Job opportunities like this didn’t just come about thanks to the Internet’s rise in popularity, but rather because the Internet is open and free. In a world where television news sources are owned by conglomerates that have their own political agendas and newspapers throw journalistic integrity out the window in favor of partisan articles meant to divide the world, the Internet is really the only place you can go to find speech that is truly free. That’s the wonderful thing about the Internet – anyone can set up a website and instantly have a platform to speak their mind, regardless of whether that opinion is popular or not.

All of that, however, is currently under attack. If you’ve read this blog any time in past month or so, you know that I’m talking about SOPA and PIPA. SOPA and PIPA are two bills that have been introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, that aim to bring online piracy to an end. It’s a noble cause considering that online piracy is real problem that has far reaching ramifications you probably didn’t even know were possible when you downloaded the latest Justin Bieber album, but both bills have major problems.

First and foremost, SOPA and PIPA would aim to stop piracy by censoring the Internet. In recent days, both bills have suffered major setbacks, with the Senate and the House both opting to shelve PIPA and SOPA. That may seem like a victory, but don’t become complacent. SOPA and PIPA are merely waiting in the wings, with Senators and Representatives alike waiting until the controversy dies down before reintroducing these bills under different names with less offensive language. This is going to happen, because major organizations like the MPAA and the RIAA will continue to try and convince congressmen and women that they only way they can effectively fight piracy is by being given the right to wipe out any site that even hint at copyright infringement. They will do the convincing with money, and they won’t stop until they get what they want or they Senators and Representatives they’ve bought are removed from office.

The notion that the only way to fight piracy is through censorship is a direct threat to free speech, and I can’t believe that my government, which was founded on the value that an American should be allowed to speak his or her mind, is even considering a bill that could result in voices being stifled. Even more bizarre is the fact that the US government has openly chastised China and Iran for censoring the Internet, yet looks to grant itself the same power. You’ll hear supporters of SOPA say things like “Well, things will probably be okay even if SOPA passes.” They might be right, but do you really want to give the government that kind of power just to see what it does? I certainly don’t.

This issue has quickly evolved into something more than online piracy, most likely because SOPA and PIPA won’t do anything to stop piracy. Our Senators and Representatives clearly have no idea that simply blocking websites or having them removed entirely won’t do a damn thing to stop piracy. Hackers and pirates are smarter than those who run our country and the massive media organizations that support these bills, and SOPA and PIPA will be an annoyance for them at best. They will still find a way to get the stuff they want illegally, all the while laughing, tickled that our government thought that something as stupid as SOPA or PIPA would do anything to stop them.

The only thing that a bill like SOPA will do is put our jobs at risk, along with the millions of other people who rely on a free and open Internet to make a living. For that reason, TFTS cannot support anything resembling SOPA and PIPA, and we urge you to contact your elected officials (even if you don’t live in the US, since this will affect the entire world) and tell them that a vote for bills like SOPA and PIPA is akin to a vote against free speech.

Since this is a matter that will affect TFTS as a whole, our editors all have something specific they’d like to say, and we invite you to carefully consider what each thinks about these bills:

Steve Andersen – TFTS Assistant Editor:

SOPA in its current form is a disaster waiting to happen. SOPA is likely to kill jobs–and this during the worst economy since the Great Depression–as well as do horrible things to innovation all across the
internet. Why? Simple–it’s so spectacularly vague that just about anything could apply under its terms. In an environment where just about any picture or any video or any clip could result in a horde of overpowered lawyers landing on your throat feet-first, who in their right mind would start anything? Worse yet, even if it’s not your post, but rather a post from a user, you’re automatically assumed at fault because you didn’t do enough to stop it. And we’re not even talking about software pirates for large parts of this discussion, but rather blog owners, web site owners, and the like. There’s too much presumption of guilt here and not near enough common sense applied.

Chris Smith – TFTS Executive Editor:

My name is Chris and I have a problem, I am an Internet addict – which is not necessarily a problem. I love the current kind of Internet flavor, uncensored, with everything it has to offer, good or bad. And it’s mostly good stuff! Because the Internet drives innovation and helps online and offline businesses flourish, something certain lawmakers are clearly unaware of. The good thing about SOPA and PIPA is that it made me realize how many Internet services I use every day, whether work-related or not, to make my life easier. And I take them all for granted, they’re there to be taken advantage of and I can’t imagine waking up one day and finding out they had to be shut down without due process, for alleged copyright infringement. Should these bills pass, then we’ll have all kinds of big corporations anonymously bully various smaller sites out of business, without suffering any consequences. Various services and websites will disappear thanks to a law that gives certain powers and a waiver-to-censor to certain corporations overnight. Innovation will be stifled and soon everyone using the Internet will lose money. Everyone. As a tech writer but also as a simple Internet user, I can easily see how these two bills would affect my whole online experience in a heartbeat. I’m not an American, but once the U.S. green-lights such laws, I bet that other less democratic governments will have their own SOPAs and PIPAs out there in a minute to locally censor the Internet. And we’ll all have to suffer. The best thing of all is that piracy, which we don’t condone over here at TFTS, will not disappear, it will just adapt to the new environment. The bottom line is that I don’t want to tell my kids one day how I witnessed the Internet being pilled up in a yard in a cold winter day and being set on fire.

Andrew Tingle – TFTS Editor-In-Chief, Publisher, and Owner:

We live in a world that’s increasingly disinvesting us of ourselves, where those that are supposed to be serving us utilise the power and trust invested in them to bear down with invisible shackles upon a Joe Public who seemingly needs said individuals to reign in on our own personal responsibilities and freedoms. Many of us already live in a bubble that sees our every move tracked and filmed as we as carefully steered along the ever more restrictive tramlines defined not by a genuine cause based on what’s right and wrong but by lobby groups with cash in hand.

In all this, as we try to live our lives in a world ever more zoned and mapped out for us lest we actually need to fall back on our own sense of right and wrong or tax our brains with any sense of personal responsibility, the internet has been and remains, to a large degree, one of our last freedoms – but should the likes of SOPA and PIPA (in whatever iteration they may now take) come to fruition then, as in politics, Joe Public’s voice can and undoubtedly will be sidelined, pushed to the fringes by teams of lawyers whose mission is to see that whom they represent get to steer public opinion.

It is well documented, both on this site and across the net, how SOPA/PIPA and any of their mutations moving forward can and undoubtedly will play out – all of which leads to opinion being stifled, slowly muted and lost.

Of course, copyright infringement is not something we condone, but SOPA/PIPA have clear wider connotations that could, and thus will, lead to the gagging of free speech as those with power – by power, I mean those that already dilute laws with their lobby groups – cast their shadow across the net.

Now that SOPA/PIPA have been sidelined (or, rather, as they slip into the backroom to avail themselves of a new mask ready to face us again) it is clear that the people have spoken and, without wanting to state the bleeding obvious, isn’t it these very same people whom the politicians are supposed to be serving?

Enough already. Some of us were lucky enough to have been born in “the free world” – let’s try to keep at least some semblance of it at least someplace. Or, perhaps, we could just hand over the net to those that would like to shape it for their own ends, have them filter our content whilst we, in democracies, slam other counties who have looked to shape personal opinion by the very some (ultimate) means – that of censorship.

You, we, still have a voice and a platform to be heard. Use it or loose it. It really is as simple as that.

So there you have it folks. If you’re a citizen of the United States of America, the stakes can’t be much higher. Now is the time to remind your Senators and Representatives that they were elected to serve the people; they work for us, not special interests. If nothing else, remember that bureaucracies and corporations will jump at the chance to take away liberties like free speech and the open exchange of information, and once they’re taken away, they’re nearly impossible to get back.

Since the internet is one of the few places left to go to find speech that is truly free, giving the government – which is comprised largely of bought senators and representatives that cater to special interests before the will of the people, mind you – the power to create and internet blacklist is a ridiculously terrible idea. That’s something that Representative Smith is just now realizing, apparently, as his website has been updated with an explanation of why he has moved to ditch the provision:

After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers.

Of course, the three following paragraphs in Smith’s message are all about why we need SOPA, so you’ll forgive me if I remain unconvinced that Smith and the bill’s co-sponsors are actually listening to the public outcry surrounding the bill. Getting the DNS blocking provision removed from SOPA is definitely a good thing, but don’t think that the battle is close to over – not even for a minute. SOPA is still a bad bill, one that could potentially kill hundreds of thousands of jobs that only exist thanks to the internet, and it gives copyright holders far too much power, allowing the easy removal of entire websites from the internet altogether.

That being the case, it’s of the utmost importance that you call your elected officials and tell them to kill SOPA. The bill still has an absurd amount of support, and the only way to beat it is to remind those in congress that they work for you. Remember folks, all of the special interest money in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if the votes aren’t there!

For those who bought Dragon Age: Origins used, that content was locked, and if you wanted it, you had to shell out some extra cash. Project Ten Dollar’s implementation in Dragon Age: Origins was rather silent and more or less non-intrusive. It wasn’t until the next year, in January of 2010, that BioWare and Electronic Arts made it very publicly known that Project Ten Dollar was going to be included with Mass Effect 2. Once again, Project Ten Dollar’s implementation was pretty much a non-issue – if you bought Mass Effect 2 new, you got free access to a new squadmate, the Firewalker Pack of side missions, and a short (yet rather moving) mission where Commander Shepard explores the crash site of the original Normandy. None of this was essential to the main story in Mass Effect 2, so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

Fast forward to now, October 2011, and Project Ten Dollar – now dubbed “online pass” by most of the gaming public – has caught on like wildfire. Not only that, but it’s completely changing the way we play video games, and not for the better. Nearly every big-time publisher out there is now using online pass in one form or another, and a fair number of them are screwing it up royally.

Here’s a few examples: when DiRT 3 launched earlier this year, it came complete with an online pass that locked the game’s multiplayer until a code was entered. The only problem was that DiRT 3 launched in the middle of Sony’s hacker debacle with PSN, and even though Sony had managed to restore the online capabilities of PSN by the time DiRT 3 launched, the PlayStation Store was still down for quite some time after the game’s release. This meant that those who bought the game new couldn’t access the game’s multiplayer, and to make matters worse, Codemasters announced that it wouldn’t be releasing a patch to enable the multiplayer mode while everyone waited for the PlayStation Store to return (in other words, it didn’t want to risk the possibility of someone buying the game used and getting online without giving them $10 first).

More recently, we’ve had the disasters with Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3. Prior to the launch of Batman: Arkham City, the fine folks at Warner Bros had the brilliant idea of actually locking portions of a single player game and holding it ransom, demanding either the purchase of a new copy or a $10 fee before the content could be unlocked. If you’ve visited any game blog in the past couple of weeks, you know how this turned out: many players discovered that the codes that came with their new copy either didn’t work or were missing entirely. Bravo, Warner Bros!

The same thing happened with Battlefield 3. Many early adopters not only had to deal with server issues, missing squad features, and had to deal with the clusterfuck that is Origin, but a fair number of them can’t even the access the multiplayer, thanks to faulty or non-existent online pass codes.

Now, I’m typically a forgiving man, so let’s pretend that I can look past the fact that Electronic Arts and Warner Bros obviously didn’t care enough to make sure that valid codes were shipping out with every new copy of their games. Even cutting them some slack on that (which I’m not willing to do, but more on that later), the solutions both Warner Bros and Electronic Arts came up with are downright insulting to those who just want to experience the game they paid good money for. When it came to Warner Bros’ attention that some Batman: Arkham City codes weren’t working or missing entirely, it issued a convoluted and entirely unnecessary list of items for players to send in before it would unlock the missing content. Electronic Arts told players to take their games back to the retailers they purchased from, when it wasn’t even the retailers fault in the first place, meaning that most of those retailers probably won’t give a shit (and they shouldn’t).

If anyone from Electronic Arts and Warner Bros happens upon this, I want you to listen to me: this is not how you treat customers that came out to support you on day one. You were the ones that fucked up, and you’re essentially telling your customers “yeah, you got screwed, but we have our money, so you can go piss off.”

In whose world is this an acceptable business practice? Have we really gotten to the point where publishers will implement a system to reward those who purchase a new copy of their game, but then when the publisher takes a shit on their end of the bargain, they aren’t to be held accountable? The sad truth is that yes, we do live in this world – whereas once upon a time, online passes only locked non-essential DLC, they now lock very essential parts of a game. If the code you were supplied doesn’t work, too bad! You’re screwed, unless you want to open that wallet of yours back up.

What boggles my mind – and we’re talking mind boggling to the point where my eyes cross and my speech slurs – is that there are people out there who actually support this bullshit. “Developers need to pay for the server space taken up by used gamers!” they’ll bellow, or they’ll say “Developers and publishers lose money on each and every used sale!” seemingly as if they were one of John Riccitiello’s trained seals.

First of all, while I can concede that it costs developers and publishers a lot of money to set up and maintain multiplayer servers, when someone buys a new copy of a particular game, they are paying for a spot on those servers. When they sell that game, they relinquish their spot on those servers to the person who purchases the game used. The person who bought it new can no longer play online, and the person who buys it used takes the previous person’s spot. Therefore, every spot on those servers has been paid for with a new copy of the game, and you can never have more spots on a server than the number of new copies sold. That would be impossible.

