Google Acquires Motrola: Whats Next?

Well the news is pretty much old now that Google is acquiring Motorola. Big deal, yeah that's a big deal. But it was expected. 

Since the arrival of rivals like Facebook, the search giant is expanding its business horizon to other fields. It has been a long time when Google introduced Android, the once very celebrated 'open source' mobile operating system. I wondered at the time, how Google is going to monetize Android. Then we saw things like Android Market and other products based on Android which are money making machines for Google (not to mention mobile adds from Google on Android based gadgets).

But Android was not going well. Microsoft as always, jumped in the way and they started to ask the mobile phone manufacturers to pay on each sold device as they thought Android was infringing their copy rights and patents. This was not the case only. Apparently Apple, MS and other big dudes tried to undercut Google by buying patents from other companies. As Google accused them of being unfair. Well, this is a long story as MS clarified the statement and bla bla bla. The point here to mention is that Google was not having a solid ground regarding Android. The hardware manufacturers i.e. the smart phone makers were having trouble with legal status of Android, they had to pay MS etc on each device they sold and Google was unable to help them in this regard. Google was lacking mobile patents to support its claims in mobile market. And the biggest dispute was Oracle sued Google over Android. Folks can you imagine what a mess was created around Google and Android? And to add to the fire even Motorola was going to start war with other Android phone manufacturers over patent issues, see yourself.

So you can see the idea was good: create a mobile OS and promote it, earn money through selling Apps, Games, Adds, Services. But the mess which was created as a bi-product was creating serious hindrances for the search giant. And now the answer comes. Google is now acquiring Motorola. Possible outcomes? Well it is too early to say rather speculate about this but this is for sure that

• Android is going to be an official OS with a phone manufacturer behind it.
• Android is going to have patent support owned by Motorola.
• Apple and Microsoft are not going to like it.
• Google is going to have more focus on Tablets which will not be liked by Apple, HP and other Tab makers.
• Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is going to have tough time. Perhaps they will try to acquire already troubled old mobile maker Nokia, who is in deal with them to make Windows Phone 7 based smart phones.
• And last but not the least, the game is on. Other rivals will not sit calmly and watch Google grow. Its going to be hot out their folks, Wait and watch the battle of giants.

Selecting Range of Filled Columns and Rows in Calc

In Microsoft Excel you have to select End Mode by pressing End button on Keyboard. Then Shift + Arrow keys let you towards the end of the series of rows or columns which are filled with data. I was looking for same solution for OOo Calc and it was pretty straightforward. In Calc you just have to press Shift key which will tell it that you are going to select every thing and then press Ctrl + Arrow keys, the range of cells which is filled would be selected. :-)

Urdu in Google Translate

Urdu started flourishing on the internet after 2003. Initially there was a single website bbcurdu.com which was known by Urdu lovers as being a "true" Urdu website, true in the sense that it was a text based website which was built on brand new unicode UTF8 standard and which was very quick to load. After 2005 there was a boost in Urdu web publishing and we saw forums as well as blogs created in unicode Urdu. And then the trends started changing from purely inpage generated .gif images to simple but elegant text based websites which were quicker to load and which were searchable by search engines. Forums like urduweb.org/mehfil emerged which were totally in Urdu, a strange phenomenon in those days. Now a days websites like urdupoint.com use a blend of pictures and text based Urdu, where default and front page matter is in unicode while poetry and other stuff is still generated through inpage in the form of gif images.
The trends to use Unicode Standard are accelerating now and it is being enhanced by various factors. Lots of people know how to write Urdu even in notepad, how to build your personal blog in Urdu (thanks to Urduweb.org/mehfil a great Urdu Forum and mother of most Urdu Blogs), of course the spread of internet, and the factor that Urdu can be machine translated now. Paktranslations.com is online for a year or so, they are working and providing good machine translations between English and Urdu but they can never meet the experience and resources the giant of search Google has. And now google has added support of Urdu in its translate.google.com service. It is still in alpha stage but very much usable and acceptable.
Urdu is now among the 56 or so languages which are supported by Google Translate. Hindi, a step sister of Urdu, was already supported and so the case was with Arabic etc. I was just watching the progress of translate.bing.com, the Microsoft's reply to google translate. It just supports 30 or so languages yet, lagging behind a lot. Bing will have to add support for Hindi, Urdu also to prove itself. Long live Urdu, we'll see more advances in just a short span of time.
Update: Bing has an Indic Transliteration Tool also, similar to Google Transliterate. But it is still behind because it does not support Urdu as well as it does not have an API to add its support to other applications, which google transliterate services has.

