If the rumors are true and Acer does show off Chrome OS hardware at Computex Taipei 2010, the largest computer exhibition in Asia that starts on June 1, it’ll be a world first. But it’s not known for sure if Acer will be running Chrome OS on a netbook. Maybe it will be a tablet. And, it might be just a tech demo, showing a beta version of Chrome OS.

Whenever Chrome OS hardware finally ships, the world is ready for a lightweight OS with a seven-second boot time, accessing its apps in the cloud with a simple, free interface. If it’s a success, for many users who just need an operating system that stays out of the way, the answer to the perennial question “Mac or PC?” will be “No.”

Can’t wait two weeks? Check out http://www.netbookpack.co.uk

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Very simple. Twitter seems to suspend accounts left, right and centre. Whilst the official version (see below) is claiming to reduce spamming – whytwitter sources show and say different.

May be this reads like a big statement, a little research of how many accounts have been suspended raises an eyebrow or two. The most common reason is ‘Overlapping accounts’. Now – by anybody’s standards, how comes that major news and TV companies can tweet so called ‘news’ on various twitter accounts, clearly coming from the same source? Whilst a small company, plus his or her respective owner get’s suspended for ‘overlapping’ accounts?

It goes without saying, even the whytwitter account has been suspended. Not really a surprise there as it always highlighted the shortfalls of Twitter. Considering that whytwitter is more at the edge of ‘human technology’, readable for everybody, not just technology freaks – it’s clearly alarming to see that the terms and conditions of using Twitter are put into practise. In basic terms: “You don’t fit – you’re out.”

Twitter version: Twitter claims to have dramatically reduced the amount of spam on its micro-blogging site in the past six months.

The company said that spam levels peaked at nearly 11 per cent of tweets in August 2009, but had been cut to under one per cent by February this year.

Twitter said that engineers from its research team had been working hard to reduce spam, but also called on users to help out in the future by clicking the ‘report for spam’ link on any suspicious profile page.

There we go. But don’t forget – “You don’t fit – you’re out.” May be Google Buzz is not such a bad idea after all.

Comments welcome. No point tweeting us as we haven’t bothered to set up a new account.

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Apple started taking early orders yesterday for its tablet, even though no one’s really sure what they’re buying.

Friday morning, the fool’s parade started. Apple is taking online “pre-orders” for its iPad tablet, which is supposed to begin shipping on April 3. Buying a new kind of product sight unseen is foolish. Especially given how mysterious Apple has been on what the iPad can do and what restrictions on capabilities and media access it will place on users and content providers.

Why blow $500 to $830 on a device that may not be what you expect? Just wait a mere three weeks to see for sure what it actually does and what surprises, good and bad, Apple has packed into the iPad.

Don’t get me wrong: The iPad concept is promising in many ways. And I have no doubt that the iPad will appeal to many people even if it’s not perfect. But we’ve all seen promising product demonstrations that resulted in major letdown when we finally got a hold of the real thing. Why take that chance? After all, the first-generation iPad is particularly likely to have disappointments, as it’s the version that will tell us what, after the hoopla dies down, Apple should have done.

Sure, we can expect Apple to make future innovations in the iPhone OS (which the iPad uses) available to the first generation of iPad devices through OS upgrades — as Apple has nicely done for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. But the iPad’s hardware isn’t upgradable, so you’ll be stuck with the iPad’s relatively low amounts of memory and its lack of connectors such as USB that I would expect Apple to remedy inthe future. And you’ll be stuck with whatever iTunes-based content locks Apple decides to place on media content and e-books.

Remember, the same thing happened with the iPod Touch, Apple’s iPhone-based PDA. The first-generation iPod Touch could play only a few sounds and even then only at a whisper, so its calendar alarms and new-email alerts were useless unless you wearing its earphones. You couldn’t change the volume without using the touchscreen — a real issue when driving, jogging, or carrying groceries. There was no microphone, so you couldn’t take voice memos or use services like Skype. (Apple even blocked external microphones from working on it!) Despite Apple making sure each iPhone OS revision has continued to support the first-generation iPod Touch, those hardware limits remain in the actual devices.
You can bet that similar types of issue will be discovered in the first iPad.