And while it’s true that developers and publishers don’t see any money from used games, I’m not sure they’re losing as much money as we’re led to believe. In fact, I’m willing to argue that they make money on used sales, especially if they’re planning on making a series out of the game in question. If someone buys their games used and enjoys it, they’re more likely to buy the developer’s next game on day one, brand new. I’ve done this many times before – I bought the original Mass Effect used, and I loved it so much that I bought Mass Effect 2 on launch day, along with all of the DLC BioWare later released for the game. I bet you’ve done something like this too, and I’m also willing to bet that you’ve done it more than once. Without the used games market, I can guarantee that I would have never been introduced to the Mass Effect series, I wouldn’t have bought Mass Effect 2, nor would I have Mass Effect 3 pre-ordered right now.

Don’t get me wrong – I think you should support great developers by buying new whenever you can, but I’m also not deluded to the point where I think that this is always possible. The world’s economy is in shambles, and brand new games cost a shit ton of money. Developers and publishers would love nothing more than to see the used games market disappear from the face of the planet, but killing used game sales is a horrifically stupid idea. Not every gamer is rich, and many of them buy new games on day one by trading in old games they don’t play anymore. By implementing online pass, these asshole publishers are driving down the cost of used games, which drives down the cost of trade-in values, thus preventing gamers from being able to trade-in their old games and purchase new ones.

I also call into question the idea that publishers and developers of major game series actually need the money from online pass due to rising production costs, like so many of them have claimed. Let’s look at an example: Uncharted 3 is the first game in the Uncharted series to utilize PSN Pass, Sony’s version of online pass. As of October 11th, Uncharted 2 has sold 4.9 million copies. How much the developers and publishers make off the sale of a new game seems to change rather frequently, but let’s go low and say that Naughty Dog and Sony get to keep $10 of every new game sold. That’s a total of $49 million made off of Uncharted 2 alone. Do you really think they need to demand that extra ten dollars from Uncharted 3 players?

Look, I don’t care if publishers want to reward those who purchase their game new. In fact, I think they should! $50-$60 is a lot of money to spend on a single game, and those that are willing to support the developers by buying new should be shown some appreciation. But if the entire point of online pass is to give people an incentive to buy new, a number of publishers have been doing a terrible job of it lately. If I were considering a purchase of Battlefield 3 right now, I actually think I’d rather wait until the game is available used and just pay the $10 to access the online mode. At least if I did that, I’d have a better chance of the online pass actually working.

At the very least, I’d like to see they publishers admit they screwed up and make the online pass content free while they work out the kinks in their system. The keyword there is “they,” – retailers and consumers shouldn’t be responsible for fixing a publisher’s mistake. I know that online pass will never go away at this point, so I think that publishers owe players that much.

But now it’s time to tell us what you think. Do you agree that there really isn’t any excuse for the issues with online pass that players have been experiencing lately, or do you still think the use of online pass is justified after all of this? Head down to the comments section below and get the conversation going!

Thankfully, aside from some slow download times, my upgrade process went rather smoothly. In other words, I still had all my data and all my apps intact after the update ran through. Of course, as someone who is constantly playing and constantly changing things — I did take some time to dive in and play around a bit with a focus to try and clean things up, and in short, just delete some stuff that I did not need. I tend to not keep much data on my phone as most streams from the cloud including podcasts, audiobooks, music, movies and even television shows. For those, many can likely imagine, but I use Downcast, Audible, MOG and Slacker, Netflix and Hulu Plus. Nothing surprising there.

For my phone number, I use Google Voice and it is the only number I ever give out, though my iPhone does technically have a number assigned from Verizon. But here is where it gets interesting — I love iOS and I love my iPhone, however I really like Google for what it offers with Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. In terms of email coming from Apple, I do have an iCloud account set-up and have been a long time MobileMe user, but that was always a backup of sorts, never primary.

Anyway, for me, with this playing around I did it reminded me just how crazy my iPhone / Google set-up actually is. That being the case, I thought it would be fun to share if for no other reason than to give you a good laugh. Needless to say, while there is probably an easier way to do things and at risk of jinxing myself — this method works very well for me and I have no intentions of changing. I use Google Voice, the official app. Nothing overly crazy in that respect, but I have that app set up with no alerts or notifications because any missed calls and voicemails forward to my Gmail account and I will get the notifications that way. I tend to live in my inbox anyway so that sort of fits well with my work flow. Plus, when at the computer in Gmail I can also send and receive Google Voice calls.

In terms of my Gmail, that is rather simple — using the Apple Mail app on the iPhone I have it set up as an IMAP account for mail only. Yes, mail only. My Contacts are set-up as an additional account. For Contacts, I have those set-up as an Exchange account which syncs between my iPhone and Google. Sure two parts and two set-ups. But just like any bad infomercial — wait there’s more. For my Calendar I have yet another set-up going on. In this case I use a separate app called Pocket Informant. This syncs my Google Calendar along with my to-do’s, which are coming by way of Toodledo.

And as to why, once upon a time I tried to set them up a bit more normally, but my Gmail set-up seems to work best as IMAP, my Contacts syncing seems to work best with an Exchange set-up and with the Calendar — yup, you guessed it, that seems to work best with the Pocket Informant app. Plus, Pocket Informant is a feature-rich app. Furthermore, this allows me to keep my information primarily in the cloud and have it syncing to and from Google to my iPhone 4 (and iPad 3G).

Touching back on the Google Voice notifications coming to my Gmail account. One may think that I would have my iPhone set-up to constantly check for new email. Well, that is not the case. In fact, my accounts are set to manual check. And you probably guessed it, no notifications for the Apple Mail on on my iPhone either. So what gives, how do I get alerted of missed calls and voicemails, or any emails in general. In this case I use another third party service, Boxcar. The reasoning here, it drains battery life quickly if you have your iPhone constantly checking for new email. With Boxcar the notifications come to me and in turn — I have an iPhone with impressive battery life.

Like I said, crazy set-up — but hey, it works for me and that is the important part.

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Anyway, with the mushy gushy stuff out of the way, lets get back into what proved to be a popular theme last week — my stupidity when it comes to buying tech. And yes, as the title implies — I did it again and likely will again soon. Though to be fair and honest, while I played it cool (or tried to anyway) in last weeks column, I think that my mind had already been made up in terms of opening the TouchPad and ordering the Kindle. In fact, I did both later that evening.

In terms of the TouchPad, what can I really say, I opened it turned it on and played with it. Not much else, I have been a Pre Plus user and fan of webOS for some time so that was not all that new to me. I can say that webOS on a tablet is really nice but the same issues that I always had about the Pre Plus came to light almost immediately with the TouchPad — the lack of apps. And more specifically, it seems a bit worse on the TouchPad. Of course, that does not matter all that much at this point given the device has already been EOL’d. Needless to say, the HP TouchPad (as seen in the above image) has taken its place in my desk drawer next to another well liked but rarely used tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook. Lets just say this, the TouchPad hasn’t gotten much use since last Saturday afternoon when I turned it off and put it away. The end verdict, it will stick around and I will wait until CyanogenMod releases a version of Android that I can install and run.

Moving on, lets shift over to the Kindle. The $79 price point was more than I could resist, though at some point in the future I am pretty sure I will spend the $30 and ditch the Special Offers part. Of course, I should point out that the ads do not really both me all that much. I should also say that I owned the original Kindle so I already knew how nice an E Ink display could be. The history with the original Kindle is that I eventually got rid of it — I gave it to my mom after the iPad 3G arrived in my house. I read often and used the Kindle on a regular basis, however I started reading on the iPad and the Kindle ended up taking a back seat so I gave it away so it would get used like a (roughly $400) gadget deserved. I am also not sure I really missed it, though I have dreamed of buying another Kindle from time to time.

That being said, it was always the price that kept the temptation at bay. Not that the previous pricing was not low enough, but $79 is way under what many considered magical at $99. Of course, there are some missing items including a memory card slot and support for Audible books. Me personally, I like to listen to Audible, but do so on my iPhone because like listening to podcasts — I feel better with headphones and being mobile — having a small pocketable device. As for the memory card slot, you can store your ebooks with Amazon and for me, I rarely keep more than a few books on my Kindle. Mostly just the one I am currently reading and one or two that I plan to read next so storage is never an issue for me.

Bottom line on the Kindle, I love it but it has such as different reading experience as compared to a tablet (iPad 3G or Galaxy Tab). But that is not necessarily due to the size of the tablet, the size of the display or even the fact that the tablets have color touchscreens. The difference comes in that I cannot do anything else on the Kindle and I tend to focus more on the book at hand. And in turn, I think I enjoy it a bit more. Plus, the E Ink display is really really nice and I do think that I missed it more than I had thought.

And now moving forward, I would like to say that I am going to try and stay good and not make any purchases, but I cannot lie — I am already planning one, though I do have to wait until the 17th to do so. You see, I am going to order an iPhone 4S, but before you judge, hear me out. I have two lines coming up for renewal (one of which will be cancelled) on the 17th and promised my daughter an iPhone several months back.

Sadly though, my plans may not done just yet, about that second line, that may just be going towards the Samsung Galaxy Nexus with Verizon. But I must try and resist. Man, more options that this guy can handle. So what about you, which shiny new goodies are you considering, or which have you purchased recently — lets discuss down in the comments.

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Yes dear readers, the hype of the interwebs got me. And got me good. Sadly, this is something that is quite painful for me to admit. After all, I tend to be on the cheap side. Not to mention, I like to think that I only buy things that I need. Well, not all the time but at least most of the time anyway. More important, despite having the tablet sitting here, I still like to think that I would not have bought a TouchPad considering it is a tablet and I already have three other tablets sitting in my office.

And perhaps the worst part, I originally set out to buy a $99 16GB TouchPad, however when OnSale managed to get more inventory, all they managed to get was the 32GB models for $149. And well, I jumped anyway. That alone should have thrown up the caution flags, but no I thought it sounded like a good idea. Heck, I even sat on pins and needles waiting for the order to get finalized and receive my prized UPS tracking number.

Well, UPS came and went. In fact, the came and dropped of the TouchPad on Wednesday and as of Friday morning at just shy of 6AM Eastern time — that TouchPad is still sitting in my office and still sitting unopened in the box. You see, I realize I do not need it and that brings me to the next phase on the caught by the hype guilt. What should I do with it?

The way I see it I have a few options in front of me. Pass it on to a family member, use it around the house or sell it. I am not looking to make any money from it, just enough to recover my cost. And just to play down the notion that anyone may have about this being a glorified for sale post — I already have a buyer lined up and a deal agreed upon, just in case.

The TouchPad, while not a perfect device by any means would probably make for a good tablet to use around the house or give to the kids to play around with. I could use it as a glorified photo frame and/or music player somewhere in the house. And truthfully, I already have it and have already paid for it so I should open it up and put it to good use.

Then again, the hype is coming back with another gadget, the $79 Kindle that was recently announced. I have been dreaming of getting one since Jeff Bezos announced them the other day. No really, I actually dreamed about it. Sad, I know. And true, I do not really need a Kindle as I read on my original 7 inch Galaxy Tab (or iPad) and have been rather happy with that setup. But the Kindle looks so nice and shiny, and its only $79.

That all being said, I will go and struggle with whether to sell or keep the TouchPad and whether to buy a new Kindle and leave you with this — what has caught you? Of course, one final thought — selling the TouchPad could pay for the new Kindle (and some new books).

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That said, all three have one thing in common in that they can appear to be shiny and new and for better or worse you find yourself getting sucked in for one reason or another. On the hardware and software side there is somewhat of barrier here as there is often a higher cost assiciated with both. But then again, after looking around my bookmark browser bar and my iPhone screen — there are more than a few services that are not free of charge either.

I guess what this comes down to is what you are willing to pay for. Or what you get sucked into paying for because you think you need it. And trust me, I am writing this as somewhat of a hypocrite because while I will fuly admit that I do not need as much as I have — I often find myself shelling out money to buy things. Or in the case of services, shelling out money to use things. And again, I would like to think that I am not alone here. Sure, there is the simple point of having more self control, but self control aside some of my issue likely boils down to what I do for a living — gadget blogging. I surround myself with this stuff day in and day out and it almost seems necessary to have.

When it comes to big ticket items I will agree with the whole self control issue and just not being stupid with money. Plus, there are some items that I have gotten through review programs so I am fortunate in that respect. The bigger issue for me is the services. This is something that was driven home this week with the Facebook announcements — they are integrating with everything. For me, I saw the music services and realized — there are lots and lots of options. Me personally, I use Slacker and MOG, though I have tried Rdio, Spotify, Rhapsody, Napster and likely some others that I cannot think of at the moment. Bottom line, while there are differences in song libraries and some features — there is one big main thing in common — they all allow you to play music.

The sad part here, the music services are just the beginning, some other paid services that I am gladly shelling out for each month include Hulu Plus, Netflix, Audible, Carbonite and MyAssist. Thankfully though, at least I am only paying for one type of each of these services with that last being one that helps me — its a virtual assistance service. Unlike the overlapping MOG and Slacker subscriptions. But hey, I actually use both of them on a daily basis.

So how should we pick? A question I wish I had a solid answer to. I would say that we need to pay for only what we actually use. And perhaps more to the point, what we can afford, but that is another whole side of this issue and I don’t claim to be a finance expert so I will not even touch that side.

