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“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”  -  Oscar Wilde

This week we began with a brief explanation for our absence over the past couple of weeks.  My week / weeks in tech were particularly uneventful, just some research on the bits I will need for the upgrade I plan to my venerable G4 iMac.   A solid state drive will hopefully extend it’s useful life beyond the eight years I’ve already had. Gareth’s busy schedule also prevented any tech action, apart from a few iPhone apps that is, the Google Voice web app, and TaskPaper being his current favourites.

Then I started off the stories….

MS unveil ‘Windows Phone 7 Series’ – Yet another product with a catchy name from Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft. This one though carries a weight of expectation, not experienced in Redmond since, oh say, Windows 7. But maybe this one is a bit more critical. If MS want to stay in the mobile market, they had to pull something special put of the hat. And, colour me surprised, they did.  Based on the Zune interface, it almost doesn’t look like Windows at all, which in my book, is always a good thing.

Is Apple banning iPhone jail-breakers – Certain app store visitors are finding that their Apple ID’s have been revoked. The common denominator at the moment seems to be that the phones were jail-broken, also one of the users in question is ‘prominent’ in the jail-breaking community. Apple’s cry of security, as the reason for their death grip on the iPhone platform, is seen as the main culprit for this. We can expect a full explanation in the press conference Apple have scheduled, for when hell freezes over.

Manufacturers and Operators join forces to compete with the App Store – A veritable bucket full of operators and several major manufacturers are pooling their efforts to try to take on the juggernaut that is Apple’s App Store. But with so many different handsets on different networks, it is sure to become a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. Missing the one thing that makes the App store so good for iPhone users. Keep it simple stupid!

You’re never too old to Tweet – Vintage computing, something that generates huge passions. Well this time it’s the turn of the Commodore Vic20, allow me to pause a while to bask in a wave of nostalgia, twas my first foray into the wonderful world of computing. Right where was I, oh yes. It’s to get it’s own Twitter client. Is it futile to try to keep a platform so slow and limited going, or will the coders who toil on these projects, be able to transfer the knowledge gained, in writing compact, low bandwidth programs and web apps, to today’s computers. No your right, futile it is.

Google to build ultra high-speed networks in the US – Right now, if you want to nominate your town, those crazy guys in Mountain View might roll out 1Gbps fibre broadband to you. Hoping to stimulate the market incumbents to invest in their own high-speed networks, by delivering their network to up to 500,000 homes. It sound amazing, but does Google know something we don’t, building high speed data networks, making phones, selling electricity. Hell they may as well just buy Amazon, and be done with it, then I  wouldn’t have to leave the Internet at all.

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“Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.“  – The Wall Street Journal

This week it was straight into it.  The ‘it’ in question being, the iPad. Duh, hello.

The endlessly hyped, and much rumoured Apple tablet, is out of vapourware, and has been released into the meatspace.  It’s hard to believe that anything this hyped, I mean, it was even mentioned on Radio 4 and they’ve only just come to terms with the loss of Empire, could live up to expectations, and so it proved.  Anyone who was expecting the ‘Jesus Tablet’, a miracle device with the potential to cure the worlds diseases, feed the hungry and reverse climate change were disappointed, and rightly so. Instead we got, I think, the tablet that everybody else has been trying to make, an integrated device, designed from the ground up to do a range of tasks, and do them well.

Whether it will be the success as the iPhone, it so closely apes UI-wise, only time will tell.  It’s already as polarising as the afore mentioned device, ‘It’s just a big iPod touch’, to ‘iPad 1.0 is still fantastic enough in its own right to be classed as a stunningly exciting object, one that you will want NOW’.

Either way, at least Dom Jolly can ditch his Nokia now.

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“It’s always darkest just before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbours newspaper, that’s the time to do it.“  – Anonymous

My week in tech was pretty uneventful this week, whereas Gareth’s was pretty full. He purchased an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, which he has yet to unbox, though he does promise a review when he gets it plugged in.  But he was particularly stoked about his other endevour, he has jailbroken his Apple TV.  The superlatives came thick and fast, which I think indicated that he was quite pleased.

Then I kicked off the stories…

Bill Gates joins Twitter – The Uber-Geek has joined the eponymous micro-blogging site.  At the moment he’s using it, apart from following a few dubious Tweeters, to promote his new Gate’s Notes site. Which is keeping us all informed about his charitable works. That’s nice for him, but you’d think his ego would be stroked enough just looking at his bank balance.

$100,000 prototype laptop stolen from Apple’s campus in 2009 – It’s reported, on Zirana.com, that a prototype laptop, most likely the next Macbook Pro, was stolen from Infinite Loop. It’s since been recovered and investigations are ongoing. I know it was probably something really low rent, a pissed employee trying to score big after being shit-canned. But I keep seeing a Mission Impossible kind of thing. Complete with Tom Cruise and all the cool gear, and the theme tune, definitely the theme tune. And maybe Howard Stringer stroking a cat, and laughing diabolically. But I’m guessing that’s probably just me, time to up the dosage again.

Bing to be default iPhone search engine – Is it a negotiating ploy, to squeeze more money out of Mountain View? Or have relations between Google and Apple Become that strained. Either way Ballmer has sensed an opportunity to push MS’ search alternative. And given the dominance of the iPhone in mobile data, and hence mobile search, this move should buy Bing some extra share points. However, there is no need for panic as it turns out setting your default search engine, is just a visit to Settings.app away.

YouTube and Vimeo get HTML5 video – You can sign up for the beta’s right now, if you are using either Safari or Chrome. Firefox will undoubtably follow, although they’re betting on the Ogg Theora codec, rather then H264. Either way it’s a win win for Mac users, Adobe’s Flash and IE in it’s many flawed forms are bound to lose out.

Cisco successfully trials IP router in space – A point to point network in space, satellites bouncing data between each other, on route from ground station to ground station. Every day these boffins think up marvellous new way to improve the intelligence of the machines that they produce. The only thing wrong, in my opinion, is the name, IRIS or Internet Routing In Space, just doesn’t do it for me.  It’s just begging to be called SkyNet.

IBM and Fujifilm develop 35TB magnetic tape cartridges – Tape devices are the last bastion of the old guard in storage. Dull and old fashioned, but reliable and with ever growing capacity, the work horse for archiving in most data centres the world over. So another increase in capacity, this time to 35TB, is just what the IT geek ordered. It’s strange to think, that it’s going to get to the point where you could probably store the sum of human knowledge on a single tape. As opposed to Rob Enderle’s which could go on the back of postage stamp.

NY court revives antitrust against the major music labels – It’s amazing that with all the competition in the music industry, the price of music downloads just sort of ended up at 70 cents. Now the antitrust investigators in NY have successfully appealed against an earlier ruling, the big four labels have a case to answer. On just how, with no collusion, that price, a price higher then the cost of physical media, came to be set. The major labels have nothing to fear though, they can always count on Bono to ride to the rescue of these poor oppressed corporations.