Just because you talk out loud while you’re alone and hear voices in your head doesn’t mean you’re crazy.

And just because it’s Google Now you’re conversing with doesn’t mean you’re not crazy.

Crazy or not, we’re all going to have an invisible friend in the form of an everywhere, always-listening, always present Google Now.

Dear Handset Maker:

Your company and hundreds of others are engaged in an epic battle for the smartphone handset market, which within a year or two will exceed a billion customers and $150 billion a year in revenue.

Don’t you want a big piece of that? Because if you do, you’re not acting like it.

Samsung gets most of the market share and some of the profits. Apple gets most of the profits and some of the market share. But Samsung fears with justification that its lead is slipping away to lower-cost and more aggressive vendors. Apple’s momentum has slowed horribly with the onslaught of Android phones.

The rest of you handset makers — let’s face it — are scrambling for crumbs on the floor.

Instead of taking one of the known-bad losing strategies, why don’t you try the obvious winning strategy?

I’m going to describe the losing strategies, then spell out the winning one.

Douglas Engelbart died this week. But his most iconic idea lives on.

The venerable computer mouse, originally prototyped as a pine box with three buttons and metal wheels, was dreamed up by Englebart fifty years ago.

The mouse has been upgraded and re-envisioned — for example, they don’t use wheels or even trackballs anymore. Some have scroll wheels on top, or side buttons.

But the basic idea of moving a thing over here (to control a mouse pointer over there) lives on. Entire generations have grown up using this funky contraption.

We now suddenly find ourselves in a world of superior alternatives — multi-touch user interfaces (of which Android is the leading brand), voice control and dictation and others.

Yet habit and inertia keep us using Englebart’s brilliant but now-obsolete invention.

It’s time to bury the mouse.

Rumors about a coming smartwatch from Google were fortified this week when The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was, in fact, working on an Android-powered wristwatch, according to people familiar with the matter.

When the Journal starts talking about matters about which people are familiar, you can assume they’re reporting something more solid than rumor. We can move the Google smartwatch likelihood needle up to 95% at this point.

As a heavy user of Google services, I really want a great, Google-centric smartwatch.

But what would such a watch do?

I have a theory. And if my theory is correct, then we should be able to speculate about what the watch’s actual specifications, functionality and user interface will be.

First, the theory.

People love large and shiny objects. So we can be forgiven for being absolutely blown away by Google’s idea of relaying IP across the skies via giant balloons to remote areas where Internet connectivity would otherwise not exist.

The most jaw-dropping aspect of the Loon project is the fact that the system uses algorithms to convert published windspeed and direction data into navigation using algorithms. (Balloons are moved by finding an altitude at which the air is moving in the right direction.)

So much about this project is dazzling — the scope and audacity of it; the solar-powered servers-in-the-sky; and the fact that balloons will deliver the Internet to remote areas — that the core aspect of Loon is easy to overlook.

The key thing about Loon is mesh networking.