Great pic!

The original plan was sound. I would wait until it came out and then buy it off-off contract and put my normal SIM in it. I've done that for the original Nexus One and then for the Nexus S. I've actually had more than one of each of these... in this order:

Bought Nexus one from Google
Sold Nexus One on eBay
Bought Nexus S from C/phone Whorehouse
Sold Nexus S on eBay
Bought Nexus One on eBay
Bought Nexus S on eBay
Sold Nexus One on eBay

If you are following that / you will notice that I still have the second Nexus S. I use it as my main phone when I'm not *needing* to use my iPhone 4 (more or less that is any time that I need a good camera and/or battery life!).

My plan in the last month or so was to sell the Nexus S AND the iPhone in order to purchase the new Nexus phone. Now that it has been announced, I am still planning on doing that but am slightly miffed that it does NOT have the Corning gorilla glass that all top-end phones should have these days.

Samsung/Google - FAIL

I may even start to refer to the two companies as Samsoogle or Googsung. It will make me feel a little better until I scratch the screen for the first time.

Leica Lenses

How To Turn Your Netbook Into a Chromebook with Chromium OS [How To]

Google recently released their own line of Chrome OS-clad netbooks, but with only a few choices and a somewhat high price tag, you might be more comfortable running Chrome OS on your own machine. Here's how to install it on your current laptop or netbook.

We've spent some serious time with Chrome OS, and found it to be a remarkably good productivity tool for the right user. It's super quick to boot up, moves fast, and is relatively pain-free since it is, in effect, just a browser. This also makes it perfect for netbooks, since they're low on power. Whether you want to install Chrome OS on your own netbook or you just want to try it out before you buy yourself a Chromebook, you'll need to do a little work to get it up and running.

You can't get the official Chrome OS build from the web; Google only sells it on its Chromebooks. You can, however, download its slightly less polished open-source counterpart, Chromium OS. In this guide we'll be using Hexxeh's "Vanilla" builds of Chromium OS, which are similar to the official version of Chrome OS, but take a bit more work to set up. We'll also show you how to get Chromium OS installed on a live USB stick for testing, as well as how to install it (or dual-boot it) on your own netbook for regular use.

What You'll Need

• A compatible machine. Chromium OS, sadly, doesn't run well on every machine out there. On some machines, it runs very slow, and may have other issues with things like the trackpad, webcam, or Wi-Fi. It's worth trying on your machine anyway (after all, hardware compatibility is constantly improving, and you can test it on a live USB drive before committing), but just know that it might not work amazingly well. (For example, it definitely does not work on Macs in my experience.) Here's a list of netbooks on which Chromium OS has been tested, and which ones work well (or have worked well at one point in time).
• A 4GB USB stick. Sadly, you can't burn Chromium OS to a CD; the only way to test it out natively or install it is to use a USB thumb drive. If your computer doesn't support booting from a flash drive, you can boot from the Plop Boot Manager Live CD and then boot to the USB stick from there.
• Hexxeh's Vanilla Chromium OS build. This is the image we'll burn to our USB drive. You can either grab a direct download or a torrent from the home page. These are often stable, but are nightly builds, meaning each day a new build comes out with new quirks, bugs, or fixes. See more about finding a stable build below.
• A working Linux live CD or installation. You'll only need this if you want to dual boot your netbook with Chromium OS, so you can partition your drives and install a bootloader (since Chromium OS does not have an actual installer built in that does these things). If you don't have one, just grab an Ubuntu live CD; it should work fine. You may need to use Unetbootin to put it on a flash drive if your netbook doesn't have a CD drive.

Preparation: Download Your Chromium OS Image

Unfortunately, the big downside of turning your netbook into an "unofficial" Chromebook is that you only have "unofficial" Chrome OS builds to work with. Hexxeh's builds are by far the most popular, but they all have their quirks. You basically have two choices: Flow and Vanilla. Flow is Hexxeh's custom build with automatic updating and more hardware support, but it hasn't been updated in over a year, and has some pretty annoying SSL issues that make accessing things like Gmail a pain. Vanilla is a nightly build almost straight from Google, but as a nightly build, stability can vary quite a bit from build to build, and with almost one a day out there, you have a lot to choose from.

I recommend going with the vanilla builds. Generally, you can find a pretty stable one that works with your hardware, but it takes some trial and error (unfortunately). You can do a bit of Googling using your particular netbook model, but you might have to try a few builds before you find one that works. Some might be slow or buggy, and some might not work with your hardware. I ended up having to go back to a mid-May build because Google later removed support for my Wi-Fi card.

So head to Hexxeh's Chromium OS page and start with the Vanilla builds. Download one and run through the following steps. It might take a few tries to find one that's stable and compatible, but once you do, you can just stick with that build for awhile.

