Just discovered this. The great FaceTime function -- for those with an iPod Touch or iPhone -- may be used for video calls with the hearing impaired. You can see not only the faces, of course, but sign language. The new iPod Touch now offers vibration alerts.

As it supports F aceTime video calling which Apple bills as ideal for sign language, the vibration alert could be very useful in alerting the hard-of-hearing that they have a call coming in. On one of the feature pages for the iPod Touch Apple talks about this and says, “If somebody wants to start a video call with you, you ‘ll receive an invitation — along with a vibrating alert —on your iPod touch asking you to join.”

Yesterday, I wrote about the $100 smartphone.

Today, Business Daily Africa profiles this same smartphone -- and its launch in Kenya.

The quest for control of Kenya’s rapidly growing mobile Internet market has intensified with the launch by Chinese technology firm Huawei of a competitively priced smartphone that runs on Google’s Android operating system.

Retailing at just Sh8,000, the Huawei IDEOS is the cheapest smartphone in the Kenyan market and is expected to deepen the penetration of Internet among the estimated 20 million Kenyan consumers of mobile phone services.

Kenya has six million Internet users a large portion (four million) of who accesses it through their mobile phones that is considered to be more affordable by most consumers because it cuts down the cost of acquisition to a tiny fraction of the closest competitors. The smartphones, however, remains dominated by highly-priced models that sell at an average of Sh30,000 placing it above the reach of the majority of consumers.

Wow. One article, from one country, on one smartphone, yet it says so much.

• Made in China
• Available in Kenya
• Built on American software (Android)

Priced about 1/4 the cost of the typical smartphone in Kenya. Millions in Kenya are embracing the benefits and market access that the Internet offers. Most, out of necessity, access it via their mobile device. Now, more will. Soon, even more. Then more. Til all the world has equivalent access to the same information, the same knowledge, the same markets, the same opportunities. Again -- this has never before happened in all of human history (with the single possible exception of the moment before the great human migration and diaspora).What will this do to power? To politics? Business? Learning? Friendships? Jobs?

Sent in from a reader.

Since at least half this site's readers are from outside the US (and Canada), you may not understand this video.

It's the Muppets.

And, in the US, it's a beautiful Labor Day weekend and there is nothing I have to be doing. So why not have some fun...

This made me laugh a little, cry a little...

Microsoft promising me a beautiful web, soon. Thanks to Internet Explorer. (This is the equivalent of your sad drug-addicted cousin asking to borrow money -- for the last time.)

And those middling AT&T bars? That's about the best I ever get.

Or is that Apple's fault?

(note: I changed my default search provider from Google to Bing when Google abandoned, publicly, net neutrality)

The real-time social mobile web...and the destruction of everything.

These laws will help you survive the global smartphone wars.

Content

• Brian's first law of content: information wants to be monetized
• Brian's second law of content: your cost structure will be destroyed
• Brian's third law of content: people want what they want when they want it where they want it on the device they want it on (deny them this at your own peril). Only old people can even comprehend when this is not so; the young view it as a (momentary) glitch in the matrix.

Scale

• Think locally scale globally
• Hyperlocal is Hyperglobal. Do not make market scale a deciding factor. Scale will be achieved, quickly, once a need is met amongst a single group or locality.

Profits

We can get anything anywhere anytime from anyone, therefore:

• your customers are your advocates -- or they will soon no longer be your customers
• values equal profits
• storytelling sells, and great storytelling sells much more
• The creators of wealth gain at least equivalent power. Smarphones are enabling equivalent access to funding, global markets, data, content, social media and other services to all peoples of the world. They will thus realize disproportionate gains in wealth and power relative to Ameirca, Europe and what was once called the 'Second World'.

Time and Space

• There is only one time: now
• There is only one place: here
• The spread of smartphones simultaneously decrease the impact of distance toward zero as they increase the impact of time toward infinite.
• As the real-time social mobile web destroys all traditional barriers inherent in time and space for the globe's population, they increase the importance of presence for the individual.

Mobile

• Mobile first, web second is a fallacy. If it does not exist, centrally, on the mobile web, it does not exist.

[More laws to follow...]

It's September 2010 and some site called "The BIg Think" only just now clues into the fact that we have, you know, feelings for our smartphones.

Apple is doing something far more radical to us as a nation, something that might even outlive the innovative firm itself: it is singlehandedly transforming us into a society that will one day feel comfortable having emotional relationships with machines. At first glance, emotional connectedness to machines sounds like an outlandish statement.

Wha chu talkn bout, Willis!

An outlandish statement!

Gadgets are sex! It's why we want to touch them! Trust me, I know grown men who spend far more time with (and on) their gadgets than any woman. And that's not gonna change anytime soon.

The Japanese stand in stark contrast to us. They are exceptionally fond of their machines, which are without exception small and beautifully designed, even cute. Whether it’s their legendary programmable toilets or their meticulously compact coffeemakers, Japanese household machines fit seamlessly into their environment— man and machine locked in a harmonious tango. Japanese homes also contain electronic gadgets that are far from functional, but are just cute and pleasant to have around. Some single women in Japan come home and tell their pink electronic teddy bears if they had a bad day at work. Grown men in the subway carry around cell phones with little dolls attached to them that make noises if you press them. Japanese anime is full of cute little robots like the phenomenally popular cartoon character Astro Boy that nurture the close bond between humans and machines from a very young age.

The Japanese are not weird.

Not weird. Dang, you're 0 for 2. This just in. That shit is wiggity wiggity wack!

But Apple is proving the Japanese belief that machines have to be neither extremely smart nor look like humans to elicit emotional attachment. They just need to be extremely helpful, sleek and beautiful.

Helpful. Sleek. Beautiful. Oh, baby.

General Motors embraces the smartphone. From USA Today:

General Motors is relying more and more on apps to help drivers interact with their cars, and one inventor on their team sees a day when your smartphone could be your car key.

The Chevy Volt electric car and the Chevy Cruze small car will come with smartphone apps that lets owners who pay for an OnStar subscription do a lot from their phones: Unlock the car, start it remotely, even honk the horns for a few moments if they need to find the car in a crowded parking lot (or scare the neighbors when you're out of town.)

Dave Proefke, a Buick inventor and GM technical fellow, says he sees a day when key fobs can be worn like jewelry, or smartphones replace keys.

He's helped develop an advanced wireless car key that automatically knows when to lock and unlock doors on the 2011 Buick LaCrosse.

"It does a lot of the thinking for you," said Proefke. "It tries to determine your intended action and perform that action for you."