Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos – WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2010
Will Apple’s new iPad support Adobe Flash when it ships in March? / Apple video shows Flashed iPad – the Register 29/01/2010

Wired January 30, 2010 quotes Jobs as saying: “They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.”

And here’s a great piece that is common to all these mobile internet devices (MIDs)

Apple + iPad + Huxley = Orwellian nightmare
If the iPad is a big success, we’ll all be at the mercy of one of the world’s biggest control freaks: Apple

John Naughton
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010

Apple boss Steve Jobs shows off the new iPad, criticised for being ‘just a big iPhone’ but potentially another world-beater. Photograph: Kimberly White/Reuters

WATCHING STEVE JOBS unveil the Apple iPad, what came to mind was something that Neil Postman, the most influential media critic since Marshall McLuhan, once said. Our future possibilities, Postman thought, lay on a spectrum bounded by George Orwell at one end, and by Aldous Huxley at the other: Orwell because he believed that we would be destroyed by the things we fear; Huxley because he thought that we would be undone by the things we love.

As the internet went mainstream, the Orwellian nightmare has evolved into a realistic possibility, because of the facilities the network offers for the comprehensive surveillance so vividly evoked in 1984. Governments everywhere have helped themselves to powers to read every email or text you’ve ever sent. And that’s just the democracies; authoritarian regimes are far more intrusive.

Until recently, the Huxleian nightmare seemed a more distant prospect. Then, two years ago this month, Jobs launched the iPhone, a product that was initially underestimated by many commentators (this columnist included) but which has radically transformed the mobile phone market.

What was revolutionary about the iPhone is that it’s a powerful handheld computer that can also be used to make voice calls. But it’s the computing bit that matters – a fact implicitly confirmed by Apple when it launched the iPod Touch, which runs the iPhone operating system but doesn’t make calls. A year after that launch, Apple revealed its strategy for harnessing the device’s computing power by launching the app store – a marketplace for small, mostly inexpensive, programs that could run on the phone. This generated a perfect storm of software development: there are now more than 100,000 apps available, and more than 3bn have been downloaded since the app store launched. At a stroke the consumer software business has been transformed. As ever, the New Yorker’s cartoonists are tracking the change in the zeitgeist. In one recent cartoon a depressed-looking man arrives home and is greeted by his anxious-looking wife: “Bad news, hon,” he says. “I got replaced by an app.”

The iPhone evokes powerful emotions. Users gibber lovingly about it and become dependent upon it. They buy lots and lots of apps. And, most significantly, they find that they use their PCs less – sometimes a lot less. They discover, in other words, that the phone has become their de facto gateway to the internet.

Which brings us to the iPad. Critics and naysayers of all stripes piled in to complain that it was “just a bigger iPod Touch”. Spot on: that’s exactly what it’s intended to be. Good though the iPhone/Touch was, it has one drawback — the screen’s rather small. The iPad’s screen is bigger and better. And it has a beefier processor, so it handles graphics brilliantly. It’s a racing certainty, therefore, that the possibilities of this improved display performance will lead to another explosion in apps.

As with the first release of the iPhone, there has been lots of carping about alleged deficiencies: no camera, no physical keyboard, no USB slot, no removable battery, no memory card slot, doesn’t do Flash, etc. Some of these probably don’t matter much. Or, in Stephen Fry’s words: “They all fall away the minute you use it … No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects.”

Which is where I begin to think of Huxley and Soma, the hallucinogenic, hangover-free drug in Brave New World that makes users contented with their (subjugated) lot. If the iPad takes off as the iPhone did, then it will have as disruptive an impact on the computing and media industries as the Apple phone has already had on mobile telephony.

And if that happens then we will all have to take a long, hard look at the company that has made it possible.

For the implication of an iPad-crazed world – with its millions of delighted, infatuated users – is that a single US company renowned for control-freakery will have become the gatekeeper to the online world. The iPad – like the iPhone – is a closed, tightly controlled device: nothing gets on to it that has not been expressly approved by Apple. We will have arrived at an Orwellian end by Huxleian means. And be foolish enough to think that we’ve attained nirvana.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Microsoft may have stirred some corporate spot light the sort it doesn’t want, in the vacuum of an economic slow down that will wipe out sales of “Windows 7” new PCs and thus Office for Win7 sales where the meat is in the MS profit (for the shareholders).

hmm this could snowball, if the analyst figures come into play for Q1/Q2 2010 before the action goes to trial 🙂 The proverbial would hit the FAN. Figures in public domain, spotlight in the computer and financial sectors media – BANG!

Deduced dividend leaks out predicting Q1/Q2 2010 profits, followed by punitive damages issued by the US Government with very little effort from the FOSS Community. This would then force the analysts and brokers into having to declare Microsoft a SELL until Q3/Q4 2010 figures come into being or some incredible good announcement to over look another set of appalling figures caused through this unusual economic downturn.

