According to Reuters, the Nikkei business daily said, “Sony plans to set up a project team as early as July to develop a new product that combines functions of its portable game player and Sony Ericsson’s mobile phones.”

Such a development could really accelerate the trend of children getting cell phones, which might have an immediate and significant impact on telecom companies’ revenue.
Sony could use a boost, too, of course.

This might also up the ante in terms of what people expect from their cell phones - imagine companies trying to pack the equivalent of an Xbox 360 into a little device.  And then imagine how the full-size gaming systems will be forced to evolve.

It’s an interesting developmental path.  Now we just have to wait and see whether Sony chooses to pursue it.  Oh, and if you want to hear an official response, the Reuters article states, “A Sony spokesman declined to comment on the report.”

A post on the Official Google Blog stated, “[A] Google team is presenting a paper on landmark recognition (think: Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower) at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference in Miami, Florida.  In the paper, we present a new technology that enables computers to quickly and efficiently identify images of more than 50,000 landmarks from all over the world with 80% accuracy.”

So essentially, if you feed this tech a picture of a few broken columns, there’s a decent chance that it’ll (correctly) identify them as being part of the Acropolis.

Now, Google was clear that “this is a research paper, not a new Google product,” but it seems likely that Google Image Search will benefit from the advancement at some point in time.  Whether Google intends to get into facial recognition is a matter worth considering, too.

There’s even the possibility that this tech could be baked into the mobile operating system known as Android, making it more or less impossible for cell phone owners to get lost.

Some proposed “open rotor” engines are efficient, but apparently quite loud.  Not so loud that everyone, everywhere would be able to hear them, mind you, but people who live or work near airports would likely get exposed to a lot more noise.  Plus airplanes’ passengers and crew, of course.

Lewis Page explains, “[T]he fan on current engines is still enclosed inside the nacelle, which cuts down on noise but limits the area of air on which the blades can work.  For true efficiency, it would be better to use larger fan blades still, ones so long that it would no longer be practical to fully enclose them and hang them beneath an airliner’s wing.”

The final tradeoff might then be a 25 percent increase in fuel efficiency “at the cost of a lot more noise.”  And we shouldn’t forget about the sound insulation that airplane builders and close-to-the-airport homeowners and businesses might have to use.

It’s an interesting problem on which NASA, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and Snecma are all working.  Here’s hoping that they can discover an attractive solution in the near future.  Perhaps they can just try to make the noisy engines sound nice, like well-tuned sports cars or something of that nature.

Here are some highlights: a 3-megapixel camera, faster Web page delivery, video recording, cut and paste abilities, and longer battery life all come standard.  Plenty of current iPhone owners would probably trade in their old models in pursuit of this without additional incentives.

But here’s what might be the really interesting part: prices start at just $99 for the 8 GB version.  A 16 GB iPhone then runs $199, and the top-o’-the-line 32 GB model sells for $299.

This brings the base iPhone in line with the prices of regular cell phones, which may make it hard to beat.  And the price cuts are sure to receive special attention considering that the economy still isn’t exactly booming along.

The 8 GB model should be available immediately (depending on what stores can keep in stock, of course).  The 16 and 32 GB models will come out on June 19th.

Joshua Topolsky has the details.  He writes, “Apparently the small, black device - codenamed ‘Natal’ - will allow for an astoundingly wide range of actions by utilizing a group of sensors (the box itself sits beneath your TV), and the accessory will be capable of juggling multiple users during a single session.  The demo Microsoft showed off included a skateboarding game (replete with a young man ‘air’ ollie-ing), and a family playing a racing game (the dad was changing a tire, the daughter driving).”

Unfortunately, there are a couple of hang-ups.  First, pricing wasn’t announced, so who knows how many arms and legs the gaming public will have to sacrifice in order to get a hold of these things.

Second, all that was said in regards to release dates was that Natal won’t be available this year.  So it’s hard to say what sort of kinks Microsoft might be trying to iron out.

Nintendo and the Wii look to have at least a little time left before receiving any sort of tangible challenge, then.