HP Buys Palm

Ohh, my goodness HP Buys Palm. Ohh, what a hot topic it is. The whole world is going mad to tweat it, share it and talk about it, HP just announced to acquire Palm for 1.2 billion dollars. That's great man, really great. But let me ask one thing, DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS PALM?
Ops, if you don't know let us try to know what is Palm, or more specifically Palm OS :-).
Palm OS is a mobile operating system which was introduced in mid 90s and since then it is being used on mobile and hand held devices like PDAs. Palm was sold and purchased by several other companies in the past also. Palm Inc. was suffering these days so HP came to rescue them. Now they would be a sub part of HP and a new addition to HP's product line.
What next? Well next would be a new player in the smart phone market. As Nokia enhancing its business capabilities buy acquiring various software and hardware related companies, Google has entered into the market by introducing Android and NexusOne, Apple is a big stack holder as an iPhone producer, Microsoft is already producing Windows Mobile OS so why not HP? HP will enter into the market with the experience and goodwill of Palm and its products and both will get benefits. You may hear in a few days that Palm OS or its products are open sourced, HP is going to introduce a new smartphone and things like that. So next days are going to be really interesting regarding the smarphone market.

Oracle: Death Eater or Lover for Open Source?

Sun Microsystems 'was' one of the biggest competitors of Microsoft in open source world. It is true they ruled the world with Java and its bi-products but when Microsoft challenged the rule of Java on internet by introducing .Net framework and a new Java like language C#, Sun became more open. Whether it was a business decision or it was really the love of open source world that Sun opened up regarding Java. Sun opened up Java round about 3 years ago. Sun was the biggest contributor to OpenOffice.org, the one and only open source office suit which can some how face MS Office. Sun was going well and every thing was going happily. But........ real world is not like the stories of princes and princesses who live happily always, so Sun had to face the challenge. A big fish Oracle proposed Sub to be eaten, and Sun agreed. And now Sun is gradually being eaten by Oracle.
That is the fate of small companies that they are eaten up or in more 'technical terms' acquired by bigger ones. First MySql was acquired by Sun and then Oracle acquired Sun. And the result was that the only open source and low cost competitor of Oracle Enterprise Database is no longer harmful for Oracle. Because they are now (step) brothers. Though Oracle is promising to run MySQL as it was run previously but they are in better ever position to keep MySQL 'on track' now.
Java is something for which Sun is known in the open source world, specially after the opensourcing of Java. Java introduced new competing technologies under the banner of Sun as JavaFX. But it is moving slowly since a year or so, obviously it is due to the replanning which is taking place in Sun after the acquisition by Oracle.
Open Solaris is a Unix like operating system and again it was open source. But the community governing the matters of Open Solaris is now being frustrated by the silence of Oracle regarding the future of the operating system. Would it be of worth for Oracle in the case that they already have a fork of Redhat Enterprise Linux names Oracle Unbreakable Linux. Well, people at Open Solaris community are even willing to fork the project and continue it independently. Whether it would be good or bad, or whether Open Solaris would continue its existence or die slowly, the time will tell about it.
Sun was a big contributor to open source OOo, Java, Open Solaris and MySQL are now looking at Oracle for the future. Out of all, I think OOo is somehow independent and is going well. MySQL is now more business oriented and no more free bits as yummy as they were some time in near past. Java is still in a state of coma, and Open Solaris: there looks something hot under the surface of calmness. Let us see what happens.