On the Mobile Internet Device front, I personally think that Amazon and Apple could corner the MID market overnight with a Kindle built upon the same OS as the iPhone.  The Kindle is too large to replace the iPhone, G1 or any other smart-phone, but Amazon could offer us the larger screen we want for web browsing, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a cellular phone.  Not to mention the idea that the titles bought for the Kindle could come from the iTunes store or Amazon, then be stored inside the Amazon cloud for when you need more space on the Kindle device.  This is a wishful stretch, I know, but it is a nice thought.  Not to mention all of the other problems that would stand in the way of these two companies working together, like the Amazon MP3 store, and Apple’s long-term goals of cloud-based computing as well.

There has been some movement in taking the virtual world platform Second Life to the mobile market.  Both Sun and Samsung have demonstrated working applications of the online world in the past, but just last month Vollee released a Second Life client for the Nokia N96 3G phone.  This ties into the idea that our online world is coming closer and closer into synch with our real life persona.

If you have ever spent any time in the Google Earth application, you might have seen the 3D buildings inside the application.  To the left, I have included a screen captured image of downtown Denver, Colorado.  Notice anything peculiar about the 3D building?  They have accurate images of their exteriors!  People went out and built factual representations of those structures, right down to the images on the exterior walls.  The current problem is that there are no interiors within the Google Earth application.  So if you office on the 38th floor of a building in your downtown metro, too bad… people will never see your logo in that area.  Google Earth has no way to get someone into a building.  Oh wait, Google bought an in-game advertising company called Adscape almost two years ago, and has recently been rumored to be in talks with Valve, maker of fanboy favorite Half-Life.  So why don’t we just assume that Google is serious on the virtual words front? And we already know that Google is serious about mobile.

Lastly, I want to consider the paradigm of the Three Screens.  It all began on the all mighty television screen.  Content was created for that screen in abundance, and still is, but then something happened.  The Internet sprang forth the second screen, the computer screen, and for a long time we were content with those two screens. Then we wanted a convergence of the content between screens one and two, and so we had that, too.  Then the the mobile phone market gave us faster download speeds and more power processors — so now we want that same content there, too.

Only AT&T has made a concerted effort to develop a Three Screens strategy so far.  The rest of the providers seem to be attacking on disconcerted fronts, under leadership of various offices and without a noticeable strategy.  If you have seen some good examples of a combined Internet, television, and mobile content delivery mechanism, share it with me in the comments below.

By the way, if you are not already on Twitter, start tonight.  If you are in the twitterverse, follow me here, and also follow Amazon MP3 for some really great music deals.  Amazon is using marketing on Twitter to huge benefit, is your company?

Links of Interest:

• Google Earth
• Second Life
• Twinity
• Intel Mobile Internet Devices
• Vollee
• Amazon MP3

Matt Williamson
twitter.com/mattwilliamson
matt@technologystory.com

As one more sign that the Singularity is coming, Jott.com is offering a free transcription service to the masses.  Well, sorta.  Jott turns any phone into a personal assistant that can quickly and easily transcribe your message into an email and send it to you, or who ever you wish, as long as the email address for that person is in your contacts on the Jott site.

Users signup for the  service, validate their email address and phone number, and then can use the system at will by call the toll-free phone number.  You can just dial, tell it who you want the message to be sent to, speak for up to 30 seconds at which point the service will email or text your message to whom ever you told it to at the begining of the call.  They are using a mix of human and machine translation services to offer you the transcription for free right now, but I can see this being ad supported one day soon.

An email is sent out with your message in it and an embedded link back to Jott where the recipient can listen to the message, just in case they might not have understood something.  I tried it out a few times today and found it flawless so far.  I also imported my entire Outlook contact file and sent out some test messages to some coworkers, all went smoothly.

What is impressive to me is not so much what they are doing or how they are doing it, just that we have people will to make this service and they rely upon the idea of ad supported revenue to make it fly.  Do I think people would pay for this?  Maybe, but not millions of people, no.  But if it is free and you can get a share of the market, like the high school and college crowds, they yeah, it will be something that gets used and therefore has worth in the Internet-based market.

So if you need to remind yourself to get eggs and the dry cleaning on the way home, or maybe you want to tell your partner to call a hot lead, give Jott a try.

The interesting Website of the day: GrandCentral – sticking with today’s theme of convergence, I wanted to share GrandCentral with you.  GrandCentral’s service allows you to seamlessly link all of your phone numbers to one number.  So your home phone, office phone and cell phone can all be reached by dialing one number. Then you can set rules to who rings through to which number or in what order the system tries to find you in.  I can tell the service that when Scott calls me I want him to ring directly through to my cell phone, but if my neighbor calls send it straight to the home number.  Both called one phone number, with different results.  Google acquired Grand Central last July of 2007 and though so far has made little or no changes, I would expect to see the service folded into another offering or just consumed entirely at some point.