Step One: Create Your Bootable Flash Drive

The first thing we'll need to do is get Chromium OS onto a flash drive so we can test it out. This is actually a pretty simple process. First, format your USB drive as FAT32 to clear any of the data off it (in Windows, this is as easy as right-clicking on the drive in My Computer and hitting "Format"). Next, download your Chromium OS build of choice, and unzip the image file to your desktop.

You'll need a small program to write the Flow image onto your flash drive. Windows users should download a copy of Windows Image Writer, while Linux users can run sudo apt-get install usb-imagewriter in a terminal to get the USB-ImageWriter program. Start up the respective program, pick the IMG file on your desktop as the source, and then hit Write. When it's done, you'll have a bootable USB drive from which you can launch Chromium OS.

Step Two: Boot Into Chromium OS

To boot from your USB drive, stick it in your machine and start it up. If you've started from a USB drive before, you're good to go, but if not, you may need to change a few BIOS settings. Hold down the Delete key when your computer boots up (or whatever key your computer tells you to press to enter setup), and find the setting for "Boot Priority". Make sure the "USB Drive" choice is above "Hard Disk", then reboot your machine. You should see the Chromium OS startup screen fairly shortly.

Before it boots you into Chrome, you'll need to pick a wireless network and enter your Google credentials. If everything's working as it should and your Wi-Fi card is supported by that build, you'll boot right into Chrome and immediately see all your settings, bookmarks, and extensions synced right down to your netbook. That's it! You can start trying out Chrome OS right away, and see all that it has to offer.

If you ran into a roadblock at this step (the most common being Wi-Fi not working), go back and try another build. See if you can find anything on the web about your particular Wi-Fi card and when it might have been supported. From the information I could find, it seems like Wi-Fi support was a bit more ubiquitous before May 21, so try a build from before then and see if it works instead.

Step Three: Install Chromium OS

If you find you like Chrome OS, or you want to try it out for longer without inserting the thumb drive every time, you can install it to your system. You have two choices: Install Chromium OS as the only operating system, or dual-boot it with something else. Installing it on its own is very easy, but means you erase whatever else you had on your netbook at the time. Dual booting is more time-consuming, but assures that you still have your previous Windows or Linux installation to fall back on when Chromium OS isn't enough (or if you decide you don't like it).

Installing Chromium OS as the main operating system is easy. Boot into Chromium OS from the thumb drive and hit Ctrl+Alt+T to open up the command line. From there, just type install and hit Enter. If you're asked for a password, type in facepunch and hit enter. It'll take a few minutes to install, after which you can remove the thumb drive and boot into Chromium OS just by turning on your machine (you'll notice it boots insanely fast, too). That's it! You now have your own custom Chromebook. If you want to dual boot, however, follow the instructions below.

Alternative Step Three: Dual Boot Chromium OS with Another Operating System

Chances are, you don't want to give up your existing netbook distribution of choice just yet. In that case, you'll need to do quite a bit more work. For what it's worth, unless you absolutely need Windows on your netbook, this method isn't really worth the trouble—it'll be a lot easier on you to just use the Live USB stick until you decide to install Chrome OS as your netbook's main OS. If you need to dual boot, though, here's how to go about setting it up.

Step 3.1: Partition Your Hard Drive

Make sure all your data is backed up, then grab that Linux live CD or thumb drive we mentioned earlier and boot into it. Alternatively, if you have a form of Linux already on your netbook, you can just boot into that. Once you're booted in, insert your Chromium OS thumb drive as well.

First, you'll need to partition your hard drive. You'll need two partitions for Chromium OS: a "C-ROOT" partition, which holds the root OS, and a "C-STATE" partition, which holds your settings and other data. Open up Gparted from System > Administration on your Ubuntu Live CD, and select your thumb drive from the source menu in the upper-left hand corner. Note the sizes of the C-ROOT and C-STATE partitions on your thumb drive. You'll also want to note the partition reference for each, which will be something like /dev/sdb2.

Now, select your netbook's main hard drive from the drop-down. Click on your main partition, which should have a healthy amount of empty space, and go to Partition > Resize/Move. Shrink it down so you have at least 3 GB of empty space, and hit the Resize/Move button. Then, click on your new "unallocated" free space and go to Partition > New. You'll want to basically mirror the partitions on your thumb drive. So, if your thumb drive's C-ROOT partition is 858 MB, then you'll want to make an 858 MB partition here. Under file system, choose ext2. Then, click on the rest of your unallocated space and create another new partition, this time just filling up the rest of the space. Choose ext3 for this partition's file system. When you're done, your partition map should look something like the image above (you'll notice one of the partitions is almost too small to see, because it's only 800 MB. That's normal). Hit the Apply button in the toolbar to complete the process.

When you're done, note the partition references of your two new partitions. Remember, this will look something like /dev/sda3.