The bulk of Jeremy Horwitz’s information relates to the nano.  Supposedly, the screen will get larger, the click wheel will get smaller, and an off-center camera will make an appearance on the backside.

Horwitz adds, in case you’re doubting these claims, “You know that we don’t run future iPod stories without having a lot of faith in the information.  Thus far, our source has a perfect track record for accuracy.”

As for the iPhone, it sounds like Apple’s ready to take it all over the world, producing versions that will be appropriate for the telecom systems of three different regions.  And here’s a key point: one region would include China, so approximately 1.3 billion people should now have the opportunity to buy an iPhone.

No official sources have stepped forward to deny the rumors yet, and as they get repeated more and more, a few more unofficial confirmations are trickling in.

Issues of cost, simplicity, and discomfort to the patient have all been addressed.  George Whitesides, a Harvard professor, just started by studying the way paper’s tiny capillaries can draw a drop of liquid around.  If a liquid like blood got moved into dimples filled with chemicals, then medical tests could almost perform themselves.

And now, according to Michael Pollitt, “The stamp-sized paper devices are capable of being printed in high volumes.  A single drop of blood can be channelled to different test wells containing reagents and results appear as simple colour changes, making it ideal for third world use.”

Then here’s another key point: “From a 5ml sample, autoanalysers perform up to 40 tests.”  So patients won’t have to get pricked again and again for the sake of each little experiment.

In terms of the “cool factor,” this admittedly represents a step backward from most of the tech we talk about.  No pretty, shiny metal or flashing lights.  But keeping people healthy, happy, and not poor is a pretty important concept, and perhaps a prerequisite to flying cars and all that other fun stuff.

The possibilities are almost endless.  Fashion-forward individuals would probably love the material just for its ability to be display moving colors and images.  Other folks might use it to keep themselves and others amused - think TVs centered on torsos or Facebook updates appearing on arms.

There are more serious potential applications, too - advertisers would surely pay people to walk around wearing logos, and businesspeople might want to check out the news or receive stock quotes.

Anyway, James Sherwood reports, “Developed by Takao Someya, a Professor of Electronic Engineering, and his team from the University of Tokyo, the screen was recently used to make a face-shaped image with changing expressions.  They use the same technique to create a spherical screen for highlighting weather information.”

OLEDs, fluorescent rubber, and carbon nanotubes are behind the tech, which unfortunately hasn’t been attached to even a theoretical price tag and still needs refining.

Want the people with whom you communicate through instant messages to have an idea of where you are?  Well, a post on the Official Google Blog states, “Google Talk location status (beta) automatically updates your Google Talk or Gmail chat status message with your Latitude location.  With this application enabled, all of your chat buddies can see your most recent city-level location.”

Then there’s the second application, and since more people are likely to visit a site or blog than chat with a given individual, it has the potential to reach a much larger audience.  The official blog post explains, “The Google Public Location Badge lets you publish your Latitude location on your blog or website.  You can choose to show just the city that you are in or you can have your device’s location detected automatically, using GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell tower ID, which provides a more specific location.”

All sorts of privacy precautions have been taken and opt-in/opt-out choices provided, of course.

The being-tracked-all-the-time future doesn’t necessarily sound fun, after all, and Google’s not trying to lead things towards a situation reminiscent of “The Running Man.”

Buy the same-named Zoombak device for $100, set up an account, and attach the device to your subject - or your subject’s collar or backpack - and you’ll gain access to a Microsoft Earth map of the transmitter’s location and past movements.  You can opt to receive notifications when the Zoombak leaves or enters designated zones.

You can even, at any time, send a request using your cell phone and get a text message with the Zoombak’s location at that exact moment.

If this sounds neat, well, David Pogue pretty much testified in a recent article that it is.  The biggest two drawbacks you need to consider are (1) the Zoombak requires decent T-Mobile network coverage to operate, and (2) its three-to-four-day battery life doesn’t allow for a set-it-and-forget-it mentality.

Hopefully a next-generation product (or something from a competitor) will solve these issues in the near future.