Check out Daemon by Daniel Suarez for a fantastic fictional story using current feasible technology, the focus being on an augmented reality network. http://thedaemon.com/

Detroit would welcome the business.

I never cared about the desktop search, but it gave me Google widgets that I depend on. I don't want to leave my browser open 24/7 to get my much-needed nags about calendar events and new e-mail. Just because I'm online it doesn't mean I'm surfing the web. So what are my alternatives? MS desktop widgets never really took off, either.

I don't see them shipping with it. It's easier to sell TouchWiz to the general public, but Samsung has been out of the loop in the community because of the lack of support. This will allow them to ship simple TouchWiz phones to everyone, but the ones that care will know they can load CyanogenMod on it with no issues, so they will buy them with or without TouchWiz, since it's coming off when they get it home. This will help them compete on both fronts with the Motorola/Google alliance that may bring AOSP to DROID phones.