Michael Scaturro of voanews.com writes:

A team of Americans and Kenyans has developed a new Internet router - and it's creating buzz. That's because it is an affordable, reliable solution for people without consistent Internet access. It can run while plugged in or on battery power, jump between networks at will, and become a mobile hotspot for multiple devices. The team presented the device - called the Brck [pronounced Brick] - at the Re:publica tech conference in Berlin.

The adoption of smartphones and tablets is resulting in consumers spending less time with dedicated devices... but most people still turn to standalone equipment on occasions.

Research from the Consumer Electronics Association in the USA shows that portable game consoles, satellite navigation devices and e-book readers are most likely to be discarded first.

There’ll be 1.4 billion mobile devices with HTML5-compatible web browsers at the end of this year, according to a new forecast from ABI Research.

That would represent an annual increase of 87%.