Cell phones
I have been pretty critical of cell phones for emulating (ahem) the video game console industry in creatinng a permission and licensing culture for getting software and documents onto your phone. Typically you can't write software for your own phone unless you pay a licensing fee and sign a license with the manufacturer. As I've written here before, and as I recently wrote to a journalist about the game console industry, I would like to see "convergence" mean that cell phones and game consoles become PCs, rather than that PCs become cell phones and game consoles.
Can anyone think of a cell phone that's going the right way, that actually lets the owner program it (and -- gasp -- load media onto it) without having to get a license or a mod chip? I was thinking of getting a cell phone if I could find a user-programmable one, even if it's more expensive than the more restricted phones. For example, is there a fully programmable PDA with integrated phone where everyone can write code on the same basis? What is the most open cell phone on the market at the moment? Would I be better off moving to Southeast Asia?
Daring to dream, is there a programmable phone that can connect to multiple competing networks? One where someone will sell you generic end-to-end data transport that doesn't discriminate against any particular kind of traffic, so that you can develop new network applications for it?
I remember that Ryan Lackey said he was developing some secure voice code for cell phones or PDAs, which is one obvious application for programmable phones. I should ask him whether he was doing that under some kind of SDK license or not, and for which platforms.
