Android

I purchased the Motrola Milestone (Android Phone) from Telus pretty much the day it was available in Canada. Why? Well, I get a big kick out of being different. Practically everyone I know owns an iPhone and so frankly, it’s become old – past it’s prime.

It’s a great phone and I love the Android Operating system. I’m not going to talk about why you should choose Android over the iPhone… there are lots of blog posts on that. However, what I will say is that I have yet to find one unique point about Android that is noteworthy. Sure, it’s an open source operating system and Apple is all about closed systems – but, does the average consumer really care? When the iPhone first came out, it was different – really different – people talked about it.

As an early adopter that loves to talk to others about new gadgets, I can’t think of a single major differentiating factor to sell Android to my friends. In Seth Godin terminology, I can’t point out the Purple Cow. I am still stuck with the old 2.01 version of Android, and I hear that there are some cool things coming out in the next version but I really hope that the Android guys are thinking about building that one major differentiating factor that the iPhone won’t have. In order to help the concept become truly viral, early adopters need something to talk about, plain and simple.

First of all, it’s been 8 months since my last blog post. That’s actually quite ridiculous, I agree. I would say that I was “busy” as most people do – however, I really hate that word – and so I won’t. Plain and simple, I have no excuse

The good news, though, is that I finally decided to give FourSquare a try on my new Motorola Milestone by Telus. It’s a pretty cool app. Essentially, the app allows you to “check in” to different locations in your city – or around the world – same concept as checking into a hotel. Whenever you check into a location, you get points. If you add a location into the app that didn’t exist before, you get even more points. It’s essentially a game – as with most games, the more points you have, the better off you are… surprise!

The most interesting part of all of this is that some local stores have begun rewarding people who check in a lot to their location. If you are the person who checks in the most to a specific location, you become the “mayor” of that location. Some pubs for example, offer a free drink to their “mayor”. Today, I added two new locations to FourSquare… give it a try… it’s quite entertaining