Acer Android phone

Acer A1 Android Phone: 768MHz CPU, 5-Megapixel Camera, Wi-Fi, GPS - Acer A1 Android Phone - Gizmodo

Having a bit of a thing watching Android phones arrive - I'm not getting an iPhone - O2/18-month contract/Paddy tax/too stingy/etc. There I said it. Presumably I can now get free counselling / govt. cash / free iphone - seeing as I'm now on the wrong side of the digital divide. I'm also waiting for a wee bit more commoditization of the market.

This one looks interesting why? Well faster processor  - slightly slower than the iPhone, faster than HTC Hero, bigger screen than both of them, but interestingly marked as Android 2.0 - why so interesting? Well this AFAIK is the first version of Android that will make multi-touch part of the O.S. Currently HTC Hero patched their own impl onto Android - which works nicely (they stuffed up the initial release but have since released a ROM update that fixes the issues), but not all apps from appstore will support it. There were some reports on the net which reported that the Motorola DEXT/Cliq would be Android 2.0 - but not according to motorola. Seeing as Android 1.0 was beta and the G1 won't support 1.6 - I think I want to wait for a phone which definitely supports 2.0 before I kick my current dumbphone.

And here's where I flick the image over to the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

Courier - looks nice, really nice. Continuing the current vibe where Microsoft get tech stuff mostly right (Zune HD, Windows 7, shocker I know - but hey there's this). Microsoft's movement of Surface from eye-wateringly expensive installation for sales drones to wow the cash away from gullible rich people - to (if it works) pretty revolutionary tablet (sorry booklet) style product.

Allegedly in late production stage. I would definitely want to play with one.

Ferrofluid

Props to PopSci for making me wish I was more nerdy than I currently am - Ferrofluid looks like a lot of fun - can't wait to see it pop-up in some over-designed bar / science installation.

Passing startup script to Amazon AMI image using Alestic goodies

Alestic.com images allow you to run a startup script that is passes as a parameter to ec2-run-instance.
Fantastic. This couple with the handly runurl command (also from Alestic) allows me to nominate which S3-hosted Java JAR to run.
Allowing me the flexibiility to run mutliple different versions of a java-based runtime on top of a base AMI image.

Wait a minute... isn't multiple-runtime version support something that goes away when you move to the cloud... sadly not always.

Comparison of Android handsets

Here's a nice comparison of android handsets via Phandroid.

All have the same speed processor (slower than iPhone 3GS). Screen size of Cliq approaching iphone (plus real keyboard!).