No longer an issue of hardware:

Stacked up side by side the Nexus One has better hardware than the iPhone but that is a meaningless fact as Apple can ultimately upgrade iPhone’s hardware for future releases. Differentiating phones by upgrading hardware as the unique differentiator is a strategy doomed to failure similarly to what is happening with desktop computers. Image and price will take a bigger part in the decision making process. Over time, and maybe it has already begun, consumers are worrying less about hardware and more about features and image.

Nuance Communications bought SpinVox for $102.5M which was a combined $66M in cash and $36.5M in stock. This purchase was a steep decrease from the rumored $150M Nuance was considering, and an especially low amount when compared to the roughly $200M already invested in the company.

So it seems Twitter has gone holiday shopping by buying Mixer Labs, the developer of GeoAPI.

I highly recommend watching this video but if you want the lessons learned and advice given in shorter format, please read on.

If you are not familiar with “augmented reality” or Pranav Mistry than I recommend you take a few minutes to watch this TED video. Initially I was introduced to this particular MIT project in February of 2009 when an earlier video was posted on TED (www.TED.com). This earlier video is also viewable at the bottom of the page.