Actually, they _are_ putting map software on the device. The new Sony cameras come with a world basemap, allowing you street level detail in major cities. Here in Tokyo you even get nice bitmap icons of major landmarks like Tokyo Tower, Roppongi Hills and others.
Usefulness - well, when you're out touristing you can actually see where you are, and of course sort your clips accordingly. I'm guessing every device will have GPS in a few years, it is pretty neat...

Well, 1 Gbps service has been available here in Japan since October for 5,985 yen/month, about $60...

http://www.hikari-one.com/gigatoku/index.html

Always fun to read the comments about "what do you need all this space for"...

The more space you have, the more ways you'll find of using it. Here's a current example:

Lossless ripping of DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, playback straight from ISO to retain all menus, subtitles and extras:
300 DVDs, averaging 6 Gb - 1.8 Tb
50 Blu-rays, averaging 40 Gb - 2 Tb

Digital photos
15,000 and growing, averaging 4 Mb, at least two copies stored in different locations: a measly 120 Gb

Camcorder AVCHD files:
Raw dump for archiving: 300 Gb
Transcoded for editing: 1 Tb

Approaching 6 Tb already. While I have hardcopies of all DVDs and Blu-rays, re-ripping them is a royal pain in the ass, so basically all files need basic protection.

All of this goes into a cheap case/PSU with G45 motherboard (6 SATA ports) running a low-power E7200 Core2 Duo, 8 Gb RAM, OpenSolaris and ZFS in a RAID-Z configuration. Now there's a robust home NAS for you. These new 2 Tb puppies will fit right in.

I'm in Japan and I have 1 Gbit/s connection (USD 50/month). Not that I ever see all of that speed, but within the country it's a breeze. Downloading 2.60 took all of 15 seconds... :)

Well, Sony and Panasonic have both had Blu-ray recorders out for almost six months that can do real-time transcoding to H.264 and burn the result to either Blu-ray or DVD, so this isn't new. It does work great, though with BD-R prices dropping by the day, the reason to burn to DVD is diminishing. At the moment here in Japan, one 25 Gb BD-R is roughly $6, twice the price of a CPRM-enabled DVD-R DL at $3. For the storage you get, BD-R is already the winner.
Of course, a standard 4.7 Gb DVD-R (CPRM) comes in at 60 cents, so that still wins, but squeezing a full-length movie down that much doesn't do it for me.

On the argument of why people here in Japan are interested in buying Blu-ray recorders: pretty basic - it's the only way for you to keep your HD-recordings after you run out of HD space. Mind you, Toshiba sells a similar HDD/HD-DVD recorder, but given they are up against Sony, Panasonic and Sharp selling HDD/Blu-ray recorders they are outnumbered in hardware variety.

Adding to this, the new Sony and Panasonic recorders can do real-time transcoding of MPEG-2 broadcasts to H.264 to save diskspace, in addition to persistently burning subtitles into the stream if you so chose. Either variety can be burned to Blu-ray of course. Coupled with DLNA server functions and 1080p upscaling, they are selling like crazy.

Of course, in the US, most people would not even consider Sony's top of the line X90 at $1800 for a 500 Gb unit, but here they've been in short supply every since the launch before Christmas.

Now we just need the media prices to go down, BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-RE and BD-RE DL are all readily available (including HD-DVD media), but pricing has a way to go. A 10-pack BD-R will still run you around $80, and don't even think about the 50 Gb DL versions yet...

Not too surprising - most of the players have put a lot of money into their current LCD plants, and LCD's are simply selling too well at the moment.

You can be sure that they will resume OLED plans as soon as the normal LCD market starts getting saturated.

Jason: It's GSM 900, 1800 and 1900. They take standard SIM cards like all recent Japanese phones do, however they are SIM-locked to Docomo. If someone were to unlock them you could certainly use them elsewhere (all have English menus), though of course neither OneSeg or FeliCa are useable outside Japan, negating the two biggest killer apps.

What you don't mention in the summary is that all of the new models except for P905iTV and SH905iTV now do GSM in addition to 3G. Finally no need to carry another phone when leaving Japan! I'll be in line when these go on sale, sayonara KDDI...
Now let's see if anyone manages to unlock these, of course most of the nice features aren't really useable anywhere else.

Aw, too bad I'm out of town and won't be back in time for the Tokyo event. Great initiative, but a bit short notice?