Go Open Mobile in 2007: Get Off of Cingular/AT&T and Your Proprietary Operating System
Yes, over the last few months I have actively adapted my habits and purchases. Back when the issue of AT&T allowing the NSA to do wiretapping, and before I read these things today, I decided I would get off of Cingular and AT&T and move my services to tmobile for mobile data/cell and someone else for broadband.
Well, I swapped services a couple of months ago and am quite happy with the swap, both conceptually and personallyl. I also decided to upgrade my phone to a PDA/smartphone. I picked the tmobile dash because I wanted to support a generic phone device (the phone equivalent to a generic pc) and I also wanted to get linux on the device as soon as possible. Plus, it has wifi, EDGE data. 2 megapixel camera, qwerty keyboard, X, Y and Z, which satisfies some part of my tech obsession (even though I realize it is near pointless). However, the problem persists that I’m now using slowwwww as molasses Windows Mobile (notice I linked to wikipedia, this is the new 2007 habit rather than not linking). I did pick this though because I thought it would annoy me to the point of contributing time and development to getting linux onto this device, which is slowly beginning.
I believe though this landscape all might change once openmoko.org is released this month, an open source project around an open cellphone (there are 83 people in the #openmoko on irc.freenode.net chat channel right now!). Coincidentally, I will be in Taipei, Taiwan to present at “Open & Free: New Enterprise in the Information Age — An International Workshop” January 10, 2007 and will hopefully meet up with some openmoko people to figure out how to get open content onto these devices. I think this is a fascinating place to see open content. Go Open Mobile in 2007!
NOTICE: I didn’t say this is the year of open mobile or make a damned end of year/prediction/list.
83 people in #openmoko, and the only q you read any more is: “when is release? can i preorder”
oh wait, someone asked about battery life three days ago, so thats not _entirely_ true. seriously though, the phone will kick ass.
Comment by rektide — January 5, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
Yeah, hopefully after their launch hopefully the entire process will open up more and take all those developers even more seriously.
I would even like to see this open phone be an open business.
What are you interested in rektide?
Comment by jon — January 5, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
Jon, if you’ve not seen it, http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2007Jan/ces20070109001296.htm has photos (though maybe you saw it yourself already?
and http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/010907-moss-pultz.html has an interview with Sean. Also very interesting for me in the UK is http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1973885,00.html 
Comment by davelab6 — January 12, 2007 @ 7:10 am
[...] it is so great to see the concerns about mobile phones getting addressed and encourage developers and others to look at OpenMoko. The OpenMoko code and devices are coming [...]
Pingback by OpenMoko and Open Content on Open Devices at rejon.org is Jon Phillips. — October 29, 2007 @ 5:49 pm