Dean Bubley addresses the challenges facing innovators looking to create openness and choice in the mobile communications market. Bubley, an analyst specializing in the field of mobile and wireless, reminds mobile communication innovators who hold a Utopian view of openness that they must consider the constraints posed by regulations, laws of physics, commercial practicalities, and especially the psychology of the Normob, the normal mobile user, who doesn't care about openness and will need to be convinced.

Compounding the health care crisis is a huge wave of aging populations. Health care needs tech-based solutions based in communities and homes, focused on empowering patients to manage their own health and change their behavior as necessary. Eric Dishman of Intel describes the new technology and platforms being built to improve this health care. Dishman also discusses longer-term efforts including regulatory approvals and reimbursement reform.

On the Tracks4Africa website, travelers pool their data, enrich it with textual and pictorial annotations, and collectively create a GPS map that natives and tourists alike can use and enhance. Jon Udell interviews one of the co-founders of Tracks4Africa, Johann Groenewald, who describes how a community of GPS enthusiasts evolved into -- and still exists in a symbiotic relationship with -- a 21st-century mapping business.

Hardware has not seen the same level of innovation and variety that software has, due to the high costs of manufacturing and distribution. In this presentation from the Emerging Communications Conference, Jeremy Toeman, Head of Marketing at Bug Labs discusses the emerging open source hardware movement and how it will impact the $10 billion consumer electronics industry.

TerraNet hopes to bring cell phones to villages in developing nations. CEO Anders Carlius describes TerraNet's ad hoc GSM mesh networking technology and business model. He envisions local entrepreneurs rolling the technology out one village at a time.

Open the telephony network and create a platform accessible to a community of developers. Crick Waters, co-founder, SVP Strategy and Business Development for Ribbit, believes this vision will lead to a new generation of hybrid communication tools and high value applications, and deliver on the premise that voice has value.

Wouldn't it be amazing if you could hold a "book" in your hands which had hyperlinks? Why would that be amazing, you ask? Well, what if the hyperlink triggered a process that makes a nearby computer, for example, play an MP3 of animal sounds that match the story? In this keynote presentation from the 2007 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference, Manolis Kelaidis introduces blueBook, his prototype that merges the analog and digital worlds of books.

People learning to read will soon be able to use a handheld device to practice their reading skills when trained teachers and the Internet are not available. Using inexpensive hardware, Literacy Bridge plans to provide Talking Book audio players/recorders in developing nations starting this fall, with a goal of selling them for $10 per device or less. Listen to Cliff Schmidt describe the Talking Book and the benefits it will bring to people in far-flung locations.

David Recordon, Open Platforms Tech Lead for Six Apart, pitches the telephony community on grassroots efforts as a means for the development of open standards. Grassroots community groups can serve as the catalyst for addressing challenges that corporate groups have chosen to ignore, and begin to bridge gaps between existing web technologies and mobile service providers.

A year ago, Apple released the iPhone to both critical and consumer acclaim. On July 11, 2008, the company came out with an upgraded version that promised faster speeds as well as third party applications. Tech geek and blogger Robert Scoble joins Phil and Scott to discuss both the device itself, as well as the social phenomenon that has people lining up for a second year in a row.