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Mobile World Congress 2009 has come to a close, and as far as most Android fans are concerned, it was a pretty big disappointment. Billed by many as a “coming out party” for Android, with no shortage of high expectations for unveiling of new handsets, the Barcelona event ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There were a handful of chipset and software announcements, and only one new functioning handset was shown – which is destined for Europe. As far as I’m concerned, Chinese ODMs showing non-functional handsets under glass don’t count. Whining that “we’re working on it” or “we’re not late, we just never intended to announce at this show” doesn’t count either, nor do scribbles in some booth jockey’s notebook. Unfortunately, these were the only headlines that comprised over 1,000 Android-related articles that crossed my feedreader in the last five days.

Few would debate that Android has no shortage of potential. Some bloggers have claimed it stands a chance to unseat the majestic iPhone, and others have asserted that Android has Microsoft running scared and clamoring to hold onto its market share. But potential is just that – and in the fast-paced, compressed time-to-market world of mobile phones, potential can siphon down the drain with frightening speed. If Google really mean business with Android, they need to get it onto a major US carrier’s network.

There were plenty of high-hopes (my own included) that an announcement – or even a rumor – along those lines would hit the wire this week at MWC. I have no doubt that thousands of other eager-eyed early adopters were scanning the headlines right alongside me, searching for any mention of Android in the same breath as Verizon or AT&T. But none came, and MWC ended leaving the tech-heads wondering just what the holdup is. Are the phone manufacturers throwing enough resources at Android integration? Are the carriers resisting the super-flexible but, ultimately, freedom-laced OS? Is Google’s support of OEMs falling short? Maybe the tough economy is putting a pinch on Android budgets. Or maybe all the industry players are waiting for each other’s next move…

I’m no product strategist, but I’ve managed to be involved with at least a few product launches in my short engineering career. I know how much effort goes into bringing a product to market: it’s easy to get 98% of the way there, but the effort to achieve the last 2% of market-readiness is exponentially higher. That’s where Google is today: they’ve got a product that’s on the cusp of being ready, if only their customers (the handset manufacturers, not the end users!) would take it and run. As the poor Android showing at MWC this week has demonstrated, if this symbiosis is happening, it’s not happening fast enough.

When Google released Android as an open-source stack, they short-circuited a lot of the closed-ness of the mobile phone world. They opened up opportunities for developers, phone manufacturers, carriers and end-users alike … so long as the gift was received, incubated, used and released to the market. But in a market this fast-moving, I believe that’s not happening quickly enough to insure Android’s survival.

It’s time for Google to short-circuit the status quo once again: It’s time for Google to start releasing Android builds for popular phone hardware that’s already out in the wild, already in the hands of early-adopters, and (most importantly) already certified to operate on the major carriers’ networks. No, this probably wouldn’t be kosher. Granted, it might not even be possible given the image-signing requirements of many handsets. Yes, it would probably require the users to break something that’s spelled out in fine print somewhere. Yes, people’s warranties might even be voided. Hell, if the Android image was intended to run on a certain shiny messiah-phone, it might even require a little risque jailbreaking. But would it be worth it?

Let’s just say, if our friends in Mountain View ever did unleash an Android image for a mass-market, major-carrier smartphone, I’d be first in line to buy one and make it my daily-driver. I’m sure there’d be a lot of others in line behind me, too.

The world, myself included, will be watching diligently. I’ve had my feedreader tuned in to Google News, IceRocket and Google Blog Search – all wildcarding for any mention of the word “Android” – with not a single hit on any new handsets after the sun has set on the final day of setup for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Granted, the show doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but Phonescoop has already posted Part 1 of their MWC report. Apparently there’s little to talk about so far.

Despite the revolutionary openness of Google’s Android project, hackers and tinkerers around the world have yet to port it (usefully, at least) to any existing phone platforms, and the T-Mobile G1 remains the sole Android-powered handset on the market worldwide. As much as I’d love to hack together my own smartphone (a lofty endeavor that Android ostensibly could enable) I simply haven’t got an extra ten-to-fifteen hours each day to try my hand at it. So guys like me (read: who live outside T-Mobile’s 3G coverage areas) are left waiting and watching.

But unlike many in the mobile phone world, I’m patient when it comes to buying big things. I wasn’t first-in-line for an iPhone, and I didn’t camp out outside my local T-Mobile store the night before the G1 was turned loose. Android may take time to find its way into the hands of the multitudes, but it’s a definite glimmer of hope in an otherwise very locked-down world. Hopefully, the freedom, flexibility and coolness it brings to the market won’t be too late.

Not content with our drippingly-romantic “garbage plate night” on Friday, or a swanky dinner out at Sienna last night, we figured we’d extend the valentine’s goodness just a little bit into belatedness this year – and broke out the cookie cutters for a fun twist on our traditional Sunday pancakes…

I know there’re plenty of opinions out there about valentine’s day, but if you partake, I hope you had a nice one this year. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming…

Looking back over my previous post, I’m struck by what amazing times we live in… It’s pretty amazing that an average Joe like me can scrape together enough time to publish a blog that’s only visited by barely two-dozen people a day, let alone write paragraph after paragraph bitching about smartphones.

After finishing that entry, I flicked on the TV and came across a special about the RAF Ferry Command. In 1942, the men of Ferry Command were navigating planes of all sorts across the Atlantic – using sextants and compasses. If they missed their target airfields, or encountered a cold front no one predicted, or lost sight of the stars in cloud cover, they died. How amazing is it then, that I can hold – locked-down or otherwise – a device in the palm of my hand that will happily read out my exact position, anywhere in the world? How amazing is it that, with a few swipes and taps, I can pull up weather predictions and animated radar maps on that same little device?

