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OTOH, if a traffic app were to do both, that would give more data than either alone. I can't be the first programmer to have had that thought. ;-)

In any case, there have been many reports that google maps is collecting some of the traffic data from phones running their software. Here's one of the earlier stories that a quick google search turned up, from about a year ago. It's not hard to find other stories about this topic. This story has the additional comment that, at the time, the iPhone was unusual in that it didn't feed data back to the google traffic database. This has supposedly been fixed in the past year.

I'd think that a sensible design would be to try to consolidate the data from mobile "smart phones" with the data from various highway agencies that monitor traffic. Of course, this would depend on which countries, states, provinces, cities, whatever that you could get data from. There's also the problem that no two of them would be expected to use the same data formats. But we have a lot of smart programmers, right? And the task is easily modularized, since you basically need one package per input source that translates that source's data format to whatever format your database wants.

Also people who buy Android tend to be cheaper, thus buying the cheaper Android devices, and are less likely to spend a lot of money on apps.

That's funny, because the best selling android phone costs exactly the same as an iPhone 4 with the same capacity. Maybe android phone buyers aren't cheaper, but more picky.

You also have to add in that Verizon enjoys screwing with their customers phone far more than AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint does. Their "dumb" phones are locked down to where you can do almost nothing more than call, text and take pictures with almost no customization and they replaced Blackberry user's search engine with Bing (see http://jkontherun.com/2009/12/17/verizon-bing-make-google-go-boom-on-blackberry/ ).

I think the main problem is the fact that there is nearly no real competition among the big cell phone providers. Look at AT&T, yeah, they are willing to do smear ad campaigns against Verizon and Verizon is willing to do the same to AT&T yet both seem more hell-bent to screw their customers more than actually change anything. Verizon seems to insist on castrating their phones, yeah, things have gotten better, yeah, they got the Droid which is perhaps one of the best phones of the year and one of the most open phones, but at the same time they screw their BlackBerry customers by trying to integrate Bing in there rather than whatever search provider the customer wants ( see http://jkontherun.com/2009/12/17/verizon-bing-make-google-go-boom-on-blackberry/ )

If a single telecom could get A) Amazing coverage B) Fast networks C) Good phones D) Openness it would be great. But instead we get AT&T the overpriced carrier with good coverage, a fast 3G network and decent phones. Verizon, another overpriced network with good coverage, a -huge- 3G network, and phones that are castrated. T-Mobile which has good support (look at how they supported unlocked iPhones http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/05/tmobile-tech-support-hearts-unlocked-iphones.html ), open phones, but has a tiny 3G network and generally spotty coverage. And Sprint which is nice and cheap and has unlimited plans, has decent phones, but coverage just isn't quite there yet.

http://jkontherun.com/2009/02/03/mimo-little-displays-add-extra-touchscreen-to-your-netbook/

this looks to be almost what I want.

"As far as running Android 2.0, anyone with an Android phone can upgrade to that. That's one of the great things about Android in the first place." http://jkontherun.com/2009/08/17/no-further-android-updates-for-g1-no-sense-for-mytouch-3g/ Actually, there have been rumors that the G1 can't get any more updates for android due to hardware limitations. They just rolled out Text-To-Speech with Donut, and I am not sure what's coming out in Eclair, but I imagine it will be too hard on the CPU of the G1. Of course you can just root the phone and install it yourself.

The web was supposed to be a cloud to begin with. I think services like Opera Unite are pulling in the opposite direction and reinforcing what the web was supposed to be like to begin with.

Did you know that the HTTP protocol has PUT and DELETE commands? As far as I can tell no browser implements them. It does explain why we have primitive authentication.

I call services like Opera Unite and Mozilla Weave a personal cloud because they can be hosted yourselves. The Opera servers only provide hole punching between unite users.

This is an example of what I want to see http://jkontherun.com/2009/06/16/opera-unite/
  and my here.

It's sad that our society's photographs are on Facebook in low quality. The big tech companies want to make us powerless over our data and retain control of them.

Subscriptions have always been more profitable than actual game sales. Blizzard is laughing its way to the bank after selling the game and then asking for more money to play the game you already paid for.

But some developers are complaining that, possibly because the Android market started out with exclusively free apps, they are having trouble selling applications.

"Over the weekend I've had a few downloads for my $0.99 app, but I guess I was expecting more," wrote "stonedonkey" in the Android forum. "I'm curious if people just aren't willing to pay, if they are having issues, or there just aren't really that many phones in use?"

"I was wondering same myself," wrote another developer, "Sundog." "I certainly expected a game with a demo in the top ten and an installed base of over 50,000 to get more than a couple of dozen purchases over the weekend."

[Reference]

For some reason people feel better rooting for an underdog, even if it starts to show the same exact features as what what they hope it will replace such as tethering being banned People only hear what they want to hear.

30 seconds of googling and you have your answer

as for arm? don't count your chickens just yet. linux had a wide base of netbooks in the beginning and it faltered. was the fault that of the netbooks that are still being sold now with winxp or of linux? use a little brain power here and you'll come to a conclusion.

my prediction is that arm comes out gang busters and dies quickly into a niche market grave. how many technologies have you've seen with this kind of traction that end up going no where due to lack of software support? if you can't think of many than you must be new to the game.

Psion have essentially given an amnesty to bloggers and journalists using the term "netbook" (which may prove reason enough in itself to take the trademark off them since any licensing must include quality assurance). That includes blogs with advertising as explained here:

"where a blogger uses context sensitive advertising that is completely outside of its control (so it has no knowledge at all whether a 'Netbook' related advert will be placed in its blog site), then we're taking the view that we need to focus on working on persuading the featured retailer to adopt a term other than 'netbook'."

This is why we believe the amnesty doesn't go far enough.

You are plain wrong. Vista will be offered with the C-7 1.6Ghz chips at launch. Units have been out for review for a while now; embargo dropped at midnight. Here is one such review: http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/04/jkontherun-revi.html

If you go over to http://jkontherun.com/, search for Kevin C. Tofel's comments on his Eee. He is one of the first people to buy and use one, and he made a video of the interview he did with his son about the son's usage of the Eee.

Everybody wants a light-weight mobile PC, but nobody wants to pay the price for the Origami slates that started appearing in mid-2006. The Eee is one of several solutions that have come out recently.

I do not own an Eee, but I can see their appeal.