Tech world awaits Apple's new tablet computer

APPLE’S EXPECTED announcement of a tablet computer at the end of the month is the subject of fevered anticipation in the tech world. As a result, firms at CES were keen to show their own tablets and slates before Apple gets out of the traps.

The industry has gone down this route before – Microsoft had a tablet version of Windows XP which ran on notebooks that had a touchscreen and stylus, but they never took off.

The current crop of tablets, which Shawn DuBravac, director of research with the Consumer Electronics Association is dubbing “Tablet 2.0”, is a very different beast.

DuBravac says the CEA’s research has shown there is a “void in the screen spectrum”. While there are plenty of screens under 5in, such as those on mobile phones and GPSs, and while notebooks, desktop PCs, and TVs look after the space above 15in, there is nothing in between.

As a result, there is a gap for highly portable devices with screens of 8-15in, and this is only partially being served by mini-netbooks.

The new generation of tablets will look more like e-book readers such as Amazons Kindle but will have a touchscreen a la the iPhone. In fact, much of the speculation around Apples tablet is that it will be a larger format iPhone.

The most high-profile response to Apples imminent launch was from Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer. At the end of his Wednesday night address he briefly showed off what he called a slate PC from HP, which uses Windows 7 and was running Amazons Kindle e-book software.

But details were sketchy other than it will be available this year. The brief demo also included similar devices from Archos and Pegatron.

“Theyre more powerful than a phone and almost as powerful as a PC. Perfect for reading, surfing the web, and taking entertainment on the go,” said Ballmer.

While we wait, manufacturers have refinements of the current tablets, basically touchscreen netbooks, with HP, for instance, announcing the TouchSmart tm2 notebook that transforms from notebook to tablet with a twist of the screen to fold it on top of the keyboard.

It goes on sale here next month with prices starting at €799.

Lenovo provided a potential half-way house with the IdeaPad U1, a notebook with a detachable screen that can operate as a tablet on its own.

The question, of course, is: where would you use a tablet? Would you just carry it around the house or would you bring it to work or college as well? The devices are small enough to fit into a ladys handbag but certainly not a shirt or jacket pocket.

And what will all this mean for the nascent e-book market, since tablets will be able to act as an e-book reader and do so much more?

It looks like 2010 will see a genuinely exciting new category of computer hit the market.

Nokia to promote online platform

NOKIA IS to hold an event in Dublin next week aimed at attracting developers to its online application store. The Ovi Store platform, unveiled last May, provides a place where Nokia phone users can buy and download applications directly to their phones.

Nokia Ireland’s Shane O’Brien says some of Europe’s best digital agencies and developers are in Ireland. “Even though the Irish community is quite small . . . there are some really good applications and content out there, not only local but also international.

“We have the Ovi Store as a platform and what we really want to do is introduce it to developers. We want to show them the process to develop for the Ovi Store and give them an idea of the support we can give to developers.”

This support ranges from loan phones to test applications to marketing and digital support, promoting content through the appropriate channels.

Developers will also have the chance to meet Nokia’s local team, in addition to Forum Nokia’s business development manager Benjamin Roszczewski and Nokia Finland’s chief engineer in its web technologies division Petro Soininen.

Developers who have already worked with the Ovi Store will also be on hand to share their experiences.

“It’s pretty much an open floor to create a discussion around how to develop for the Ovi Store,” says Mr O’Brien.

The event will take place on January 13th in the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin city centre.

Nokia says there has already been considerable interest and, while numbers are limited, Mr O’Brien says they will do their best to accommodate everyone.

The mobile application market is competitive and growing all the time. Earlier this week, Apple announced the number of applications downloaded from the App Store had reached three billion, with more than 90,000 applications in the store.

Google’s Android Market, meanwhile, has 18,000 applications.

Tech titans Apple and Google square up to each other

Both Apple and Google are wandering out of their core competencies into each other’s territory, writes DANNY O'BRIEN

THIS WEEK felt like one of those moments in a science-fiction movie when the two main characters are popped into a mind-swapping machine. On Monday, Apple bought mobile advertising company Quattro, reportedly for $275 million (€192 million). On Tuesday, Google announced the Nexus One, its long-rumoured self-branded mobile phone. Apple got into advertising. Google started selling its own phone.

What is going on here? Both companies are wandering out of their core competencies into each other’s territory. Google’s cash cow is advertising; Apple’s is increasingly its mobile-phone division. Both risk annoying their own customers.

