Fabian Hemmert’s demo at the TEDxBerlin seminar is a bit hokey, but then that’s usually the way with new ideas and prototypes. In it, though, he raises some profound questions about the connection between us and our newly expanding digital world. In particular, “how do we make digital content graspable by humans?”

This conundrum isn’t restricted to the digital world. We’ve long tried to make representations of the physical world more real, such as making baby dolls that cry, wet, and can be comforted. (Maybe a G.I. Joe with kung-fu grip would have served better here.) But in the physical there’s a visual connection upon which to build. What happens when there is no visual to connect to? How can you make the digital, which is virtual, into the physical?

Hemmert offers three possibilities--two of which are already in play (albeit in modest ways). They are mass, shape, and intuition. Mass shifts weight within the object--in this case a prototype of a mobile phone--to aid the user’s understanding or use of content. (An adaptation of the Rumble Pak.) A shifting shape can provide clues about that content--how much or where there might be more. Intuition is basically the Tomagotchi paradigm-mimicking in the device emotional responses to which we can relate.

For gamer these ideas are logical extensions of what they already experience. Hemmert’s interest is in making such experiences commonplace. Integrating them into mobile phones, for example, will make the technology more approachable, and expand the potential the technology has to offer.

Dumb phones may not yet be dead, but they are in the process of dying. Manufacturers who haven’t hitched themselves to smartphones are paying the price--it’s time to put-up or shut-up for them. Motorola, which has been struggling with sales of late, has decided to put-up, announcing plans to introduce 20 smartphones in 2010, including one “consumer device” it will produce with Google that will be sold directly to consumers.

The hot phones for the final quarter of 2009 were produced by Nokia and Apple--both saw a rise in market share--while Motorola’s share and revenue dropped. (No word yet on what happened for RIMM or Palm.) Motorola only managed $5.7 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, a 20% decline from the fourth quarter of the previous year. The smartphone handwriting is clearly on the wall, as Motorola’s only bright spot was the sales of Android-powered smartphones, such as the Droid and the Cliq.

There are no other details, other than this admission by Motorola. What this new Google phone will look like, what it will do, what it will cost, or when it will be available are all unknowns.

The rumor-net has been mildly abuzz about the possibility of Microsoft launching its own Zune phone. Within the context of the smartphone marketplace, it makes sense--the Zune has the all the basics for a smartphone, sans the phone. And, if Apple could pull it off, so can Microsoft (albeit after Apple, again, has established market viability). Now comes the smoking gun: new drivers for the Zune that definitely, positively, absolutely confirm there’ll be a Zune phone.

Long Zheng, at istartedsomething.com, shows a text dump of the new Zune driver .inf file. Under device descriptions comes both “%Zune.DeviceDesc%” and “%Phone.DeviceDesc%”. Proof positive! After all, why put something into a device driver that you don’t have (or plan to have)? Better yet, because there are three distinct device entries, it’s a certainty there’ll three different Zune phone models.

Zheng dismissed the notion that these entries are references of Zune integration into Windows Mobile 7. He says “this particular driver references specific hardware IDs that are locked to a vendor (Microsoft) and product which under USB body regulations cannot be masked.”

When will the world be blessed with an actual announcement of a Zune phone? John Paczkowski, of All Things Digital, says expect something that coincides with the World Mobile Conference in February, or the CTIA in in March.

Amazon’s Kindle is a neat idea, as are eReaders in general. But they aren’t much good if there’s nothing to 'eRead' on them. Book publishers, still stuck in last century’s economic models, are slow to come around to Jeff Bezo’s world of bits-and-bytes, leaving a gap in what is and what might be. Amazon has moved to shore-up that gap, at least for the Kindle and Amazon’s digital bookstore: it’s offering to pay authors and publishers a new royalty of 70 percent of list price--doubling the current 35 percent rate.

Well, not quite 70 percent. First, Amazon wants to deduct delivery costs. This is readily factored into the equation, as Amazon projects costs to be 15-cents per megabyte. And the book must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99 to qualify for this royalty rate. On top of this the book’s ‘ePrice’ must be at least 20 percent less than its physical copy price.

Oh, and Amazon wants distribution rights throughout the world where the publisher/author has such rights. The book can’t have been published prior to 1923. And the book must be sold in the United States.

Honestly, though, isn’t the soul of an author or publisher worth a royalty of 70 percent?