Dear Andrius and all

I've submitted an entry to the 'Google 10 to the 100th' Competition.
The idea is for phone manufacturers to add a USB Host Interface to
cheap, entry-level GPRS phones for developing countries, so they can
interface to peripheral devices, like full-size USB keyboards,
printers, cameras, etc.

http://www.project10tothe100.com/

The idea is to get mobile phone manufacturers to add a USB Host
Interface to fairly cheap GPRS mobile phones, so they can control
peripherals, such as cheap PC Keyboards, flash drives, etc, and more
expensive devices like printers, where the cost is shared among many
people in a village, business, school, medical centre, etc.

With the ability to connect to peripherals, the phone becomes an open,
exandable system. People can use phones as the heart of a computer
system, in a similar way to a laptop or PC. They are no longer limited
to the phone keypad. They can write emails more easily, type messages
for discussion groups, enter text into web-forms, etc. The ability to
download information from the web and print it out will benefit the
wider community, not just the actual phone-owner. It could be useful
for web-pages, health leaflets, teaching material or anything that
people currently print using PCs.

With a USB Host Interface, people can use cheap $5-$10 PC Keyboards,
etc, that are already available in developing countries. They don't
need an expensive smart-phone or expensive $60 Bluetooth/Infrared
Keyboards.

I suggested adding USB Host capability, for basic text-entry, ahead of
expensive, luxury features like camera-phone capability.

The competition doesn't have a prize. It's just for people to submit
socially-useful ideas that will benefit a lot of people. Google allow
you to suggest an organization to implement the idea, if it's a
winner. I suggested they submit the idea to a major phone
manufacturer, if it's one of the 5 winners.

Competition details are on the FAQ page. Closing date for entries is
20th October 2008.

http://www.project10tothe100.com/faq.html

100 shortlisted ideas will be published on 27th January 2009.

Ricardo