Google was long assumed not to be entering the mobile hardware market, for the good reason that its Android smartphone operating system depended on the goodwill of phone companies and other hardware manufacturers which would not take well to competition.

Apple’s foray into controlling advertising in the mobile market is bound to make its effective partners – developers creating apps on its iPhone platform – nervous.

On the other hand, Google and Apple are both old hands at trampling out of their comfort zone, straight into those of their soon-to-be ex-friends, and winning. It is long-forgotten now, but along with “don’t be evil”, one of Google’s original rules was to do one thing and do it well. That one thing was search. The rule was almost immediately broken when Google decided to do advertising and e-mail and then video, and then applications, and so on.

Apple Inc used to be Apple Computer, and kept out of the music, consumer electronics and phone markets – until it stormed all three.

What is significant about this week’s news is not the phone companies, the mobile advertising resellers and other slightly shell-shocked gangs. It is that Apple and Google are lining up against one another.

Compare these announcements to Microsoft’s damp-squib keynote by a greying Steve Ballmer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Ballmer announced very little in the way of new products, services or software from Microsoft. He did mention HP’s new range of “slate” computers, but that was widely seen as a limp pre-attack on Apple’s expected announcement of a tablet-sized product later this month. What he praised was Bing, Microsoft’s frontal attack on Google’s search engine, which has been around far too long now, and failed to make a dent.

Bing and the slate computer do not feel like real forays against these big names. The old attack dog seems to be retreating increasingly into its safe domains of the Xbox and Windows updates, while lamely batting one paw outside its den.

Meanwhile, on the vacated yard, Apple and Google nervously circle one another, trying to work out exactly who is destined to take what in the new and emptier high-tech landscape.

In these kinds of battles, no one actually wins. Google doesn’t take all, and Apple doesn’t triumph. The battle is all about where the armistice is signed, and what innocent bystanders get hurt in the few real fights.

Right now we’re in the phoney war stage. No one has really noticed that Apple wants to do advertisements. Android and the Nexus One are not taking market from the iPhone; they are gouging out what remains of the iPhone’s competitors.

But sooner or later, there is going to be live fire between these two. There have already been some minor preparatory spats. Google has been the most upfront, by proposing a Google Voice application for the iPhone (which was rejected by Apple). The attack was successfully repulsed, and Google did not care enough to push harder.

Apple, too, has tried a few times to sidle into Google’s arena, and failed even on its own terms. It is significant that, while Apple’s designs do wonderfully in the “real” world, their internet offerings, such as .Mac or the original iPhone Web application model, have never really caught fire. People talk a lot about Apple on the internet, but you don’t see much Apple presence on the internet.

The real final battles between giants do not take place in the marketplace: they take place in the proxy world of the courts and regulatory space.

When Microsoft and Sun locked horns, it was in a lawsuit over Java. When IBM fell, it was because it was torn apart by the US courts.

So that is my prediction for the next decade. Apple or Google will find itself tripping over some legal or regulatory bind. While there will be no trace of the other in the lawsuit (neither company would be so gauche or so desperate to sue the other), the case will present an opportunity for the other, which it will take.

Perhaps Google will get hit by anti-monopolistic (or anti-American) regulation in the EU. Perhaps Apple will find its phone strategies being undermined by network neutrality and open hardware rules in the US.

Either way, come 2020, both these companies will still be around, and around each other’s necks, like boxers in the final rounds. And from somewhere will come a new contender who will exploit their obsession with each other and take whatever prize fight the next decade has to offer.

Twitter in hiring mode, many openings for software engineers

NEW YORK: Popular micro-blogging site Twitter is expanding headcount and has many openings for software engineers.


Twitter is looking to hire people for as many as 27 key positions in the company, which had started operating from a garage in 2006.

Twitter has sprang on popularity charts with a number of celebrities, including Britney Spears, India's Shah Rukh Khan and US daily The New York Times using the service and scores of people using it for dissemination of information.

It is looking for people in areas right from software engineering to product and technical operations; administrative department to managing media services to take the company to the next level of growth.

"We are a hard-working team looking for a few key people to help take us to the next level," Twitter said on its website.

The company, as per information available with its website in April last year, has about 120 employees.

Twitter offers micro-blogging which allows users to send short text messages, among others, on various multimedia platforms.

