Android likes E-Ink

Prototype
A new hardware mashup, a marriage of E-Ink and Google's Android operating system, suggests that iPhones and Android phones might one day double as e-books, or Kindle 3 owners will be making mobile phone calls on their little digital slates.

Moto Development Group (labs.moto.com) says it is the first to lash an E-Ink development kit to a processor kit running Android, using a cable the Moto folks put together for the job.

The result is a 6-inch smartphone screen you can look at all day. E-Ink screens are energy sippers, powering up-and-down through each page change. The technology is also gentler on your eyes, because it creates a reflective reading surface, like ink on paper.

Some masochists, myself included, already read books on their smartphones.

Others are writing novellas specifically to be read on the devices' shiny little screens.

For example, I have been poking through a copy of "Huckleberry Finn" on my iPod Touch, using a lovely little app called Classics.

In Classics, you drag your finger across the touchscreen to skip through electronic pages. The pages even curl as you drag your finger. And you can hear the crisp crinkle of paper as you turn them.

But Classics and short novels are examples of how we are sometimes forced to adapt to a technology's limits.

E-Ink, on the other hand, is an improving technology. (Note the Kindle 2's sharper-looking text and finer shading.)

And other e-reader devices, including those with very large screens, include color.

Digital cameras

Fujifilm cams fit tight budgets

Our old, five-megapixel Fujifilm digital camera is wrapped in tape and has a busted lens cap. Its batteries can barely last through a weekend camping trip.

You see, I've been holding out for a powerful digicam that comes at a Depression 2.0 price.

Several of Fujifilm's latest FinePix cameras fit my "bang for the buck" criteria. Most of them will cost less than $200 when they go on sale next month. Yet they are in the 10-megapixel range, and can perform enough tricks to keep an amateur shutterbug happy through the end of the summer.

The 10-megapixel FinePix Z30 (expected to cost about $180 - less than we paid for our current camera) can automatically adjust its focus and exposure to suit your subject and the surrounding scenery.

The Z30 includes a mode that you can use to post your photos and short videos (up to 60 seconds) to social networking websites and blogs.

You can only share your images once you've plugged the Z30 into your PC, however.

My idea of the perfect photo-sharing camera is one that comes with Wi-Fi. Bluetooth, at least - for connecting via a mobile phone - would even be helpful.

I often snap pics in town that I can't wait to share with my fellow Boston bloggers (such as a nasty little speed trap that sprung up on the Jamaicaway last week). Right now, that means having to haul my camera home, or to Emmanuel College, where I teach, to get connected.

But Wi-Fi could add about $100 to the cost of any of the Fujifilm cameras, I reckon. And that would count as a deal-breaker for the bargain camera hunter.