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People have been installing their own software for decades. I don't see why it should be any different on a smartphone.

I don't think you understand how college admissions work. Students are generally accepted based on their overall academic record. Grades, SAT score, extracurriculars, etc.

Students are not accepted to CS programs because they've written a lot of prior code. I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class. College is where you specialize in a particular field so students are accepted based on their overall aptitude and not experience in a specific subject.

I don't think the licensing problem can be solved with money. TomTom owns the mapping data and obviously wouldn't let Google provide a navigation app since it would put them in direct competition with TomTom. That's why Google had to create their own maps for the US.

The map downloading model you're describing already exists and there are already plenty of other companies providing in-car GPS devices for that. I don't think it's appropriate to implement that sort of thing in a smartphone since the entire point is that it should always be connected.

Droid is CDMA-only but at some point, AT&T will have their own Android 2.0 device.

I think it'll be a while before Google is able to provide mapping data internationally. That's why Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US, where it's a perfectly suitable replacement for traditional GPS devices, especially with Verizon's ubiquitous coverage.

Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US.

I don't think it's really reasonable, at this point, to expect a GPS device to work worldwide. Are they supposed to store the world's mapping data locally? Google is still licensing their maps from Tele Atlas (TomTom) outside the US so I don't think it's even possible for them to provide navigation in those parts.

The navigation app is only available for the US, where data plans allow unlimited data so price shouldn't be an issue.

They could also get a lot of third-party revenue by wiping out all of the native apps and letting other people sell them. At some point you have to worry about the value of your platform and now they have Android to compete with.

I think Apple's recent acquisition of Placebase, a mapping company, might indicate that they're willing to compete with Google on a navigation app.

I think always having a network connection is sort of the point of developing this application for Android. Their address lookups are sent to Google's servers and the guy in that demo video is constantly mentioning "the cloud." I don't imagine this would work without a network connection since their intention is not to develop a standalone GPS device.

Google didn't previously own the map data (Tele Atlas did and they're owned by GPS device company, TomTom) so it wasn't theirs to license. They only recently started using their own maps earlier this month for the US.

Also, Apple recently acquired PlaceBase so they now have access to their own map data.

Speaking of hiring... any startups looking to hire?

The HN jobs section has been empty for a while and the previous "Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (take 2)" thread is a bit stale.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=759452

No, that's incorrect.

It's related to the format of the video rather than browser sniffing. Firefox only supports Ogg Theora for HTML5 video, but the video on the page is MP4/H.264. Dive Into HTML5 has more detail: http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#what-works

There's a video link on the front page to: http://www.apple.com/imac/the-new-imac/

The video provided is MP4/H264 so it'll only work under Safari (maybe Chrome?) with the <video> tag. Firefox will use the Quicktime plugin.

When was the last time you used Midomi?

I think it's pretty well established that Midomi is faster and has better music recognition than Shazam. There's a few video comparisons out there that show this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-EK50DWDn0

http://revision3.com/appjudgment/ip_mau_shazamvsmidomi

Wolfram is not the sort of company the engages in marketing ploys. They've always charged a hefty amount for their products, from Mathematica to their crazy prices for API calls. They get away with it because they create niche products that are usually paid for by the user's employer.

The iPhone application still requires Internet access. If you seriously needed to reference Wolfram Alpha for your work, then you would most likely be within reach of an actual computer. This app is nothing more than a novelty and is ridiculously priced.

Actually, only blatant violations are rejected. There are a lot of apps out there that make use of a few private API calls so I wouldn't say that Google has "special access."

Special characters are substituted in double quotes. They're treated as literals in single quotes.

Seems pretty consistent to me.

That's ridiculous.

Why should I let Palm decide what I can install on my phone? Android, Windows Mobile and PalmOS users have been doing fine with having the option of installing their own software.

Will it be possible for me to host the app so users can download directly from my server?

Google doesn't have special access to the iPhone, they use the same SDK as everyone else with the exception of a couple of private APIs though that's fairly common.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/12/private

You're still tied to an AT&T voice plan unless you don't intend on receiving calls.

Applications still aren't allowed to run in the background so you'd need to have your iPhone on with the Skype app running to receive calls.

screenshots: http://www.iphonefreak.com/2009/03/gv-mobile-google-voice-ip...

That's not true.

AT&T has always limited iPhone VoIP applications to WiFi to cripple their usefulness. They just announced today that they were extending VoIP apps to 3G, most likely due to pressure from the FCC.

Also, you can't replace the native dialer or any core functions on the iPhone. Google Voice implemented its own dialing interface and was rejected for duplicating the built-in dialing and voicemail functions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ATT-Extends-VoIP-to-3G-bw-7675...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_voice#Rejection_from_iPh...

You're exaggerating.

I've had an iPhone on AT&T for 2 years without any issues. No dropped calls or billing mistakes and no issues with customer service. The rates that they charge are nearly identical to the other wireless providers for voice + data.

I'm not saying that AT&T has not had these problems, but your comment does not exemplify the experiences of the majority of their customers.

This isn't twitter. You don't need to shorten URLs.

Can we please stop submitting rumors?

This article has no information. We can speculate endlessly about what Apple is going to release, but it's not very useful. Let's wait and see.

It's 8Mbps from Comcast, not Verizon.

I was referring to his other positions (abolishing most federal agencies, withdrawing from NATO/UN, negating Roe v. Wade/gun regulation, etc.) in addition to the IRS.