Doug Aamoth…

Google has booked not one, but two (!!!!!) booths at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February. That means that it’ll probably be showing off Android phones then, right? Maybe. Or maybe not.

APC Magazine thinks that we’ll see some Android headsets on February 11th, but let’s all keep that in our back pockets until then.

While early prototype devices might trickle out here and there, Google has said that the first available handsets won’t surface until the second half of 2008. Plus, the Android Developer Challenge will still be accepting submissions until March 3rd and then Google will hold a second developer challenge “after the first handsets built on the platform become available.”

So I’d think that the very earliest we’d see actual, fully-working devices would be in March but that would be a big surprise in and of itself since Google hasn’t waffled on the “second half of 2008″ thing yet.

Google-powered mobile phones to make a February debut? [APC Magazine]

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“Two people were injured, Michelle, and the weather made the rescue work all that much more — HAOOH!!” The look on this guy’s face is priceless. Ha!

via Neatorama

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Mobile handset production in Taiwan is currently up 82 percent from last year and the first quarter of next year is forecast to see a 150 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007.

This growth is thanks in large part to device manufacturer HTC’s popular handsets and a little upstart device called the “iPhone” (whatever that is). The value of devices shipped out of Taiwan not only broke the billion dollar mark for the first time, it got up to almost $1.5 billion.

Handset Production Soars in Taiwan [MobileCrunch]

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The OLPC XO laptop seems to be a hit in Peru. The country placed the largest order for the machines (272,000) and it’s already enjoying success in many of the smaller rural villages.

One village in particular, Arahuay, is featured in an Associated Press article published on Monday. It’s an interesting read about how the computers are being used in daily life and how positively the people in the village — children and adults — have responded to the project.

The program still has its critics, though. A communications professor in Lima worries about “a general disruption of the educational system that will manifest itself in the students overwhelming the teachers.” He basically thinks kids should stay dumber than their teachers so they don’t question or challenge what they’re taught, something he sees as disruptive. If anything, I think this program can make teachers better too as it’ll force them to learn enough to stay one step ahead of the students. They’re given 2.5 days of training on the machines and $150 towards the purchase of a regular laptop, which includes a special low-percentage educational financing program.

There’s also the question of tech support and what should be done if and when one of the laptops breaks. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte favors tinkering, saying, “What you want is for the kids to do the repairs. I think the kids can repair 95 percent of the laptops.” I agree. The laptops are rugged and durable but in the event that something goes wrong, why not let the kids figure out how to fix it instead of having to rely on someone else? There’s no better way to learn than by doing, which is the whole point of the OLPC project.

Laptop project enlivens Peruvian hamlet [AP/Yahoo! News]

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An attorney who’s sued the city of Chicago over 100 times is at it again.

This time he wants the city to stop ticketing people for talking on their cell phones while driving and he wants anyone who’s been ticketed to be paid back. The case may have legs, too.

The law banning texting and talking while driving “includes a clause that requires the city to put up signs telling drivers not to talk on the phone and drive at the same time,” but apparently the city hasn’t put up those signs yet despite ticketing people thousands of times since 2005, when the law was enacted.

Regardless of what happens, please stop talking on your phone while driving. If you think the law is unfair, rig up a speakerphone system. Nobody can get ticketed for appearing to talk to invisible automobile passengers, ghosts, or both.

Chicago Cell Phone Ban Under Attack [MobileCrunch]

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Art Lebedev Studios was more than happy to take preorders for the Optimus Maximus keyboard (that we all thought would never see the light of day) but seems to have neglected to make the device’s firmware work well enough to justify the high price tag. The method by which the firmware gets upgraded also needs to be overhauled.

Alas, she’s been delayed until the end of February. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but we’ve been waiting this long, what’s another couple of months, huh? One of us here will be sure to update you in mid-February when it gets delayed again. 

Optimus OLED keyboard pushed to February [MacNN]

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Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) is just about complete, thanks to a late-night launch yesterday of the system’s three remaining satellites. GLONASS is similar to our GPS system here and will initially cover most of Russia and then, by 2009, the world.

There are 24 satellites in all, with the purpose of giving the Russian military “exact bearings around the world.”

Russia began developing the system in the 70’s but work was stalled in the late 90’s due to the country’s economic hardships.

Russia launches final satellites for its own GPS [Reuters]

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The HP-FX500 headphones from JVC are partly made of wood, which is supposed to make stuff sound better. Here’s to hoping that it makes stuff sound WAY better because these things are expensive.

They’re available in Japan for 15,000 Yen (about $132)and may or may not mark the resurgence of wood-paneled audio gear that the world fell in love with back in the late 70’s or whenever that was. I don’t remember it happening, I just remember being born in 1979 and being surrounded by wooden-looking speakers from February of that year to sometime in the mid-80’s.

New wooden earphones from JVC [Akihabara]

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Looking to buy a new camera? Keep your wallet separated from your ass cheek by a thin layer of whatever material your pants are made out of until President’s Day, says a guy who wrote two photography books. That’s the part of the camera season (yes, there’s a camera season) when the new wave of digital imaging gadgets that everyone got a whiff of at CES start to kick it into high gear.

So President’s Day is the “peak of the discount season for cameras” when old cameras get closed out and the new ones hit the shelves with a force as hard or harder than your body hitting the floor when you’re trying to take your socks off after a long night of drunken foolery.

The PC World article I’m sourcing also lets us all know the best times to buy MP3 players and cell phones. The answer? Any time. So there’s not too much new information there unless you consider “new information” to be that if you’re looking to buy a phone, you should do it at the end of your contract so you’ll get a hardware discount when you re-sign.

When to Buy a Camera, MP3 Player, or Cell Phone [PC World]

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India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is taking a cue from open source initiatives that you and I know so well and applying those same ideals to third world drug research in the hopes of developing cures for diseases “at a fraction of the costs incurred by multinationals to develop a new drug.”

The idea is pretty simple. Knowledge and data about diseases will be kept online where “researchers and experts would then be encouraged to come forward and solve specific problems.” Plausible ideas would then be given to various research organizations (in India, where clinical research costs are low) for further testing. Any drug that eventually gets developed would essentially “become a low-cost generic from day one.”

Open source drug discovery [Economic Times]

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