The typical routine for a new PC is to install the OS, and then find and install drivers for the hardware you have.

With a phone, the hardware is often proprietary and different from device to device. In the PC world, you get your video card driver from the guys who sold the video card, but with the phone, all the hardware comes from the device manufacturer, so they'd need to be the ones supplying updated drivers.

And the incentive just isn't there for Samsung or HTC to spend money working on software that enables an older device to run a newer OS. Samsung makes money when you buy the hardware, and that's it, unlike in Apple's world, where they also make money when you buy software, so it's in their interest to keep your phone current.

One solution would be for Google to declare a reference platform and if your phone is based on the reference platform, then you can get Google's OS and install it directly. Problem there is the carriers don't want that.

So if Google is going to succeed here, they're going to need to sell a cheap phone ($199 range - you've got to compete with carrier subsidized phones) that's good enough quality that people actually want it, sell it direct, and support it themselves. Problem is, I'm not sure there's any profit in doing that.

Did you watch the video? It makes unreadable text readable. That falls into the category of making missing data suddenly appear.

Canada Post is still profitable, but it's probably just a matter of time.

One of the things that happens here occasionally is postal strikes. We just went through one. When there's a threat of a postal strike, billers (like utility companies and whatnot) step up efforts to get people to switch to electronic billing. And once someone has switched to electronic billing, they're probably not switching back once the strike is done.

I don't think the postal employees realize the damage they're doing to their own business by going on strike.

This should be great for tracking UFOs!

And eating plates of food off the floor. That's not a good lesson to be teaching kids either. Nobody ever mentions that.

If a Flash app on the iPhone sucks, either Apple won't approve it, or users won't buy it.

If it doesn't suck, then what does it matter how it was developed?

I've used Joker for a few years and have been happy with the service.

Jambi wouldn't be quite the seamless cross platform experience you get with AIR, though, and it looks like you would need to develop separate installers for each supported platform. With AIR, you can post the *.air file somewhere and Mac, Windows and Linux users can grab it and use it.

It depends on what you're looking for - for some applications, native widgets would be an advantage; for others, consistency between platforms would be an advantage.