There is a big work force that works out of their cars, driving from meeting to meeting and trying to keep up with stuff in between. I did that for years and more than once I longed for a simple, cheap way to use my laptop for quick work sessions from the driver’s seat of my car. The Laptop Steering Wheel Desk spotted on Gearlog would have been just the ticket for me, and may be for those in a similar situation.

The Laptop Steering Wheel Desk is a simple platform that hooks easily onto the steering wheel, providing a small desk to support the notebook for work sessions. It puts the laptop at about the right height for comfortable typing, and is easily removed when it’s time to hit the road again. It looks to be able to handle netbooks, but bigger notebooks might create a problem. Of course, users know better than to use the laptop while driving, right?

While you could use many of Google’s services in the browser, some folks prefer actual client software. I’ve been using a Google Voice client created in Adobe AIR and today I started to use Google Tasks in a similar fashion. This too runs on Adobe’s AIR, so it’s cross-functional for use on various operating systems. Although it’s just a an AIR wrapper around the mobile Google Tasks site, having my to-do list broken out in a prominent area offers a higher likelihood that tasks have my attention.

After spending a few minutes with it, I see that it supports Google Calendar as well. Lifehacker mentions that all of the mobile Google sites and services should work with this implementation, but I’m only getting the Calendar functions to work right now. Maybe my app has a flat and ran out of AIR? Regardless, it does work for Tasks so chalk this up as an option to running tasks in a browser .

I was excited to hear about the new Solution Center for Android alliance formed by ARM and 35 other companies to pool resources to aid development efforts for Android on the ARM platform. Smartbooks are in essence the merging of the smartphone and netbooks, and Android is a logical platform for them. To have such a major effort focused on getting ARM devices produced for Android can only be a good thing for both the platform, and for getting interesting mobile devices to market.

Smartbooks are not the only likely product of this alliance; it is easy to envision web tablets and other consumer devices appear with Android on board. As the alliance press release indicates, ARM-based products are designed to be “always connected” by nature, and that can mean devices of all kinds. Android just got a lot more interesting, in my view. I wonder how Android will fit in with the Google Chrome OS poising for takeoff?

Opera today announced the beta of Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Mobile devices. The new look and feel is very much like Opera on the desktop or the newest version of Opera Mini. Here’s a listing of what the latest Opera browser brings to WinMo:

1. Intuitive new interface Opera has thrown out the clutter and is keeping it simple in terms of aesthetics. Less is more when it comes to mobile browsing.
2. Speed Dial Speed Dial serves as your personal table of contents for the Web. Your favorite sites welcome you upon launching Opera, and in one click, you are there.
3. Tabbed browsing Open new links in multiple tabs to bounce between sites easily.
4. Password manager Save those annoying passwords with Opera’s password manager, or if you are feeling vulnerable, simply and swiftly delete all.
5. Touchscreen or keypad navigation Whether your Windows Mobile smartphone is touchscreen or keypad-based, Opera Mobile 10 beta is customized for your navigation style.
6. Save images Select and save your friends’ Facebook pictures to your phone for offline viewing later.
7. Opera Turbo Offload your page rendering to one of Opera’s servers, and reduce your data costs.
8. Advanced compatibility Since Opera Mobile 10 beta is based on Opera’s browser for desktop computers, it maintains advanced Web-site compatibility and ensures that nearly any site is accessible from a mobile phone.
9. Smooth surfing Pan, zoom and smoothly scroll your way through the Web.
10. It is free! Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile is available as a free download at www.opera.com/mobile/ or m.opera.com/mobile/ (for phone download).

The best part — aside from the Turbo function, which I still love — is that like older versions of Opera, the new beta supports Windows Mobile 5 handsets on up. Pity that I just shipped off my old Dash for a little holiday cash…

Are you liking what you’re seeing from the Nokia N900 and its Maemo operating system? Nokia hopes so because it let loose that Symbian S60 is hitting the recycle bin by 2012 on its N-series line of devices. Assuming that the Mayans don’t get involved in any calendar tomfoolery, you’ll see Maemo on all N-series handsets by then. That’s the word from a Maemo event held yesterday in London — bear in mind that it was a Maemo event, meaning that Nokia hasn’t officially stated this in any formal capacity.

The news makes sense in several way, though. By comparison, the S60 user interface is looking older than that Mayan calendar as each day goes on. And Nokia left the door open for this very scenario back in August when Om asked the company about a potential dumping of Symbian. Here are quotes back then from a Nokia representative, emphasis mine:

“[t]here is logically not just one software environment that fits all consumer and market needs,”

“In addition, as we’ve stated before, we also continue to explore opportunities around a new class of devices that we see as the next segment of high performance mobile devices.”

Those opportunities are surely Maemo at this point, with the N900 currently starting to ship. “Consumer and market needs” are indeed changing as well — and Nokia must change with them, or else become irrelevant. The bulk of the company’s handsets are low-end, low-margin feature phones, and the rising trend of smartphone sales tells Nokia where the near future is. For Nokia to regain lost market share and earn more profit per handset, it needs to reinvent its smartphone line. Maemo looks to be it, while I’d wager that S60 moves down the line to become the “new” feature phone-plus for Nokia.

I’m officially jealous that I can’t go to the Google press event on Thursday where the Chrome OS will be shown. Our GigaOm Network Editor in Chief, Sebastian Rupley, has the invite, so maybe I can convince him to livestream right to my monitor later this week. Why do I have Chrome fever? Three reasons.

