Today Google and partners announced the Open Handset Alliance, a group of phone related businesses and technology providers that are committing to develop phones and software with an “open architecture”.   

Although showcasing an actual Google Phone would have been more dramatic, this approach will likely shake up the cell phone world in a variety of ways, especially if this approach gains quick traction in the developer community.   On November 12th Google will make available a free package, the “Android SDK”  which is  a  software kit for phone application developers.   If the Google mapping applications used by the iPhone and the Treo are an indication of the kinds of new phone functionality we can expect from this Google’s expressed goal of trying to create something like a “magic phone” could actually become a reality.  Google asked kids what they’d want in a “magic phone”.    I think this was a neat way of helping adults innovate and think out of the box during the software design phase.