In an effort to force users of its HTC Dream to do a software update that fixes a 911 call bug, Rogers has disconnected Internet from all its Android customers. Here’s the full text I just received on my phone:

Rogers/Fido Safety Message: URGENT Reminder 911 Calls HTC Dream software update: Mandatory software update is now available to help ensure 911 calls are completed from your phone. Please go immediately to rogers.com/dreamsoftwareupdate on your PC to download.

In order to help ensure 911 calls are completed internet access was temporarily disabled on your phone at 01/24/10 6:00AM EST. To reactivate internet service, please complete your software update immediately. Upon completion, internet access will be re enabled within 24 hours.

For users of Macintosh and Windows 7, please call 1- 888-764-3771(1-888-ROGERS1) for update instructions.

We apologize for the inconvenience but we prioritize customer safety above all.

The issue stems from a requirement that 911 services have access to GPS data, but it’s worsened by the fact that Rogers insists on using its own version of Google’s Android OS, with its own restrictions and application icons, rather than staying in step with a more broadly tested operating system.

Other carriers, such as T-Mobile, unlock handsets that are purchased outright, leaving the choice of operating system and upgrades to the user. Two weeks ago, for example, I bought a Nokia handset at a T-Mobile store for the full $50 price, and within 24 hours of asking, T-Mobile had sent me the unlock code. Canadian carriers don’t buy this; in fact, they claim that unlocking a phone constitutes copyright infringement.

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I’m in San Diego today with Lenny Rachitsky of Webmetrics, talking about possibilities for cloud research. We were discussing App Engine penetration, and fired off some searches to try and see how much attention the Google Platform-as-a-Service is getting. This is speculative at best, and fairly imprecise; but we did see some surprising things.

The trick here is that every Google App Engine site has a name that ends in appspot.com. You can call your new site whatever you want (mysite.com), but there’s a default name for it (mysite.appspot.com). And that makes it searchable.

First of all — how many are there? Well, according to Google’s own search, around 221,000. But what’s most interesting is that the top-ranked ones aren’t in North America. Many of them are Chinese, or Indian. Some of them are phishing sites (such as this one that is a pixel-for-pixel copy of Twitter — don’t log in.) Looks like the free trial and easy enrolment in the service make it appealing for certain markets.

Where’s the word “Appspot” being searched for? Once again, we turn to Google — this time their Insight for Search service — and see that China and Japan are where most of the discussion’s going on about “appspot”; for “appspot.com”, however, it looks like it’s North America.

It’s not clear that App Engine is getting the broad adoption of other cloud platforms, like Amazon. For one thing, it’s a Platform, not Infrastructure, model, which makes it less attractive for enterprises. There are concerns over portability, particularly for people who code to Google’s APIs for storage. But if these searches are anything to go by, it’s getting attention in some parts of the world.

Back in mid-2008, Twitter was just another Web 2.0 application. Industry watchers were beginning to take notice of its million or so users and speculate if it might be the start of something bigger, but most people hadn’t heard of it or didn’t “get it”. Here at Bitcurrent we pondered the rise of microblogging and the scaling problems ahead, noting a few teething problems along the way.

Towards the end of 2008, people outside of tech circles began to take notice, especially when it became a key form of communication during the Mumbai terror attacks in November. In December it became clear that Twitter was not just another social site, but a protocol for a new form of communication. By the end of the year, people were exploring all sorts of new uses for Twitter, and the Twitter pantomime was born.

But 2009 was the year that Twitter really took the world by storm.

We didn’t imagine that we’d be writing so much about Twitter in 2009, but being focused as we are on technology and how it changes society, it turned out to be inevitable as Twitter became more and more a part of our online lives and went mainstream. Here’s a look back at 2009 through the eyes of Twitter, including all the Twitter stories we covered across the year:

January 2009

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