Worst of the Week: Awesome Androids

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Forgive me if this edition of WOTW is a bit stale as I am still trying to pick myself up after the miserable letdown that was the Google “Android” announcement from earlier this week. I have tried the normal means of waking myself from a malaise including ingesting dozens of cans of Red Bull and avoiding all communications with Mike Dano, but the let down from the announcement seems to have been too great.
Last week, my esteemed colleague Mr. Dano, by which I mean he is full of steam, used this space to extol what he hopped would be Google’s plans for the mobile space, and a quick review of those comments showed he could not have been any more wrong.
But enough about Dano being wrong-though I could go on for days about other things he has been wrong about-and let’s take a look at what Google did announce and thus the cause of my malaise.
“Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform,” so explained Google’s Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin on the company’s official blog.
I have but two words for this announcement: Yawn and Android.
Yawn, as in this is so not exciting and whenever companies start spewing about “ecosystems” and “platforms” half of my already minor brain activity goes into sleep mode. I barely have enough synapses firing to support being alive.
Android, as in that is the most awesome name for anything that involves an ecosystem or platform.
After hearing the name I immediately began to picture a young Daryl Hannah bouncing around a room trying to kill Harrison Ford. And that is the only thing that saves the announcement, a killing Daryl Hannah.
Other awesome androids that also come to mind include C3PO, T-1000, Fembots, The Gunslinger and Steve Jobs. All awesome androids.
As for all the world-changing improvements promised from Android, who cares? We need to continue focusing on the possibility that any handset manufacturer that implements the Android platform will in essence be creating a sort of Transformer that can change from being a boring cellphone into a person-killing Daryl Hannah android.
OK! Enough of that. Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
–We received word earlier this week that Acme Packet Inc., which as we all know is provider of session border control solutions as well as generic versions of every product ever produced, posted solid third quarter financial results and raised its business outlook for the full year. No word as to whether an increase in giant slingshots and extra-large bottle rocket sales in the Southwest were the cause for the revised outlook.
–Props to Motorola who earlier this week made a big to-do about the Crystaltalk technology in its new Motopure H12 Bluetooth headset. The handset giant conducted a world-wide webcast touting the headset and sound-cancelling technology with a couple of execs giving their presentations near busy, and presumably noisy, intersections. And in case you missed the beginning of this paragraph, this was all for a Bluetooth headset.
–On-again, off-again lovers MetroPCS and Leap appear to be off again as MetroPCS late last week pulled its offer to “merge” with its low-cost wireless rival. MetroPCS noted in its diary that, “While there is widespread investor and analyst enthusiasm for a merger between the two companies, MetroPCS has not been able to engage Leap in meaningful negotiations regarding MetroPCS’ merger proposal.” Very touching. All this telecom tango is missing is a trailer park and an appearance on Jerry Springer to make it complete.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@crain.com.