Verizon Droid Resistance Is Futile

Verizon is making a big bet on Motorola’s Droid. Verizon is spending millions of dollars on advertising and Motorola is going “all in” on Google’s Android platform. It seems everyone in the mobile industry is suffering from iPhone envy. All the major carriers are struggling to compete with the iPhone and Google is stepping up to give them an answer.

This has to be salt in the wounds of Microsoft, who has had suffered several missteps and has seen the mythical Windows Mobile 7 get dealayed over 2 years. Windows Mobile 6.5 launched earlier this month to little fan fair. People are not considering Windows Mobile 6.5 a real competitor to the iPhone. Microsoft is not really in the converation now and Google has to be celebrating. Motorola’s Droid is certainly going head to head with the iPhone.

Twitter World

The Twitter phenomenon has been truly amazing. I wrote last year that I thought Twitter would be bought or dead in 2009. Well they are not bought or dead. Since then Twitter has been embraced by the media, celebrities, and any other narcissistic individual that wants to tell the world in 144 characters or less what they are doing. What is even more interesting is they still have not found a business model or solved their infrastructure problems. It is down so often that the Twitter fail whale should be their homepage.

I was recently at Web 2.0 and I heard Ev’s conversation with John Battelle. Not much has changed. He seemed very coy about his plans to figure out a business model or solve Twitter’s scalability issues. Even during his talk I could see several people in the audience getting the Twitter Fail Whale trying the access Twitter. But one of Ev’s problems might be solved sooner rather than later. The two search titans Microsoft and Google struck deals with Twitter to get access to its valuable real time data. Both Microsoft and Google most certainly had to pay for it. Sheryl Sandberg made it a point to say she didnt believe in charging for data. Early this year Ev closed another round of financing putting the total at $100 million with a whopping $1 billion valuation. With all this hype Twitter is seeing their growth plateau  and they are getting more and more competition from Facebook.

T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster

In 1928 twenty-seven cars filled with gasoline exploded outside Zyba, Kansas. The explosion could be seen from miles away. The chaos and horror of this event was cemented in peoples’ memories for decades.

The T-Mobile Sidekick disasteris turning into one of the biggest train wrecks in recent years. In the era of cloud computing and people dependent on their mobile phones Microsoft is in the middle of  a PR disasters.

Its not everyday Perez Hilton breaks a tech story wide open by ranting on his blog how for seven days he has not been able to access email or contacts on his T-Mobile Sidekick. He immediately ignited the twitt-o-sphere by telling all his loyal fans to tweet #TmobileStillSucks. What came next was so unbelievable it had to be considered a sick joke to Sidekick customers. T-Mobile issued a letter to all of its Sidekick customers saying that based on Microsoft/Danger’s recovery assessment, they basically lost all of peoples’ data. And to make matters worse they have no backup.

Update: T-Mobile halted selling Sidekick devices. T-Mobile is now saying that “Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible.” CNet reported that those who do suffer permanent data loss will get a $100 “customer appreciation card” good toward T-Mobile service or products.