After creating a huge shift in spectrum management just through speculation, Google has confirmed that it will participate in the upcoming auction of frequencies in the 700 MHz band. In a pretty extraordinary press release, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We believe it’s important to put our money where our principles are.” He said that no matter who wins the spectrum, valued upwards of $4.6 billion, “the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet.” Google’s entry sparked fear from existing cellular carriers, no doubt leading to Verizon’s recent announcement it will open its network next year to everyone and anything–whatever “open” might mean to Verizon. I’ll believe it when I see it. When you have a few billion dollars to toss around like Google, it’s interesting how much you can accomplish without even spending it. Imagine what they might be able to do if they win.

In the battle between the Mio 610 GPS device and good design, the latter lost. Just take a look at the back of the device (below) for the best example. The company slapped a huge metal sticker on the back documenting all sorts of arcane technical information that didn’t need to be there, and completely ruining the design. And then watch the video demo of the device to see all the ways screen real estate was badly used. How on earth does the demonstrator hit those on-screen buttons?! He’s using the tip of his fingernail. Compare it’s screen features to Apple to see how design really does translate to improved performance. And also consider why Apple hasn’t built GPS features into the iPhone–it’s complicated to implement well, as Mio proves in the demo video.

The Canadian company Immersive Media provides the photos for Google’s impressive Street View feature on maps, and now Popular Mechanics has posted a ride-along with a crew taking the original high-res videos that generate the stills. What’s really impressive is that the original videos allow you to pan around while the video is playing, a much neater feature than appears on Street View as a still photo. Read the story here, and find the links to demo videos within the story.

An article in The Wall Street Journal details how MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project began with high hopes, but has bumped into big corporate competition along the way. Negroponte has worked to design and build a solar-powered, weather-protected $100 laptop that developing countries could buy and distribute to their citizens. But because the computer operates on Linux with open-source applications, it immediately drew the attention of Microsoft and Intel. Both companies have responded with attempts to sell to developing countries, the Journal article details. Intel, in fact, cranked up its first and only computer project, and went head-to-head against the One Laptop project by giving sales pitches to the same countries that the One Laptop had targeted. Read the article and decide for yourself if American business is out of whack.

It’s perhaps the strangest Web site idea I’ve heard: Dell Inc. has created a site called YoursIsHere.com, intended to be a focal point for visitors to receive donations so they can buy a Dell computer. Whaaa? Yep, you register, and then point everyone you know to the site so they can donate money towards your Dell purchase. The money actually goes to a PayPal account, and you can spend it any way you want, of course. But Dell’s hoping you buy their gear with the cash. There are all sorts of bells and whistles on the site, but that’s the gist. Apparently Dell’s marketing efforts are now translated: We’ve cornered the biz market, can’t make headway in the consumer market, and now are scraping the bottom of the barrel for customers who are funded with donations. Has the company lost all of its self-respect? OK, OK, the site itself is neat.

After my news story pointed out some missing keycaps on a Best Buy display Macintosh, I visited my local CompUSA and Best Buy stores. As usual, the CompUSA as a hodge-podge of stuff, with displays not visually organized, some software shelves disarrayed, and computers tightly lashed down. On one end-cap I noticed an iPod display that looked pretty neat–until I noticed that the iPod itself was missing! Yikes! I then drove to a Best Buy stores and found that new “store-within-a-store” area for Apple computers. The ASC was actually present, and armed with a cloth and spray bottle making sure the display table looked good. Later he was explaining a Mac computer to a couple, while another blue-shirted Best Buy employee demo’d a Mac for another person–gasp! Things were pretty squared away…until I noticed the black display MacBook was missing its F3 function key. Yikes again!

CompUSA: Ahh…where’s the iPod?

Best Buy: A souvenir for someone?

So Apple’s Filemaker unit has released a trial version of its new Bento personal database. It’s very Apple-like, with a familiar column-oriented format similar to iTunes, Address Book and other apps. It has the little plus-sign at the bottom of the column to add items, and lots of other familiar interface elements. It automatically taps into the Address Book and iCal databases so you can use and manage the data directly. But as a moderately heavy Filemaker Pro user, I’m wondering where this app fits among database and organization tools. It seems like a Filemaker Simple app. Perhaps Bento will be Apple’s database application, to eventually be included with iLife. That would pretty much fill in all the necessary applications for a complete set for consumers.

