A lot of attention has been given to sub-$100 e-readers such as the new crop of Kindles. But a report from PaidContent suggests another generation of sub-$100 devices might be on the horizon: the sub-$100 smartphone. PaidContent reports that consultants at Deloitte see an impending wave of cheap smartphones hitting the market—as many as 500 million of them by the end of the year. By and large, these will not be Android, iOS, RIM, Symbian, or Windows Phone based phones, but rather they will run on closed, proprietary platforms. Most consumers care more about touchscreens or keyboards than...

A while ago, in my story about Route 66 and technology shifts, I mentioned Kodak’s failure to hop on the digital camera bandwagon quickly enough. In the last week or so, the Wall Street Journal reported Kodak is on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, mainly so that it can sell off 1,100 patents through a court-supervised auction. The Journal article suggests Kodak has been having trouble finding a suitable direction over the last couple of decades: Casting about for alternatives to its lucrative but shrinking film business, Kodak toyed with chemicals, bathroom...

Responding to the incident in which Alec Baldwin was kicked off his flight for refusing to shut down his cell phone, Salon.com’s pilot columnist Patrick Smith has written a column about the question of interference from electronic devices—including e-readers—on takeoff. Much of it is about what you would expect—while it hasn’t been proven that cellphones are a flight danger, airlines choose to err on the side of caution. But I did find interesting the part that specifically addresses e-readers: As for the restrictions pertaining to computers, iPods and certain other devices during takeoffs and landings, this...

TechCrunch reports that a recent Pew Internet research project survey shows that 51% of US adult cell phone users used their phones within the last month to retrieve information they needed right away. It also reports on some of the differences between usage of cell phones and smart phones, and on the percentage of users who do things like take photos, send e-mail, play games, and so forth with the devices. (And 13% of respondents admitted to faking a phone call to avoid talking to someone physically present!) It is interesting to see smart phones being used as the...

An article in Knowledge @Australian School for Business discusses the fact that the present Internet addresses system, known as IPv4, will have literally used up its 4.2 billion addresses soon: APNIC, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, is the registry that issues Internet addresses for the booming Asia-Pacific region, and is expected to be the first to run out. Registries in other regions may last just a few months longer. The article's writers describe the new address system, IPv6, and its 340 billion billion billion addresses, as the system that will save the Internet from the end of capacity.  It...

Smartphones are penetrating more and more widely these days, but there are still plenty of people out there with feature phones or other small-screened devices. And while there are cloud readers (such as Ibis Reader) and free e-book sites that work on smartphones and tablets, they tend to be media-intensive applications, requiring a decent amount of screen real-estate and memory. Enter ebook.Taggedzi.com, a cloud e-book site designed to work with small-screen devices that don’t have those sorts of specs—for example, basic feature phones. (Why do they call those “feature phones” when they really don’t have any?) The site acts...

It turns out that the Kindle is getting another retail outlet. Amazon issued a press release this morning announcing it was going to begin selling the 3G version of the device in AT&T’s retail stores nationwide. These stores currently sell feature phones, smartphones, and other devices that work with AT&T’s network, so it’s not too surprising they would decide to add the Kindle. (The 3G version, at least. The wifi-only version was not mentioned in the press release.) Though it’s a little ironic that, unlike every other product AT&T stores sell, the Kindle comes with free 3G for life rather...

The Guardian has a report on ways teachers can use smartphones to improve the educational process. Apps such as Classdroid allow teachers to photograph, grade, and blog homework assignments quickly and easily. There are also anti-bullying apps, quiz and testing apps, and so forth. (It doesn’t mention e-books save for a way to keep Wikipedia on a smartphone, but they could be just as useful in that context.) The article doesn’t say much about student use of cell phones, which could have even greater implications for education and information access—assuming schools can come up with ways to encourage desirable...

Our sister blog Gadgetell notes that Virgin Mobile has decided to scale back the $40/mo unlimited-bandwidth 3G plan that I have waxed enthusiastic about in the past (and that “saved the day” for Paul earlier this month). As of February 15, the plan will throttle download speed after the first 5 gigabytes of data in a month. That may work all right for people who just check their email and do ordinary web browsing, but it’s going to leave people who do more bandwidth-intensive stuff such as stream Netflix movies high and dry. Of course, it won’t really...

In addition to looks back at the last year, this is the traditional time for looks ahead at the year to come, and Seth Weintraub has an interesting one in Fortune’s “Fortune Tech” blog. Weintraub predicts that, due to falling prices and improving networks, 2011 is going to be the year the smartphone (particularly the Android smartphone) really takes off, bypassing traditional computers as the way the majority of the world’s population accesses the Internet. In terms of price, Weintraub points to new and forthcoming chipsets from Broadcomm that should allow Android smartphones to retail for under $100, possibly...

From ad-supported fiction to free textbooks: Ars Technica has an article looking at Scitable, a venture of Nature Publishing Group that provides free life-science educational material on-line. Ars first covered the venture in 2009, and now looks at how far it has come. And one thing that Scitable does not have is advertising. It does have sponsors, however, such as biotech and pharmaceutical companies that sponsor educational material often based on their own fields of research or manufacture. Further, a number of other publishers have started their own free on-line services. Many seem to be using them as “freemium”...

Are the days of unlimited wireless data plans numbered? ReadWriteWeb reports on a speech by a wireless researcher who believes that they are. Dr. Reinaldo Valenzuela, director of wirelss research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, notes that the more people use smartphones, the more data usage is going to go up. Only 10% of all smartphone users are using the majority of data, and as that usage grows, soon the cost of providing “unlimited” bandwidth data plans will surpass the revenue it brings in. Valenzuela believes that metered pricing is one possible answer, but there are also...