The Technology newsbucket: Apple sues, Evernote .Not, Google wanted Jobs, and more

Smartphone patent lawsuits and deals - updated

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Apple countersues Motorola over multi-touch iPhone patents >> AppleInsider
"As expected, Apple has responded to a patent suit from Motorola with its own legal action, accusing the company of violating six patents related to multi-touch features found in the iPhone."

Lessons from Evernote's flight from .NET « Tim Anderson's ITWriting
Evernote says that since giving up .Net for C++, it's got an app that starts five times faster, and uses half the memory. Tim Anderson looks at why it did: "WPF is not only based on .NET. It also uses DirectX and hardware acceleration under the covers, enabling rich multimedia effects. The layout language of WPF is XAML, giving freedom from scaling issues which cause hassles in the native API. So what are the lessons here? Is WPF no good?
"It is not so simple. WPF is brilliant in many ways, offering the productivity of .NET coding and a powerful layout framework. However it was a technology which Microsoft itself hardly used in its key products, Windows and Office – a warning sign."

Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted >> Mary Jo Foley
Basically, it's HTML5 in future for cross-platform products.

Enterprises: We'll run Windows XP even after retirement - Computerworld
Not a large survey (950 companies) so don't stake your house on its precision. Still: "Microsoft has been pushing XP customers of all stripes, including enterprises, to upgrade to Windows 7. While Dimensional didn't query IT professionals about what operating system they were leaving behind as they migrated to Windows 7, they're doing the latter in increasing numbers. More than a third, or 38%, of those polled said their companies have implemented a partial roll-out of Windows 7, up from 15% in January 2010, the last time Dimensional surveyed IT administrators and staffers.
"Six percent of the companies have fully deployed to Windows 7, a six-fold increase over the 1% who said the same back in January."

Larry And Sergey Wanted Steve Jobs To Be Google's First CEO >> Business Insider
Interesting detail. They didn't actually get as far as asking him, as he was already re-ensconced in Apple.

Exploring Earth's History with Wolfram|Alpha >> Wolfram|Alpha Blog
Likely to make creationists' brains melt.

LIVE BLOG: Microsoft Earnings Call >> Business Insider
Everywhere has done well apart from Online. Which still hasn't.

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The Technology newsbucket: browsers v HTML5, WP7 sales, Nokia v Apple and more

Good moooooorning Toronto! Photo by gtall1 on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 16 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Where the iPad comes into its own >> Memex 1.1
John Naughton discovers a great new app, Soundnote: "At first sight it looks like any other notetaking App. But it has one magical ingredient: it can record audio and sync the recording to the typed notes. In other words, it does much of what my Livescribe pen does, but with none of the associated gadgetry — and cost. The Livescribe pen retails at around £120, and then there's the cost of the special notebooks (you can print your own special paper, but life's too short for that) on top."

HTML5 Conformance Test Results >> W3 Org
Pits Safari 5, Opera 11, Firefox 4b6, Google Chrome 7 and Internet Explorer 9 (preview 6) against the current HTML5 (not CSS3) testbed. See if you can guess what order they ranked before you click.

Windows Phone 7 "selling well" so far >> ZDNet UK
Jack Schofield looks at WP7's progress (though nobody can work out whether there's been a supply constraint or a mad dash to buy), and asserts: "It seems likely that the number of WP7 apps will overtake the number of iPhone apps, though most of the WP7 apps may be in-house programs that are invisible to consumers."
Filed away to revisit in the future, though it contains its own getout clause.

'Evilgrade' Gets an Upgrade >> Krebs on Security
Apps that are updated on Windows but don't use a cryptographic key can have updates spoofed. "Among the software products that Amato says EvilGrade can compromise are iTunes, Java, Skype, Winamp — even security applications like Superantispyware, Sunbelt and Panda Antirootkit (a longer list of vulnerable apps is available in the documentation)."
iTunes considered harmful.

Nokia Gets Support of ITC Staff in Apple Smartphone Trial - Bloomberg
Apple wants to get Nokia's phones ruled in breach of international rules, which would mean imports to the US would be blocked. (Would anyone notice?) Nokia, separately, wants to do the same to Apple.

Porn maker sues 7,098 alleged film pirates | Media Maverick - CNET News
"F--- 'em all," [Axel] Braun told Xbiz. "People don't realize that when you pirate a movie it hurts all of the people who work very hard to get it produced - from the cast to the production assistants to the makeup artists...So we are going after every one of them who pirates our content."
You mean they're not doing it for the enjoyment in those films? But they always sound so happy.

Google is lost in location-based battle with Facebook, will it check in? >> Scobleizer
Robert Scoble: "In the past, to find a business, we'd go to Google and type something like 'Palo Alto Sushi.'
"We're heading toward a world where you'll use location-based services to do the same thing. That is a HUGE disruptive threat to Google.
"Here's why.
"In Google's world they controlled everything and were able to decide which ads get displayed next to searches for businesses.
"The world has now shifted to where people like my wife stay signed into Facebook 18 hours a day. Now she can see which businesses her friends are using."

New IE 0-Day used in Targeted Attacks >> Symantec Connect
"Since the specific exploit page only worked when someone was using Internet Explorer 6 and 7, the script only transferred the visitor to the page hosting the exploit when this condition was met. In other cases the users didn't see anything but a blank website." There's a moral in here, if only we could disentangle it...

10 Reasons Python Rocks for Research >> Hoyt Koepke
Makes a lot of good points, though quite a few of them aren't exclusive to Python by any means; it's more the fact that you have all of them together in the package. (OK, tuples are clever once you find the right use for them.) But quite a few of these could be applied to, say, PHP.

Open data from the inside: Lichfield Council's Stuart Harrison >> Online Journalism Blog
"I think the main thing I've learnt is that APIs are great, but they're not always necessary. My early work was on APIs that link directly into databases, but, as I've moved forward, I've found that this isn't always necessary. While an API is nice to have, it's sometimes much better to just get the data out there in a raw format."

What do you have to believe for an Android dominated future? >> Asymco
Horace Dedlu asks calmly what it would take for Android to become dominant, what the constraints are, how the future looks. Consistently rational, and points out that those cheering Android have forgotten that Windows Phone is more likely to take share from there than from Nokia, Apple or RIM. "Looking at the world through modular/inter-dependent lenses lets you see that mobile platform dynamics will not evolve as they did in the PC era. At least not for the foreseeable future."

How much is that data plan going to cost you if you use internet TV? - The Globe and Mail
The unanswered question about Google TV (and similar TV-over-web plans, Apple): are they going to pay for all that streamed data? Because there's no sign in Canada (where this article applies) or the UK of "unlimited" data plans even on fixed broadband.