And moving past the paid services, there are also new items popping up everyday online that we seem to want to join. For these, I often find myself signing up for the simple reason of wanting to be able to get my preferred username. Of course, just like the paid services, we could take these as being time suckers and that in itself is a cost. The cost of not being able to do something else. But my guess, we could most likely skip most of them and never miss them.

Going back to the preferred username though, the problem for me, I have a common name Robert Nelson and like to use robertnelson. Heck I got into Gmail shortly after it launched in beta-only with invitations being required and I still missed my name ending up with an alternate of rjnelson. Its ok, but not the same. Simply put, I prefer robertnelson. Though I have also been known to use areyouageek.

And that brings this full circle as to where the geek in the title of this column comes from. Truth be told, that is what I am, which is probably the real reason why the overabundance of tech is such an issue for me. Then again, bringing up the areyouageek name and it just makes me think of yet another service that I have signed up for — Posterous, though that one I really like and actually use and thankfully it is free.

With that I will leave you with my explanation that the overabundance gets me because I am a geek. Although I suspect it is more the fact that I am a more than a bit OCD and have to have my hands in as much as possible. Otherwise the one bit of suggestion that I can offer to help manage this, something that I have recently begun doing myself — evaluate what you have and what you use and try to narrow things down. For example, my Flickr account expired and while I have yet to remove the email they sent me from my inbox, its been a few months and I have come to think that I am now saving $25 per year because of not renewing. I guess Flickr was not as important as I once thought. That makes me wonder what else I can get away with cutting.

So, how about it, fire off in the comments with your thoughts and opinions. What overabundance issues do you have? And for me, I think my best option is to evaluate each item as they come up for renewal.

Missed an episode of Geeks Corner? Click here to catch up with other episodes.

As far as what you can expect, this column will come available each and every Friday and given my obcessive compulsive nature, it will most likely never miss a week. In terms of what you can expect to be reading, well, considering Andrew was kind enough to give me a fairly open ended deal, that will vary a bit and it will ultimately depend on my mood at the time, it could be something that I want to chat about or maybe something that happened to be a hot topic during that particular week. One thing is certain though, it will be geeky in nature.

This first column is more just an introduction as to what you can expect to see along with a bit about who I am, some of the goodies that I use and a little tease as to what you can expect to see next Friday. If you ever poked around the site you may have seen the About Us page which has the bios for all the writers, however there is also a much simpler version of mine. I tend to describe myself as being a “gadget blogger, runner, triathlete, husband, father & all around geek.” That of course, given the short and sweet nature comes from my Twitter profile, where just in case you want to learn more about me, I am @robertnelson.

Some of the gear that I use tends to be either free and/or on the old side — I like quality, but I am also fairly cheap. My daily driver is a 24 inch iMac from several years ago that has a secondary 20 (or 21 inch) Apple Cinema display that is even older. And although there are several notebook computers in my house, I tend to use the Cr-48 that I was lucky enough to get from Google. And yes, I really like the Cr-48, but hey, I am a tech/gadget blogger who uses quite a bit of Google services and lives in the browser so ChromeOS sort of makes sense for me.

Given that last statement you may think my mobile phone would be Android, its not, my main phone is the iPhone 4 with Verizon. That said, I do also have an active (and now nicely aged) Droid Eris that is rooted and running Gingerbread and a Pre Plus (mainly because Verizon gives me free Mobile Hotspot). As for tablets, I have an original 3G iPad with AT&T, an original 7 inch Galaxy Tab with Verizon and a Wi-Fi only BlackBerry PlayBook.

And of course, when I am not geeking out and writing, I am spending time with the wife and kids, or running way further and often than many people would think to be normal. Plus, I also have a real strong fascination with how regular (non-geek) people use their technology and which gadgets they both have and dream of having. In other words, you can probably expect a column or two in the future dealing with my friends and their gear. And in case you were wondering, while I have geek friends, most of the people that I see and interact with in the real world are totally non-geeky and think that I am quite odd for wanting to write and talk about this stuff all day long.

With that, fire away in the comments, but as this is the first, try and not beat me down all that much. And as a teaser for next week, I am thinking something along the lines of the overabundance of tech. After all, there is plenty of hardware and plenty of services and while we like to check everything that is both shiny and new, we often find ourselves going back to the tried and true.

Missed an episode of Geeks Corner? Click here to catch up with other episodes.

We cover technology news here on a regular basis, and while nuclear plants aren’t ordinary topics for us, they still fall under our “jurisdiction” so to speak, as nuclear plants are just another proof of mankind’s ingenuity and innovation in this tech field we love so much. But what happens when things go wrong? Can we find solutions to the issues that affect such smart inventions when they are hit by a rebellious nature, which, to certain degree, we’re also responsible for?

Today we hear that one more nuclear plant could have a similar outcome to the one in Fukushima and this time around we’re talking about a plant in the USA. The nuclear plant in question is, as you may know, the one in Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plan, the one that was flooded by the Missouri River on June 7.

According to Business Insider, which cites a report from a Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, a Russian regulatory agency is claiming that “the US is currently having a major nuclear emergency at the flooded plant in Nebraska and that the Obama Administration is trying to cover it up.”

This is certainly the kind of news involving nuclear plants that we don’t want to read about in the papers. But before we leave room for panic we should wait to see what the Obama Administration has to say about these allegations. The report cited by The Nation has apparently been prepared by the Russian FAAE (Federal Atomic Energy Agency), which was working with information provided by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), and without wanting to minimize any political influences and/or interests in such reports or to enter into conspiracy theories, we’ll certainly want to hear more from U.S. government officials about what’s going on at Fort Calhoun before drawing any definitive conclusions.

What’s certain though is that covering up a nuclear disaster is hardly possible in this day and age of instant access to information. In case the Nebraska plant will fail when faced with the regular course of nature, then the whole world will know about it. And we all hope that doesn’t happen as it will have severe implications on multiple levels both locally and internationally.

We’ll be back with more details as this situation progresses, and, in case you’re anywhere near Fort Calhoun, let us know more details about the situation down there in the comments section below or via Facebook.

Image above: Associated Press

Currently there are two main app repositories for iOS devices These are the gigantic, and official, App Store, which probably has an “app for that” thing you are looking for, and Cydia (jailbreak required), which not only provides access to all the paid App Store apps (sorry to say this actually since I mean pirated copies of those apps here) but mostly to apps that have never been approved by Apple in the first place.

Could Facebook attempt to be the third one, and one that could give some nightmares to Apple? Well, the word on the street is that Project Spartan will bring out the best of the geeks busy at coding stuff for Facebook in a clear, and daring attack at Apple. That, of course, will make the geeks over at Cupertino return fire soon.

What is Facebook cooking? Well it’s basically a new gigantic web app built on HTML5 (the irony is more than obvious here, isn’t it Apple?) and glazed with social networking features, which is certainly expected from Facebook. In it, you’d find plenty of web apps that would work on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and which could be the same kind of apps that you’d find in the App Store with plenty of Facebook integration in them. Maybe even more apps considering that Facebook will not apply the same draconian rules Apple has set in stone regarding the App Store. And it will most likely lower, if not ditch all together, that 30% commission that developers have to pay to have their paid apps featured in the App Store and make money off it.

The end user will still have to buy web apps from Facebook’s app store so developers will still make money off them. The same developers will certainly be interested into attracting the attention of those up to 700 million, and that number keeps growing, Facebook users. Being HTML5 and all, the new app store could work on multiple mobile platforms, so Android and Windows Phone 7 users, among others, could also be interested in the offers found inside Facebook’s unnamed, but about to be released, app store. Speaking about release dates though, we have no idea when that will happen and we won’t get over excited about such an alternative yet.

Just a short while ago we all thought that ubergeek Mark Zuckerberg and his peers would totally change the future of email. They didn’t! Now some people are thinking the future of apps will be completely rewritten by Facebook. I say, not so fast!

Apple will not sit by and watch Facebook ruin this impressive part of its business. The App Store, along iTunes and iBooks, or, in a word, mobile content, is what keeps some iOS users glued to their iOS devices. So Apple can’t lose any of those content and money makers and can’t afford not to be #1 in the app store business.

And Apple will find a way to fight Facebook, as will the likes of Google and Microsoft, which should also be threatened by such an initiative. In fact I can already see a bunch of ways Apple could limit the unwanted effects of a Facebook rival. For example Apple could lower that 30% commission it charges developers for their app sales. Although I don’t think that would be something Apple would really consider at first.

What Cupertino could do would be to make developers choose between either the App Store or Project Spartan and that will certainly be a hard choice for already established App Store developers that are making a ton of cash on the App Store, even after that 30% gets taken away. As for new developers that have great apps that could go viral fast, I think they’d rather want to be initially featured in the App Store, Android Market or Windows Marketplace rather than the Facebook App Store, wouldn’t you agree? And once they start making money of those apps they might not want to be excluded from any of those app stores to simply be part of the Facebook app store.

Last but not least, and something that Apple doesn’t directly control, is the fact that the Facebook app store will only have web apps available to you. I mean how else would you be able to run them in the first place? Installing them on your device will not be officially available since Apple doesn’t allow any third-party apps to be sideloaded on the phone. So whenever you don’t have a Wi-Fi or 3G/4G connection available, you won’t be able to access your web apps in the Facebook store, apps that you have already paid for. Considering that not all iOS customers purchase 3G devices, or if they do they might not get unlimited data plans with them, or if they do get unlimited 3G, and 4G, data plans, they might be throttled after reaching a certain amount of traffic, we find another reason for certain people not to go wild about a Facebook app store. Of course jailbreaking the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to install the Facebook store could be a solution, although that’s probably where Apple’s legal team would be immediately dispatched against Facebook. All these minor or major hassles, depending on your stance on the issues above, could somehow cripple the mobile experience the user wants, which is seamless integration of content and communication tools on the go, and may convince some of the 700 million Facebook users, which happen to also be some of those 200 million iDevice owners, to keep it simpler, rather than complex, and stick it out with just one app store. The App Store.

As I said above, and no, I am not biased when considering the above, I don’t think that the Facebook app store could overthrow the current mobile web app stores anytime soon, even with the tremendous number of subscribers Facebook has. On the other hand this Project Thunder could work a lot better against the Mac App Store or the Chrome Web Store, and any other similar initiatives in the computer business, although that’s something we’ll talk about in the future, since we’re still waiting for Facebook to confirm these Project Spartan rumors in the first place.

But is Nintendo’s idea really original? The company transformed the controller into a smart device, one that could prolong the time you spend gaming considering that it doesn’t necessarily need a big screen TV to work properly. The controller is also capable of various other functions, not necessarily gaming-related, which make it pretty similar to a tablet, although it’s not really a tablet.

I think it’s pretty clear where I am going with the argument here, isn’t it? The iPad changed the way we look at tablets and reshaped that particular niche. The iPad was one of the best devices sold last year, and everybody that’s anybody in the mobile and computer businesses tried to come up with a decent rival, although it’s this year that we really got to see such creations capable to somewhat fight Apple’s old iPad and especially the iPad 2. Needless to say that none of them is the iPad 2 killer we’re waiting for even if the iPad 2 can’t beat some of its contenders, strictly speaking from the hardware point of view.

It’s the iPad overall experience that other tablet makers can’t offer which includes access to a ton of apps and plenty of different content, like music, videos and eBooks, all accessible almost instantly. Which brings me to the point I’m trying to make: gaming on the tablet.

Gaming on the iPad was huge in 2010 and it’s getting even more impressive in 2011. The iPad 2 is an even better gaming tool for gaming, and games are getting better and better when it comes to graphical performance and actual playing experience. All you need to make gaming on the iPad 2 better was a big screen TV and an iOS way to make the iPad 2 act as the controller. And certainly there’s an app for that. Just check the video below that shows you how an IOS device can be used to control the action on a bigger display:

In other words, considering the mobile empire Apple has been building for a few years now, and I am referring to both hardware and software here, Cupertino may soon enter, and dare I say reshape, the gaming industry as we know it.

Picture this: Apple launches a new, more powerful Apple TV, possible one that’s incorporated in an actual big screen display an uses the next-gen iPad 3, iPhone 5 or iPod touch 5 (or their successors) as controllers for some very hot games. Would that particular setup be something you’d want to install in your living room, or gaming room? Would you choose a certain setup instead of the Wii U that’s about to hit stores at some point next year?

Of course I am speculating here, but the argument makes plenty of sense. Apple almost has everything needed to enter the console business: an OS (iOS 5 or later that could also include support for motion controlled gaming) that would work on controllers (iPad, iPhone and iPod) and console (Apple TV); a rich ecosystem for developers that can create better and better games that could, in a short time, rival current console titles, and a multiplayer feature, Game Center, that could grow even further to become a real threat to all other console gaming multiplayer systems.

Let’s not forget that while E3 was getting ready to start last week, Apple announced at its 2011 WWDC event that Game Center is going to be one of the main features of iOS 5. Apple went straight ahead to compare Game Center, which has 50 million registered users, to Xbox Live subscribers, which are only at about 30 million. Now that sounds like a company that’s taking gaming a lot more seriously than it did a few years ago. That sounds like a company that might be, in its secret R&D departments, conceiving a future console that could turn out to be a nightmare for Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. And, since we also mentioned Sony, Apple’s potential gaming-dedicated servers would probably be a lot more secure and less prone to unwanted attacks too.

