With Apple, you never know who is going to be evil next. Microsoft usually gets the grand prize, but as of late it appears that Google may be getting the cold shoulder for its forays into the mobile word. Apple and Google have historically been very friendly. But in recent months, the tenor of that relationship has changed. Apple rejected Google Voice for the iPhone. And now it appears that the relationship may get a bit cooler with all the talk of a Google phone. As that relationship becomes more distant, it appears that Apple and Microsoft may be warming up a bit, which may prove fruitful for the future of the iPhone in the enterprise. It may also prove beneficial for Microsoft, too, as it is also fighting off Google's efforts to win over the enterprise with its Google Apps productivity applications. Sponsor As PCWorld points out, Microsoft may be smart to team up with Apple. The iPhone is a solid, smart phone. Microsoft could do well by developing applications for the iPhone that serve its customers. Its Exchange Server and Office products still dominate the enterprise. As it is platform agnostic, Microsoft can develop applications for the iPhone that support its customers and protects its market base. Apple needs a good partner like Microsoft to make any significant dent in the enterprise. It does not have the enterprise infrastructure like Research in Motion does with the Blackberry Server. Without an enterprise management service, Apple will find it tough for the iPhone to make any deep play into the corporate world. Further, Google is showing signs that its plans to dominate the Internet is dependent on having hardware to go with its enterprise services and cloud-based operating systems. Google is reaching out to handset and netbook manufacturers. This suits Google's designs on the enterprise. Google Apps are gaining acceptance as a enterprise suite. The Android OS finally seems to be gaining some momentum. And the Chrome OS is a strong contender for the netbook market, especially as Windows 7 shows yet more signs of delays. We expect the enterprise will serve as the place where the battles intensify between Apple and Google. Microsoft has nothing to lose in teaming with Apple to fend off Google, a common rival and current evil force du jour. Discuss

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Will Apple and Microsoft Join Forces To Fight Google?

Location-based social network Brightkite announced this morning that it has added what it calls the first mobile Augmented Reality advertising for US markets to its AR layer in the Layar augmented reality browser. Augmented Reality (AR) is a class of technologies that place data from the web on top of a camera view of the physical world. Layar is a browser for a wide variety of AR data layers, from real-estate listings to government data to messages posted to networks like Brightkite. It is available for Android phones and was available on the iPhone until it was withdrawn from the marketplace last week due to excessive crashes. The Brightkite ads appear to be just for electronics retailer BestBuy so far and are displayed as unique markers in your field of view when pointed towards one of the stores. Sponsor Big round circles have been added to Brightkite annotations of the camera view of users, designating the location of nearby BustBuy stores. The circles join the clearly different annotations for text messages and photos posted by nearby users. The ads are relatively unobtrusive for now. These ads appear in all search results pages, whether they are relevant or not. For example, no one has posted on Brightkite about "pizza" within miles of me for the last 3 days, but a search for pizza displays a number of search results on my phone's radar. It turns out those are the BestBuys in my area. The same results appear in searches for "love" and "flatulence" - it's all BestBuy. If advertising proliferates on platforms like this then it's going to have to become contextual. These are the early days in mobile Augmented Reality advertising, but the field is expected to be big. AR has been become increasingly common in recent months as a gimmick in print ads that can be held up to a webcam to display a 3D image, but we're unaware of previous experiments like what Brightkite is doing on Layar. Is the advertising industry excited about mobile AR advertising? Blake Robinson , Director of Research and Measurement at social media marketing firm Attention , says he is. "If the question is whether or not money will be pumped into mobile AR advertising," he says,"I'd say it's a question of if, but when - and I'd say soon. "For the first time in a long time local businesses could be given opportunities by advertisers to reach not just potential patrons but people who are literally at their doorsteps. There is a lot of potential for good here, a lot of potential for irritation too, but I'm more excited than daunted." Will consumers find the ads more useful than invasive? That's an age-old question in the relationship between advertisers and consumers. Discuss

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Location-Based Ads Come to Augmented Reality in the US

Look at how smart phones are reaching into the enterprise and it's clear a cultural shift is taking place that is transforming the relationship between IT and business users. Smart phones in the enterprise are a user-driven phenomena. People buy smart phones to do work, but also for personal use. IDC is estimating that by 2013, a billion mobile devices will access the Internet. In light of this onslaught, how do IT managers keep things in check? MobileIron believes the trick is in treating smart phones as computers. By employing a data-centric model, IT can manage and control how smart phones are used, while at the same time creating a cooperative environment with users. Sponsor MobileIron uses the data from smart phones to help IT administrators create social graphs for users that gives insights into the business. Call histories and SMS messages are no longer locked in the phone. Instead, the information can be aggregated and analyzed. IT is slowly learning that the days of using command and control tactics are ending. As smart phones become ubiquitous, IT is struggling to keep up with security and the costs of managing how employees access information and applications. Serving as a police agency is ineffective. The real answer is to develop a cooperative culture. For example, MobileIron provides the capabilities for an enterprise to establish its own "app stores." IT can manage what applications may be accessed by users. The MobileIron methods allow for all sorts of opportunities. Costly roaming charges can be monitored as can service quality. MobileIron demonstrates how smart phones are becoming an icon for cultural change in the enterprise. In many ways, the social Web is changing how we view the way we work. The advent of smart phones accelerates that shift and will force the enterprise to alter the way IT has historically worked with business users. Discuss

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Smart Phones Show How the Times are a Changing

It's official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win. Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn't play nicely with Gears, Google has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn't yet ready and isn't supported by commercially available browsers. Oh, the humanity... or rather, the machinery. Sponsor In the mists of time, back when Gears first launched , we wrote, "We've written many times before about the need for offline web app access... And guess who is most at risk with this announcement? Yes, Microsoft. Google after all has many of the top 'best of breed' web apps now." This was before Google's Chrome browser had hit the scene, and the Gears project was a collaborative effort between Goog, Opera, and Mozilla. But in our coverage of last year's Google I/O conference, we wrote of Gears, "We question whether offline access is even necessary. After all... in today's world, you're never too far from an internet connection. We concluded that offline access is important now, but less important with each passing day." Not only could Gears be used to take online data offline; Google had more in store for Gears users. A few short months later, Google announced a geolocation API for mobile devices running Gears. We wrote, "We think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them." But the party ended with Snow Leopard's release. A change in the newest Mac OS prevents Gears from running on newer Mac computers. Whether or not the relationship is one of causation or mere correlation, Google is now abandoning Gears. As one Google rep told the L.A. Times , "We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites." Believe us Google, no one is looking forward to the cross-browser, cross-OS implementation of HTML5 as much as we are. Discuss

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Google Dumps Gears for HTML5