Category: Ideas
Android Mini PCThe device of my dreams: a no strings attached, open Android-powered device, which is like a smartphone (touch screen etc.), but which is not a phone, but can get a data plan from any cell carrier in the same way that laptops can use 3G cards and get internet anywhere from a cell phone carrier.
It would basically be a miniature PC that resembles an Android phone, but which isn't a phone, but which you can just install Skype on if you really need to make a phone call, since it could still get cellular data service.
And, being like a miniature PC, it would be as open to operating systems as a real PC; it would be just as easy to install and reinstall Android firmwares (or any compatible OS) to it as it would reinstalling your operating system on your laptop.
I imagine Dell would be a good manufacturer for such a device; they would market it just like they market netbooks, as being just a mini PC that happens to run Android (preferably the stock vanilla Android as Google intended it, but being open you could flash any version of Android you want).
If such a device existed I would buy it as soon as it came out. I'm quite sick of the way phone carriers abuse the Android OS and wish there could just be a seriously open device.
Random thought about forum spam bots
In some cases, I don't think all spam bots post on web forums to actually get people on the forum to click the links. This is evidenced by the bot posting what looks like a large article of text about something random in the world, which is just sprinkled with completely random out-of-place links to sites that sell World of Warcraft gold or some such. Maybe the programmers behind these bots don't really think that members of the forum they just spammed are seriously going to click the links...
Maybe they just want the links to be there for Google to see... to improve the page rank of their scam site so that it comes up higher in Google search results. They just want links from the forums they spam, not necessarily clicks.
Thus an interesting idea for web forum software: add a kind of restriction on link posting. Like how some forums require that you post 10 things that aren't spam before you're allowed to send private messages to other users, or other such arbitrary restrictions... what would be useful is one that goes: you can post links immediately after signing up, but every link you post will have rel="nofollow" attached to it, so that Google and other search spiders won't follow your link, and you won't get Pagerank credit for it. And then after posting enough on the forum, all your previous links and all future links will be linkable for search engines then.
Spam bots always seem to find ways to register and spam forums, but taking away their ability to get any Pagerank credit for their spamming would help fight back just a little bit.
/random thought of the day/
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