Several gadgets and one SIM

NTT DoCoMo has created a prototype of what they call a modular phone. It has one inexpensive handset that you can dock into more advanced hardware, like a game device, a slider phone, a device with a QUERTY keyboard and more.

Read the short article.

This is a concrete example of an ide I have had for a possible future solution where you have a SIM that identify you and license you to access the network and other things. The SIM is package into some small gadget that you dock into whatever larger gadget you want to use but need to identify yourself to be autorized to e.g. use the network.

Maybe it is not hardware docking - like the DoCoMo solution - but some kind of "over the air" docking. This might also allow several devices to be autorized at the same time.

Amazone and Google race for books on phones

This is taken from this article in Rethink Wireless:

Amazon is also looking to port the software to general purpose smartphones, perhaps offering just a subset of the Kindle Store’s 230,000 books, targeting more casual readers. "We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones," spokesman Drew Herdener told the New York Times. "We are working on that now."

Google said on Friday that it is making titles from its PC-based Book Search service available for the Apple phone and the Android-based T-Mobile G1. This offers 1.5m public domain titles, which were previously scanned and released for free on the PC. The mobile version will be text-only, rather than scanned book pages.

Rethink Wireless also have these related stories:

Verizon plans rival to Amazon Kindle