Recorded crime data at local authority level >> data.gov.uk
Come on, someone has to be able to do something dramatic with this innocent-looking CSV.

Apple confirms move to 90-second iTunes samples >> CNET News
Because it reckons you'll buy more tracks than with the present 30-second ones. Well, it gives you three times the chance of getting an earworm.

Amazing Facts About Facebook And Breakups >> Mathias Mikkelsen
Pre-Christmas is a minefield and spring is the worst. All human life is on Facebook, it seems.

iPhoto '11 updated to squash "extremely rare" library bug >> DownloadSquad
"Extremely rare". Suuuuure. The bug that deletes libraries whole. Mmm-hmm. The onle blamed on third-party plugins. Nobody uses those.

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Creative Technology jumps into the tablet market... too late, too slowly?

Detail of Creative ZiiO 7 tablet: note the non-English script on the return button, bottom right. Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative Technology - the Singaporean company which five years ago vowed to go after Apple over a patent it had which it reckoned the iPod infringed - has come into the tablet market with a range of tablets, including 2 3.2-inch, 7-inch, and 10-inch models, running the Android OS.

And what does it bring to the tablet party that's different from what everyone else is doing? Wellll... that's hard to say. It has built its own processors to run the devices (designed at 3D Labs, which Creative Technology owns), and written its own audio drivers which it says means that you'll get far higher audio quality while listening or streaming (via Bluetooth) to compatible devices.

But in many other ways, Creative's output looks to be lagging behind many other tablet companies. To begin with, they're all running Android 2.1 - and none of them has 3G. This means that they won't automatically be able to access the Android Marketplace (because Android is a phone OS, and devices which don't have 3G or other phone stuff inside them can't be phones, so they can't access the marketplace for phone apps).

Update: Factoring in the prices, though, suggests that these are priced to sell - and so could give rivals quite a run for their money if Creative can get past the Marketplace hassles.

However Mac Aw Kuw Weng, director of corporate marketing, told us that there will be an over-the-air update (via Wi-Fi) to the devices to Android 2.2, which will be available as soon as Google has finished its trials of them - sometimes in late December... early January? Once that's done, then users will have access to the Marketplace. Otherwise they'll have to sideload apps via their computer.

Oh, and on the Wi-Fi issue: it's the ZiiOs (the 7" and 10") are only 802.11g&b, not 11n, which might be slightly limiting. The 3.2-inch Zen, mystifyingly, is 802.11b/g/n.

The models that we tried were all a little unfinished, at least in software terms: though there is an orientation sensor in the devices, the software didn't pick up on it. The keyboard though was pretty nice, and the limited tests I did suggested that the settings were well laid out. But there were a few crashes, and lack of responsiveness to touch, especially when trying to swipe through a selection of films.

The 3.2" Zen device comes with optional GPS, which would mean you could use it as a navigation device; the larger devices don't, because (Weng suggested) you wouldn't really want to try using them to do turn-by-turn navigation. (Though I thought: might be good to be able to view the maps at a more usable size.)

The tough question: what does it think people will want - the 10" or the 7" version? "That will be based on the feedback from the buyers in stores [not customers, but the retailers who order stock]," said Phil O'Shaughnessy, in charge of worldwide corporate communications. "We believe there will be a huge trend in the holidays for buying tablets."

That might be so, but if Creative doesn't get its factories sorted out, then it's going to have serious supply problems - making 7" or 10" machines isn't like turning a tap on and off. Look at the problems that Apple had trying to meet demand - and that's a company which normally has its finger right on the pulse of the supply chain. Creative looked a little shambolic in this, to be honest: started late, late to get the product through testing, and without access to the Marketplace, which a lot of its rivals do have.

Plus it's using a resistive rather than capacitive touchscreen, which is generally reckoned to be a less pleasant experience, and less robust, than the capacitive ones (used by Apple and Samsung among others).

The prices are pretty competitive with other Android tablets, but the lack of a Marketplace will probably mean disappointment for many would-be ordinary users who'll be expecting something like the Apple app experience. Although it does come with Angry Birds already installed - so at least that's one way to while away the time until Google gives the thumbs-up to 2.2.

I did ask whether Google had given its blessing to the idea of a 10" tablet running Android; Weng sort-of implied that it had, or at least that it hadn't frowned on it. Perhaps we'll see through watching how long it takes for the 10" version to be approved.

Update: But the prices are competitive. Here's the listing:
• ZiiO 7" Pure Wireless Entertainment Tablet 8GB: £199.99
• ZiiO 7" Pure Wireless Entertainment Tablet 16GB: £219.99 (only via creative.com/shop)
• ZiiO 10" Pure Wireless Entertainment Tablet 8GB: £249.99
• ZiiO 10" Pure Wireless Entertainment Tablet 16GB: £269.99 (only via creative.com/shop)

• ZEN Touch 2 Wireless Entertainment Device (without GPS) 8GB: £149.99
• ZEN Touch 2 Wireless Entertainment Device (without GPS) 16GB: £159.99 (only via creative.com/shop)
• ZEN Touch 2 Wireless Entertainment Device (with GPS) 8GB: £159.99 (only via creative.com/shop)

Creative says these are the suggested retail prices, though I do wonder whether they include VAT. But even if they do, then the 10" 16GB version comes out at £320 - substantially below the 16GB iPad at £430.

Also on show were plenty of Bluetooth streaming systems, including some nice-looking satellite speakers (more here). Why Bluetooth when the Kleer system could give even better audio? Because Bluetooth is more prevalent, Creative said - though Weng revealed that the company is talking to Apple about incorporating Apple's AirPlay system for streaming audio over Wi-Fi: that might be coming soon.

And while Creative may not have managed (even a bit) to displace Apple in the iPod market, it did score one notable success: it won a patent case against Apple over the use of menus in the iPod - meaning Apple had to pay it a license fee for every classic iPod sold.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the Creative tablets. Excuse quality, but they should give you the idea.

iPad beside Creative ZiiO 10. Photo by Charles Arthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative ZiiO 7 beside ZiiO 10. Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative ZiiO 7: OK... Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

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The Technology newsbucket: Gmail shuts out Facebook, the last Windows?, Android exploits and more

Photo by futureatlas.com on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 15 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Building the Simple Enterprise >> TechCrunch
Linked, because it's wrong in so many ways. It begins: "In the enterprise, simplicity simply doesn't sell. Complexity, on the other hand, justifies costly software licenses and a swat team of consultants and systems integrators." It reads like someone who has never considered that the needs of an enterprise - the laws to be obeyed, disclosures to be considered, procedures to be followed - are orders of magnitude more complex than an individual's. Enterprise software often stinks, but it's not because it's unnecessarily complex. It's because it's trying to deal with complexity in a limited time and budget.