The net working site is searching for 13 people for software engineering positions, which includes four vacancies for monetisation, four at IT and website operations and two each at business development and administrative departments.

In addition, Twitter is looking at one each for the post of data analyst and interaction designer among others.

"Twitter is looking for new members of our technical staff to work on cutting edge monetisation projects," the company said.

In April, the company had opened vacancies for as many as 13 people, most them were for the post of software engineers.

Security lapse compromises Facebook privacy

he security loophole is an embarrassment for the site which, last week, unveiled new ways to restrict access to personal profiles.

Facebook's recent upgrade to its privacy controls was rendered defenseless thanks to a security lapse that recently compromised the privacy of personal photographs on an individual's Facebook profile. The loophole is a major embarrassment for the popular social networking site which, last week, had unveiled new ways to restrict access to personal profiles. According to a report, users were still able to circumvent these new additions and pull photographs of members whose personal profiles had been protected by privacy settings. Reacting quickly to the reports of this lapse, Facebook claimed to have fixed the bug within an hour. A spokesperson for the company said that the company gave utmost importance to privacy and that it would continue to make enhancements to the site. Given the increasing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, this latest lapse is another warning to millions of users who put sensitive information and pictures in their profiles. There have been instances where the information posted on social networking sites have been misused. With more and more people logging on websites like Facebook, Orkut and MySpace, the security aspect has become extremely important and sensitive issue for those who frequent these sites on a daily basis. The Facebook flaw is a grim reminder of the price one may have to pay for networking online.

Facebook Axes Suicide Machine Access

Facebook has axed users' access to Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, a service that helps users to sign out forever from other social networks. Few days ago, even Facebook got into the list of the social networks which Suicide Machine lets you unplug from. Hence, Facebook has axed Suicide Machine website's access to Facebook as measure, reported CNET. So you can get rid of the 'distracting' social networks and Facebook is no more in that list.

A Facebook representative said in a statement, "Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine collects login credentials and scrapes Facebook pages, which are violations of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. We've blocked the site's access to Facebook as is our policy for sites that violate our SRR. We're currently investigating and considering whether to take further action."

Suicide Machine website offers a service to users for unplugging themselves from popular social networks like Twitter, Linkedin and MySpace. Suicide Machine service uses a custom script that not only deletes the user profile from the respective social networking service but also deletes/breaks connection with every friend linked. This means the service removes all your friends from the profile and also makes it totally unusable.

Gordan Savicic, Suicide Machine's chief euthanasia officer, responded when questioned of breaching Facebook Terms:
"No, not from our point of view. We are just offering a service to users who want to drop out of Facebook. According to Facebook's terms of service, they should actually not threaten us but the people who commit suicide -- 'You will not share your password, let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account' http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf -- And again, we are neither 'hacking' into their servers, nor scraping their pages. We only store the profile picture and the name of the user! This is actually possible without even logging into Facebook."

Suicide Machine believes everyone who uses social networks should be able to commit social network suicide and thereby offers it service.

Google Wave, iPhone and Android will be heavily attacked in 2010

From the crystal ball of Roel Schouwenberg :
Google Wave, the iPhone and Android mobile phones will come under heavy cyber attacks in 2010.

Schouwenberg, a senior malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab Americas, predicts Google Wave will grab headlines in coming months -- but not necessarily for emerging as the next killer online networking app. Instead, he says, Google Wave is likely to become a top target of cyber criminals.

"Attacks on this new Google service will no doubt follow the usual pattern," Schouwenberg soothsays. "First, the sending of spam, followed by phishing attacks, then the exploiting of vulnerabilities and the spreading of malware."

Schouwenberg also anticipates a sharp rise in attacks on the iPhone and Android mobile platforms, following the successful probe attacks of 2009. "The first malicious programs for these mobile platforms appeared in 2009, a sure sign that they have aroused the interest of cybercriminals," he says.

Android users, in particular, seem ripe for plundering. "The increasing popularity of mobile phones running the Android operating system, combined with a lack of effective checks to ensure third-party software applications are secure, will lead to a number of high-profile malware outbreaks," he says.

Schowenberg's prescient orb also tells him that the overheated race between Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo Search to incorporate Facebook and Twitter posts in search results -- in real time -- is destined to aid and abet cyber criminals' deployment of phishing scams, banking Trojans and cutting-edge intrusions. "Malware will continue to further its sophistication in 2010," he says.