I’ve had my iPhone for two months, and still love my iPhone. It provides all the connectivity that I need: phone, e-mail and text messaging (it’s SMS and not iChat, but hey…). The thing is like a bar of soap to hold, so I bought myself a rough canvas case to keep ahold of the thing. The screen is amazing, both in its durability and clarity. I keep the iPhone in my pocket, screen turned inward, and have absolutely no scratches. Typing on the thing is pretty amazing. I primarily follow Steve Jobs’ advice to just type away, and the keyboard will do its best to figure out what word I’m typing and make any corrections. Even without reading glasses the accuracy is great. In fact, it’s almost better, since I’m doing more “punching” that spending time trying to carefully place my fingers on the correct keys. It’s strange. The only downside for me, an info junkie, is more dedicated information buttons. I’d love to have a bunch of main menu items similar to the stocks and weather that give me news, or airplane flight status or lots of other things. But I suppose those applications will appear next year as Apple loosens up access to the iPhone.

As much coverage as I give the Apple store, I’m really w-a-y behind lots of others who are “lifecasting” their experiences at the store. The iPhone launch at Palo Alto was just crazy. Bloggers (including Robert Scoble) and videographers were doing live, second-by-second coverage of the events–from 30 hours out! I went to Burlingame (N. Calif.) for the Leopard launch and just snapped a few photos. But there were lots of people doing live video broadcasts of the event at various stores, including hours in the waiting line, entry into the store and the final purchase. Some of the segments now on-line are 32 minutes long and filled with excited Apple fans. Check this ustream video of the Leopard event at the Southpoint Mall (NC), and this video from the Ala Moana (Hi.) store. Gee, I’m feeling like an under-achiever.

During Monday’s conference call to financial analysts, COO Tim Cook dropped the “U” word when asked about iPhone sales rates over the past months. For some reason, when asked about the rate of sales before and after the iPhone price cut, Cook said Apple was happy about the “elasticity that we saw,” allowing them to meet their 1 million iPhone sales goal by the end of the quarter. Then Cook unexpectedly revealed, “Some number of these were sold to people who have an intention to unlock.” He said Apple doesn’t know precisely how many iPhone buyers are using unlocked phones, “Our current guess is that there was perhaps 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold that people had bought with the intention of doing that.” He didn’t say what information the company used to make its “guess.” He said “many” of those 250,000 purchases occurred after the price cut. So while I earlier had railed that iPhone hacking and unlocking certainly seemed like it involved a trivial number of users, apparently Apple feels its an 18% problem. That’s huge. Yet I still believe those are out-of-country or export-oriented buyers. The pressure of unlocking should subside dramatically once the UK, Europe and Asia markets begin receiving their own supplies of iPhones.

There have been a ton of blog postings that appear to report that non-citizens of the United States cannot buy iPhones from their local Apple retail store. The reports are completely unverifiable, and no official statement has been made by Apple. Both Canada and Mexico residents have been identified in these stories, which even end with the question, “Is there a class-action attorney out there who wants to take my case?” The stories are vague enough so that the issue could be the person’s credit card, some limitation on the number of iPhones allowed in one sale, or other routine rules. But there’s a suggestion in all the stories that store employees are making citizenship determinations and then refusing to sell iPhones. On the other hand, I’ve also received feedback that the store, particularly Fifth Avenue (NYC) is/was the scene of mass iPhone purchases by citizens of other countries, including the Soviet republics. It’s not obvious why these people are buying the phone, if there’s some type of fraud occurring, or whether it’s just the international marketplace at work. Either way, it’s strange how only Apple seems to be the target of cross-border buyers. Is no one interested in buying T-Mobile handsets to be used in Mexico?

A promotional video on the upcoming release of OS X Leopard features “John,” who says he works at an Apple retail store, and “Nicole,” who he describes as his “colleague.” He suspiciously looks like you-know-who, and also closely resembles the man who did the videos for the iPhone. Something about the black clothing, glasses and hairstyle….hmmm. Beyond that, though, are some pretty interesting OS X features, including Time Machine. Yikes! The complexity of the software is completely hidden, or at least John didn’t delve into it. You simply turn it on, and then use it if you need it. Very slick. The Stacks feature also looks neat, especially for me who does a ton of files transfers and downloads. iChat now lets you assume command of a remote computer’s desktop–with permission, of course. The Spaces feature looks, interesting, but I’ll have to wait to see how practical it will actually be. Same thing with Quick Look and Cover Flow. The former doesn’t seem that much of a short-cut from actually opening the document with the application, the latter seems like it would be very processor intensive. Watch the promo video, and notice where the audio changes–you can tell that various parts were done at different times from the difference in acoustics and volume. No doubt the features of OS X were changed or updated even after some parts of the video was finished, probably right up until the video was posted. “John” probably posted some overtime during the past few weeks.