While we might not see such a product in stores anytime soon, I certainly expect Apple to go into the console gaming business at some point in the future, since it only seems to be the next, natural move in Apple’s evolution, as a company that’s providing all sorts of entertainment and entertainment-friendly gadgets to its customers. And that’s precisely one reason that could explain Nintendo’s choice for the Wii successor. The Wii U could be just the preemptive strike Nintendo needs to deliver in 2012; the product it needs to have in stores before Apple decides to storm the console business with a tablet/smartphone-based console gaming concept that could make the Wii U obsolete if launched anytime later..

Of course Apple launching a gaming console might not be as simple as it sounds, considering that Apple products are rather expensive, some may say. But, if you think about it, the only extra thing that you’ll have to buy would be the actual console, the new Apple TV (or whatever iGame name it would carry), which could be priced as reasonably as the Apple TV currently is. As for the iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch, well, these would be multi-purpose devices, that you might already own by the time Apple would even launch its own gaming-console. In other words, Apple’s gaming console could be on par with the Wii U, and other consoles, when it comes to overall cost, especially since Apple’s iOS customers base is growing at a steady pace. So those people that would already own a iDevice controller, might certainly interested into getting an Apple TV-based new gaming console to pair it with their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Last, but not least, I’ll mention the App Store, which will naturally deliver all those games you’d want to play on a big screen TV. And since you’d be downloading them straight from the App Store (actually straight from Game Center), they could be a lot cheaper than the games you normally purchase for your current console(s) given the fact they won’t involve any extra costs for developers, other than Apple’s cut of the transaction.

So what do you say, console gaming fans, would you choose an iDevice-based Apple gaming setup instead of the Wii U (or any other product) in the future?

With that in mind, and after thoroughly following WWDC 2011 yesterday, I was pretty surprised to see so many people start pointing the finger at Apple and saying the company is copying features already available on Android, Windows Phone 7 or BlackBerry devices. It’s like everybody was waiting to do that – spoiler alert, folks, rant incoming to address this finger-pointing need.

So yes, Apple brought a few features to iOS 5 meant to improve the overall mobile experience of the user, but where were all of your fingers pointing when Android, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry started copying Apple?

Apple, with a single device, revolutionized the mobile world, or better said, just a segment of it, the smartphone world, with the introduction of the original iPhone. The touchscreen interface was introduced and quickly after that the App Store universe which completely changed and reshaped the smartphone business. Everybody, and there’s basically no denying there, copied Apple’s ideas as fast as possible. The companies that didn’t or were not able to really shape up, have either died (yes Palm, it’s you) or going through some rough times (Nokia we do miss you.)

Let’s start with Android first shall we? Remember this little guy below? Well wasn’t Android supposed to be a BlackBerry rival initially? So would Android have copied RIM’s smartphones? We’ll never know as the iPhone appeared and Google quickly changed its mind. That’s how we ended up with HTC making the G1, which eventually led to where we are today, a mobile environment in which Android is a strong player and a very tough adversary for iOS. But isn’t it just a little too much to claim that Apple has reached a point in its existence where it has to copy Android features to keep selling its crappy devices? Well, I bet that even without the iOS 5 features that have been “copied” from Android, Apple would have kept selling boatloads of iPhones.

What about that famous Ballmer reaction to the iPhone? Back then Windows Mobile was one of the most important smartphone operating systems out there, and nobody could have envisioned its disastrous fall. Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.5 were no match for the iPhone and then Android and that’s how Microsoft had to come up with WP7, which is basically a new OS based on the existing features on other mobile operating systems. Now Joe Belfiore is a great guy and a very smart Microsoft employee, but is it really in order for him to tell iOS users that WP7 had a dedicated camera button for 8 months? Well Apple had the iPhone for the past four years and in those 8 months Apple sold millions of iPhones while Microsoft was still unable to come up with a total number of WP7 sold units, not to mention launching those WP7 updates its customers were expecting.

As for RIM, they know it and we know it they have to make some quick changes to keep themselves atop of the smartphone business. And there’s no denying BlackBerry devices are following Apple’s lead. In case you don’t believe me then try to explain all the touchscreen smartphones coming out this year, not to mention the PlayBook.

So yes, the Notification Center might have been inspired by Android, the iMessages iOS chat app is probably inspired by BlackBerry, although it is built on Apple’s current Messages app and that dedicated camera shutter, or deep social networking integration is already available on Windows Phone 7. But does that mean Apple is copying the competition; competition which has been copying and playing catch-up to Apple for the past few years, while adding their own innovations to concepts that were first brought to mobile products by Apple? Or is Apple simply evolving to meet the needs and requirements of its customers in its own way and rhythm?

Because most people, when asking for a new notification system, a dedicated camera button or deep Twitter integration (and more new iOS features) did not do it after comparing their iDevice to an Android, WP7 or BlackBerry smartphone. That’s what we, the tech blogs do when asking for new features. We compare, we ask, we voice our concerns based on educated backgrounds within the business. But regular consumers are just looking for better ways to enjoy their mobile experience, and I do not mean just iPhone owners. And Apple as closed as it is when it comes to its iOS environment, is listening to its customer and potential customer base to some extent. Which is something Google, Microsoft, RIM and others, are also doing or should be doing.

As our Robert said earlier today, competition is great, especially in this business, and it should benefit the regular user. And that competition will eventually lead to similar devices being all able to do similar things in order to provide a great mobile experience, while retaining as much originality in the process as possible. But the players involved in the game should keep it as fair as possible and not forget how it all started.

So, what do you say folks, who copied who in the mobile business? Who are you rooting for?

While HTC and LG already have prototype units in testing with Android developers at Google (allegedly), it would seem that HTC has a bit of an edge on LG when it comes to making the next Nexus. The story got even more interesting earlier today when Tech Hog, the tech site that got the first images of the alleged Nexus 3, decided to delete the leaked image and all the information it had published in its previous posts.

Here’s what the post that contained information about the Nexus 3, including first details about specs and features, looks like now:

(Photo removed per request)
(Information removed per request)
Sorry everyone, I’ve been politely asked to remove the information from this page regarding the 3rd Nexus. I apologize for the inconvenience.

We can only guess who politely asked to have that kind of information removed since we’ve seen this scenario happen a bunch of times in this tech-reporting industry. We’ve seen plenty of leaked images, videos, or information get pulled after a certain someone asked for that to happen. It’s all part of the game, and we definitely understand why it happens.

Even if the device in question wasn’t a Nexus, we know it exists and we know Google was/is working with HTC to develop it. Even if yesterday’s leak has disappeared from the main source of the leak, that image is now available on plenty of tech sites, us included, and forums, and people are already discussing the new phone, its alleged specs and features, and the fact that the image was doctored.

Indeed, the image was tampered with, but only to protect the anonymity of the person that leaked it in the first place, which makes plenty of sense:

Now as for the image itself, some of you claim “FAKE” or “GIMPed” or even “PHOTOSHOPPED.” I CAN tell you the image was “touched-up” to removed and/or HIDE things on the device that would have made it easier to track back. So as for the “line” across the screen or the thumb, they were two of the things that were taken out of image to help prevent any identification.

Mike Blake, founder of Tech Hog, whom we’ve also been in contact to ask more details about this interesting leak, explained what happened with the original article and what made it disappear:

First off, I want to set the record straight. For those of you who are new to this site, I have said since day one, that I am honest, sometimes to honest and brutal perhaps. I don’t hide my feelings, especially with my utter distaste for RIM and their over glorified and pompous CEO’s and their awful outdated designs. But that is the great thing about the internet, I can share my opinion and you can either agree or disagree. So let’s get to this Nexus 3 hoopla, I received information from a source, I asked a few things and posted it. You all wanted more and so I pushed for more. I then posted the now infamous “Nexus 3″ image that I have since taken down as per a request (from who will remain private). I am not going to be giving more information from this source, nor will there be any follow up images.

Again, that makes plenty of sense and what’s even more important here, for both “haters” and “believers,” as Mike calls them, is that the Nexus 3, or whatever they’re going to call it, is going to get leaked again. To date there has never been any Android phone kept 100% secret from the media. We always had an idea of what’s coming or about how it will look, and just like with every other Android handset, we now have an idea of what could be coming from HTC, or LG in partnership with Google later this year.

I’d normally advise you that we should keep our grain of salt close by and consider the possibility that we’re looking at a very well engineered fake here, but something tells me, after talking to Mike and after reading his latest post (see Source link below) explaining the whole thing, this leak should be taken a lot more seriously.

So what do you say guys? Anyone excited about the next-gen Nexus? Looking forward for your thoughts in the comments section, via Twitter or Facebook!

Thanks, Mike!

According to BGR, who relies on some “solid Apple source” Apple is going to offer its customers some surprises this Thursday and we really have no idea what’s about to happen. Will Apple launch a new product just like that, totally out of the blue? That surely doesn’t sound like Apple and we can’t think of anything that Apple could launch right now other than the 2011 MacBook Air.

The 2011 MacBook Air refresh has been rumored to take place at some point in May/June, and what better moment in time to launch it than May 19, the day Apple will celebrate its 10th retail store anniversary? We have no way of confirming that right now, and we could be totally off on this one. But from what we know so far, the iPad 2, 2011 MacBook Pro and 2011 iMacs have been launched while iOS 5, the iPhone 5 and the 2011 iPods are going to be unveiled at later dates.

Therefore the only product that remains, unless Apple has prepped something unique like a 7-inch iPad (which we would have seen in certain leaks and rumors by now), the 2011 MacBook Air, could be unveiled in just a few days from now. To prove that there’s something special going on at Apple this week, here are a couple of points made by BGR that emphasize the secrecy around this Apple anniversary event:

• There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
• During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
• There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
• Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
• Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
• Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, “training” in a password-protected zipped folder that won’t accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
• Lastly, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meeting are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.

From the bullet points above it’s pretty clear Apple is getting ready for some sort of product launch. Considering that the MacBook Air is a very important product for Apple, not only a best-selling device, but also the possible image of the future Apple MacBooks and MacBook Pros, it would surely deserve such special attention and an equally special launch. Anyone excited about the upcoming, 2011 MacBook Air launch?

We’re pretty much sold on Android, as the mobile platform is slowly eating away market share from the competition (iOS not included) on its way to becoming the most used mobile OS out there. Because, let’s face it, as some people said it before, Android will get a more than decent chunk of market share in the future. Due to the relatively large amount of openness in Google’s Android OS we now have a ton of Android smartphone makers that sell plenty of different Android handsets and tablets from low-end to top-of-the-line devices.

As for Chrome OS, while it’s clear that Google would like to become an important computer OS player as well, I wouldn’t say I’m quite yet ready, or willing, to include Chrome OS into my day-to-day activities.

In fact, thinking about it, one question comes to mind, doesn’t Chrome OS to some extent rival Android, and vice-versa? Despite being brought to life by the same company, are Chrome OS and Android friends or enemies? Will they be able to safely coexist in our future? And I am mostly asking these questions thinking about our current computer environment, which sees the first tablet vs PC battles.

As Google put it, more and more people are replacing desktops with laptops, as consumers are going mobile. Some of them are embracing tablets too, and tablets, while not ready to replace the personal computer altogether, are definitely heading in that direction.

Naturally Google wants to be a part of both of these two phenomenons because, at the end of the day, Google is still a search-based company. That’s what pays the bills. And what better way to make even more cash from the search business than by offering customers devices that are always ready to offer the best of the web, at one touch away, and controlling the way these devices work?

We want instant-on devices, that have great battery life and that are always connected. But how would one choose between a Honeycomb tablet and a Chromebook? Which one is better and why? Why isn’t Google sticking just with one of these two operating systems which could be adapted to offer the same seamless experience on any device, be it a smartphone, a tablet or a Google TV?

Maybe not now but at some point in the future, people could actually stop to decide whether a Chrome OS or an Android tablet is the best way to go. There are plenty of reasons for and against choosing either one, and the better tablets will become in the future, the more capable to meet our computing needs they will get. At which point we’ll have to ask ourselves whether a Chrome OS notebook is really necessary. Because, at the end of the day, the tablet, be it an iPad X or its most important competitor, offers instant-on, a day’s worth of battery and maybe even more, and an always connected environment filled with apps and lots of other content. And it has the potential to someday replace a personal computer. Or a Chromebook, especially since Google now claims that no Chrome tablet will be made anytime soon.

Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to keep Android for smartphones, since Honeycomb is already a lot more different than what we can find on Android handsets, and launch Chrome Chromebooks and Chrome tablets instead? No, because Google had to match Apple’s products. And since Apple has iOS smartphones and tablets, that was the only way to go for Google too. Come to think of it, it’s quite interesting to see that whereas Apple is trying to make its future Mac OS X Lion as similar as possible, at least when it comes to the UI, to its mobile OS, so users can enjoy a similar experience on Macs an iOS devices, Google is taking a totally alternative route, promoting Chrome OS and Android at the same time, two products that, at some point in time, could turn out to be fierce rivals.

2011 will be an impressive year for the mobile business, as we’re going to see some impressive handsets and tablets hit stores but also witness the continuous power struggle between Apple, Google and the new Microsoft-Nokia newly created Death Star.

