Google launches its first mobile: Nexus One

San Francisco: Internet search giant Google has unveiled its first mobile phone and increased the pressure on Apple's iPhone in a mobile market that many analysts predict will come to dominate the internet in the coming years.

Google's Nexus One is also called iPhone killer by many analysts. Nexus One beats iPhone in many criterias such has camera and pricing. In terms of pricing plans in the U.S for unlimited usage, Apple's iPhone cost $3,780 over 24 months as compared to Google's Nexus one $2,580, almost 50 percent more, according to Tech Crunch.


Google said it would sell the phone from its website for $530 and will ship the phones to the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. Customers can also buy a subsidized device together with two-year service plans for $180, from the top U.S. carrier Verizon, as well as fourth-placed carrier T Mobile.

"The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call 'superphones,' with the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset making it as powerful as your laptop computer of three to four years ago. It's our way to raise the bar on what's possible when it comes to creating the best mobile experience for consumers," said Andy Rubin, Vice President of Engineering, Google. "We look forward to working with handset manufacturers and operators to bring more phones to market through this channel worldwide."

Lets take a look at technical specifications of this phone. The phone has 3.7" AMOLED 480x800 WVGA display and weighs 130g. Camera is quite impressive with 5 megapixel auto focus with flash and geo tagging. It has a 512MB Flash, 512MB RAM memory and comes with a 4GB removable SD card. Memory can be extended upto 32 GB. In terms of audio, it has a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with four contacts for inline voice and remote control.

It also has the typical Android features like Google Maps Navigation, Email, Phone book, Android Market and Quick Contacts. The phone also has a voice-enabled keyboard for all text fields. User can speak a text message, instant message, tweet, Facebook update, or complete an email. User can also record Hi-Res MPEG4 video, and then upload to YouTube with one click.

Google previously released its Android operating system for phones, which has been adopted by manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and HTC. But the Nexus One is the first device to be branded by Google and sold directly to customers.

"The Nexus One represents the unique combination of design and innovation two companies like Google and HTC can have when they collaborate," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. "The Nexus One continues HTC's strategy of offering people a portfolio of phones that meet their diverse needs."

Clean Up Duplicate Contacts in Gmail

In January, Gmail's Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Gmail will include a contact deduplicator. "Jackson says a de-duper is on the way and that contacts will have more of a presence both in your inbox and in conversations."

11 months later, Gmail added a feature that detects and merges duplicate contacts. "To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the Find duplicates button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the Merge button." If you have many contacts, it's a good idea to consolidate them and to have a single contact for each person.


Other popular webmail services included this feature a long time ago: Yahoo Mail and Hotmail added tools for cleaning up duplicate contacts in 2007.


Courtesy - Google

Microsoft's Loss, Google's Gain. Don Dodge Gets A New Job

It was just 11 days ago that Microsoft’s “ambassador to startups” Don Dodge waslaid off as part of a broader workforce reduction. Last week he showed up in Silicon Valley to “see friends” as he put it. But it was clear that he was also interviewing for jobs.

We sat down with him to do a proper exit interview while he was in town.

I got a few tips from Googlers that he was seen roaming their Mountain View headquarters, and I confirmed tonight that he has been offered a job at the company. He has accepted, and will shortly begin working for the company that he only recently considered the enemy.

It’s unheard of for Google to go from a first interview to an offer in such a short period of time. For Dodge, the process from first interview to first day on the job was less than a week.

He’ll be working for another ex-Microsofter, Vic Gundotra. Gundotra worked 15 years at Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft’s developer outreach efforts. He joined Google in 2007 as VP Engineering, responsible for mobile applications and developer evangelism.

Dodge will have a similar job at Google as he did at Microsoft – developer evangelism. He’ll be focusing on Google Apps.

 

 

by Michael Arrington - techcrunch