Google's open source mobile platform, code name Android, has finally been released to the public, and was officially demonstrated last week on T-Mobile's first Android based handset device, the G1, also known as the HTC Dream, by HTC.

The Telegraph, Britain's number one newspaper website, has reviewed the G1 phone, compared it to Apple's iPhone, and compiled short review quotes from several of the best and well known technology critics on the internet such as TechCrunch, CNET, and Gizmodo.

I am a Mac user, I respect Apple, and I think that the iPhone is a cool and innovative device/gadget, but one of the thumbs down for me was complete absence of a full qwerty keyboard. I spend a lot of time on my phone responding to emails, texting, and researching the web so the ability to type quickly is very important to me...I like the feedback!

The price of the HTC Dream will be priced at $179, with a 2 year contract with T-Mobile (not bad). From the looks of it, it has everything I need: a large sliding screen (touch screen), and a full qwerty keyboard. On the  Software side, based on this Android Demo, the new mobile platform looks blazing fast on the G1, and is very promising.

Application wise, I am looking forward to ShopSavvy; a tool that turns the G1's camera into a barcode scanner, allowing the user to photograph the barcode from any product one may want to buy, then searches the internet to find the cheapest price out there for that particular item...pretty cool huh! You can check our more Android applications on the Android Market.

I must note that I do not plan on switching to T-mobile anytime soon, but I do hope that HTC is open minded enough to have an unlocked version of the G1 for the rest of mobile community to use...I won't mind paying a few extra dollars for an unlocked G1 warranted by the manufacturer...something Apple will probably never bother entertaining!

Google has just released a new browser called Google Chrome. Take a few moments to read up on it on the google site.

I am excited about it, mainly because it's from google, and because google stuff just works. Google Chrome is basic, lightweight, and really does make it seem like the internet just got faster. The menus and options are short, simple, and straight forward. I was up and running in less than one minute after installation.

As of today, there is no release of Chrome for Mac OS X. Being that I am a Mac user, I am currently using it on a Vmware instance of Windows XP on my MacBook Pro until google releases a working version for Mac.

A few minutes ago, I encountered a bug, which caused the flash plugin in Chrome to crash...and here is what showed up on my screen!!!