Google points finger at Facebook hypocrisy, blocks Gmail import >> Ars Technica
"Facebook has long been a one-way valve. You put data in so you can connect with friends, and then you can't get it out and use it the way you would like to, even as the company is trying to corner the market on your identity.
"And Thursday night Google called out its rival on such data-portability hypocrisy: It banned the huge social network from allowing its users to connect their Gmail contacts to see who among them are also on Facebook to get the friending frenzy started."
The closing of diplomatic relations often presages war.

Generation Why? by Zadie Smith >> The New York Review of Books
"I can say (like everyone else on Harvard's campus in the fall of 2003) that "I was there" at Facebook's inception, and remember Facemash and the fuss it caused.." And now she examines The Social Network. A fantastic piece. Bring a long drink.

New browser RockMelt oozes into beta >> CNET News
"RockMelt is indeed a "Facebook browser," if only because Facebook is the social-media service that's best integrated into it at launch. It's clear that ultimately the browser's team plans to make it more customizable with other services. The ultimate goal, you could say, is revamping the traditional browser many of the Web-browsing behaviors that have popped up in the past few years--social-media sharing, Twitter clients, RSS alerts, and speedier search--and works them into an interface that aims for convenience rather than confusion."
Ohh, you mean like Flock.

The last Windows ever >> BankerVision
James Gardner, who writes this, is the chief technology officer at the Department of Work and Pensions. The DWP has just done a deal to get Windows 7 (it's presently "struggling along" on XP), but "Personally, I think it likely this is the last version of Windows anyone ever widely deploys, though."
Why? Because "I think they'll be fewer workloads that actually require a heavy deskop stack. Today, of course, we have all this legacy that's coupled to the desktop, but in a decade, I really doubt that will be the case. Most stuff will arrive via the browser."

Microsoft's Linux Patent Scare Trumps SCO - InternetNews:The Blog - Sean Michael Kerner
From March, but interesting: "Microsoft convinced Japanese hardware vendor I-O Data to sign up for Microsoft patent licensing to protect against Linux patent issues. Over the last three years Microsoft has been successful at getting multiple vendors including Amazon, Novell, Brother International Corp, Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd, Kyocera Mita Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and TomTom International BV to buy into their argument that they need protection from Linux patent infringement."

Researcher outs Android exploit code >> The Register
Relies on flaws in WebKit that have been fixed in Android 2.2, but only 36% of users have that. Its effects are limited to what the browser can read - thuogh that could include the phone's SD memory card.

Investors back #TechCity – Concentration of startups "will attract" capital >> TechCrunch Europe
I'm not sure that the headline is completely supported by the quotes that appear, though: there's a lot of doubt that governments can really create the hubs.

Xserve will no longer be available after January 31 >> Apple
Lots of people sang its praises, but Apple's servers never got the market traction: if you're savvy enough to set up a server, you're probably savvy enough to load it up with Linux instead. So that's the second time Apple has tried to get into the server market and given up.

HTML5 Testing >> W3C Blog
"..it seems that people are trying to draw conclusions from the tests or from the results, including whether one browser or another is better.
"An increase of 135 tests isn't meaningful. It's way far from making the results significant in fact. We'll need several dozens of thousands of tests to make those results indicative. Still, while working on the HTML5 specification, there is an advantage to figure out where we have interoperability issues already."
Is this the W3C version of "yes but no but yeah but no but.."? (Thanks @DerekJohnson for the link.)

Bank of America, Citigroup Said to Test IPhone for Mobile E-Mail >> Bloomberg
"The banks are testing software for the iPhone that's designed to make it secure enough for company messages." The two banks employ 524,000 people, though not all will shift away from BlackBerrys. Even so, I'd expect that BoA and Citigroup will be getting some earnest calls from RIM's top people in the near future...

Viral Spiral: most shared video ads of 2006-2010 >> Unruly Media
From the makers of the Viral Video chart: see who has been topping the video ads. (Flash required.)

Dell to Ditch 25,000 BlackBerrys in Bid to Promote Own Service [and WP7] >> WSJ.com
Big win for Windows Phone 7, which will run on the Dell Venue Pro that will do the replacing: "In a direct shot at BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., Dell Inc. plans to move its 25,000 employees over to its own line of smartphones and then aggressively market a service to help other companies do the same."

How one company games Google News >> CNET News
Ever heard of Red Label News? Probably not: "Upon clicking on any of the Red Label News stories, it became instantly clear that all of the stories were pure spam: ads from Google's AdSense and Amazon's affiliate program wrapped around barely cohesive sentences of SEO-friendly keywords along with a few links to other stories about the news." Does Blekko do news yet?

First RS-232 to dock connector interface approved by Apple, controls telescope >> The Unofficial Apple Weblog
When iOS devices are being used to control hardware like this... things are getting interesting.

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The Technology newsbucket: Mac App store, games ire, Nokia wins?, and more

Games developers see too much of this. Photo by indi.ca on Flickr. Some rights reserved
A quick burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

The Mac App Store isn't for today's Mac developers >> Marco.org
I get a sense that the Mac App Store - which will let people buy apps to be downloaded directly onto their Macs, just like iPhone apps to iPhones - is a glimpse of the computer experience of the future. Think of how much safer Windows machines could be if that applied. Though, also, consider the antitrust headaches Microsoft would have in operating such a store. So who would operate it?

Games developers criticise David Cameron over tax breaks >> The Guardian
This was Thursday: "Video games developers criticised David Cameron today for failing to implement tax breaks that could create 3,500 jobs and bring the Treasury £200m over five years."

How a tax break could affect the UK gaming industry >> Wired
And this was in April: "Alistair Darling's announcement of a tax incentive for UK videogame developers came as a welcome surprise for the scores of British creatives, and was a victory for TIGA -- The Independent Games Developers Association -- which had been campaigning for such a tax break."

Facebook and adult social networking: A dream that's all wet >> ZDNet
Answer this honestly: "How many times have you been stuck in the rat's maze of Facebook profile settings and thought, 'This is such a turn-on. I can't believe that no one has made a porn version of Facebook, because surely this pleasure must be taken to the next level'?"

Super-fast broadband unlikely to reach all of East Lancashire >> Lancashire Telegraph
The reality of fibre rollout: it would cost £57m to get it to the whole of the county, but 16% of residents won't have it by 2015.