First, I live in a web browser for most of my waking hours. I don’t need many of the standard features that a full desktop operating system provides, so it’s essentially just feature-bloat for me. Second, in the past two to three years, I’ve moved over to Google’s services for email, contacts, phone management and more. Lastly, while I expect Google’s Chrome OS to run on x86 devices, I’m really hoping to see it to thrive on the ARM platform. Chrome OS is probably overkill for a netbook or notebook, so I’m thinking it will help kickstart the smartbook platform — a lightweight web-based OS for a power efficient processor for all day browsing.

What are you expecting to see out of Google’s Chrome OS this week?

Here are some of today’s phone conversations I enjoyed reading or viewing on the web, along with some brief thoughts:

T-Mobile’s Boldly adds another UMA phone (BGR) — The BlackBerry Bold gets an update in the 9700 and it landed at T-Mobile this very day. $199 is the going rate, although you can spread that out over 20 months. This newer bold uses an optical trackpad in lieu of a trackball and adds seamless Wi-Fi calling to save on those minutes. Of course, it has 3G and all of the other nice features of the original Bold — including that 480 x 320 display.

Nokia’s E72 arrives (Nokia) — Did you like the E71? Then chances are, you’ll like the E72 because the form factor is pretty darn similar. New to this model is a bit of revamping to the email and other messaging apps, a 5 megapixel camera, and the latest version of Ovi Maps.

San Francisco getting an AT&T upgrade — or did it already get it? (AT&T) — The Bay Area is probably the worst gap in AT&T’s network due to the large number of iPhones per square block. The company dropped $65 million into the area over the past year, with most of the upgraded 850 MHz spectrum deployed this past quarter. I haven’t heard customers there say things are better, but AT&T is throwing a bone — San Francisco will see the 7.2 HSPA deployment in 2010. No firmer timeframe is mentioned, but if there’s one place AT&T needs to beef things up, it’s the Bay Area.

I spent a fair bit of time in a doctor’s waiting room today, and that meant surfing the web on a UMPC. I ran across a few articles that point to recurring ludicrocity that I have to comment about. Sit back and enjoy the ride, and let me know if you find these things as silly as I find them.

Retweet — the new retweet function that Twitter has rolled out was seemingly in every third tweet I’ve seen lately. Let me be straight — I am interested in reading smart things that folks have to say, on Twitter or anywhere else. I do not care that 1,300 people also found them interesting enough and retweeted them. We don’t need more noise on the web, we need more focus.

Droid Auto-focus Bug — the Android development team has admitted there is a bug in the auto-focusing API that caused all of the Droid’s bad camera experiences, and then fixed them automatically. There’s a time-stamp error in the API that causes it to work poorly for 24.5 days, and then properly for 24.5 days, ad infinitum. Time-stamp? In a camera focusing routine? You’re kidding me, right?

Microsoft Exec Ray Ozzie — smartphone apps don’t matter, developers will port all apps people want to all the platforms. Apps are not a differentiator among phone platforms. Spoken like a company in denial. Sadly, Ozzie is Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect. Let that sink in for a moment.

Windows 7 Starter Edition on Netbooks — Joanna Stern of Slashgear points out that 23 of 28 netbooks on sale at Amazon currently are preloaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Ms. Stern also points out the basic functionality that is missing from the Starter Edition, such as desktop wallpaper customization, that makes Windows XP a better value for netbooks than Win 7 Starter Edition. It’s like we have taken a step backward in the Windows world, yet again.

Back in September, I chatted with the Femto Forum to get their outlook on femtocells — the little cell sites for homes with poor network coverage. “Anticipated optimism” was the general feeling I walked away with, but questions lingered as to how consumers would take to personal cell stations in the home. You can read my full report (subscription required), but suffice it to say that Unlicensed Mobile Access, which uses Wi-Fi, and pass-on costs to the consumer could be femtocell roadblocks.

There’s also the issue of slow adoption rates by carriers to get femtocells in front of potential consumers, and that may have hurt sales this year. Geek.com caught an ABI Research note that suggests sales aren’t as good as expected this year. How bad are the numbers? ABI is slashing its femtocell forecast in 2009 by 55% of what it was. Earlier forecasts predicted 790,000 femto deployments, but new expectations peg that number around 350,000. And it doesn’t take a crystal ball to forsee 2009 sales when we’re already halfway through November, so I gather that these numbers are spot-on. 2010 doesn’t look much better — ABI is cutting sales estimates for next year by 40% as well. What reasons do they give?

“[t]he general economic malaise, which makes the $150 pricetag of an unsubsidized femtocell harder to swallow; the time operators need to get their systems and networks ready for a femtocell deployment and to devise innovative pricing plans; a fear in some quarters that a rapid increase in femtocell numbers would cause interference in the macro network.”

In my chat with the Femto Forum, I specifically called out the price challenge, but not because of the economy. Instead, my thought is a reluctance for consumers to pay the carrier when the femtocell decreases demand for the carrier’s network by producing supply using the customer’s backhaul — the extra network coverage gained requires traffic to be routed over the home broadband network you’re already paying for. I suppose that folks who can’t get cellular service in the home, the price will be well worth it, but are there enough of those consumers out there?

I just received the weekly newsletter from eReader and they snuck in a biggie:

Sure enough, just go to www.ereader.com/android from your phone and download the app. The Android version supports working with the eReader online store and the user online bookshelf. I can tell you one thing — the Droid’s big screen makes it a fantastic e-book reader. The only complaint so far is no justification of the text, a pet-peeve of mine.