I guess it’s all relative…

“You know you want one! You just admitted it!” Kelly hit me with her you know I’m right stare.

“Well, I don’t necessarily want one – it’s a little on the extravagant side right now. I just figured I’d see what it’s all about.” My pitiful attempts at feigning disinterest were failing miserably.

The truth is, when I stood in the showroom at our local AT&T store, playing with their demo iPhones as the sales rep showed me one completely-sweet app after another, I did want one. Looking at all the cool stuff the shiny little slab of telephonic sexiness could do, I would have been happy to take one home. Hell – the whole reason I was there was to look into getting an iPhone for Kelly as a Valentine’s day gift. But I stayed strong. My willpower (and intentionally-empty wallet) prevailed. I gathered all the info, totaled up all the discounts I could muster, and left the store with nothing but a scribble-laden brochure and a business card.

If you’ve ever gotten real excited about something, then had your hopes deflated like a scuba tank shot with a 7mm rifle, then you know roughly what happened next. Before investing a hundred-ninety-nine of my hard-earned clams in an iPhone or two, I wanted to make sure it would work with my PC, my music player, and some manner of PIM syncing software. After all – my trusty iPod mini works just fine with all these things. But alas, in no particular order, the answers were “no”, “no” and “no”. Gee, thanks Apple.

As it turns out, in order to manage your iPhone’s music collection with anything other than the vendor-locked iTunes software, you’ve got to go through a process called jailbreaking. It’s a somewhat-shady but ingeniously-developed process to crack Apple’s lockdown on what apps you can run on your iPhone. With an out-of-the-box iPhone, you can only run apps that come from Apple’s App Store walled-garden – but a jailbroken phone can run other apps. Apps that Apple doesn’t want you to run. Apps that (one would have to surmise) awaken Steve Jobs in the wee hours of the morning, beaded in cold sweat at the prospect of giving iPhone owners a choice.

As it turns out, Apple’s not too keen on people managing their music with anything but iTunes – because (horror of horrors!) people just might not buy all their music from iTunes. They’re also not too keen on third-party GPS applications – which is why the iPhone still doesn’t have a turn-by-turn navigation app. Want to use your iPhone’s camera to capture videos? You won’t find an app to do the job in the App Store, because Apple won’t allow it. Want to tether your iPhone to your laptop to enjoy the 3G Internet connection? Don’t plan on doing it unless you jailbreak – and risk voiding your warranty, bricking your expensive phone and contracting syphilis.

Yes, Apple has their reasons. They want to ensure a seamless user experience – for most users. I have my reasons too: I don’t want to run Windows – an insecure, bug-infested operating system – on my PC, nor do I want to shell out premium coin for Apple’s sexier-than-it-is-useful fare. What I do want is a smartphone that adheres to some effing standards. I want to be able to drop content onto it by USB mass storage – something that every other bloody smartphone in the known universe can do. Or – here’s a shocker, folks – load it up with a damn memory card! I want to hook it to my PC without having to install a bunch of pointless bloatware. I want to invest in a piece of hardware, and not have to worry about finding my hands tied later on – by the company that sold it to me!

To be sure, the iPhone world (you know, that impenetrable bubble that forms around iPhone users when their noses are to their phones) is a magical, utopian place where none suffer and all the users are equal. But remember: some users are more equal than others. There’s no better proof of that than the news that broke from Apple today…

To make dinner a little easier tonight, I opted to break out the slow cooker just before bedtime last night, and try my hand at a pork chili. Compared to your average chili (brown the meat, pour in some canned stuff, dump on the seasoning packet and boil away) this one took a solid chunk of work, and a lot more fresh ingredients – but it was worth it.

Rather than repeat it here (and risk violating some poor soul’s copyright) I’ll direct you to the recipe, over at MyRecipes.com, courtesy of Cooking Light magazine.

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After having all day to wonder just how it came out (and do plenty of salivating), I finally dove in tonight – the verdict? Very, very close. If you like your chili with lots of juices, this is the recipe for you; if you’re like me, and you prefer it a little more on the stewy side, just drain the tomatoes and reduce the beer a bit.

Oh, and get ready to clear those sinuses out…

So you’ve got your new computer set up – you’re ready to hit the web, rock out on e-mail, catch up with all your friends over IM and Skype, and crank out the documents in your office suite. But what else can the thing do?

If you run Windows, we’d recommend getting cozy with some anti-virus software, and maybe yanking your PC’s power plug a couple of times to get used to the feeling of losing your work unexpectedly. But if you happen to run Linux, Dave Hayes has some slightly more-interesting advice: Aside from having the most made-of-win blog tagline ever at his blog – davehayes.org – Dave has put together a bonzer list of 7 Cool Things to Do With Linux that every aspiring geek ought to at least try out once or twice…

If you’ve ever seen the movies Contact or Frequency, or the Simpsons episode entitled Homer’s Paternity Coot, then you’ve had a very small – though rather fictional and in the later case mocking – look at the world of amateur radio. I was 13 years old when I passed the entry-level exam and received my first ham license in the mail. I saved every penny of a summer’s lawn-mowing money to buy a new handheld radio, and by 1996 I had upgraded my license to afford greater priveliges and explore the parts of the radio spectrum that can traverse the world over. A week before my 16th birthday, I begged the local bank manager to let me open a checking account in order to buy a “fox tango” that was older than me, and convinced my parents to let me plant a 25-foot-high aluminum antenna behind our house.

Needless to say, I did not have a girlfriend, but we’ll save that round of soul-searching for another blog entry. Now, as I was saying…

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