Buzz of the week 12-May-08

Last 4-6 weeks have been pretty hectic on the personal front, getting me not much of time for any serious blog posting. So many of my cousins got married, got a new house or had their baby named. From this week onwards I want to start a column called "The week that was", where I try to capture interesting things that happened in the telecom world. This is the first such attempt.

1. RIM announces BlackBerry partner fund

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced creation of a fund to invest in Mobile apps and services for both BB platform and other mobile platforms. The apps they are talking about include mobile commerce, advertising, social networking, location-based services, media and entertainment. It is worth noting that the apps under development need not necesarily has to on a BB platform. This should help small companies with interesting idea to test out their stuff on one platform and slowly move to others.

2. Android announces Top 50 apps

• Commandaro – GPS based SN program. Sends out alerts and invites friends based on relevance to a user location
  
• GolfPlay – Support real time necessities of a golf player and acts as a SN to meet local area golfers
  
• Wikitude – Find points of interest based on your current location
• Sustain – Helps to keep your SN alive
• BreadCrumbz – Picture based naivigation
• Cooking Capsule: Convert recipes to a check-list!!
• Eco2Go – Alerts you on alternative public transport, so that you contribute less to the pollution

Overall, one of the dominant theme to be Social Networks (SN) and location based services in the context of SNs. Frankly, I was disappointed to see the list. No "change the world" kind of a stuff, yet.

You can get the complete list here and can see some screen shots here.

3. Alltel commits itself for LTE

Alltel announced that it was committed to evolving its network to LTE over the next five years. The move makes Alltel the second biggest CDMA carrier in the U.S., after Verizon Wireless, to commit to the LTE standard, even though LTE was originally on the GSM evolution path.