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The Google Phone

Named Nexus one, the Google Phone, manufactured by HTC is set to soon make its début and expected to be the first major threat to Apple’s dominant iPhone. The Nexus One will obviously be powered by Google’s own Android OS which over the last year has made serious progress and has matured into a powerful mobile computing platform. While it has been reported that the Nexus One will not be cheap (about R6,000.00) it will surely make it’s mark in the smart phone arena. The Android OS in terms of stability and ability is already far more advanced than that of Apple, therefore the Nexus One will comfortably move the bar up in terms of mobile computing.

The Apple Tablet

After months of rumours and speculation (typical Apple tactics), it seems as though Apple will be releasing the Apple Tablet, dubbed iSlate early this year. Apple has always made use of it’s fanatical following by fuelling rumours, which have proven to be a successful marketing approach as the result is huge amounts of hype and exposure. According to Gene Munster, the iSlate will:
• Be similar to an iPod touch, only larger, capable of running most of the 70,000 applications on the iPhone App Store plus a new category of apps designed for the bigger screen.

“• Will be used primarily for Web surfing, e-mail, and digital media, competing with netbooks without being a netbook.
• Will be priced between an iPhone and a MacBook.
• Is likely to include a 3G cellular modem and could be subsidized by a carrier.”

Apple’s reputation and innovation will most likely lead the way in tablet adoption as a mainstream computing device, much the same way Apple achieved in creating the music player boom with it’s iPod.

Ebook craze

Amazon last year fuelled the ebook meme by announcing its new and improved version of the Kindle, its very own ebook reader. As more and more books go online and environmental responsibility becomes more important, ebooks seem to become more dominant devices. Ebook readers are specialized in a way that allows easy reading by mimicking the way pages from a book are viewed, and presenting them in a legible way. However it must be noted that single use devices in the past have failed to catch on due to their single use abilities, however seeing as though the Kindly is effortlessly attracting so much attention, it could very well be a successful device

Google OS

Google’s much talked about operating system is to be released this year. Since the project is an open source project, the development of the operating system has been transparent, therefore many have already managed to install and test development version of the operating system. While it remians confusing why Google would release a PC operating system that is less powerfull than it’s own mobile operating system Android, it sure will create waves within the operating system market. The operating system is 100% cloud based and open source, and uses your Google account for identification. The OS is targeted primarily at netbooks and other mobile devices.

Anti Social Media

2009 was undoubtedly the year for social media, however many experts predict that 2010 will bring calm to the over hyped and over crowded social networking scene. It has become all to common for users to post their entire lives online, and in 2009 this proved to be unwise as the media was filled with facebook horror stories of job dismissals and privacy breaches. With last years Facebook Terms fiasco and Twitter’s bruised security reputation, many are thinking twice about privacy and pulling back slightly on the over sharing online. Online reputation is probably as important as offline reputation and as it becomes harder to remain anonymous online, the need for proper self representation both socially and professionally becomes more apparent.

Ever more heated browser war

Recently it was reported that the Google Chrome browser has moved into third place in terms of market share and kicked Apple’s Safari down to 4th place, further more with Firefox’s impressive growth in dominance and its German victory, 2010 is set to be year of heated browser battles. It could very well be the year where Internet explorer could possibly fall to second place as it’s market share is in the constant state of shrinkage as more and more users discover the benefits of choice and importance of browser speed, security and web standard’s compliance.

Rich Online Media

With many modern browser’s now adopting CSS3 and HTML5, new possibilities are being created in terms of online media. Notably Firefox, Safari and a few other open source browsers are leading the way into implementing these new standards enabling online media publishers to engage their users on a new level. 2010 is surely going to see alot of these new standards go mainstream.

Ubuntu 10.04

While Ubuntu 10.04 will unfortunately not include Gnome, it sure will be aleap in Linux refinement. With many new features planned and plenty bug fixes, 10.04 is set to be a milestone in Ubuntu development, and a testament to the power of Linux

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Gene Munster, in a report to clients, describes Apple’s forthcoming tablet and offers a rendering of a bigger iPhone to show how it might look. Brainstorm Tech summarizes: more

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Advertising is often annoying and time wasting, generally we often avoid or completely ignore it. If one has bought a device, then there should be no usage limits or advertising conditions imposed, it is reasonable to see adverts on free online services as this is the only source of revenue for these services and further more there are no subscription fees or payment terms, but the idea of forced adverts on a paid product will leave a bitter taste in many mouths. forced advertising is surely a way to develop a disgruntled user base. Given that many of Apple’s patents never get used commercially, it seems that this patent is backed by Steve Jobs himself, CEO of Apple, therefore the company is probably quite serious in bringing this kind of technology to life.

The hinderence of development and freedom of use created by proprietary software has possibly gone to far if the software developed under this patent actually finds it’s way to the stores. When that time comes perhaps we will see an explosion in the open source software domain, where Linux adoption will radically increase. It is a bleak concept, that one company is going to such extremes in controlling it’s users. What further measures will they decide to take in the future, perhaps develop a file format that will hold your data at ransom until you pay a regular license fee. Which is behavior currently seen in certain computer virus programs. The idea isn’t too far fetched as Microsoft has hinted at releasing a “pay as you go” office suite, which essentially means you can only use the suite to open, view and edit your documents if your fees are snuggly deposited into Microsoft coffers. The possibilities could easily cause mass hysteria as users could realize that they are in for some bad news.

Microsoft has received alot of negative marketing due to its proprietary nature and apparent lack of respect for the GPL license over recent years, however it remains fact that Apple is far more proprietary than Microsoft yet curiously their severely strict usage restrictions don’t seem to bother their users. Will their fanatic following blindly accept yet another massive restriction of usage? Will this move inspire people to perhaps see the danger of placing their data in a limit imposed environment? Has the propriety model gone to far should this technology become mainstream?

Perhaps Apple has been blinded by the fanatic praise it receives or perhaps this all is not what it seems, but the idea of forced advertising and further more blocking access to your data stored on your Apple device should you not pay attention to the forced advertising seems quite ludicrous anti anti democratic!

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