From my perspective, they very fact that this is possible is the news here. It's a "reading" lamp that can be powered by a phone jack. That's right, your phone jack has a tiny amount of power that comes through along with the phone signal to power things like ringers and speakers and microphones. I imagine that the light output of this thing is pretty pathetic, honestly. I haven't seen any in use, but just looking at the price (less than $6) and the LEDs the thing has got makes me think this isn't going to assist all that much with reading, unless it's very dark out and you REALLY want to find out whether Robert Langdon is really dead.
There are a couple of other advantages to the lamp. First, these phone jacks are the most standard plug in the world. While everybody has a different outlet for power, almost every country uses the same phone jack. Second, when the power is out, often, phone lines are not, meaning this could be a way to have some light during an emergency. And, finally, what could be the most appealing reason to uses this ugly, cheap, and insignificant source of light is that the power you pull from telecoms is free. They pay for it...you don't. Now that I think of it, it's probably against the TOS agreement you have with the phone company, but there are no meters, so they'll never know. You can use all of the (really insignificant amount) of electricity you want to power this lamp, and you'll never get charged for it.
The 
Airships are making a comeback with the US military, which could be good news for civilian applications. The military has the deep pockets for research and development, but then, once these ideas are worked out, civilian applications often follow along. So it is for those reasons, and not military boosterism, that we are excited to see that the US Army is planning to deploy an 
