It’s been a tiring day…but here’s the news.

In what may be a little slip, Motorola CEO Sinjay Jha mentioned Windows Mobile 6.5.  Partly after the announcement that WM7 will now not be released until mid 2009, this may have a sliver of truth to it.  Frankly I’ve been using this WM phone (originally 5 and upgraded to 6) and now, I just hate it.  Again, I’m not overly partial to the iPhone.  I love, more than anything else, the interface - slick and usable and the iconics and screen flow is, bar none, the best.  But it’s still gimicky.  WM6 has a lot of usable features but the flow stinks and its impossible to do a lot of things.  I would love to see what’s going to be included (potentially and allegedly) with this release, but in the end, who cares.  So I decided I’m just going to go buy a G1 instead - how can you beat a $148 price tag (Walmart - believe it or not).  I was really determined to wait for the Touch Pro but I’m just bored from waiting now, and the draw of being able to program Android apps in Eclipse is figuratively making me drool.

Moblin.  Know what it is, you know why it’s in a news category of its own.  Don’t?  Go look it up.

Blow out the candles.  iPod turned 7 today.  Wow.  Throw party.

Sarah Palin is still an idiot.  I actually feel bad for McCain having to grimace through every journalist asking if he regrets nominating her onto the ticket and daydreaming of just blowing up at one of them and saying “Of course I am, the woman is a train wreck!”

Jen, your blog is looking really good and I am very proud of you and your numbers.

Finally, Martin Cooper, an engineer from Motorola and one of the key inventors of the cellphone, says that today’s phones are too complicated…

[From switched.com]

The inventor of the cellphone says the iPhone’s ubiquitous, do-everything, jack-of-all-trades approach to applications, music and – oh yeah – phone calls, makes the Apple Computer superstar mobile device less impressive, not more.

Martin Cooper, who while working at Motorola made the first cell-phone call in 1973 with a device weighing two pounds and with only 20 minutes of battery life, says that cell phones today, especially the iPhone, are too complex. Speaking at a conference in Boston, Cooper said wireless companies and cell phone makers have the wrong ideas when it comes to making products people really need. Instead, he advocates cell phones with fewer features and functions, not more. He also says cell phone reception problems and dropped calls are a major problem for the industry and could be avoided with some better technology. (Cooper serves as chairman of a company called ArrayComm, which develops software to help antenna arrays more finely pinpoint cell phone location.)

Cooper’s main push is for simpler, specialized phones, such as the one his wife designed called Jitterbug, a cell phone with large buttons and extra large characters on the LCD screen for use by the elderly.

“A phone that’s an Internet appliance, an MP3 player, a camera and a whole bunch of other functions doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “You try to build a universal device that does all things for all people, and guess what? It doesn’t do anything very well.”

…okay, true maybe. Then why are we using computers instead of typewriters and graph paper? Technology changes people and people change technology. It, like evolution and natural ecologies, changes with needs, wants, conditions and the environment. It will get more complex and no matter how much we attempt to make it simpler, our fiendish need for gathering information (much like women hoard shoes) and gaining knowledge is one (or two) step(s) ahead of the ability to streamline the process of acquiring it. Build a better mousetrap and the world will come knocking at your door … at least until evolution produces a better mouse (on that note, did you know that a rat has 700psi of jaw force in its bite - that’s more than an alligator).