In short MWC 2011 was dominated by Android devices and there’s no question about it. We did look at Windows Phone 7 handsets, Windows 7 tablets, bada phones and even MeeGo-powered devices but the undisputed king of the show was Android.

On the other hand, without actually being there, the iPhone 4 won the best mobile device at the GSMA Awards, which is not something we didn’t expect, in fact we deemed it the best smartphone of 2010 ourselves.

Furthermore the iPad was the most used tablet on the floor. From exhibitors, to business professional coming to MWC to look for new partnership and business ideas to the press that covered the event, I saw a lot of iPads in use. That’s not something I can say about Galaxy Tabs, which were so scarce during the show. In fact I must have spotted 3-5 devices at most, not counting the ones on display at Samsung’s booth.

Overall it was a great show and since we covered all the hot devices hitting stores now or later this year, I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of what went on behind the curtains of MWC. The kind of stuff you don’t really hear about since it doesn’t concern new gadgets directly. But luckily I had my cameras with me at all times to capture some interesting, strange, and funny moments while I was walking the MWC 2011 halls.

Android Presence

Android was everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. It was even present on the floor to guide you through this continuously evolving Android world.

Mozilla Carriage Tools and the Fox

Mozilla was offering free rides at MWC, too bad I didn’t have time for such an adventure myself. And the Fox, for some reason, came out of hiding too to play with the folks at the show.

INQ Facebook Phone

I thought INQ wasn’t making any Facebook phones. As it turns out it was HTC that launched the Salsa and the ChaCha, two Android handsets with Facebook buttons, but INQ might still be cooking some special Facebook phone too.

MeeGo Engineer Testing a BlackBerry PlayBook

How else would you get to see what’s wrong with your platform than by going around to test what the competition has on display. This MeeGo engineer was certainly interested in testing the PlayBook as thoroughly as possible. I can only but wonder whether he checked out the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab 10.1 too.

Sony Ericsson Playing Real Life Sims

What better way of promoting your newly launched Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (PlayStation Phone) handset than by actually ordering some employees to play real life Sims during MWC. And these folks took an impressive tour of the venue acting like Sims as I encountered them a bunch of times.

Bring Your Own iMac to the Media Center

The Media Center barely had enough spots for the press to hook up their laptops to the web and send out their MWC 2011 updates. Just like I did. But it looks like somebody decided not to travel light and packed an actual iMac to the show in order to use it to work on editing videos and images right then and there. I knew you won’t believe me that’s why I have pictures:

Packed Keynotes

You thought that Media Center looked pretty packed? Well the keynotes and media events hosted by the MWC were equally full. And in the darkness you could easily spot everyone’s new mobile device, whether smartphone, tablet or laptop, being lit up. Too bad Cisco’s free Wi-Fi hotspots rather failed to deal with all the traffic!

Weird Association

While inspecting the gadgets at the Motorola booth I found an unusually weird association on one table. There they were, the brand new Xoom tablet, the Motorola Atrix 4G, playing peacefully with a MacBook Pro. And, just for the fun of it, there was also an Adobe sign, to make sure that we understand some Flash was present there. I call it the “Google, Apple and Adobe table”, something we don’t usually get to see at such shows.

Dancing Rehearsals

Well it’s not all about gadgets at the MWC, or any other show for that matter. It’s also about ladies handling gadgets during the show. Or about ladies rehearsing some sort of dancing for the MWC.

Or is it the Mobile World Catwalk?

MWC 2012 Dates

MWC will stay in Spain for one more year, at least, and considering what we saw this year, well, we can only be excited to watch this mobile business grow in the following months. In the mean time we have dates for next year’s event, so in case you’re a phone manufacturer, app developer, or you plan to start a business around mobile devices, then start planning ahead accordingly.

I haven’t seen any of the new Eee Pads in person for now, and the iPad 2 isn’t even officially out yet, but I am going to venture out and tell you that the iPad 2 will have no match in Asus’ newly launched devices. I might be contradicted by future sales, but Asus just proved it didn’t fully grasp the tablet concept.

Asus, the inventor of the netbook can’t leave the netbook die. Two models come with mandatory keyboard options today, the Transformer and the Slider. It also didn’t understand that Windows 7 can’t really compete with iOS and Android for tablet dominance yet. So why bother launching four tablets that won’t really impress instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, just like Apple did with the iPad, and launch one single flagship tablet that would be a very tough nut to crack.

No, Asus went ahead and launched four different machines, and some of them have some tremendous specs and features on board, which I’d actually want to see matched by Apple, Samsung or Motorola, and thus made the customer’s choice even harder. Because the customer will not be looking at the Eee Pad, an iPad 2 fierce rival, but he or she will have a hard time decided whether they need Windows 7 or Android, whether they want a 7-inch, 10-inch or 12-inch device and whether a keyboard should be included in the package or attached to the tablet. In the end they might just walk away with an iPad or iPad 2.

Why not make a single tablet running a single OS, but ready to offer a powerful user experience? You know, make the crowds love your device, even if it’s flawed and doesn’t support all the features the crowds want in a tablet. Then third parties will be more than interested to bring keyboard docs and keyboard cases to your customers, and those people that would require such accessories could purchase them later down the road.

Apple has created one single product, with one powerful OS and a great content-providing machine in the background and then it cashed in on the tablet-frenzy big time. In case you’re wondering, transforming the iPad into a laptop or notebook is possible thanks to the various docs and/or iPad cases available out there and they aren’t necessarily made by Apple but by third-party retailers.

The Eee Pads, at least on day one, seem to lack the magic the iPad has and therefore they won’t get as much mind and market share as Asus is probably expecting. We’ll definitely be waiting on your opinion on the Eee Pads as soon as they come out. Although some of them, the Eee Pad Slider and the Eee Pad MeMO, scheduled for a May and June release, might come to the table too late.

In the mean time we’re definitely excited to see the Motorola Xoom become official. At least Moto seems to know how to make a single product sparkle and place its bets on it to fight the iPad!

That doesn’t mean that taking a hit at what email is supposed to be and hoping for the best is the way to do it. Bluntly put Facebook combines Google Wave, Gmail’s Priority Inbox, SMS messages and Instant Messaging into one single text-based communication method. The result is a more social emailing system that would/should better integrate with your communication needs. (VoIP might also be available in the future.)

But at the same time it brings chaos back to online communication. This new Facebook email product is in no way a Gmail- or Yahoo-killer. In fact, you will never be able to really use Facebook email in real life like you’d use any other kind of webmail and I’ll tell you why in what follows.

First, let’s talk more about Facebook email. The product is supposed to be based on three principles: seamless messaging, conversation history and social inbox. In other words you will be able to communicate with all your Facebook and non-Facebook friends via email, SMS and IM from one single place as Facebook will hold all of your contacts and your communication history (email, SMS and IM) between you and each of them, help you get rid of the stuff you don’t want to read and prioritize your emails according to your communication habits with your contacts. But Facebook email is not a productivity-oriented product (yes, the fact it comes with only three folders is a little discouraging when it comes to professionally managing your communication habits).

These are all valid ideas, that might improve the way you communicate with your friends and family but is it really practical in the real world? What Facebook seems to forget is that we have lives outside online social networking. We have various work- and non-work-related email accounts, which we could manage form inside an email client like, for the sake of conversation, Gmail. During our day we have to deal with various messages that aren’t always short and instant and that aren’t always coming from our friends. And those messages need to be very well organized in order to actually make our life a lot easier. Again, productivity is key to communication, whether personal or work-related.

Facebook email, or whatever they will want to call it, is a communication method that could evolve to contain our work-related emailing needs too so we can truly have a seamless communication system into a single platform and thus give up other similar products.

But right now I doubt that your boss will advise you to sign up for an @facebook.com email address (for the sake of the argument) and then make it the default communication platform for his/her small or big company. That will not happen! That means you will still have to email, text, and instant message at work, using non-Facebook products with your colleagues and peers, and only later on during the day will you be able to communicate via Facebook. Can these two worlds be combined? Yes, they can, but that means we’d be using during our busy day not just one single messaging platform, as Facebook suggests, but various others, right along Facebook, until we’d have enough personal time for Facebook. So how will Facebook actually help you prioritize emails, sort through them, mark stuff down for later? The current product, as shown today doesn’t seem to be able to do that but what it will do is always show you the most relevant messages from your closest contacts, organize them into a never-ending stream and will do away with spam. But you’d still get Facebook ads, that doesn’t change, does it?

Yes, Facebook has improved its internal communication system in order to support more of our needs, but trying to rethink email might not be possible and it’s not appropriate. Facebook email is great if you’re a teenager without any real worries, if you have retired and have plenty of time to spend at home and if your professional life doesn’t include a lot of work-related emailing. In these cases Facebook emailing will come natural to you and could be quite an easy communication tool to master.

What happens to the rest of us that also have to integrate plenty of work-related communication methods into our life? Isn’t it easier to use, for the sake of the argument, again, Gmail, to store all of your email from various accounts and neatly organize it? Then you could use Gmail, while at work, for work and non-work messaging (your boss will never look closely whereas Facebook usage tends to be noticed) while combining it with SMS text messages on your phone, and an instant messenger of your choice. My point is that bringing all your email life into a single email client and then use different programs for SMS and/or IM is a lot easier than integrating your work related stuff with Facebook email that already has IM and SMS abilities (this will probably be impossible, at least for now). After all we’re going for a truly unified inbox here, aren’t we folks, but that doesn’t seem to be a viable option just yet so Facebook email will not kill email yet, at least not in the very near future.

Oh and by the way, using different text communication programs (email, text and instant messaging) doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to keep track of these conversations and remember what was said, even if it’s not neatly arranged into a single thread between two parties.

What do you think about this new messaging program? Anxious to use it? You might have to wait a while as this Facebook email system is not going to be available right away to all Facebook users. And how would Twitter fall into place with this new communication scheme?

Chuck Norris told Steve Jobs never to wear a suit again in his life. Turtlenecks are fine as long as they’re black and go with jeans and matching shoes.

Chuck Norris shared the words that describe him: “magical,” “phenomenal”, “incredible,” “revolutionary,” with Apple; Cupertino signed the deal with blood e-ink.

Chuck Norris has a White iPhone 4. The paint is too scared to let light go through it, not to mention it spreads evenly on the phone’s entire surface. It can also resemble any other color if Chuck Norris wants it so.

Chuck Norris’ iPad does Flash out of the box. It does Thunder and Lightning too depending on Chuck Norris’ mood.

Chuck Norris’ iPad takes perfect pictures although Chuck Norris can’t be photographed to reflect his true awesomeness.

Chuck Norris hates Mac but loves KFC.

Chuck Norris has a full Steve Jobs kit, which he only wears at keynotes. You’ll know it’s Chuck Norris disguised as Steve Jobs if other Apple Staff members aren’t invited to explain new product features.

Chuck Norris… There’s no app for that

“There’s an app for that!” is a spoof of the legendary “There’s a roundhouse kick for that!” line, one of Chuck Norris first words ever.

Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked all other smartphones until they dropped signals during Antennagate.

Apple doesn’t ban apps from the App Store, Chuck Norris personally roundhouse kicks them out of it.

Apple pays a 70% commission on its take from the App Store revenue stream plus a 30% protection fee to Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris’ iPhone gets coverage at all times, from all carriers in the world simultaneously. It does 4G and beyond too.

Apple is looking for an exclusivity deal with Chuck Norris; Chuck Norris is not the exclusive kind of guy.

Apple asked once Chuck Norris to sign an NDA agreement. Steve Jobs ended up creating a new company called Pixar.

Chuck Norris escaped Vietnam, went back and escaped again. He can jailbreak and unlock any iPhones or iOS devices out there. Roundhouse kicking may be used.

Like Steve Jobs Chuck Norris can do a lot better than just 7-inches.

Chuck Norris is the only person in the world to own an 11-inch MacBook Air netbook. Everyone else has 11-inch Air notebooks.

Apple Geniuses train at the Chuck Norris bar by looking at a picture of him inventing the Internet with the power of his mind.

Chuck Norris is the iPhone- and iPad-killer. He can also kill anything else should the need arise.

Chuck Norris doesn’t do HTML5 since he sees the web in Matrix anyway.

Each Mac battery uses half of a drop of Chuck Norris’ sweat to give you 9 hours of uptime; that’s why Steve Jobs talks smack to everyone else, to keep Chuck Norris busy at roundhouse kicking rivals and thus sweating more.

Chuck Norris can’t be manipulated, he roundhouse kicks everyone else because he wants to; the other half of each sweat drop is harvested to bring life to Mars by 2012, December, End of Time.

When there’s nobody left to roundhouse kick Apple employees volunteer to take the hits. There’s always someone to roundhouse kick if you’re Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris makes up rumors about Apple devices and then Apple has to invent them or get roundhouse kicked in the Apple. He calls it sleepless Inception.

The Apple logo wasn’t always the same, but Chuck Norris was in a mood for a bite of fresh fruit one morning.

Chuck Norris puts the “i” in Apple and Apple products, or any letter for that matter into any other word we take for granted.

Steve Jobs was never fired by Apple, he was roundhouse kicked into Pixar with a boomerang-like spin by Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris never answers Steve Jobs’ emails. Never ever!