FTC Names Edward W. Felten as Agency's Chief Technologist >> Federal Trade Commission
What, Ed Felten as in Freedom To Tinker? Yes, him, chief technologist of the Fedetral Trade Commission, "protecting America's consumers". He explains: "My main role at the FTC will be to provide advice on technology policy issues."

Nokia has already won the developers battle >> PanicCode
By moving to Qt, since you ask: "There are a lot of things that could go wrong with this new strategy, but on paper it looks very good. Developers will have one SDK, working over Linux, Mac or Windows, to make desktop or mobile apps with a Javascript like language."

US Patent database up and running >> O'Reilly Radar
Rather than selling it, as before, the US government is now making it available for free download: "Google now has 20 tbytes available for download, Jon Orwant tells me he has another 50 tbytes on the way. The Patent Database is the only database explicitly called out by the founding fathers in the U.S. Constitution and it is good to see that database finally become available."

Who's suing who in mobile >> Interface Digital Labs
In Flash, see who's suing whom in the smartphone wars. This meme is getting better every day.

Data visualisation of mobile lawsuits >> Interface Digital Labs
The blogpost explaining how and why the above was done. Lovely.

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F1 technology goes virtual

5 November 2010 Last updated at 13:11 GMT Help

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The Technology newsbucket: iPad pricing, vanishing search, WP7 tablets?, and more

Sunrise at Moto Azabu, Japan. Photo by DanDeChiaro on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Apple iPad's rivals can't hang on pricing >> ZDNet
It is worth considering that the reason why rivals can't beat Apple on pricing (even though they don't have any significant development costs on the software) is that Steve Jobs and especially Tim Cook have turned the company into one of the most efficient consumer electronics manufacturers in the world.

A Search Market Craters - Welcome to the App Diaspora
"Hadley Reynolds, a senior analyst at IDC, said in a presentation last week at Lucene Revolution that the enterprise "OEM" search market is expected to drop from more than $100 million in 2007 to $50 million by 2011. The market has traditionally included companies such as Autonomy and FAST, which was sold to Microsoft and is now integrated with Sharepoint.
"'We see the OEM search market as essentially cratering,' Reynolds said."
This seems concerning for Autonomy if it plays out over the longer term. (The link is from last month, but it has long-term implications.)

Microsoft steers OEMs away from putting Phone 7 on Tablets >> The Register
Having tried Windows 7 on a 10" tablet, and Windows Phone 7 on a large smartphone (the 4.3" HTC HD7), I can tell you that Microsoft is making a mistake. Windows Phone 7 would work a lot better on a large tablet than Windows 7 does.

Editorial: Why the Galaxy Tab's price makes sense >> Engadget
"At the end of the day I think the iPad will absolutely outsell the Galaxy Tab, probably in 3G models alone. The iPad UI, at least with multitasking, is much better optimized for a tablet, and the developer community has embraced the iPad like few products before it. In a vacuum I think the Galaxy Tab would be well received, but the Galaxy Tab won't exist in a vacuum, obviously."
Indeed not. It's going to have to fight tooth-and-nail on price with dozens (literally) of other tablets vying on price in one way or another. And while it's a lot of fun, you have to say - it has less than half the screen size of the iPad for almost the same price.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition - SophosFreeTalk community >> Sophos.com
Some of the titles of the posts are quite telling in themselves: "Does this product contravene UK consumer protection laws" for example. Mac users, sceptical? Er, yes.

Free anti-virus for your Mac - And why you need it! >> ZDNet
I'm not sure that having Stuxnet on your Mac is exactly a threat.

iPhone's smartphone share continues to rise >> Asymco
Examining the Canalys press release which might suggest that Apple lost market share to Android: "Sequentially, Nokia lost 5.6% of share, Samsung gained 4.6%, RIM lost 3% and Apple gained 4%, Motorola, HTC and Other remained largely unchanged."

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The intersection of art and technology

20 October 2010 Last updated at 09:00 GMT Maps plotting where tourists and locals take pictures in London creates unusual images

Bill Thompson likes the ways technology and art intersect.

At a recent conference on the future of the arts in a digital world the opening night panel was asked to name a digital art work that had impressed them.

All stumbled, perhaps unsure of who was doing 'interesting' work in this rapidly changing field, leaving the delegates at the Media Festival/Arts with the sense that digital might not really count as far as they were concerned.

My first thought was that the most interesting piece of digital art I'd come across in the last year was definitely the new album from The Editors.

Continue reading the main story

I love Peter's work, but can't escape the realisation that I had been online for nearly five years before he was born”

End Quote Bill Thompson In This Light and on This Evening is a wonderful work, and everything about it apart from the vibration of Tom Smith's vocal chords and the strings of Chris Urbanowicz's guitar is the product of digital technologies, first in the studio and as then it is distributed and played.

It surely has the right to be called a digital art work, even if it is then embedded in a commercial model that is struggling to adapt to the realities of the network economy.

One musician whose work is definitely - and sometimes defiantly - digital is cellist Peter Gregson.

On Monday evening I sat enthralled as he performed in King's Place London in a recital that combined his own compositions with works from Steve Reich and Max Richter, accompanied on screen by technology provided by Microsoft Research and others.

We enjoyed a World Wide Telescope fly-over of Iceland, the time-lapse photographs from a SenseCam worn by his collaborator, Microsoft's Tim Regan, as he delivered material to the venue and some of the astonishing maps Eric Fischer makes by plotting the location data from Flickr photographs of major cities, along with some astonishing data visualisations.

I love Peter's work, but can't escape the realisation that I had been online for nearly five years before he was born.

He has grown up into a world infused with the potential of digital technologies, and it is clearly evident in his astonishingly confident and compelling performances in which he alternates between two cellos, a Colin Irving acoustic cello familar from any string quartet, and a custom five string Erik Jensen electric cello, a strange skeletal beast that plugs directly into his digital toolbox to provide a transformed sound that he harnesses into music.

Later in the week I spent a fascinating hour in the company of Matthew Applegate, better known as Pixelh8, as he explored the realm of chip tunes - music made from old computers - in a talk at Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge, part of their celebration of the work of John Cage.

Hybrid world

Digital music is transforming how tracks are shared at parties

Matthew described his experience working with the old computers at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park, and the joy of composing electronic music to the rhythm provided by hand-cranking an old mechanical calculator.

Both Peter Gregson and Matthew Applegate work in ways that simply do not recognise the boundary between digital and analogue, and they belie any claim that we now live in a 'digital' world.

Matthew's use of a soldering iron, and Peter's technical expertise with his instrument, remain profoundly located in the physical world, even if they incorporate digital technologies into their creative processes.

