1. Smart to target China market right from the beginning

2. Hard to penetrate China market since R&D was not done with the Chinese in mind right from inception ..?

3. Really difficult to break through duopoly of iOS and Android without critical mass, and to achieve critical mass is almost impossible

4. Just an alliance with D.Mobile may be futile. But with Tencent’s involvement – this could mean something.

Here Comes the First Real Alternative to iPhone and Android

Source: QZ

Simply love the spirit of sharing!

There was OpenIDEO and Innocentive. Now there’s NapkinLabs too.

“….An off-the-shelf crowdsourcing platform will let companies create “challenges” to gather insight, and guide users with a series of design-focused exercises….”

Via FastCoDesign.

Yeps, totally agree with the fact that Google’s next step is really to look into making hardware specs consistent to prevent fragmentation, given its kind of business model with the myriad phone manufacturers (unlike Apple’s exclusive model). Otherwise, Google may die in its own hands if not managed properly. Luckily they realise this in time! I still love my Android!

 ”We heard last week that Google was suddenly being quite protective of its Android 3.0 Honeycomb code, and that the few OEM makers like Motorola who’d got their hands on the system may be just lucky early beneficiaries of Google’s OS. Now there’s more detailed information coming out of Google’s suppliers, that suggests Google has actually dramatically changed tack for its latest incarnation of Android. Compared to the free-for-all for prior Android versions, which has resulted in millions of sales but an incredible variety of Android-powered devices, not all of which result in customer satisfaction due to hardware foibles or inability to access the Marketplace to run apps, Google is pushing for strict hardware standardization for Honeycomb.”

Via FastCompany.

A joint collaboration between Google & IBM Research.

“Visuals are cognitively efficient” and they are critical in the new journalism arena.

Journalism in the Age of Data from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

Try it here.

BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® Tablet OS

Sometimes, we just need to put some thoughts into how a lot of our day-to-day experiences can be translated to a more engaging, social manner simply through design and technology.

Just like reading.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

A bank which truly understands consumers, and willing to go the extra mile.

The Future of Self-Service Banking from IDEO on Vimeo.

Wow, the kind of interactive catalogue I would like to ideally have for themannequeen. Users can browse a lot of (branded) denim content, celebrities and designers videos as well as music. Also, consumers can probably purchase straight off from the app too. Cool eh.

I guess I can only dream on….

Via itunes app store.

On a slightly different note, Gap has also developed a FB app called Lookbook which allows you to pick and match your outfit and then direct you to the Gap online store.

One disappointing aspect though – I would think it’d be better if the redirect actually points to the respective chosen apparels’ pages rather than the generic lookbook denim page. I’m sure to do this, backend will definitely have a dozen and one restrictions. So I guess it’s good enough for now.

If you are very used to Mac’s drag and drop, you will be happy to know this!

Via gmailblog.