Chuck Norris changes everything again, and again and again… Whenever he wants too.

We’ll be back whenever new technology Chuck Norris facts are available. In the mean time tell us what’s your favorite Chuck Norris Apple fact!

All events depicted in the material above are purely fictional and should inspire a healthy dose of innocent laughter. In fact we surely appreciate the persons, products and brands described above, in one way or another, otherwise such a Chuck Norris and Apple combination would have never been possible.

The Verizon iPhone was said to be available for pre-order on November 9 as an “Iconic Device” was spotted inside Verizon inventory. People thought that was the Verizon iPhone 4 but we’re going to dismantle the rumor for you piece by piece!

First of all, “Iconic Device” is an internal codename used by Verizon to describe any phone that has the potential to become a hit with the crowds. Can anyone tell me other Iconic Devices sold by Verizon this year? Hint: most of them are Android-powered. Now if it was an iConic Device here, we could have been talking about the iPhone!

At the same time with the screenshot above, a different rumor emerged saying the Motorola Droid Pro was going to start selling (yes, also pre-orders) from Verizon on November 9. Now what are the chances that Motorola and Apple would be willing to share the same pre-order date? Would Verizon do such a thing in the first place?

Apple is not HP. If a Verizon iPhone 4 is coming then you’d bet your ass a special event is going to be magically scheduled well in advanced a pre-order process. On stage Steve Jobs and Co. would explain in plain words why moving to Verizon makes sense, and only after a thorough keynote with various hits at the competition, would pricing and release dates be announced. Only then we could talk about Verizon iPhone 4 pre-orders. But what Apple won’t do is launch the CDMA iPhone with a simple press release and send the hot phone to a different non-U.S. market first! If that sounds familiar, well without the CDMA part, it’s because that’s what HP did with the Palm Pre 2.

Moreover, all the Verizon iPhone 4 confirmations we’ve seen in the past months, and the more time passes the more leaks about the product we tend to get, said that the iPhone 4 is coming out in early 2011. Not to mention the Chinese companies building it are said to start production only in December so why pre-order the device from November?

Last but not least Apple is sitting on a pile of cash that could be turned into whatever they’d like it to be. It’s not like the company needs to grab your cash JooJoo-pre-order-style way ahead of actually making the product!

So in case you stumbled upon this rumor all day long and you started believing it yourself, then, don’t! The iPhone 4 from Verizon is not coming on November 9. It’s not mathematically possible, so get back to waiting for it! Or order the Motorola Droid Pro on that day, a very interesting and iconic device itself!

We’re going to slowly step in a conspiracy theory universe, so come out of your comfort zone for some quick brainstorming session!

Microsoft announced on October 11 Windows Phone 7, again, an event we also covered extensively. But they did a rather poor job at creating buzz around the new WP7 phones. Instead of showing off the new phones, at least the ones scheduled to hit the USA, they focused on WP7 as a mobile OS most of the time. But they also confirmed that WP7 handset will be available to the public on October 21 in Europe and November 7 in the USA.

Keeping those dates in mind, we’re going to move to Apple. The company suddenly announced Back To The Mac on October 13 and the event was scheduled a week after the announcement, on October 20. Not only that, but Apple, knowing it had a record quarter and that everyone expects that particular performance, scheduled its Q4 2010 earnings call for October 18, two days before the Back To The Mac.

During the conference call Steve Jobs took some clear shots at RIM and Google. But replace their names with Microsoft and you hear the CEO telling us how Windows Phone 7 won’t be able to keep up with Apple. He went further on to say that iOS and Android are currently winning the mobile battle, while Microsoft is nowhere to be seen.

Moving on to October 20, Apple unveiled some new products while also highlighting the iPhone, the iPad, iOS and the Apple Store. That all happened one day before Microsoft and partners started selling the Windows Phone 7, but guess what, the eyes of the tech world were still focusing on some of Apple’s products and while that was happening we heard no reports of customers fighting over Windows Phone 7 smartphones in Europe or any other countries. In fact October 21 hardly looked like a hot smartphone launch day.

Is it all a coincidence or sheer marketing tactics? Did you buy Windows Phone 7 or a MacBook Air yesterday?

Microsoft seems really interested in pitching their Windows Phone 7 handsets, and by “their” I mean the smartphones created with WP7 use in mind by HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell so far, as totally different smartphones that would offer us a rich, and very different mobile OS experience.

But while WP7 looks great and all, and Microsoft seems to have learned from past mistakes and from what the competition is currently doing, WP7 appears to be an unfinished business. Even if WP7 comes two to three years later than it should have, there’s no trace of multitasking, no copy and paste, no Flash support, no iTunes/Mac syncing, no unified inbox, not to mention we have no ideas how many apps will be available to WP7 users in a couple of weeks from now.

But Microsoft will add multitasking, copy and paste, Flash support, Mac syncing, and probably lots of other updates in the near future, hopefully before Windows Phone 8 comes to town. That’s actually where I am trying to get here as there’s one more important issue to think about when looking at Windows Phone 7 handsets: fragmentation.

Fragmentation has affected both Apple and Google, but it’s mostly Android that’s taking all the heat for it, and that’s on good grounds. Apple’s iOS, now closing to version 4.2 which will be the first one to be available to all iPhones, iPod touches and iPads, has more and more new features, but in order to really take advantage of them you’d require newer and newer iOS devices. Instead of running iOS 4.2 on an iPhone 3G I’d rather stick to iOS 3.1.2, even if that means not enjoying some of the iOS 4 features, which wouldn’t be available on older hardware anyway.

Now Google’s Android fragmentation is a whole different game. Google doesn’t have it’s own set of Google devices, the Google Nexus One has been a one-time stint, and, since Android is so open and all, it doesn’t impose hardware rules to its partners. That’s why we have all kinds of Android handsets in the wild, from the high-end devices that are always topped by newer released to the mid-ranged and low-level Android smartphones that might not be upgradeable to Froyo and beyond. That’s why Android fragmentation is a little more annoying, but only from the point of consumers. Guys and girls, you have to understand that older hardware won’t run newer software. It’s not rocket science, it’s just how the world works.

Oh and two more factors that play an important role when it comes to Android fragmentation are manufacturers and carriers. The manufacturers offer us hot Android devices that come with custom UIs on top. Carriers install bloatware on them, and that’s why even the high-end Android devices aren’t getting the latest Android OS version the day Google announces it but only a few months later, after the custom UI and bloatware have been tested with the new Google OS version. Now that is something you can bitch about, not that anyone is listening.

Back to Windows Phone 7 handsets and Microsoft. Redmond, decided to impose strict WP7 hardware regulations. That means all the current WP7 smartphones will offer us 1GHz processors, 3-inch and upwards touchscreen displays, 5-megapixel cameras, no microSD memory expansion and the same Windows Phone 7 Metro UI with absolutely no customization on top.

When Microsoft will decide it’s time for multitasking, Flash, copy and paste, and anything else that’s not included in the current Windows Phone 7 build, they’ll simply push the necessary updates out and WP7 handset owners will get it really soon. At least that seems to be the obvious conclusion so far, which leads me to believe that fragmentation is not something we’ll see on Windows Phone 7 handsets. Not that lack of software fragmentation is the most important factor to think about when choosing one of the current smartphones made for WP7, is it?

The bad news here is that since most WP7 handsets offer way too similar specs and features, choosing one for yourself will not be as fun anymore. Not to mention that WP7 handset will not be special anymore and won’t impress your friends since, no matter which one you choose, there will be at least nine similar devices out there.

What does this all mean exactly? Will the App Store get better? Will Flash be used to create apps again? Will Apple really loosen its tight grip on the App Store?

Well, at least from what we can see so far, it looks like Apple has backed down for now and it will have to let archenemies like Google and Adobe go about their business in the heavily controlled iOS environment. And they’ll have to show similar consideration to other developers too, at least for a while.

Why is that? Well Apple might be afraid of those FTC officials coming to investigate the way Apple conducts its App Store business. As you surely remember, Adobe wasn’t particularly impressed with Apple’s new provisions earlier this year and Apple was promised that an investigation is pending. That’s surely not something Cupertino should deal with especially with the full fledged iPhone vs Android war going on out there. But will any investigation be canceled following these sudden App Store terms and conditions changes? Is that what Apple is really after?  Why not let Adobe’s Flash be used by developers to make iPhone apps? Kevin just showed us that Adobe’s pretty happy with this outcome, and they’re not the only ones.

Speaking of Android and Google, the word on the street is that Google Voice (see above tweet) is going to be allowed back in the App Store. While that’s still to be confirmed, we also noticed that Google is also pretty happy with the new App Store regulations. Their reason is purely cash-related as developers will not be required to use just iAds in their free but ad-supported applications anymore. Google is very much back in the iPhone advertising business and Google’s AdMob will still be available as an iPhone app monetization solution.

As for the rest of the developers out there, Apple’s new rules might help them have their apps approved a lot easier than before, and hopefully apps like VLC for iPad will indeed be approved in no time. But that doesn’t mean that Apple will just allow any kind of app into the App Store. At the end of the day, it’s still Apple that controls what apps get approved, and what apps are sent to the purgatory.

In fact while Apple is going to have to swallow its pride on this one, I don’t expect these new rules and regulations to last that long. After all, what better way to prove to the FTC and the EU Commission that Apple was right to ban certain tools from developers, say AdMob or Flash, than allowing them to fail by building some apps based on Google and/or Adobe services. I am not Apple-biased nor do I want you guys to build below-par Flash-based apps or anything like that! I’m just saying that, from a conspiracy-theory-point-of-view, this might all be a scenario to prove the need of a tight App Store control. Because at the end of the day, phones aren’t perfect and apps aren’t perfect either. Some day some app built with these newly supported tools will surely fail to meet some Apple requirements and Apple will then point the I-told-you-so finger back at some people. And new, tighter App Store regulations will simply have to be reinstated.

So, let’s hear it from you, developers, Google, Adobe and even Apple; is this a defeat for Cupertino? Or just a strategic retreat while a counterattack is being carefully planned?

Social networking has just gotten a lot more interesting this week as Apple announced what was long rumored. iTunes has a social networking side called Ping. A rather silly name (Pink and Bing are already in use), but then again all the good social network names were taken, and they’re not that great either. Moving past the name we see a great social networking solution for our web 2.0 needs. One that has potential, unlike Google’s Buzz, a totally failed project that also emerged this year.

So should Facebook be afraid? Facebook is probably the uncrowned king of the social networking business, and like any king it has a life filled with controversy. The ultimate goal is to make lots and lots of piles of Benjamin Franklins no matter how many privacy matters it would infringe and no matter how great or noble its goals were when all this craziness started. Facebook started as a cool project and gradually evolved into this monster you can’t stay away from today. With 500 million users, and the number is growing every day, Facebook seems like it can’t lose the un-awarded first place in the social networking business, but is it really so?

Unlike Facebook, that started as a simple project, Apple’s newly announced social network and Google’s Buzz were conceived not only as attempted viable solutions to Facebook and Twitter, but as logical products meant to be integrated with other products coming from these two important corporations.

And while Google Buzz failed to take off, and it’s probably still failing at it, Apple’s Ping got 1 million active users in two days. Sure, you’ll say that in this day and age, social networking is something we take for granted when we talk about the current state of the Internet. In other words this rapid growth is partly based on the popularity of Facebook or MySpace, services that have been around for ages to the point that every Internet-aware individual has mastered the art of social networking. Therefore every individual already knows how Ping works and what it will discover inside even before using it. And thanks to the simplicity of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, MySpace, and the list can go on, the individual can easily adapt to Ping and quickly become an active user.

But, if it were that simple, Facebook will probably prevail in the end. But the thing that makes Ping stand out is that people will, whether they want it or not, be encouraged or even forced to embrace it. Because Ping is a feature of a service that so many people use and love/hate: iTunes. And iTunes is the core of the whole Apple mobile business. There’s where the magic is at: music, ebooks, applications, videos are all somehow accessed through iTunes. So, whether you like it or not, you’ll use iTunes on your Apple mobile devices. iOS has direct “doors” to the iTunes portal: the iTunes app itself, the App Store, the iBooks app and, ultimately, the Ping.

So if you’re every day invited to sync your iPhone, to get new apps, new movies, or new songs, at some point you’ll want to stalk keep up your former boyfriend or girlfriend, you’ll want to follow Lady Gaga and see what unusual and unnecessary stuff she has been up to recently and you’ll want to be as cool as all your peers and engage them in Ping too. Because Ping is the latest thing in town, it’s made by Apple and therefore magical.

Currently Apple has 120 million iOS devices. At some point or another a lot of their owners will start being more active on Ping considering how much time they spend in iTunes anyway. And each month Apple will sell a few million more iOS devices, and even more people will be Pinging each other and their friends. Add to that a drop of Apple fanboyism, and you’ve got a growing crowed that will rely on Ping in order to show off their social networking skills. They’ll still be active on Facebook and Twitter and anything else, but Ping will not be neglected. And if you think Ping will not have all the resources Facebook has, well, think again! iTunes has plenty of apps and every Facebook service can be mimicked rediscovered reinvented by Ping in the near future. Oh, and let’s not forget the new Apple TV is coming. That’s going to be another tool that can serve’s Apple’s chase for more money, and will be another device that comes with Pinging support.