Step 3.2: Copy the Chromium Files

Now, open up a Terminal window. We're going to copy the partitions from your thumb drive onto your hard drive, effectively installing Chromium OS next to whatever operating system you currently have. In the Terminal, type:

Where C-STATE_USB_PARTITION is the partition reference for your thumb drive's C-STATE partition, MACHINE_SMALL_PARTITION is the corresponding partition on your netbook's drive, and so on. So, for example, my commands looked like this:

See the multiboot guide on Hexxeh's Wiki for more information on setting this up.

Step 3.3: Update or Install the GRUB Bootloader

Lastly, you'll need to make sure you can boot into Chromium OS. From Ubuntu, open up a Terminal window. If you're dual booting with Windows, run the following commands:

When you boot up, you should get the option to boot into either Windows or Chrome OS.

If you're running Linux as your other operating system, you already have GRUB installed. Open a Terminal window and run grub-install -v to see what version. If you're running GRUB legacy (prior to version 1.99), you just need to boot into Linux (these commands assume Ubuntu) and run:

However, if you're running GRUB2 (1.99 or later), you'll need to add Chrome OS' entry manually. Type gksudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom to edit your GRUB configuration file. Add the following line to the end of the file if you have Intel graphics:

If you have Nvidia graphics, add this instead:

When you reboot, you should get the option to boot into Chrome OS.

Note that I have not tested all of these methods. These are taken from the MultiBoot Guide on Hexxeh's Wiki. Everyone's GRUB setup is going to be a little different, so you might have to do a bit of research on your own to get it all working. Like I said before, the dual-booting option is quite a bit of work, and unless you need Windows on your netbook, you're better off just sticking with the flash drive until you know you want Chrome OS, then installing it on its own.

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That's it! It's certainly more work than buying yourself a Chromebook, but you get the advantage of picking your hardware, or using the hardware you already have. Again, everyone's system is going to be a little bit different, so if you have issues with the installation or with dual booting, leave a comment and help each other out. And, once you've given Chrome OS a shot, let us know how you like it in the comments too.

Microsoft spills beans on new ‘Tulalip’ social network

Microsoft accidentally spilled the beans on a new social network it has been working on called “Tulalip.” According to VentureBeat, a splash page for the the social network appeared shortly on Socl.com on Thursday before it was immediately taken down. In an effort to conceal its mistake, Microsoft issued a statement. “Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest,” Microsoft said. It’s unclear if Tulalip is a legitimate social network or if it really is just an “internal design project,” but given the similarities between Tulalip’s user interface and the tiles found in Windows 8 and Windows Phone, it would certainly be a nice fit.

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The MicroBombata Laptop Bag Daily Find

 MicroBombata 13" Laptop Bag

• $39
• Fab.com

Bombata's vinyl suitcases remind us of the type of luggage our parents hauled around back in the day, when PanAm was still crisscrossing the skies and flying still had an air of glamour. But these mod-style cases hold today's technology inside; laptop or tablets sit safely with velcro straps with additional room for accessories related to your mobile computing. Made in Italy, available in 13" and 17" sizes in a plethora of colours.

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SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project

We first wrote about SocialBicycles when it was just a student project in New York. Now it’s going totally legit with a new website and Kickstarter project that promises to bring real bike sharing to the Windy Apple.

Pledges of $25 or more get a free sharing account plus a credit while $50 gets you a T-shirt. For $500 you get “a 2 hour bike ride around New York” with the founders. “We can talk bikes, technology, and start-ups. BYOB(ike) or if the timing is right we can ride Social Bicycles!” A real treat, to be sure.

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How Starbucks Is Paving the Way for Mainstream Mobile Payments

The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo does not just manufacture technology. They make Do machines — super-powered creation engines designed to help the people who do, do more, do better, do in brand new ways.

 

While near field communication and QR code marketing campaigns are all the rage, the 2D bar codes pushing mobile payments are a little less sexy. Starbucks Card Mobile is a three-part system that includes 2D bar codes, scanners and mobile phone applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and now Android.

This seemingly simple system — especially when stacked up against Google’s pending NFC mobile payments program — allows Starbucks customers to pay with their phones at roughly 9,000 locations in the U.S. It has also helped the coffee company stand alone as the only large-scale mobile payments provider.

In fact, by March 2011, nine weeks after the nationwide rollout of its mobile payments program, Starbucks had processed more than 3 million payments.

In an interview with Mashable, Adam Brotman, Starbucks’ vice president and general manager of digital ventures and the man overseeing the mobile payments project, sheds light on the company’s approach to innovation, how it successfully predicted a trend in the making and how it used accessible and consumer-friendly technologies to bring the solution to market immediately.