What they show is that we now live in a hybrid world.

I faced up to this hybrid world myself recently when I celebrated my fiftieth birthday and had to decide what music to play.

In the old days we'd have had a stack of 45rpm singles and invited people to choose what to play next, but my old singles are in a cupboard, untouched for years.

I toyed with the idea of making a playlist or two, but that would have meant planning in advance and also assumed that I could anticipate the way the tone of the party would change over time.

Shiny toy

This is tricky - I'm always ready to segue into The Clash's first album, but maturity has taught me that others can feel differently.

So I decided to follow the modern fashion in government and return control to the people, empowering the party-goers to find their own solutions to the problem of what to listen and dance to.

I plugged the loudest speakers I could find into my desktop computer and started iTunes, and used the Remote app on my iPad to select the songs.

Over the evening the iPad was passed around and anyone who wanted to could choose what we listened to.

Apart from a few rather painful transitions when people started their song playing too early it worked really well, and anyone who wasn't sure what to put on next could simply use the 'Genius' button to select similar songs to the one currently playing.

Using the iPad as control pad was fascinating, as a touchscreen device offers a far more intuitive and enjoyable way of engaging with what is on offer than any remote control ever could, with dozens of tiny buttons and obscure icons.

Remote on the iPad is exactly the same as using iTunes on the desktop, and even though it's a poorly designed piece of software it did the job remarkably well.

Of course my creative use of digital technology only involved connecting the pieces together and taking the risk that my expensive shiny toy would end up broken or soaked in prosecco, while Peter Gregson and Matthew Applegate are both exploring the artistic and performative potential that the new tools offer.

But I like to think that we are all moving in the same direction, and that we'll soon reach the stage where it makes as little sense to talk about 'digital art' as it does about 'new media'.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet. He is currently working with the BBC on its archive project.

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The Technology newsbucket: Microsoft forecasts, HTML5 video passes 50%, Digg mysteries and more

Soviet Safeway (in 2008). Photo by p373 on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 13 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Windows Phone Marketplace Is Weak at 1000 Apps >> PCWorld Business Center
"Some developers blame the Microsoft coding, others say they can't use an overlay such as with Android apps, while still others are waiting to see how successful Windows Phone 7 will be. It's likely that some developers l don't want to see their blood, sweat and tears go the way of Microsoft's Kin.
"However, among the most needed things are enterprise apps. Previously there were reports that the Windows Marketplace would put more effort in this area, including offering companies the capability to create in-house apps, but so far there's been little talk or action on this."
Actually this feels completely wrong. The Marketplace is growing very fast - and Apple's lineup didn't happen overnight either.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) - Q1 2011 Earnings Preview >> iStockAnalyst.com
Analysts' consensus is earnings per share for the figures to be announced tonight at $0.552. That would translate to net income of $4.87bn, and (if they grow in line) revenues of $17.09bn.

Microsoft having big Apple week -- just don't tell Melinda Gates >> TechFlash
Office 2011 for Mac, the Windows Phone Connector for Mac, Messenger for Mac. But Melinda Gates won't let Apple stuff cross the Gates threshold, apparently.

FusionCharts v3 Documentation >> FusionCharts
Interesting: adapting the Flash-based FusionCharts so that they can run on the (non-Flash) iPad too.
"Starting FusionCharts v3.2, FusionCharts also allows you to create JavaScript based charts (sometimes also referred to as HTML5/Canvas charts). This feature allows you to create charts in web browsers where Flash Player is not supported e.g. in iPhone/iPad. FusionCharts internally makes use of Highcharts library to generate JavaScript based charts. This feature works seamlessly with the current implementation mode of FusionCharts, which means you do not have to write any additional code to implement this."

Digg's Algorithmic Mystery Tour >> Digg About
On the Digg blogg, a warning that you might see a different set of "news" - randomly. "There's a chance you might notice some weirdness on Top News during this test."

Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners? >> Dumplings from this Panda!
Short answer: no, but it may have been trying out different algorithms and creating fake users to try them out. Certainly it's a puzzle. (Suggestions that the Guardian is somehow involved aren't true.)

YouTube API Blog: Flash and the HTML5

Twitter's temptation continues in South Korea >> Yonhapnews
"According to the Twitter Korea Index, the number of Korean Twitter users jumped from 127,000 in January to more than 1.8 million today. Twitter has even surpassed Facebook in Korea, where it has 1.58 million users."

Is Apple About To Cut Out the Carriers? >> Gigaom
"Sources inside European carriers have reported that Apple has been working with SIM-card manufacturer Gemalto to create a special SIM card that would allow consumers in Europe to buy a phone via the web or at the Apple Store and get the phones working using Apple's App Store."
Full price, of course.

webOS 2.0 review >> Engadget
Looks like a nice interface. The conclusion: "Despite some issues, webOS 2.0 is probably neck and neck with iOS4 when it comes to polish and ease of use, and that's a pretty huge thing for Palm. This isn't just a good OS, it's a great OS, and the updates in this version have made it even better. It's obvious that when combined with even slightly better hardware, it's also a fast experience that makes it easy to get real work done. And that's the problem with webOS 2.0, really. Palm is still hampered by last-generation, underpowered hardware."

Apple's Push For HTML5 Video Wins on the Web | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD
"Video search engine MeFeedia, for instance, now says that 54 percent of Web video is now compatible with HTML5. That's more than double the tally the company had back in May — less than six months ago. And because MeFeedia's numbers include old archival stuff that most people don't watch, as well as big troves of Chinese video you're unlikely to see, the practical number for most Web surfers is much higher.
"Then again, it isn't hard to find Web video that isn't compatible with your iPad or iPhone — or your Android handset from Google, either. And once you do, the fact that the clip is in the statistical minority won't make you feel any better."

Journey Planner API Back Online >> Malcolm Barclay
An independent developer writes: "When it comes to the journey planner, TfL's primary objective is always ensure the website planner is online (some peoples jobs depend on it). If the API has to be pulled for load reasons or some idiot does something stupid; I'll be the first one to support such a decision. So a word of warning, don't screw this up for everyone. If you don't know what a session key is, the difference between a HTTP POST & GET request or how to XML parse you have no business using the API."

Apple delays white iPhone until next spring >> Reuters
Truly becoming the Chinese Democracy of iPhones. Dammit, aren't unicorn horns white to begin with? So what the hell is the problem?

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The Technology newsbucket: Apple sues, Evernote .Not, Google wanted Jobs, and more

Smartphone patent lawsuits and deals - updated

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Apple countersues Motorola over multi-touch iPhone patents >> AppleInsider
"As expected, Apple has responded to a patent suit from Motorola with its own legal action, accusing the company of violating six patents related to multi-touch features found in the iPhone."

