of these technology giants for mapping is best described by Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley when he says maps are the bridge between our physical and digital worlds.

He is right. While Crowley has always wanted to build Harry Potter’s magical map, it seems Google has built something for today. “Maps is the interface,” said Bernhard Seefeld, Google Maps Product Management Director, who pointed out that the passive information alone makes the new maps richer and deeper.

Bernhard Seefeld, Google Maps Product Management Director

It takes a few seconds to realize that the key to these new maps is interweaving various disparate streams of data — from restaurant reviews to places of interest to transit maps. The usage of the maps — especially when logged into Google — is going to make the experience of the maps better.

It is pretty obvious that data is going to be a key part of building user experience in tomorrow’s apps and the new Google Maps is a good early example of that. For instance, when plotting a route, the new Maps shows you all options — walking/biking, public transit and driving — and highlights the time it will take you to get there using different routes. It also tells you when the next bus or subway is going to come.

You can do all of that on Google Maps today, but this is now just a simple, one click experience. It seems after years and years of collecting data, Google is finally putting that data to work.

Little things that matter

Search is front and center of this new product. The big, bold graphical interface is inviting and attractive. The new Google Maps web app is packed with dozens of minute but important design improvements that are meant to make using maps immersive and simple. In its official blog post announcing the new product, the company’s spokesperson writes:

In addition to a customized map, we’ve also made it easier to find and discover the best local places. Search results are labeled directly on the map with brief descriptions and icons that highlight business categories and other useful information like restaurants that are recommended by your Google+ friends. Info cards provide helpful information such as business hours, ratings and reviews so you can quickly decide where to eat, drink and play.

I got a chance to take a closer look at Google Maps before today’s launch and was impressed by the subtle design touches. For instance, the new maps takes a lot of inspiration from old print maps (in an atlas) where the changing landscape and different bodies of water (lakes, rivers, seas and oceans) had different hues. The colors of the mountains, deserts, plains and grasslands were different in those maps. Google has taken some of those elements and incorporated them in their new maps.

There are more subtle changes: the fonts are different, cleaner and more legible. When you plot a route, the roads taken become more prominent while the rest of the map fades into the background. Smaller bylanes that are unmarked become more prominent and their names legible. Yes, these are little things, but when you are lost, these little things matter. (We’ll be diving into the little design things that matter at our RoadMap event in November in San Francisco — sign up here to get first access to our tickets that will go on sale this Summer).

For instance, there is a carousel at the bottom of the screen that brings together all sorts of images — Street View, Business Photos and Photo Tours — and gives you an easy view into the venue or location you might be visiting. These stitched together photo tours are pretty awe-inspiring and in some cases you feel like you are almost there. This stitching together is based on proprietary Google technology. And then there is the whole Google Earth 3D app packed right into the Google Maps (as long as you are using a WebGL compliant browser.) Just play with it and you will know what I am saying.

Of course, this is Google, so it has to be about the ads. Even the ads are native and tightly integrated into the overall offering — not offensive, intrusive or out of place. The focus is on more action-oriented advertising such as making hotel reservations. Even in a few minutes it became obvious that there is a certain blurring of the lines between what is actual information and what is advertising. I guess, that suits Google’s mercantile goals.

Privacy nightmare?

While Google likes to say that it will have our “friend’s recommendations” and social signals in the new apps, in all honesty they are unlikely to have that information. I don’t use Google+ and neither do others who are happily poking away on Facebook.

What Google will do, however is use brute force machine power to make best guesses about our likes and favorites, and in doing so, they will make the same mistake others make: they will have built a product that lacks empathy.

Google, for instance will know where we live and where we work — after all, we are going to mark those spots and use those markers to find things to do and roads to drive on. It will also know where we are going, how we are going there and when we are going. And this brings up the same privacy issues I have with Facebook and its Home (and other mobile apps.)  And just like my ongoing skepticism of Facebook’s ability to do the right thing, I am pretty sure Google is going to put profit before people. That conversation is for another day, perhaps.

So what do I think?

Ever since Google search was integrated into the browser, I have lost a reason to go to do search on Google.com. But I am very likely to make the new Google Maps as my starting point on Google.com. While a 15-minute demo doesn’t mean a hit product, it is safe to say that this is a worthy upgrade and it showcases Google’s core competencies: putting its big infrastructure and data to work. It also highlights that when it comes to mapping, Apple is not even close to catching up.

What is more disappointing is that the new Google mapping experience isn’t available on the mobile devices as maps are more useful when on the go. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait eight years for the mobile version of these new Maps.

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Since Android has long been the prepaid carrier’s OS of choice, the vast majority of those devices ran Google’s software. NPD’s Mobile Phone Track service show that year-over-year prepaid smartphone unit sales doubled in the first quarter. Quarter over quarter, prepaid’s overall share of the smartphone market jumped from 22 percent to 32 percent. NPD’s VP of industry analysis Stephen Baker said Q1 marked the twelfth straight quarter of triple digit sales increases in the U.S.

Apple certainly isn’t blind to the trend. In fact, it’s been actively seeking out prepaid carrier partnerships in the last year working with carriers like Cricket Communications, Straight Talk and T-Mobile USA. Though the iPhone’s share of the prepaid smartphone market was only 8 percent, that’s up considerably from last year when it was a mere 2 percent. Samsung share of the prepaid smartphone market is big, 32 percent, but it’s relatively stable, while Apple is on a big growth trajectory.

“For consumers looking at prepaid phones today, value does not equate with finding phones that are cheap or obsolete,” Baker said in a statement. “In fact, the Galaxy S2 and the iPhone 4S, two of the top five prepaid smartphone models in 2013, were among the top-selling phones overall just one year earlier.”

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Now, VMware and Verizon Enterprise Solutions say their newly released VMware Horizon Mobile service eases that angst. The news comes two years after the effort, called Project Horizon, was first announced. Two new VMware-ready phones — the Motorola Razr and LG Intuition — will run the new service with additional “VMware Horizon”-ready devices to come. And these devices running this service will bring fulfill “dual persona” promisew which segregates work email and access to applications from Twitter and Facebook.

According to the press release, those devices running in VMware Horizon Mobile environments provide:

” …  a corporate workspace that is controlled and managed by IT, and is completely separate from the employee’s personal information, applications and data on the device. The workspace contains its own operating system, applications and policies, enabling IT to remotely manage the entire lifecycle of the workspace. IT is able to provision the workspace, deploy applications and monitor the flow of information to and from the workspace for security.”

According to a blog post VMware’s Srinivas Krishnamurti:

“Irrespective of who actually buys or owns the device, the corporation or the user, most employees tend to download personal apps onto these devices – Facebook, Angry Birds, Temple Run, etc. coexist with work email/PIM. It is fair to assume then that most devices will have both personal and corporate content (apps, data and services).”

A perpetual license for the service costs $125 per user.

Ah, Angry Birds and truly secure corporate email in one small package. If these devices deliver as promised, that is the best of both worlds — although one might quibble at the lack of immediate support for iPhones or Samsung Galaxies –both hugely popular among business users.

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