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Making Something Old New Again

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“Sometimes, innovation isn’t about doing something that is overly complicated; it’s about seeing something that’s right in front of you and seeing it in a way that other people haven’t thought about,” says Brotman.

Brotman’s words typify the company’s internal technology maxim: improving the in-store customer experience should drive technological innovation, and not the other way around. This is how Starbucks Card Mobile came to be.

Prior to 2009, the Starbucks Card and loyalty program — the plastic cards for purchase and the then-newly introduced My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program — were beginning to take off, explains Brotman. At the time, the company’s card and loyalty team began to think about now they could build mobile payment options into the existing program.

As Brotman tells the story, Chuck Davidson, Starbucks’ category manager for innovation on the Starbucks Card, had an early breakthrough with his team after realizing that most stores already have bar code scanners.

The idea, says Brotman, was that “we could essentially replicate, in a very secure way, our Starbucks Card…with 2D bar codes.”

“There was the notion that a 2D barcode was feasible,” he adds, indicating that replicating Starbucks Cards with 2D bar codes on mobile phones would allow the company to release a solution immediately. No need to wait for mobile phone technologies to catch up to more sophisticated solutions.

The mobile payment system went into production in 2009. By September of the same year, Starbucks was ready to pilot an early version of the program at 16 stores in Seattle and the Bay Area.

The company measured the pilot according to three specific parameters: Could Starbucks roll out scanners to all stores? Would mobile payments offer customers an easier way to pay? And, would store baristas understand and embrace the system?

The answer to each of those questions was yes, Brotman says. “One of the things that we learned in the test was that mobile payments gave the store partners and our customers an extra moment to connect.”

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Customer-Driven Innovation

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Brotman describes Starbucks’ internal corporate culture around technology as trend and technology-agnostic. “We are not about technology for technology’s sake,” he says. “We are not deploying cutting-edge technology just for the sake of trying to do something for us.”

Instead, the customer experience drives the innovation process at Starbucks, Brotman says. “Any time there’s an opportunity to enhance the customer experience through innovation, the company rallies behind it.”

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The Broader Implications

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What role is Starbucks playing in the broader mobile payments sector? A substantial one, when you consider that the company has not only proven that customers do indeed want to pay with their phones, but that it has deployed a fully-functional nationwide system now accessible to 90% of smartphone owners.

Starbucks is also exploring ways to extend the program and make Starbucks Card Mobile a payment option wherever consumers buy Starbucks products. Starbucks Card payments now represent 20% of all in-store transactions.

Brotman, however, seems less interested in cementing Starbucks’ name as the flagship company pushing the mobile payments space forward.

“We do not worry about what role we play in some overall movement. We worry about how we can continue to innovate and push initiatives forward that make our customer experience better,” Brotman says. “Given the size of our footprint and our traffic, by definition, almost anything we do in this space will be important and probably leading in some respect.”

The movement is palpable and the push is happening. Google, Square and a slew of carriers and startups are pushing full-speed-ahead on their own mobile payment systems. Both Google and Square also consider the mobile phone a type of wallet, but they differ in how to process the “electronic cards” stored in consumers’ mobile wallets. Google Wallet payments are initiated via tap-to-pay markers and NFC-enabled phones, while Square transactions are entirely application and name-driven.

Not surprisingly, just as is this case with Starbucks Card Mobile, each initiative attaches loyalty program tie-ins. And while Starbucks’ low-tech, 2D bar code approach to pay-by-phone is not being replicated by either Google or Square, the company’s pre-2009 hypothesis that mobile payments would work best as a natural extension to a loyalty program has certainly proven influential.

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Series Supported by Lenovo

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The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo makes machines specifically for the innovators. The creators. The people who move the world forward. Machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad, meticulously engineered with visibly smart second-generation Intel® CoreTM processors to help the people who do, do what’s never been done.

 

 

 

Images courtesy of Flickr, GlobalX and GraceOda

More About: loyalty, loyalty program, mobile payments, starbucks, starbucks card mobile, Tech Innovators Series

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Google+, Google’s answer to Facebook, is finally here [video]

Google on Tuesday finally took the wraps off of its answer to the social steamroller that is Facebook, and it’s called Google+. While Google has launched numerous social products in the past, Google+ is the Internet giant’s most comprehensive offering to date. It is largely an effort to play catch-up, of course — since Google has a lot of catching up to do — but the service also offers some nifty innovative elements that could appeal to users who navigate away from Facebook long enough to check it out. Key features include Circles, which allow you to group contacts together in various social circles and share things only with the particular circles you chose; Sparks, which are topics similar to Twitter hashtags; and Hangouts, which are video chat rooms. There is also a mobile element to Google+, and for the time being it focuses on text updates, photo and video sharing, and… you guessed it… location. Google+ is currently in private beta. A handful of videos covering the key elements of Google’s new service can be viewed below.

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