Lessons from Evernote's flight from .NET « Tim Anderson's ITWriting
Evernote says that since giving up .Net for C++, it's got an app that starts five times faster, and uses half the memory. Tim Anderson looks at why it did: "WPF is not only based on .NET. It also uses DirectX and hardware acceleration under the covers, enabling rich multimedia effects. The layout language of WPF is XAML, giving freedom from scaling issues which cause hassles in the native API. So what are the lessons here? Is WPF no good?
"It is not so simple. WPF is brilliant in many ways, offering the productivity of .NET coding and a powerful layout framework. However it was a technology which Microsoft itself hardly used in its key products, Windows and Office – a warning sign."

Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted >> Mary Jo Foley
Basically, it's HTML5 in future for cross-platform products.

Enterprises: We'll run Windows XP even after retirement - Computerworld
Not a large survey (950 companies) so don't stake your house on its precision. Still: "Microsoft has been pushing XP customers of all stripes, including enterprises, to upgrade to Windows 7. While Dimensional didn't query IT professionals about what operating system they were leaving behind as they migrated to Windows 7, they're doing the latter in increasing numbers. More than a third, or 38%, of those polled said their companies have implemented a partial roll-out of Windows 7, up from 15% in January 2010, the last time Dimensional surveyed IT administrators and staffers.
"Six percent of the companies have fully deployed to Windows 7, a six-fold increase over the 1% who said the same back in January."

Larry And Sergey Wanted Steve Jobs To Be Google's First CEO >> Business Insider
Interesting detail. They didn't actually get as far as asking him, as he was already re-ensconced in Apple.

Exploring Earth's History with Wolfram|Alpha >> Wolfram|Alpha Blog
Likely to make creationists' brains melt.

LIVE BLOG: Microsoft Earnings Call >> Business Insider
Everywhere has done well apart from Online. Which still hasn't.

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The Technology newsbucket: Microsoft's big numbers, turn Flash into HTML5, safe from sheep and more

Alchemy. Photo by fdecomite on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Adobe demos Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool >> John Nack on Adobe
"Pre-Adobe, I made my living building rich, Flash-intensive sites for Gucci, Coca-Cola, Nike, and other big brands. Doing that job today, I'd be in a jam: How could I create rich experiences that run on desktops (where Flash is the obvious, consistent (cross-browser/-platform) choice) and on iOS devices where Flash isn't allowed?"

Demystifying KB976902, a.k.a. Microsoft's "Blackhole" Update >> Krebs on Security
"I have verified with Microsoft that this update is designed to smooth the way for the deployment of future updates on Windows 7 systems... The confusion appears to stem from a timing mistake by the folks at Microsoft, but this incident illustrates the hysteria that can ensue when the world's largest software company fails — for whatever reason — to be fully transparent with a user base that has come to expect detailed advisories with every patch."

Home Office does u-turn on Internet Explorer 6 - Will this become a domino effect? | TechEye
"A Home Office representative confirmed to TechEye today that it will upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, although the department gave no indication when the move will happen." Never dealt with Sir Humphrey, TechEye?

Microsoft Investor Relations Press Releases >> Microsoft
For July-Sep: "# Office 2010 is off to a fast start with revenue growing over 15% in its first full quarter in market. # Microsoft continues to see a healthy and sustaining business PC refresh cycle. # Xbox 360 consoles grew 38%, outselling every competing console in the U.S. for each of the past four months. # For yet another quarter, Bing continued to grow market share, while achieving major milestones in implementing Microsoft's partnership with Yahoo."
Not mentioned: online services lost more money ($560m) than it took in revenue ($527m).

Telling the Story of Friendships >> Facebook blog
"Today I'm excited to be launching Friendship Pages. They contain the public Wall posts and comments between two friends, photos in which both are tagged, Events they RSVP'd for together and more. You'll be able to see a friendship page if you are friends with one of the people and have permission to view both people's profiles."
This is either brilliant or creepy or both.

HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation
"HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites." Useful if you suspect there might be people around using Firesheep - another Firefox extension.

Koobface Worm Targets Java on Mac OS X >> Krebs on Security
"It is not surprising that attackers would begin leveraging Java to attack Mac users with threats that have traditionally only menaced Windows users. My research shows that Java is now the leading vector of attacks against Windows systems, findings that recently were buttressed by oodles of attack data released by Microsoft."

MacBook Air more profitable than other Apple laptops, says analyst >> Macworld UK
"The [new] MacBook Air sports margins between 28% and 37%, said Brian Marshall of Gleacher & Co., who estimated the new notebooks' bill of materials (BOM). That's significantly above the approximately 20% margin for Apple's entire notebook line."

Boonana Trojan Horse warning and removal instructions >> SecureMac
"When a user clicks the infected link, the trojan initially runs as a Java applet, which downloads other files to the computer, including an installer, which launches automatically."
Java considered harmful. (Or possibly: internet considered harmful.)

Rethinking Wikipedia contributions rates >> eaves.ca
"One things about open source projects is that they rarely die. Indeed, there are lots of open source projects out there that are the walking zombies. A small, dedicated community struggles to keep a code base intact and functioning that is much too large for it to manage. My sense is that peer production/open source projects can collapse (would MySpace count as an example?) but the rarely collapse and die."

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The Technology newsbucket: PlayBook sighted!, Zynga tops EA, Ozzie's warning and more

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Wow! It's Mike Lazaridis of RIM operating a real PlayBook! A confirmed siting! Hooray!

Zynga Tops Electronic Arts as Social Games Spread >> BusinessWeek
"Zynga Game Network Inc.'s estimated worth surpassed Electronic Arts Inc.'s stock-market value, a sign of the ascendance of social-networking entertainment at the expense of traditional video games.
"Zynga, the maker of such games as "FarmVille" and "FrontierVille," is valued at $5.51 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies. Electronic Arts, the second-largest game publisher by sales, is worth $5.22 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market."
Yes, but how many acres do the Farmville farms cover?

Scrivener for Windows >> Literature and Latte
If you're doing the Nanowrimo (write a novel in the month of November) challenge, and use Windows, you might find Scrivener useful. Though you might just find it useful whatever you're doing.

Nielsen cops to iPad stat cock-up • The Register Forums
In reference to..."The customarily competent media-survey firm, The Nielsen Company, has backtracked on its startling claim that one-third of all iPad users have never download an app. The company now says that the number of download virgins is fewer than one in ten.
"This article and the The "Possibly a simple answer" comment looks like it's got the solution to this puzzle.

