Knock, knock- who's there? Not Microsoft

When you weren't looking, Google went and did something very sneaky, and veeeeerrrry cool.

If you've got an iPhone, or an Android-based phone, you can now edit your Google Spreadsheets. Not a lot, but some. And, as we all know, Google is like a locomotive: once they get rolling on a feature set, they just keep coming, and with a helluva lot of mass behind them.

I wonder what Steve Ballmer was doing while Google burned up the mobile phone world? Bill Gates wouldn't know, because he's banned Apple products in his house. (Seriously.)

One step closer to Star Trek

Question:  What's more impressive than the iPhone?  

Answer:     The iPhone hacking community.

The video here demonstrates a movement known as "mainstreaming," which, in this case, is all about making the iPhone a true mobile computing platform, by enabling it to connect to an external keyboard.  The magic happens via Bluetooth, so you have a tidy, wireless connection, but it requires a jailbroken iPhone.  Don't ask me if it works; I don't have the cajones to jailbreak my phone.  But thank goodness these guys do.

"What about an external monitor for the iPhone?" I hear you say.  You mean, like your high-def LCD TV?  Already here.

This puts us one step closer to Philip Greenspun's ubiquitous Device, and that much closer to the Star Trek communicator. 

Google keeps bringing the heat

Google just announced Tasks for mobile devices, including the iPhone.

ToodleDo's otherwise excellent iPhone app and Web service, which replaced my ToDo app, which replaced my OmniFocus app, may have just been replaced.

Yes, I do get tired of spending time and energy to divine the "ultimate" app for my purposes. But some of that is just the cost of doing business, and my feeling is that the effort will pay off in the end with slightly increased productivity, and greatly increased peace of mind. Part of the appeal of these apps to me is the "external brain pack" factor, which allows me to quickly offload my vagrant thoughts onto a more permanent medium. That medium used to be a lined sticky note stuck inside my daily calendar/journal thingy. It was a good, flexible, and simple system, which has been surprisingly hard to beat. But it was also not traceable, and it was hard to track both new, unprocessed thoughts, and sorted "to dos" all in the same space. It became unwieldy after a while. Capturing new to dos electronically, with online sync, is a little more sterile, but a lot more scalable and reassuring.

The new service is still buggy, as you can see in the below photo, so I'd give it a month or two. But after that, look out.

Phone projector

Logic Wireless is releasing the Logic Bolt, a phone with a built-in projector, next month, for about $450.

One of the reasons I bought the iPhone was to consolidate my primary mobile tools: phone, full contacts database, calculator, calendar, notes, to-do list, maps, iPod, and to get wireless access to my email and a good (!) Web browser. The Treo did a pretty good job of that (for example, it never replaced my iPod or paper calendar and to-do list). The iPhone does it much better.

My friend Kai and I are both speakers. Sometimes, it is necessary to have an LCD projector, but they are bulky to carry when traveling. Even small ones get heavy when lugging around in an airport. If this phone/projector technology works, then it could, at the very least, lead to a micro-sized projector that is much easier to carry. At best, it could be incorporated into a smart phone that caters to speakers, trainers, and C-suite execs.

I doubt that that the iPhone would be able to incorporate projector technology and retain it's design aesthetic, unless maybe it used LED technology. Hmmm...