And while Apple has 499 million more Ping users to get until it reaches Facebook, although Facebook will keep on growing so this number will be actually higher, Facebook definitely has a lot of reasons to be afraid of Apple’s Ping. Because Ping will magically change everything, again, in the social networking business! Unlike Google’s Buzz, at least not for now.

So, what do you think? Is Ping a real threat to other social networking sites out there? Let us hear your thoughts, whether you love or hate Apple! Or Google! Or Facebook!

Microsoft has invested a great deal of money in R&D and although it feels it’s playing catch up when compared to Apple and Google, the Redmond-based company still knows how to build a smartphone OS. Windows Phone 7 is definitely meant to bring some balance to the force in a mobile world that’s being ruled by the iPhone and Android devices.

With all that in mind, a natural question that comes to mind is where are all the hot Motorola Windows Phone 7 handsets? Motorola was almost dead before Android came along in their life when it comes to hot devices. The Razr line wasn’t working for them anymore and they barely made it to the modern smartphone business. It took a lot of balls to play a last winning hand on Android and CEO Sanjay Jha is to “blame” for Motorola’s newly found success with Android devices. But is that enough for Motorola?

Unlike Apple, RIM or Nokia, and even Samsung with its Bada OS, Motorola doesn’t have its own OS to use in its own smartphones. And that might not even be required if Moto will be able to make enough hot Android smartphones to meet the needs of its worldwide customers.

But everyone else is also building hot Android devices, and if the Droid X was a hot device a month ago, it will be blown to pieces by the next HTC Android creation. And while Motorola is busy creating the next flagship Android device of its own, its competitors are also making Windows Phone 7 handsets thus attacking each other, and Motorola, on two fronts, Android and Windows Phone 7.

Motorola has what it takes to build a Droid X-like device running Windows Phone 7. But there are no leaks and rumors to point to that fact so that must mean they aren’t doing it. An old rumor/statement said that Moto will stay away of the Windows Mobile 6.5 universe, and I’m glad they did. That was a losing horse for Microsoft and partners from the get go. Other than the HTC HD2 or a few Samsung Omnia devices, can you honestly say you liked Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets?

But WP7 is a whole different story. Microsoft finally has a mobile platform that has a lot of potential and Motorola seems to be missing out on that action, and so will we, the consumers, as Motorola could be an important WP7 player.

So what do you say, Motorola, are you going to place all your eggs in the Android basket or are you willing to give Windows Phone 7 a chance? In which case, we’re definitely waiting to see what hot WP7 smartphone, Droid X-style you can come up with!

The D3100 will sport a 14.2-megapixel camera with a shutter rated for 100k shots. It also features improved video recording (an oft-requested feature for amateurs). It’ll be capable of recording in 1080p video at 24 frames per second, or 720p video at 24 or 30 frames per second. It records in H.264 or AVCHD, if you know what that means.

It offers a 3-inch LCD on the back and in-camera video editing (this is a feature that we’ve seen with other cameras and in mobile phones. Expect it to be a bigger feature in the future). It offers a 3FPS burst mode too, and an 11-point autofocus. According to CrunchGear, the auto-focus will be capable of 35-person face recondition, which sounds almost like overkill.

For newbies looking to get into the DSLR game, the Nikon D3100 should be on sale in mid-September with a MSRP of $699.55, which includes a 18-55mm lens.

Several companies came out with UMPCs including Archos, Panasonic, Gigabyte and more but none of these devices really managed to take off. Sure, the idea of having a fully featured computer in such a small package was cool but users struggled to find a use for them. Running operating systems like Windows XP and Vista, UMPCs weren’t exactly the most touch friendly devices out there and did not provide a very user friendly experience.

However, just because some rotten eggs were found in the pack doesn’t mean they will spoil the party. In fact, Eking has come forth to announce that they are still playing the UMPC tune and will break into the industry with their latest offering, the E5.

This device features an Intel Atom Z515 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz, a 5-inch WSVGA 1,024 x 600 display that tilts and folds for easy access and storage, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 16GB of SSD storage, 802.11 b/g WiFi, built-in 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, a 3 megapixel camera and a 2,600 mAh battery.

There’s no word on when this device will be hitting North America, if ever, but it will be shipping in China for around $800 soon.

What do you guys think about a device like this? While it doesn’t feature a large touchscreen like, say, the iPad it does feature a small form factor along with a hardware QWERTY keyboard – something that many believe is crucial for productivity. Of course, since the tablet rush is upon us, a device like this most likely wouldn’t stand a chance.

5) iOS 4.0 on iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G was never meant to run iOS 4.0, was it Apple? And this video tries to replicate the original iPhone commercial, which lasted 28 seconds.

4) The Banned iPhone 4 Commercial

There’s nothing better than seeing manufacturers admit they were wrong with some products. In this case Apple! Too bad it is just a spoof, but a brilliant one nonetheless.

3) The Condescending Apple Press Conference

I actually showed you this one yesterday, so you already know what’s going on here. It’s still hilarious, and worthy of your attention once again.

2) Darth Vader Calls About His iPhone 4

Even Darth Vader, when trying to reason with AppleCare, doesn’t succeed to find an appropriate solution to his iPhone 4-related problems. I’m surprised to see him not use the Force, which must still be strong with him, although in this scenario the Force might not work either.

1) Jailbroken iPhone 4 on Video with Cydia Store creator

I told you that at least four of them are funny. This one is just a little more serious, but it’s worth including in this set of videos. Why? Well the fact is that the iPhone 4 jailbreak and unlock is coming soon, and, while it won’t solve the Death Grip problem, it will free the device from Apple’s and the carrier’s shackles (not that we’re advising you to do that.)

Why did I get those videos together? Well I realized today is the one-week anniversary of Apple’s now famous 15-minute press event (that lasted well over 30 minutes without the Q&A session) as Apple walked us slowly through the official bullshit that should act as an excuse/apology/solution for the even-more-famous Death Grip problem.

Steve Jobs himself blamed the media for blowing everything out of proportion, although I never heard Apple asking the media to stop building the good kind of buzz about upcoming Apple products. And in just seven days (all right, not all the videos here have been released this week) the media managed to blow it out of proportions again. Poor Apple, how is it going to deal with all this?

Having listened to it, I’ll tell you from the beginning that Apple is selling as many iPhone 4 and iPad units as they can make. That phrase has been repeated a bunch of times to answer various questions, and probably to show everyone how popular the iPhone 4 and iPad are even if one comes with a Death Grip issue and the other one has plenty of shortcomings itself.

But let’s see what Apple said about its most important products!

On the iPhone

The company sold plenty of iPhones this past quarter and the iPhone 4 performed quite well in its first weekend. The antennagate scandal only affects a few people and the iPhone 4 returns are less than the iPhone 3GS and, of those, just a few are determined by the Death Grip. Apple will give out bumpers to everyone owning an iPhone 4 which will lead to an overall loss of $175 million in the holiday quarter. Cupertino is still “happy” with AT&T and there’s no reason to talk about future (Verizon) plans right now. As for that Android rival, Apple will not exactly comment, as it wants to focus on iPhone instead which is still growing at an impressive rate.

On the Mac

That’s where, in my opinion, and disregarding the iPad for a bit, Apple really shined this quarter. The iPad didn’t cannibalize Macs, in fact Apple sold a record of Macs this quarter, especially in Europe and Asia. And that happened during the iPad launch, a product that also sold quite well in the first three months. And Apple is not worried that, at some point, customers will choose iPads over Macs. In case that happens they’ll also choose iPads over PCs which basically means Apple is still the one to make lots of money.

On the iPad

Counting all iOS devices sold by Apple since 2007, we now have over 100 million such machines out there. That’s an impressive number and so is the number of sold iPads. Apple sold over 3 million units so far which is an outstanding performance for a device launched last quarter. Again, Apple is making more and more iPads, but it sells them as fast as it’s making them. Keeping up with demand is really difficult but as long as there’s no iPad competitor out there people will wait for Apple to make more iPads for them.

On the iPod

The gadget that brought back Apple into the spotlights a few years ago is the iPod. And while Apple sold less iPods this quarter, it still sold 9.41 million of them. That’s a major product for Apple, which apparently also encouraged people to choose Macs on the long run. Add to that the iTunes store which brings in lots of cash from music, video, apps and eBooks sales and you have a great universe ready to be taken advantage of. And that’s exactly what Apple will do.

On iAds

Apple didn’t have that much to comment on the iAds section of its business. iAd deployment has just started and, with 100 million iOS devices out there, and the number is growing, we’re probably going to look at another important revenue stream for Apple in the very near future.

How many Apple products do you currently own?

But while Cupertino is instructing customer care to address accordingly such non-existent problems that some users claim to have, some of these affected users themselves are working on class action suits. So is it a real issue or do we simply love to pick on Apple, and on everyone else for that matter, when they mess up our hot phones?

Well it looks like Apple is treating this non-issue seriously as it has decided to hire some antenna specialists to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, or better said, to improve the quality of antennas in future iPhone and iPad models.

And it’s not just one job that Apple posted up there, but there are plenty of positions for antenna-related activities:

• Antenna Engineer – iPad/iPhone
• iPhone OTA Wireless Systems Engineer

These job postings are dated June 23, which is probably when some early iPhone 4 users have started to spot this non-issue. And Apple is looking for qualified personnel with at least ten years in the industry. Do you qualify? If you do, then let us know what magical antenna project you’ll be working on at Apple (well we had to try and ask you for some info but we know that those NDA agreements will probably forbid you to even think about work when at home)!

So, Apple, care to explain what’s going on? Admitting that you were wrong would take a lot of guts and it would probably make your faithful customers like you even more. The smart thing to do would be owning up to this unforeseen antenna issue, get everyone a free plastic bumper which costs you, what, $2 to make (uneducated guess here), and go on about your business.

Saying that nothing is wrong with the device as long as customers can still replicate the problem will not help that much and claiming that other handsets have the same problem is plain idiotic. Especially since Apple products aren’t supposed to be like any other devices, but better!

So what is it going to be, Apple? Free bumpers and better qualified engineers to deal with the problems or a nasty class action suit that will affect your image and will probably end in the customer’s favor?

Sure, some will argue that the referee of the game is also meant to add salt and pepper to the game. Tell that to the Brits who were disallowed a goal against Germany. Or tell that to Mexico which clearly had a goal scored against them from an offside position! Even if the better teams, Germany and Argentina, respectively, did win in the end, it’s not fair-play at all to ruin a game with a wrong human decision.

As you can see in the picture above, the second goal that England happened to score was disallowed on good reason as the ball never crossed that white line there. But then, leaving silliness and jokes aside, we’d really want to see FIFA let tech into football games to improve the performance of some of these referees.

It looks though that FIFA is (finally!) going to consider adding tech to the game. Sepp Blatter, the ruler of all things good and evil in the football world, in short, FIFA’s president, is finally ready to start a new “discussion about technology.”

FIFA is probably going to rely on goal-line technology in future games (read: future World Cups probably) but it won’t use the same tech when calling offsides which often lead to some goals being scored. Would a referee watching the replay of a game and raising an extra flag to help his colleagues ruin the game? Will it slow it down? Kill its charm? I don’t think so. Other sports use technology and it’s still very fun to watch them.

We’re definitely going to keep an eye on all this sports-related tech for you as the game of football is just about ready to become even more interesting should referees be finally able to do what they’re supposed to do in the first place: make good calls during a fast-paced game and bring even more fairness to the game.

Is your team progressing through to the final? Has it been affected by bad ref calls yet?

Google, on the other hand, although it may be activating as many as 160,000 new Android devices a day, which sounds like a lot, doesn’t have a similar bestseller. And I don’t mean just the Google Nexus One, which definitely wasn’t the hit we expected to be, but basically any other hot Android-running phone out there.

The Motorola Droid is probably what made Android even more popular in the USA and in other markets. Hotter handsets, like the Droid Incredible and the EVO 4G, have been sold out quite fast, but still not comparable to the iPhone 4 or its predecessors when it comes to volume.

And the problem with Android devices, besides fragmentation, is that everyone wants to push their model out the door as fast as possible. Three months ago, the Droid Incredible and the EVO 4G were on everyone’s lips. Now the Motorola Droid X and the unreleased yet Motorola Droid 2 get all the attention. In six months from now we’ll probably have other HTC, Motorola and Samsung Android hot devices meant to fight the iPhone 4 and destroy their predecessors.

So while Apple rolls a new iPhone every year, Google has a hot new Android device every few months. That’s definitely good for the overall evolution of Android but, like I said, it’s still a problem when it comes to marketing and sales.

There’s no iconic Android device that can symbolize all things Android. The Google Nexus One represents Google’s original Android vision, but the device is definitely not worth buying when compared to what’s also available out there.

And, among all these Android announcements, one question comes to mind. Whatever happened to that Google Nexus Two project? Will Google launch any more smartphones or will it abandon that road?

The Google Nexus Two was rumored to be a Motorola-made Android device that would come with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard on board. You know, just like the Motorola Droid. Or, more importantly, just like the upcoming Motorola Droid 2. But is Motorola going to make any device for Google in the following months?

Google tried to sell the Google Nexus One by itself, with no carrier interference, and, despite being the first Android device to be promoted by all Big Four U.S. carriers, the Nexus One ended up selling with T-Mobile plans only. That’s definitely not what HTC, the manufacturer of the Nexus One, expected, is it?