Dawn of a New Day >> Ray Ozzie
Written in a kind of looping professor-ese that makes it read like the transcript of what might have been a good speech, he notes (in a sidelong no-names way) that Apple and Google have outdistanced Microsoft in mobiles and the cloud, and then asks people to consider a post-PR world: "there's one key difference in tomorrow's devices: they're relatively simple and fundamentally appliance-like by design, from birth. They're instantly usable, interchangeable, and trivially replaceable without loss. But being appliance-like doesn't mean that they're not also quite capable in terms of storage; rather, it just means that storage has shifted to being more cloud-centric than device-centric. A world of content – both personal and published – is streamed, cached or synchronized with a world of cloud-based continuous services."
Basically, a warning to those in Microsoft who are listening: change or get run over.

WARNING!!! iPhoto 11 Erases ENTIRE iPhoto Libraries >> Pigs, Gourds and Wikis
Apple has a habit of occasionally putting out software that wipes key elements such as music or photo libraries. Backups are good.

12-year-old finds critical Firefox flaw, earns $3,000 bounty >> ZDNet
Wow. "By Alex's estimation he spent about 90 minutes each day for about 10 days until he spotted it–a flaw in the memory of the running program."

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The Technology newsbucket: Google's AdMob problems, VLC's DRM hassle, tablets' little trouble

Oh, yes, here's another tablet computer. Or model deckchair. Photo by IntelFreePress on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 17 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Microsoft's consumer brand is dying >> CNN Money
Six months after Apple's release of the iPad, Microsoft still has virtually no presence in the tablet market. And its strategy for taking on Apple - Windows 7 on a tablet, rather than a tablet-specific operating system - is leaving potential partners cold. Lenovo's technology director recently told PC Mag that his company won't be building around the platform: "The challenge with Windows 7 is that it's based on the same paradigm as 1985 - it's really an interface that's optimized for a mouse and keyboard."
The idea that the Microsoft brand is becoming tarnished with consumers is intriguing - it would be interesting to see any research data to back it up. Meanwhile, my own tests have found that there is definitely a difference between a touchscreen-ready OS and a tablet-ready OS. (Thanks @avro for the link.)

Why Steve Jobs' Pixar uses Microsoft Windows Azure >> SeattlePI
There's only one problem with this story: pretty much everything in it is wrong. Pixar is a public company, not Jobs's; he didn't found it; Pixar's Renderman isn't used in every CG shot in the film industry; and it doesn't run on Microsoft's Azure - the demonstration at Microsoft's developers' conference was, an apologetic endnote accepts, a "proof of concept". Hey ho.

A look back at the iTunes App Store - Part I: Explosive Growth | Edible Apple
"The iTunes App Store opened up for business about 1 year ago [in June 2008] and boasted a somewhat modest figure of 500 applications. Since then, the number of downloads and available applications has skyrocketed.
"Just two months into the app store, Apple issued a press release announcing that iPhone and iPod Touch users had downloaded over 100 million applications from what was then a 3,000 strong library of available titles. A little over 2 months later, on October 21, 2008, Apple announced that 200 million applications had been downloaded from the iTunes App Store. On December 5, 2008, Apple took out ads in a number of newspapers touting that the App Store library had surpassed 10,000 applications and that there had been over 300 million downloads."
So Windows Phone 7 opening with 1,000 apps (more by the time it reaches US buyers from 8 November) isn't bad. The challenge will be to get the download growth.

Apple overtakes RIM as runner-up to Nokia in smartphones. Does volume matter? - GLG News
"In the future the environment might not be as favorable for Apple and RIM as it has been in the recent past. Top line growth will make international sales a higher priority and levels of operator subsidy abroad might be lower on average than those of the North American markets. This might result in growing pressure on the pricing side. Furthermore, competition is likely to increase. The Android pack gets larger every day, HP will re-launch webOS , Microsoft might at last gain traction thanks to Windows Phone 7 and Nokia should be expected to bounce back at some stage."

Blekko, The "Slashtag" Search Engine, Goes Live >> SearchEngineLand
A very interesting new search engine: "In particular, Blekko is keen to emphasis that auto-slashing keeps "content farm" material from dominating search results (see our previous article, Google, Content Farms & Why This May Be Blekko's Moment, for more about this).
"Personally, I don't see content farm material as all bad. Some of it can be helpful. Nor do I always see it dominating Google's search results. But it has become a flashpoint for some, and a pitch that Blekko can be a content farm free search engine may draw in a specific audience."

Flash Vs HTML5 >> CodeComputerLove
"Pong - written not just in Flash or in HTML5, but in both (the left side is Flash, the right HTML5). Interesting if only to show that both sides seem identical." (Thanks @whereistom)

Licensing Dispute Could Drive VLC out of the App Store - PCWorld Business Center
A nose/face/spite issue: "In order to maintain the freedom of the software it protects, the GPL imposes several conditions under which redistribution may take place; in particular, the redistribution of the software must be unrestricted under any circumstance, allowing any user to give another user a functional copy under the same original terms.
"According to VLC contributor Rémi Denis-Courmont, Apple's App Store violates these terms by using digital rights management technology (DRM) that prevents a user from redistributing apps obtained from the App Store to other users in an unrestricted way. In an e-mail he sent to the VLC developer list, Denis-Courmont claims that he has filed a copyright complaint with Apple, demanding that the software be pulled from the App Store."

Google's AdMob Integration Is 'Just Not Going Great' >> Business Insider
"Google's integration of AdMob is "just not going great," a mobile industry source friendly with many people at AdMob tells us.
"We reached out to our source after TechCrunch reported AdMob's CEO Omar Hamoui was leaving Google just 5 months after Google was approved by the government to spend $750 million on the mobile ad startup.
"Hamoui isn't the first to go, and he won't be the last."

Ocado deploy Google Apps >> Computer Weekly
"Moving [1,250 staff] to Google Apps should reduce IT costs, saving servers, back-up space, support and maintenance, whilst in the longer term eradicating costly upgrades and licence fees, Ocado said."
And Ocado badly needs to get costs down if it is to have a hope of being profitable this century. As Computer Weekly didn't, we asked Ocado what it was using before. The answer: Microsoft Exchange.

Android tablets: Big enough, smart enough, cheap enough? >> BBC: dot.Rory
"There are two big doubts for me about [the Samsung Galaxy Tab], its size and its price. Is there really a big enough niche in the space between a smartphone and an iPad for a tablet with a seven-inch screen? It's too small to be a comfortable place to type more than a short message, whereas on the iPad I managed to write most of this blog post. It is being sold as a more mobile device but you can do just about everything the Tab does on a much more portable smartphone."

