Engadget.com reports that LG mobile has confirmed that a 12 megapixel phone will soon be produced. Sony Ericsson was the first to demonstrate they could put a 12 megapixel camera in a phone, but LG is the first provider to officially announce one is coming. Don’t get too excited, though, as LG’s UK head of marketing, Jeremy Newing, admitted, “it’s important that people realize when taking 12mp images, they’ll be using huge amounts of data, and it will be more difficult to do things like send such files”. Plus, as lifehacker.com has pointed out, megapixel size is not directly proportional to picture quality. While you’re waiting for over an hour for your phone to send that picture of a daisy to your mom, don’t expect the end result to look nearly as good as your DSL with less megapixel resolution but far superior optics and sensors.

Despite all the hype, at $360 the upcoming Kindle 2 is still going to inhabit a very small niche market. Of the 50% of Americans who read books at all very few are ready to make a digital switch. Just like the visceral pleasure we experience from holding a newspaper keeps them in print, a fair amount of the literary class enjoy perusing a bookstore, reading back flaps and skimming contents. But for those who are ready to adopt the digital model, the Kindle itself, or even Sony’s $300 Reader Digital Book, are not the only game in town. A more affordable option may be Indigo’s Shortcovers – a digital ebook app that will run on iPhone, BlackBery, and Android operating systems – devices that many potential Kindle buyers already own. Shortcovers lets users read the first chapter of a book without charge with the option of buying additional chapters individually or the entire book at rates comparable to Kindle and Sony. The difference between Shortcovers and other ebook readers already available on many mobile platforms is the relationship Indigo has with publishers. Shortcovers will initially offer over 50,000 titles, only a third of which are public domain titles. Indigo will also offer news and magazine articles – ala Kindle. Until prices drop dramatically – which may depend on advances in thin displays – the Shortcovers model may make more inroads in popularizing digital formats than Amazon and Sony can only dream of.