So will Motorola embark on such a Google Nexus Two quest in the near future? Is Google planning to make an even better Android device than the HTC EVO 4G or the Motorola Droid X? Can that be really achieved in the following months?

Let us know if you have any news on that happening as we’d definitely be interested to see how a Google Nexus Two would look like!

Fragmentation is that dirty word that iPhone fanatics love to throw out to instantly defeat an Android fanboy when the two are locked in heated message board debate. The truth of the matter is that yes – there are a lot of different versions of Android and their multiple feature sets are confusion, but this 3G iOS4 story is case-in-point of how it affects the iPhone as well.

So, the iPhone 3G can’t multitask or use backgrounds. Those lucky enough to have newer iPhones might say “Big deal – it’s two year old hardware.” But, if that’s your argument, you can’t expect a two-year old T-Mobile G1 to run Android 2.2 with its active wallpapers and things when it can barely run Android 1.6.

Further providing evidence that some Apple fans have against Android – look at the iTunes app store. Some apps will not run on the iPhone 2G or 3G. Some only run on the 3GS. Some only run on the iPad. Don’t pretend that’s not fragmentation, either.

Steve Jobs was asked by a customer, why doesn’t the iPhone 3G support Backgrounds? What did Steve say?

The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.

If you’ve ever used an iPhone next to an Android device, you’ll notice that the icon transitions on the iPhone (even an older 3G) are much snapper than the Android (even on a cutting edge model, like a Droid Incredible). Obviously, Jobs’ strive for perfection ended up in him simply throwing out a major feature of iOS4 for a large number of customers, simply because it would of given some lag to the operating system.

iPhone 3G users, what’s your opinion on this? Anybody disappointed?

Or at least that seemed to be the case since carriers are starting to back off and probably hate themselves for ever thinking about offering you unlimited data plans.

We’ve seen AT&T in the USA cancel unlimited data plans and this “disease” has been immediately caught across the pond where O2, Orange and probably Vodafone will take similar action.

Sprint on the other hand is not ready to lose any customers after such a decision so instead of canceling the unlimited data plans they’re going to simply throttle it. In other words once you reach a certain traffic limit, which remains unknown for now, you’ll either have to pay for using the same speed when browsing the web on the go or you’ll have to settle for crappy web surfing speeds.

It’s all but a rumor right now based on a leak which is available above. “The Playbook” will tell Sprint employees more in the near future but at least we know Spring unlimited data plans aren’t going anywhere.

It’s funny how the dictionary, and I did look just to make sure I am right, doesn’t mention anything about unlimited things getting limited by human action:

Unlimited:
adj.
1. Having no restrictions or controls: an unlimited travel ticket.
2. Having or seeming to have no boundaries; infinite: an unlimited horizon.
3. Without qualification or exception; absolute: unlimited self-confidence.
unlimitedly un•lim’it•ed•ly adv.
unlimitedness un•lim’it•ed•ness n.

On the second look though, it does explain the word in a weird way: “having or seeming to have no boundaries.” I guess a carrier’s army of lawyers could use this defense in court: unlimited actually means “seaming to have no boundaries” when in fact there are some bounds which can be summarized by two words: data throttling .

So, carriers worldwide, before we really get mad with all of you once again, how about upgrading your networks and make sure we still can do some unlimited browsing while using them? You know, especially with WiMAX or LTE getting more and more present in our lives?

Gates is being blasted for his predictions in the book, mainly because he barely mentioned the internet, and called it “The Information Superhighway”, an archaic term that even by then, we all had agreed not to use. I’d argue that Gates was spot on with his comments on the internet, but let’s go through them, shall we?

From The Atlantic’s story:

The Internet and the Web

Prediction: Gates’s 286-page book mentions the World Wide Web on only four of its pages, and portrays the Internet as a subset of a much a larger “Information Superhighway.” The Internet, wrote Gates, is one of “the important precursors of the information highway,” along with PCs, CD-ROMs, phone networks, and cable systems, but “none represents the actual information highway. … today’s Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway.”

The Atlantic calls this a miss, although Gates was spot on. The internet of 1995, frankly, sucked with static HTML webpages, the dreaded “Marquee” tag, iFrames, all of it. Gates’ idea of the hypertext-enabled ‘Information Superhighway’ is exactly what the internet is today, it’s just not coming via CD-ROM and phone networks.

However, today’s criticism from The Atlantic and Gizmodo regarding Gates’ predictions isn’t anything new. After the book came out in 1995, Time Magazine bashed Gates’ view on the internet, saying,

Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them.

Interestingly enough, 15 years later, that’s still a concern for Microsoft. Netbooks running Chrome, the iPad, and services like Google Docs, all attached to the Cloud, make us question our dependency on proper computers and desktop operating systems.

The Internet aside, Gates did get a few things right with almost scary accuracy. He predicted today’s smartphone, but instead called them “Wallet PCs”. He predicted video conferencing accurately, as well. A few misses by Bill? He said that we would have the ability to watch online retailers fulfill our online orders. As the Atlantic points out, “technologically possible but socially and economically impractical.” Bill predicted e-mail would help create a paperless office and improve office productivity, something that most office monkeys would disagree with.

The iPad Supreme is available for £129,995, that’s $190,000 in mortal money, from Stuart Hughes and it’s surely going to attract attention for at least five minutes or so. The back panel of the thing is made of solid 22ct gold which weighs 2,100 grams. The Apple logo on the back is covered with 53 diamonds that bring extra bling to your tablet / jewelry. They are 25.5ct ‘I’F’ Flawless diamonds so make sure you take extra care of the device.

Unfortunately, no matter how interesting the whole design is the fact remains that this iPad Supreme tablet version is pretty useless and I shall demonstrate. The solid gold back adds 2,100 grams of extra weight that you won’t want to hold in your arms while actually using it. Therefore you will need some sort of stand for actually being able to comfortably play with the device. Thus you’d be turning the tablet into a netbook-like device, which means you won’t really use it out in the open or on the go. Chances of impressing the audience will be pretty scarce once you decide not to take this heavy gold rock with you at all times. And if you do decide to have the butler carry this piece of gold for you, you’ll probably cover it in some sort of a case that will totally hide all that bling which means that innocent bystanders will not be able to spot that gold and diamonds finish.

So if it can’t really impress the crowds, without extra effort, what can it do? At least the iPad Supreme is actually a Wi-Fi + 3G 64GB iPad so you’ll have plenty of storage space and connectivity options whenever you do decide to play with this toy.

If you still want to buy the thing you’ll have to know that they’re only making ten iPad Supreme units. Better hurry, or decide to buy something else instead!

Well yes, and no — HTML5 is definitely going to be a big part of the  future and relying on one company’s platform to do so many things is never a good thing. However, Adobe needs not to throw away their technology but instead they need to adapt and embrace the future. As more and more handset manufacturers begin to allow Flash to run on their devices, more and more online publishers begin to offer an HTML5 alternative to Flash so there is definitely a need for this embrace or Adobe is going to miss out on a valuable new market. Now, I’m no graphics designer so I’m not completely versed in the logistics behind it all but I am an avid Photoshop user and have dabbled with Dreamweaver and Flash in the past and if you’ve done the same you’ll surely know that Adobe entire lineup of software is incredibly powerful.

So now you look at this lineup and see that they have an image editor (Photoshop) a WYSIWYG HTML/CSS editor (Dreamweaver) and then of course, the Flash editor. So now if they were to take the knowledge they have accumulated over the years and adapt this to HTML5 they should easily be able to come up with an industry leading HTML5 editor. Sure, you can say just incorporate it into Dreamweaver, but it wouldn’t be that simple. After researching the topic a bit I’ve found that doing this would be partly impossible, and partly impractical. The amount of variables and new markup that comes with HTML5 would have a WYSIWYG editor with an insane amount toolbars and drop-down menus to incorporate all of HTML5s new features.

However, this is where Adobe’s extensive knowledge comes in — The company has been making these products for over 25 years now and with an employee base of over 8,500, there has to be someone over there that can figure out how to make a fully featured HTML5 editor; just think of it as a mash up between Flash and Dreamweaver.

So come on Adobe, you have what it takes and you don’t need to abandon Flash. Just take your knowledge and adapt it to the new technology because with all of the talk about HTML5, there is definitely a market for it.

How come Sprint isn’t willing to say anything yet about Android 2.1 yet? Android fragmentation is definitely a problem for Google and its partners and these updates aren’t apparently as easy to roll out. According to the screenshot below, the HTC Hero is going to get Android 2.1 on Friday, May 7.

The leaked picture comes from a Best Buy employee, which could mean that HTC Hero units sold in Best Buy location will already come with Android 2.1 on board starting this week. Existing customers will have to go in store and have Best Buy’s staff help them with the upgrade. But what about Sprint customers that purchased the device from Sprint? Aren’t they entitled to the upgrade too?

Moving over to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the Xperia X10 family we have some good and bad news. The Android 2.1 update is coming in Q4 2010, that’s the bad news but the good news is that the Android 2.1 update is coming to the Xperia X10 in Q4 2010.

Really, Sony Ericsson, is that the best you can do? We’ve been waiting for the Xperia X10 since last year hoping it will be a great device, and it definitely is. Now that it came out, it’s not particular interesting to hear Android 2.1 will be out in Q4 2010 for the Xperia X10 family.

Sure the manufacturer it’s upgrading the whole UXP or Sony Ericsson’s “User Experience Platform” and it is including some perks like HD video, wireless home connectivity via DLNA and improvements to Timescape and Mediascape. That sounds all good but by the time the Android 2.1 update is out we’ll have lots of Froyo devices out there. Or at least that’s what we hope.

Froyo, also known as Android 2.2 will roll out at some point this summer after Google I/O. Let’s hope, for everyone’s sake, that the latest Android OS version will arrive as late as possible. That way Sprint and Sony Ericsson can somewhat enjoy the mercy of the hordes unhappy with not having Android 2.1 on their handsets yet. Well, actually, disregard that folks! I think you have the right to be angry at Sprint, or any carrier, for not trying to offer you Android 2.1 a lot faster. It’s like being angry at AT&T for all the dropped calls its subscribers experience.

And when it comes to the Samsung Moment, also a Sprint Android phone, we have no idea when it will get Android 2.1 for now.

In a not-so-long post over on the Internet Explorer blog, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer, basically says that “the future of the web is HTML5” and that’s very early into the article. Sure he might be right but that’s the future. Until the future arrives we need to focus on the present and how to make the most of it now.

LTE and WiMAX are the future of telecommunications. But right now we can barely say we have a dependable 3G connection at all times and we’re very happy with 2G speeds on a number of occasions. When the time comes, should we purchase LTE-only handsets that can’t deal with 3G or 2G technologies?

Like 2G and 3G, Flash might be slowly dying, but does that mean we have to ditch it right away? Steve Jobs’ open letter from yesterday can be interpreted in many ways but Apple doesn’t hold the truth when it comes to Flash. Neither does Adobe, and I am sure that everything could be worked out if both companies would really want to compromise.

Microsoft is basically focusing on Flash and HTML5 in its latest post and it emphasizes the fact that Internet Explorer 9 will support playback of H.264. That’s great, but who uses Internet Explorer anymore? You’d have to admire their resilience when it comes to IE development, wouldn’t you?

H.264 might be the future of video but Flash is not only used for video. I am not defending Adobe here but just saying the obvious. Flash is used for a lot of other things than video which complete the web, so to speak.

What’s funny about this unnecessary Microsoft intervention, besides the fact they side with Apple which is really something uncommon, is that they don’t mention Silverlight anywhere.

You know, Silverlight is Microsoft’s own Flash version which, if I understand correctly, is part of the past as HTML5 is the future of the web. Any thoughts on Flash, folks?

When I first saw the media release of the Polaroid 300, it looked extremely familiar. I went into the cupboard to whip out my FujiFilm Instax Mini and the only difference I can spot so far is the branding. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, looks exactly the same.

It looks like I’m not the only one who has spotted this design similarity. Someone from Engadget has identified the Polaroid 300 as a rebrand of FujiFilm’s Instax Mini. I’m also puzzled as to why the giant photo company has decided to replicate the design.

The Polaroid 300 will use instant-processing film that comes in a pack of 10 for $10. The camera itself will set you back for $90. Yes, even the film and pricing strategy is very similar to the Instax.

Once you insert the film cartridge into the camera and load it up with four AA batteries, you’re ready to point, shoot and develop. The 58 x 86mm photo will come out from the top.

The Polaroid 300 has already generated negative responses from photo-enthusiasts and tech bloggers. Essentially at $1 for a small, not-so-clear photo, it’s very expensive compared to just getting digital camera photos developed.

Nevertheless, it’s the novelty factor, not the quality that will get people purchasing the camera. I must admit that there’s still that element of fun and surprise as I watch the image slowly appear on the instant film. The Polaroid 300 certainly won’t replace your digital point-and-shoot, as producing happy snaps from a holiday could end up costing more than the plane ticket.

The Polaroid 300 will hit stores in May and and comes in black, blue and red. My tip would be to just purchase the FujiFilm Instax Mini instead and save yourself around $20. Plus, the Instax Mini comes in the colors white and chocolate.