Browser momentum: Chrome has it, IE doesn't >> CNET News
"For browser watchers, October was a continuation of previous trends: Internet Explorer lost share to Chrome, Firefox and Opera idled, and Safari edged upward.
"The statistics, based on Net Applications' monitoring of millions of Web sites in its analytics network, show that this summer's resurgence of IE has faded, at least for the present. At the same time, Chrome, now two years old, made its July dip look like a blip rather than a foreboding omen."
Also: IE8 usage barely changed between September and October. Explanations welcomed.

Privacy and the internet – parliamentary debate transcript >> Hansard
Well-informed: "I have no problem with Google photographing me in my garden, or my house, and putting those images on the web, but the point is that I want to give Google permission to do so. I want to opt in. Some people will respond that any citizen can walk up a street, taking pictures of people's houses. Of course that is true, but there is a difference of scale and of commercial interest. Google was not sightseeing; it was creating a product to sell advertising on a mass scale. No private citizen has the millions of pounds or dollars at their disposal to take a detailed picture of every house, street and company in Britain. That makes this case fundamentally different."

New MacBook Airs riddled with bugs >> THINQ.co.uk
"The new MacBook Airs seem to be manifesting some teething problems, which are proving a frustration for some early adopters.
"Apple Support has already issued a bulletin and patch entitled "About MacBook Air (Late 2010) Software Update 1.0" to resolve an issue where new MacBook Air (Late 2010) notebooks may become unresponsive while playing back movie trailers in iMovie. Apple says the update also addresses a problem where the computer may become unresponsive after waking from sleep when an external display is connected and contains general graphics performance updates for good measure."

Microsoft isn't worried about the tablet cannibals >> CRN
Are tablets "more of a threat than a help" to Microsoft?

Lars Rasmussen Quits Google, Joins Facebook >> Sydney Morning Herald
Rasmussen: "I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens', which is a pretty exciting thing."

Paul Carr's NSFW: Yep, Montblanc Killed my MacBook Pro Today >> TechCrunch
Possibly the first time in living memory that TechCrunch commenters have been as witty (if not more so) as the piece. Meta is the new funny.

IPad a Therapeutic Marvel for Disabled People >> NYTimes.com
Truly a heartwarming story - though the platform is irrelevant; what's valuable is technology's ability to enhance the lives of the disabled: "Over the years, Owen's parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try."

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Creative Technology jumps into the tablet market... too late, too slowly?

Detail of Creative ZiiO 7 tablet: note the non-English script on the return button, bottom right. Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative Technology - the Singaporean company which five years ago vowed to go after Apple over a patent it had which it reckoned the iPod infringed - has come into the tablet market with a range of tablets, including 2-inch, 7-inch, and 10-inch models, running the Android OS.

And what does it bring to the tablet party that's different from what everyone else is doing? Wellll... that's hard to say. It has built its own processors to run the devices (designed at 3D Labs, which Creative Technology owns), and written its own audio drivers which it says means that you'll get far higher audio quality while listening or streaming (via Bluetooth) to compatible devices.

But in many other ways, Creative's output looks to be lagging behind many other tablet companies. To begin with, they're all running Android 2.1 - and none of them has 3G. This means that they won't automatically be able to access the Android Marketplace (because Android is a phone OS, and devices which don't have 3G or other phone stuff inside them can't be phones, so they can't access the marketplace for phone apps).

However Mac Aw Kuw Weng, director of corporate marketing, told us that there will be an over-the-air update (via Wi-Fi) to the devices to Android 2.2, which will be available as soon as Google has finished its trials of them - sometimes in late December... early January? Once that's done, then users will have access to the Marketplace. Otherwise they'll have to sideload apps via their computer.

Oh, and on the Wi-Fi issue: it's only 802.11g&b, not 11n, which might be slightly limiting.

The models that we tried were all a little unfinished, at least in software terms: though there is an orientation sensor in the devices, the software didn't pick up on it. The keyboard though was pretty nice, and the limited tests I did suggested that the settings were well laid out. But there were a few crashes, and lack of responsiveness to touch, especially when trying to swipe through a selection of films.

The 2" device comes with optional GPS, which would mean you could use it as a navigation device; the larger devices don't, because (Weng suggested) you wouldn't really want to try using them to do turn-by-turn navigation. (Though I thought: might be good to be able to view the maps at a more usable size.)

The tough question: what does it think people will want - the 10" or the 7" version? "That will be based on the feedback from the buyers in stores [not customers, but the retailers who order stock]," said Phil O'Shaughnessy, in charge of worldwide corporate communications. "We believe there will be a huge trend in the holidays for buying tablets."

That might be so, but if Creative doesn't get its factories sorted out, then it's going to have serious supply problems - making 7" or 10" machines isn't like turning a tap on and off. Look at the problems that Apple had trying to meet demand - and that's a company which normally has its finger right on the pulse of the supply chain. Creative looked a little shambolic in this, to be honest: started late, late to get the product through testing, and without access to the Marketplace, which a lot of its rivals do have.

Plus it's using a resistive rather than capacitive touchscreen, which is generally reckoned to be a less pleasant experience, and less robust, than the capacitive ones (used by Apple and Samsung among others).

The prices are pretty competitive with other Android tablets, but the lack of a Marketplace will probably mean disappointment for many would-be ordinary users who'll be expecting something like the Apple app experience. Although it does come with Angry Birds already installed - so at least that's one way to while away the time until Google gives the thumbs-up to 2.2.

I did ask whether Google had given its blessing to the idea of a 10" tablet running Android; Weng sort-of implied that it had, or at least that it hadn't frowned on it. Perhaps we'll see through watching how long it takes for the 10" version to be approved.

Also on show were plenty of Bluetooth streaming systems, including some nice-looking satellite speakers (more here). Why Bluetooth when the Kleer system could give even better audio? Because Bluetooth is more prevalent, Creative said - though Weng revealed that the company is talking to Apple about incorporating Apple's AirPlay system for streaming audio over Wi-Fi: that might be coming soon.

And while Creative may not have managed (even a bit) to displace Apple in the iPod market, it did score one notable success: it won a patent case against Apple over the use of menus in the iPod - meaning Apple had to pay it a license fee for every classic iPod sold.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the Creative tablets. Excuse quality, but they should give you the idea.

iPad beside Creative ZiiO 10. Photo by Charles Arthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative ZiiO 7 beside ZiiO 10. Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Creative ZiiO 7: OK... Photo by charlesarthur on Flickr. Some rights reserved

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