Google is taking a break from technology ventures to invest in people. The tech company is investing $28 million in a low-income section of Boston, Massachusetts, with 240 new housing units. Perhaps the housing will include some modern technology?

We're often times asked why we chose Android as the first platform to launch Zazu on. There were a number of reasons that can be summarized quite easily:

Android was easier to program for. When we started out back in December, iPhone was inherently incapable of running a simple non-invasive app like an alarm clock. Android on the other hand came preset with an alarm content provider.

Back in December, we were all still looking at what was the calm before the storm of Android adoption. Many of the users we wanted feedback from were still young, male, gadgetry loving early adopters. The openness of the Android platform also made it simpler to distribute the app in a private beta as well.

As we worked away over summer, we kept hearing the buzz that Android was growing and nipping away at the heals of iPhone, BB and even the global giant Symbian. It was definitely a great encouragement. I wont go into crazy numbers, but what was most important was that 1 in 3 smart phones being sold in the US was an Android and Gartner published yesterday that 25.5% of the global smart phone market share is now dominated by Android. You can find all of it here: http://bit.ly/9qEC29 and it's becoming obvious now that we continuously hear the Android SMS alert in the cubes around us in MassChallenge.

Looking back, we're happy to have chosen Android as the first market to launch in, our beta testers were awesome, and we got support from the Google team in Boston which Apple wouldn't have thought twice about saying no to us.