Android Update
As regular readers know, I have long been in search of the perfect pda/phone/web browser. The latest Android phone, the Motorola Droid, officially announced today, may bring that goal a little closer. The screen is substantially larger than the screen on my G1, the keyboard is said to be a little better. The phone is not due to go on sale until November 6th, so until then I will have to be satisfied with pictures.
While gathering information on the Droid, I looked a little more carefully at the question of support for an external bluetooth keyboard, one of the features that my G1 lacks. Apparently the Droid will lack it too, at least for a while. Connecting such a keyboard requires the appropriate bluetooth profile, software telling the phone how to interpret the information coming in from the keyboard. Such a profile does not yet exist as part of the Android software, although developers appear to be working on the problem.
While on the subject of smartphones, I have an idea for a software product that, so far as I know, does not now exist—smartphone OCR. Use the camera on your phone to photograph a page of text, have software on the phone or, if the phone's processing power is insufficient, somewhere out on the net, turn the picture into text.