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Amazon.com announced today that Kindle and Kindle 3G with Special Offers customers will receive AmazonLocal offers on their screensavers when they are not reading.

This turns the e-reader into a handheld daily deals billboard and a competitor to the kinds of daily deals and flash redemptions iPhone and Android phone users can get through Foursquare and Groupon. Amazon has been steadily increasing its competition against daily deals contenders this year. This the latest development is another step in that direction.

We all know what the acronym BYOB means, but when it comes to bringing your own mobile devices, there are several implications for enterprise IT managers. Of course, BYOD isn't a new concept: people have been bringing their own PCs and connecting them to corporate networks almost as soon as the PC was invented back in the 1980s. I recall dealing with this issue as a young IT worker, trying to convince my manager that the nascent Compaq (which is now buried inside HP's product lines) wouldn't bring our network to its knees. Fun times.

Google and Motorola Mobility announced this morning that Google will acquire the mobile handset manufacturer for $12.5 billion. Android will remain open and Motorola will remain a licensee of Android. Google will run the Motorola as a separate business. Across the world, there are Android-based original equipment managers that feel like they just got punched in the stomach, as Google's entry into the hardware supply chain, no matter how benevolent the companies make it sound, is a huge wave that will have ripple affects across the entire mobile ecosystem.

It makes absolute sense for Google to buy Motorola. The last couple of weeks have seen Google take significant body blows to its Android vertical. First they lose the Nortel patents to Apple and Microsoft (among others) and then Apple comes out with its second quarter earnings statement to reveal that it now has $76 billion in the bank and making more than $10 billion in profit every quarter. Most of that is from iOS. Android is not making that kind of money for Google and the search giant has to be feeling that it missed an opportunity, especially considering that Apple only has 18.2% of the worldwide smartphone market and Android has 43.4%. How will Google's addition of Motorola shake up the industry?

The FCC will meet on Thursday to vote on a proposal to open up a larger swath of wireless spectrum to licensing than was opened at the dawn of TV remote controls, baby monitors, cordless phones and WiFi networks. The most likely candidates to fill that new spectrum are connected devices, or the Internet of Things, which are now coming online faster than new human subscribers to leading mobile phone networks.

"This will also be a platform for innovators and entrepreneurs," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told the New York Times in an in-depth report last week. "There is every chance of this leading to the development of one or more billion-dollar industries." Beyond the possible economic impact, the move may have substantial cultural consequences, as the spectrum is opened up through which our refrigerators, toasters, exercise equipment and city streets can publish data about their activities to the Internet.

How many Droids are there? How much RAM is in the Nexus One? Does the Samsung Galaxy S support Wi-Fi N? Does the Droid X have a bigger screen than the Droid 2? Can you get Android in a TV? In a car?

If these are the sort of questions you've found yourself wondering about (or even Googling about with limited success), there's a new resource out there that you should be aware of. It's this incredible spreadsheet of all known Android devices and their technical specifications. And it includes smartphones, netbooks, e-books, PMPs (personal media players), MIDs (mobile Internet devices), TVs, cars and more.

Everyday objects with their own IP addresses may soon be the norm. This communication of objects with the Web is the latest version of a still-idyllic new vision of technology that claims it will improve our lives. Yet we're at such an early stage of development of the Internet of Things that finding the best blogs to follow is a moving target.

Many of the 10 offerings below have only come into being in recent months. Not making our list is a ReadWriteWeb favorite - Pachube - which has been remiss in updating their blog. So stay tuned for updates in future posts. For now, here are what we believe to be the 10 most active blog feeds available on the Internet of Things.

While the iPhone is clearly the media darling of mobile devices in the US, there's no denying that Nokia's handsets have saturated the global market. As part of that global strategy, the company just announced free walk and drive navigation for 74 countries in 46 languages. Today's release of the third iteration of Ovi Maps is similar to Google's maps for Android in that the service offers free turn-by-turn voice guidance. Nevertheless, there's one important catch - maps are cached offline for future use. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Nokia's VP of product and location, Christof Hellmis, for a look at how the company is saving device owners precious battery life.