Kindle 2? What were they thinking!

My opinion of the intelligence of our collective human race has taken a step down since the release of Amazon's latest baby, the Kindle 2.

For those of you not so up-to-date as Yours Truly, Amazon.com, book retailers of the Interweb released a fair while ago, a device by the name of the Amazon Kindle, a portable book reader made for use with Amazon's extensive collection. Now, they've released its successor, the imaginatively-named Kindle 2. It has grown in size, functionality and tech appeal, as has Amazon's Kindle-friendly catalogue. But there is really only one question that comes to mind with this little gadget: Why?

If people want to read a book while sitting around at home, they will probably read a book, available for a much smaller price than Amazon's eye-watering $360 dollar tag.

If they want to read a book while they are out and about, they will probably want to get themselves a decent PDA, a smartphone, or even an iPhone will do it. And if you know the right places *nudge nudge* *wink wink*, you can get the books for free, and in nice .pdb or .lit files, not stupid proprietary type...

If they want something bigger, that they can annotate on, or do things like shop on the go with a full QWERTY keyboard, they can get a netbook, like one of the mini Dell Netbooks (especially the one with Wireless Broadband built in. Hurrah!). Something they can do all kinds of things on... (Waaaaaaaayyyyy!)

Okay, so maybe some of you want something to do all of these things, and only these things. Then you should consider dropping the $360 for a Kindle 2, which in all other regards, does its job very well, even if it is a bit big.

But this all returns to the age-old question: A bunch of devices to do lots of little specialised things well, or just the one to do all of them, but not quite as well?

Is anyone going to dispute the value of, say, a nice Palm TX, or a mini Toshiba netbook with a wireless Broadband card? (cue Godlike choral singing as the clouds open and light floods down upon these pinnacles of technology.)

Judging by the explosion in the smartphone industry (some freaky numbers floating around!), the consumers have decided on the latter, and this particular technophile agrees.

Android picking up speed, and various other phone news

Google's own phone OS, called Android (?) is now picking up speed, with another Android phone released recently (built by a no-name Taiwanese company) to arrive in Australia soon. Remember this is just weeks after its release, and there are already HTC phones to add to the other two Android handsets, and the new Lenovo-badged OPhone up against the mammoth Windows Mobile OS. Yeah okay, this isn't Google's first time taking large bites out of Microsoft, but it's like opening up the Twenty-Sixth Front...

Also making noises in the phone area is Palm (yes, remember them) who are set to unveil their new 'Nova' OS on January 8. Unfortunately, we won't see customer products until mid-2009

And now Garmin has jumped on the Smartphone bandwagon. Yes, it's a satnav maker, building phones. Their nuvifone is still coming, but has just passed FCC testing, so it's getting closer, (and we're all holding our breath, yawn!).

And to add to this huge pile of phone news, the rumours about the iPhone nano have resurfaced with possible case sizes surfacing on Crave showing a smaller iPhone in basic dimensions., which is to be expected, and apparently accessory brand XSKN has already produced a silicon style case for a shorter thicker iPhone. One month until MacWorld. Hmmmm...

And if you thought of the one country that would embrace phones and technology into every part of their life, it probably wouldn't be Estonia would it? They have decided to allow citizens to vote in their 2011 parliamentary elections on their cell phones! They buy a special chip for their phones that verifies their identity, then once installed, Estonians can use their phones to vote, without going to a ballot. Genius! From Estonia!??