Well, today we're pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a Google hosted web store. The goal of this new consumer channel is to provide an efficient way to connect Google's online users with selected Android devices. We also want to make the overall user experience simple: a simple purchasing process, simple service plans from operators, simple and worry-free delivery and start-up.

The first phone we'll be selling through this new web store is the Nexus One — a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet. Nexus One is an exemplar of what's possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket. The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call "superphones." It's the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.

Today Google launched the Nexus One, in collaboration with HTC. Built by HTC, designed and branded by Google, and launched on T-Mobile's network, they now have their own "superphone".

I don't see the big deal. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington seems to like it so much that you get the impression that he'd marry it if he could, while Engadget is considerably less impressed. Honestly, I don't see the big deal. It's yet another Android phone. That's not a bad thing per se, and it's the best Android phone to date, but it's also nothing to get excited about.

My biggest problem with the new device is that it has even worse stated battery life than the iPhone – in some cases, 33% less. How is this even remotely acceptable anymore? The reason I moved away from the iPhone was because the battery life was abysmal. You can't rely on a phone when it's dead. The Nexus One has a beautiful 800x480 OLED display... but what good is it if you have to set the brightness to 10%?

What is pretty cool is that this shows actual progress towards a more open mobile communication structure in the US. The Nexus One probably wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for T-Mobile, who has will fully support, and even subsidize the fully unlocked device. T-Mobile recently changed their business mode in a wayl which provides support for unlocked devices by providing low cost, no contract plans for voice, text and data.

As someone who now uses T-Mobile, I'm glad to see that there are more big releases coming to the only carrier willing to sell unlocked, unhindered devices, but I'm not about to rush out and buy a phone that will be dead before lunch time.

To begin with, one of the more surprising reveals that came out of yesterday's news is that the OS cannot be installed on your own computer. Oh sure, there are downloads available that use Google's open-sourced code to create bootable builds tech-savvy users and developers can play with, but the official word from the search giant is that anyone wanting to use the "real" Google Chrome OS will have to purchase a new netbook to do so. You cannot simply download it from the web and install it on any machine.

Yesterday, Google released the source for their new Chrome OS – a super-lightweight Linux distribution that only runs their Chrome browser and Google Gears. It's basically a new window manager running on top of the Linux kernel. Most of the big tech blogs slammed it for not being a "real" operating system and calling it a huge disappointment. What the hell are they talking about?

I read the snippet above and started wondering what's wrong with some of these tech blogs. Why has the editorial level of the content fallen to the level of the comments on Digg or YouTube? The articles on TechCrunch and Mashable were no better. Why are people who know nothing about Linux writing about a new Linux distribution? They all rush to get articles out the door as fast as possible and then they end up writing ignorant nonsense. The big three web technology blogs (TechCrunch, Mashable, and ReadWriteWeb) now routinely write articles about things they know nothing about, or products and services they've never used. What is this?

... anyone wanting to use the "real" Google Chrome OS will have to purchase a new netbook to do so.

The source is available in full. Anyone who wants to use the "real" Google Chrome OS can compile it from source – just like every other linux distribution. Since when is compiling from source not real? Google has simply chosen not to use a standard library of drivers in the OS they seed to OEMs. In fact, they may leave it up to OEM manufacturers to develop driver packages themselves. In any event, the OSS community will likely develop a set of drivers for the Chrome OS in no time. It all ready works in a virtual machine. That's a good start.

I thought that the Chrome OS was a brilliant idea. One of the biggest problems I have with modern notebooks, netbooks and smart-phones is that the battery life is abysmal. An operating system that's designed to only run web applications could run with a very low CPU footprint. I, for one, welcome an era of netbooks that last all day on a single charge.

So what’s the catch? The only catch is money. As long as you’re willing to pay the minimum of $20 a day, Reddit will enter you into a pool with everyone else willing to pay to determine how much face time you’ll get on the homepage. For example, if the total bids for the day equal $200, and you bid the minimum $20, you’ll get 10% of the day in this ad slot. It seems very likely that the daily bids are going to be quite a bit more than that, so $20 probably isn’t going to buy you much, but still, it will get you something.

It seems as if Reddit has adopted the same ad model that I played with at a startup a few years ago. I actually wrote a post about this earlier this week, and an in-depth review of what we did and how it worked on my works blog just last week.

Reddit has essentially adopted the "variable CPM" model that I talked about. Well, not essentially. It is. Someone has finally gone ahead and done it. I knew it was just a matter of time before advertising itself became democratized. I actually wrote an email to both Digg and Reddit about this after Digg launched their Digg Ads platform. I never heard back. I wonder if someone over at Reddit read my email.

I'm definitely interested to learn out how this pans out for Reddit. We always thought that for individuals, the model was most compelling if you aggregated all their content together to create a larger pool of impressions; but for huge networks (like Reddit) the model actually works better if it's reversed. That is, if the advertiser can choose which individual page it is they want to place their ad on and you have multiple pools going on for every given piece of content. This way there is an incentive for people to advertise on stories and content that they speculate might become popular or viral, so they can catalyze on the low initial cost of those impressions before everyone else joins the pool. Of course, this requires a more transparent marketplace and the ability to actually track what's going on in real time, but it's completely possible – I should know.

I guess my post on Monday really was spot on. Thanks, Reddit.