New uses for your cell phone

I have to say, it seems more and more that using your cell phone just to make phone calls is so 2001. Because clearly, you should be reading comic books on your cell phone.

Admittedly, I don't think this is going to catch on in a big way, at least not any time soon. But it is intriguing to see how there's this push to make you have one device that you can't leave the house with, so that device has to be able to do anything and everything you want it to do.

After all, wouldn't it be interesting to get a text message that's not full of IM-speak, because it's a book excerpt? Perhaps that's an opportunity for libraries in the future. And the future is closer than you think.

Mmmm, iPhone

By now, I'm sure most of you have at least heard the news that Apple has unveiled its long-awaited iPhone yesterday at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco. This article from THE Journal does a nice job of explaining the phone's many features and the ways it's unique from other smartphones. In addition to a larger screen, iTunes, the ability to run Mac OS X, and Google features like Google Maps, the phone has a built-in sensor "for dimming the display and disabling input when the phone is placed to the user's ear", which saves battery power. All very cool, and of course, it looks scrumptious. I think the iPhone, which will be available only through Cingular starting in June, won't cause current Blackberry, Treo, and Sidekick users to defect immediately, though if it is as good a product as the iPod, it'll could well tempt those of us who've never had a smartphone to test the waters.