Best of Both Worlds?

What's most appealing about the Kogan Agora, at least based on these specs, is its promise to deliver the "best of both worlds." It combines the apps and music of the iPhone with the form factor and keypad of Blackberry. 

As much as some people love the iPhone, it's touch keyboard takes some getting used to. Some people never really get used to it - especially former Blackberry users or those who are comfortable with a two-hand typing experience. Switching to the iPhone is a move these folks need to think carefully about. Although they gain a combo media player/phone and applications galore at their fingertips, they have to sacrifice the typing experience they consider to be ideal. For heavy email users and texters, giving up the keyboard may be a deal-breaker.

Then along came Google's Android OS. Now you can have both music and apps and the possibility of using a real hardware-based keyboard. Unfortunately for Blackberry addicts, it first arrived on T-Mobile's G1 which came with a slideout keyboard. That was close, but it was hardly a recreation of the Blackberry experience.

The Kogan Agora, on the other hand, looks like the Blackberry (or perhaps the Blackjack) and includes all the Android goodness, too. Will this be the ideal combo? A Blackberry-esque media player that you can fill with downloadable apps? We'll have to wait and see once the phone arrives and reviews come in, but it definitely looks promising.

Google Phone Unveiled, Can it Beat the iPhone?

This week, Google, T-Mobile, and HTC came together to introduce the first phone running the Google mobile OS, Android. The overall message at launch was focused on openness. But will the future of the mobile internet be driven by open platforms? That's what Google is betting on with Android, but more importantly, it's what T-Mobile is hoping will stop the flood of customers leaving their service for AT&T's iPhone.

To entice customers away from the iPhone, we now have the G1, a slick alternative with a touchscreen and an app store of its own. The companies want you to believe the G1 is just as good, if not better, thanks to the real QWERTY keyboard and the open nature of the Google OS. Now that we have all the facts, are you convinced?

RWW Predictions: Google's Android vs. Apple's iPhone

This week we asked at RWW Predictions: will T-mobile or AT&T adjust their entry price point (either up or down) for the HTC Dream and the iPhone respectively in 2008? Nearly half of respondants said no, there won't be a price adjustment in 2008.

MySpace Music Launches

The long awaited MySpace Music service launched this week. We like what we see. It's going to be a very big deal.

Users will be able to assemble playlists from a huge catalog of songs from all four major labels and from independent distributor The Orchard, full length songs are all streamable for free, users will be able to purchase DRM-free MP3s through a close integration with the AmazonMP3 service and developers will have a gradually increasing amount of access to user activity data from the Music section. Screen shots in the post.

Muxtape Is Dead - Favtape Emerges as a Great Alternative

While Muxtape's Justin Ouellette posted a dire story about the shutdown of the popular mixtape service and his dealings with the music industry, Favtape has updated its service dramatically. Muxtape will effectively remain closed for the general public and will only return as a music hosting service for bands. Favtape, on the other hand, now looks like Muxtape on steroids, with embeddable playlists, album art, integrated YouTube search, a shuffle mode, and the ability to create tapes based on your last.fm and Pandora bookmarks.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

A Word from Our Sponsors

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• E.Factor is an online community for entrepreneurs.
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• Talklets is a Text to Speech system for your site.
• Compete Search Analytics is for search marketing campaigns.
• Direct Media Exchange is a solution for managing ad networks.
• Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
• The Defrag conference is on November 3-4 in Denver.
• EditMe lets you make a web site in minutes.
• Quintura is a visual-based search engine.
• Eurekster is a custom social search portal.
• MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
• SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

Web Trends

RWW Live: Data Portability

In this week's episode of RWW Live, our podcast show, we discussed Data Portability - the ongoing campaign for open data across the Web. We had an amazing group of Data Portability leaders on the call: Chris Saad (Co-founder, DataPortability.org), Daniela Barbosa (Chair, DataPortability.org), Eran Hammer-Lahav (Open Standards Evangelist, Yahoo), and Angus Logan (Technical Product Manager for Windows Live Platform, Microsoft). Friend of RWW Chris Messina also popped into the call midway through. The discussion was very interesting, check out the recording here:

Download MP3

State of the Blogosphere 2008

Blog search engine and ad network Technorati released its 5th annual State of the Blogosphere report this week. Technorati says its findings indicate that blogging is now mainstream. We're not so sure. Although reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream, is writing them?

The Scannable World: Mobile Phones As Barcode Scanners

One of the promises of the mobile web was the possibility of being able to integrate the internet with the real world. One of the ways to accomplish this task is through the use of barcodes. The idea is that you take a picture of the barcode with your camera phone and you're then delivered to a mobile web site. This could effectively make anything - whether a poster, an ad, or an object - a virtual part of the world wide web. Although this technology has been available for years, it's only now with the birth of the smartphone, or more precisely, the next-gen smartphone, that the potential for this type of integration may finally be realized.

See also:
The Scannable World, Part 2: Scanning Your Web Printouts
The Scannable World, Part 3: Barcode Scanning In The Real World

Religion and Web Technology

This week, as part of our ongoing Mainstream Web Watch series, we looked into how religious groups are using Web technologies. In the first post we looked at LifeChurch.tv, a sophisticated rich media site that aims to preach Christianity over the Internet. What was really great to see is how LifeChurch is using best-in-class web apps to create each different aspect of their online presence - Twitter for real-time communication, Wufoo to create their online forms, Blip.tv for video teaching, Mogulus for live broadcasting, and so on. It has also developed its own web apps.

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

RWW Enterprise Channel

Zoho Part 2: The Cookbook

Last week, we covered how Zoho is defying conventional wisdom in the Web Office market. But is being unconventional all it takes for a bootstrapped start-up to take on both Microsoft and Google, in head to head evaluations by giant enterprises such as GE? Far from it. Whenever you see a surprising 'overnight sensation', you will usually find years of hard work and careful execution.

In Part 2 of this story, we revealed some of Zoho's cookbook.

Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.