Elephantsquared.

Holy cow! Google Nexus One docs got leaked. According to Gizmodo, Google will sell the much desired Nexus One unlocked and unsubsidized for $530, and Google will sell it by themselves here (google.com/phone).

More information (via Gizmodo):

• Yeah, it’s $530 unsubsidized. Google’s not going to be selling the phone at cost, like so many people considered. They’re not going to save us from the “making money off of hardware” culture we’ve got right now, so this is basically just another Android handset, albeit a really good one
• If you want it subsidized, you’ll have to sign up for a 2 year mandatory contract and pay $180 for the phone
• There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total
• Existing customers cannot keep their plan if they want a subsidized phone; they have to change to the one plan, and this only applies to accounts with one single line
• If that doesn’t fly with you, you have to buy the $530 unlocked version—this actually might save you money over two years if you already have a cheap plan
• Family plans, Flexpay, SmartAccess and KidConnect subscribers must buy the phone unlocked and unsubsidized for $530
• You can only buy five Nexus One phones per Google account
• There is language in the agreement of shipping outside the US
• Google will sell it at google.com/phone, which explains what they were doing with that page a few weeks ago
• Google will still call it the Nexus One apparently, and not the Google Phone

Now is the time to get overexcited! :)

Foursquare, Gowalla and Rally. If you are not familiar with these three (3) apps I think it’s time you change this, because 2010 is going to be all about location, location and location. These apps launched in 2009 and are about to get crazy in the following years. All these location-based social applications are excellent pieces of software that converge to the provision of one of the most valuable type of information nowadays, that is location. It occurs to me that location is more like a synonym to the year 2010 and an indistinguishable part of the new era of the mobile industry.

The first one (foursquare) which is available on both iPhone App Store and Android Market is the one that, in my opinion, is the predominant candidate for this convergence. The second one (Gowalla), looks a lot like foursquare but outcomes foursquare when it comes to the user interface (for the time being..) which is definitely far more attractive. However both of them can be considered as the best location-based social app. The latter (rally) is the newest member of the “location” family and it claims that it brings real friends together by utilizing some unique concepts like the “home” location. I didn’t have the chance to use rally but to what I ‘ve heard, rally is taking a long shot here by refreshing/filtering your social network and I am sure it will be discussed a lot in the near future.

Do you like/use/prefer/enjoy/dislike/etc. any of these apps? The sure thing is, we ‘ll see more apps like these coming up and there is nothing you can do to stop this. :P

At last! A full spec sheet for the much desired Nexus One! Thanks to Engadget, more specs of the Google Phone surfaced. The most striking specs include a 3.7-inch widescreen, 512MB of RAM and of course the Android OS 2.1. It also has a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash. There is also a rumor about first devices shipping on January 5th available by invitation only.

I want so badly to get my hands on this device. :)

More specs here.

UPDATE: Google announced Android press conference for January 5th (via Engadget). That’s interesting.

Wondering about when Santa is coming to your town this Christmas? No need to worry. Thanks to NORAD that is tracking Santa’s journey around the world, you can find his current location on the 24th. The tracking will start in about 8 hours from now. So get ready for some stalking! You can also stalk him from your mobile phone! Just go to m.noradsanta.org or search for “Santa” in Google Maps.

Wouldn’t be awesome if Santa was using foursquare (..with his Google Nexus One)?! :P

I guess it is not too soon for Christmas presents. About two weeks ago, AppJet and the Google PR Team announced the acquisition of AppJet (the company and technology behind EtherPad) by Google and a few hours after that they made a second announcement about EtherPad going back online until open sourced. Two days ago, EtherPad announced the release of its source code to the public which can be found here. As they said:

Our goal with this release is to let the world run their own etherpad servers so that the functionality can live on even after we shut down etherpad.com.

So, if you are up for a challenge you can read these instructions for compiling and running the EtherPad open source release and try out your own etherpad server.

Ho ho ho! Christmas came earlier for WordPress this year. WordPress 2.9 is out with features that you are going to love. I think the most handy one is the new global undo/”trash” undo feature. There were times when I wished I could go back in time and prevent me from clicking that “delete” button. Well, that times are over now!

Other than that, there a few other exciting new things that come along with WordPress 2.9. First and foremost, the new built-in image editor which allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images. I am sure it will come in very handy when you just want to crop or flip an image just after uploading it. There is also this batch plugin update and compatibility checking and this rocking new feature for easier video embeds that allows you to just paste a URL on its own line and..

have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support

Last but not least, another cool new feature that I am definitely going to use is the automatic database optimization support! All you have to do is add a define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true); to your wp-config.php file and your are done!

Read more about the new WordPress 2.9 release here.

UPDATE: Note to self: I just love the new “squareish” buttons

The sure thing is that URL shortening services have been tremendously useful over the last year, especially with Twitter going nuts in 2009. Apart from that, they are very handy when it comes to mobiles and the mobile (r)evolution going on the last years. From TinyURL to Bit.ly people have trusted such services for tr.imming and sharing even the most obscure urls around the globe.

Well, after the huge success of TinyURL and Bit.ly now its time to get serious about this. According to Inside Facebook, Facebook has developed its own URL shortener in order to make its long urls more accessible. Moreover, Google announced a few hours ago its own URL shortener which only works for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner for the time being. As they said:

Google URL shortener is not a stand-alone service; you can’t use it to shorten links directly. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.

What if Google decided to make its own url shortener an open stand-alone service? What do you think?

If you can’t live without notes you should definitely try out Evernote. Evernote helps you capture everything, organize it and find anything fast!

A few hours ago I installed Evernote beta for Android. You can download it directly to your phone here (make sure you have checked the box that says “Unknown sources” in the settings first). Well, the first screen that you get when you first launch Evernote on an Android phone is a simple login form. After that the magic unveils.

After a few hours of use I can give you 3 main reasons why you should try out Evernote beta for Android.

• Note everything!
  The first one is that with Evernote you can take notes of any type! Not just text notes, but also pictures, voice notes and even pdf files. There are quite a lot of notepads, todo lists and task managers in the Android Market with various features including advanced notifications, great user interface and even encryption. For my text notes and todo lists I mainly use Astrid which is a life saver for me. Astrid also supports syncing with Remember The Milk. Evernote is not exactly a todo list but you could use it as if it was. OI Notepad is another Android app which supports voice notes and encryption. Evernote combines some of the best features in these apps, but still has work to do.
• Your notes in the cloud.
  The sync feature between many devices is perfect. You can capture a picture with your phone and then access it from anywhere.
• The icon rules!
  The icon’s look and feel is awesome! It is one of the best icons I ‘ve ever seen in the Android platform. Just this.

There are also a few video tutorials and some very interesting user tips here that are worth watching.

However there are a few drawbacks in this current release. (Remember this is a beta release). In my opinion, the most major drawback of all is the lack of speed. I am aware that every note is synced to the cloud but speed is very important for an application like this, let alone a mobile application like this. Except for this, I believe the whole user interface needs a lot of improvement. It needs icons above each menu option and maybe a few custom components making it more evernoted. Not everything has to be Android-native. Maybe just the homescreen’s search textfield and button.

Compared to the iPhone version, the beta Android version still has work to do. Anyhow, Evernote beta for Android looks promising and I can’t wait to see how the first final version will look like. What do you think?

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