Again in Q3/Q4 2010 figures are going to be a blood bath because of the PC consumer slowdown is going to stop the market dead in it’s tracks. The market for PCs going to people who do not currently have a computer is practically ZERO for all intents and purposes.

1. What are the users going to be able to do in windows 7 that you cannot do with Windows XP that justifies $350 for a new computer?
2. When people cannot pay their mortgage because they lost their job, and they going to buy a new PC?
3. If you are retired, or about to retire you will be seeing your pension vapourising and stock market seriously affecting your long term financial prosperity – are you going to buy a new PC?

And the buggers are even starting to print money to prop up this whole charade, and remember what happened when somebody last tried that stunt… IE printed money out of thin air.

See quantitative easing.

Bummer we could almost turn it into a sad short selling sport, to “spot” stock in the correct sequence in order to do short selling roll overs with the profits from each sinking. Now all you need to do is think laterally about products and their associated industries, and for the industries that float into your mind, think about the suppliers lead times and inventory levels held for a particular line item or BOM. Scary or what?

They will have to switch the financial systems off in every single electronic settled market place if the hedge funds started doing this – which they will. Surely?

Because as I say to people, if you’ve just thought about it, the odds are if you Google around your thought meme. You’ll find a community of like minded thinking individuals, and this networking is being accelerated by del.icio.us and Mag.nol.ia and other folksonmy driven bookmarking systems in our 2.0 world.

Did somebody say wheel? (PS I had a drink this evening 🙂 so it may not make much sense!

I think it could very well be, but the interesting observation is from the people who perceive the action is criminal on Microsoft’s part, would must surely hit the headlines from a Business Analyst point of view?

Submitted by asmiller-ke6seh on March 6, 2009 – 12:56 P.M.

It sounds like Microsoft is knowlingly counselling the violation of an existing contract which their patent licensees have previously committed to. This could put Microsoft in violation of such federal laws as Taft-Hartley. Microsoft may find that this ends up being a nuclear option, and not a good defense.

And the most interesting comment I found to be this one:

Time to Sue or Prosecute MS for racketeering
Submitted by Marty on March 6, 2009 – 5:38 P.M.

If M$ entered these deals with non-disclosure agreements, knowing that the non-disclosure is intended to hide their licensee’s violation of GPL licensing, then it sounds like Microsoft may be guilty of collusion and racketeering. Whoever is responsible for protecting the patents and licesning for GP licenses should sue MS and ask for a big-time punitive settlement. And the gov. ought to look into possible criminal implications.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/linux_companies_sign_microsoft_patent_protection_pacts

&

http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Real_Reason_for_Microsoft_s_TomTom_Lawsuit

Excerpt from an SWRDA press release titled the same:

In outlining his skills vision Lord Leitch set some ambitious goals which included:
– 95 per cent of working age adults to achieve functional literacy and numeracy – up from 85 per cent literacy and 80 per cent numeracy today. This means 680,000 basic skills attainment per year against 110,000 today.
– More than 90 per cent of workforce adults qualified to at least Level 2 (equivalent to 5 GCSEs – grades A-C)) – up from 70 per cent today. Ninety-five per cent means 1.7 million more adults with Level 2 and 500,000 people achieving Level 2 each year against 280,000 today.

• What a load of bollocks – define what literacy is?!
• What does it really mean to be literate to a level that is useful for an individual to be useful to a business?

• Mozilla Weave the most important announcement for the (social?) web for 2008
• Providing you read history to choosen trusted parties, how disruptive will this become?
• Web directories are about to enter a new era
• Mainstream publishers be aware, the hub of the future is being a trend spotter

& http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/

I jest you not, I received this today via a Micro$oft newsletter:

…”

Bill Gates was at the British Library in London on Tuesday to celebrate the launch and made some special announcements. Footage of this event can be viewed at www.windowsvista.co.uk. Earlier this month, at CES in Las Vegas, he labelled the launch as “by far the most important release of Windows ever” and “the highest quality release we’ve ever done”.
“…

The amazon plug:

After years of studying countless winners and losers, the author has come up with a simple idea that explains why some technologies – DVD players, iPods – become huge hits while others – video phones – crash and burn. His big idea is that people are only willing to change when the ‘pain’ of their current situation outweighs the perceived pain of trying something new. In other words, technology demands a change in habits. This simple fact is the main cause of failure for many fabulous inventions. Many companies fall for their own hype and believe that if they build something better, people will automatically beat a path to their door. This is not necessarily the case; as Coburn shows, most potential users are afraid of new technologies and need a really great reason to change. “The Change Function” looks at this trend across many industry sectors, from computers to mobile phone and digital TV recorders, and is invaluable for anyone who creates, invests in, or is interested in, new technologies. ‘every page is a tug at your lapels to see things his way. The world would be a better place if we did.’ – “Wall Street Journal.”