Maybe I’m wrong — maybe the iPad will be the full “magic” that Steve Jobs promises. Wonderful! If that’s the case, buy one when you know it really is magic — after people not employed by Apple have had a chance to really use it and put it through its paces. Until then, why send Apple your money until you know for sure? Doing so would be, well, foolish.
One positive sign in all this iPad hoopla: One of my breathless local TV news stations had its tech reporter at an Apple Store Thursday night hoping to find people lined up to camp out so they could be first in line Friday morning (at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, 5:30 a.m. Pacific) to order an iPad — the station was clearly hoping for the kind of lemming-like frenzy we saw for Windows 95 (remember that?), the first iPhone, and for fan-driven movies like the “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and “Harry Potter” franchises.

But guess what: There was no line. Sure, it looked like a few people were willing to go online first thing in the morning to order their iPads sight unseen, or even head to an Apple Store before work today to order one. But only a few. Maybe the infamous Jobs reality distortion field does have limits after all. (Yes, I know you can’t pre-order an iPad at the Apple Store. Clearly the TV station’s anchorwoman didn’t know when she asked the on-the-scene reporter if people were lining up already. And I doubt she’s alone in that misimpression.)

A fool and his money are soon parted, the saying goes. Let’s hope most Apple fans are as smart as they claim to be.

The post is riddled with choice words and phrases like “concept UI,” “subject to change,” and how the device “might look,” which also came paired with the rumour igniting phrase “under development.” Those two magical words have our brains pondering the possibilities, but beyond our flights of fantasy, here is what Google’s official tablet experiments have entailed.

Have a look here:

According to the post, the Chromium team is testing a touchscreen user interface that includes these key points:

• Keyboard interaction with the screen: anchored, split, attached to focus.
• Launchers as an overlay, providing touch or search as means to access web sites.
• Contextual actions triggered via dwell.
• Zooming UI for multiple tabs
• Tabs presented along the side of the screen
• Creating multiple browsers on screen using a launcher

For those unfamiliar with Chrome OS, it is Google’s new web-centric mobile platform for laptops and netbooks. Chrome OS is unique in that unlike Windows or Mac operating systems, it is designed specifically for web applications, reducing the emphasis on localized software and replacing it with cloud-based programs. In other words, Chrome accesses programs and user data that reside on a web server, alleviating strains on internal processors and making accessing said information on a wider breadth of devices.

More important, there are more than 7 Mill netbooks out there, waiting to be upgraded. And the solution is around the corner. Netbook Pack – a slick version with the same functionality, available today. Maybe 2010 becomes a different OS race altogether. But – tablet PC or whatever you want to call it- Can you see any student reading a book without listening to music? So we are back to Chromes OS, the fast emerging market of the netbook and the software which makes best use of it. Like Netbook Pack, a Chrome OS version ready for your netbook today.

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Are you planning on purchasing an iPad? Please comment below!

1.) The Name
Numerous names were being thrown around in the months/weeks leading up to the release (iTablet, iSlate, iPad) but which name was Apple going to choose? We had grown accustomed to referring to the device as the iTablet, could even see calling it the iSlate… but iPad never seemed quite right. Why would Apple want to name their new product something that sounds so familiar to the iPod? Some people are objecting to the name referring to it as the “iTampon“.

Talk about foresight, this Mad TV iPad skit aired several years ago… and easily became 10x funnier.

2.) No Multitasking
Are you serious…? Who thought this was a good idea? How can the iPad even compete with Netbooks if you can’t multitask? This means that if you’re writing a document you can’t listen to music, you can’t have TweetDeck open if you want to check your email, you can only do one thing at a time, which has always been a complaint with the iPhone.

3.) No Camera
Why is there no camera on the iPad, front or back? It’s got a microphone… but no camera. Look at the size of the case that surrounds the screen, there is ample space for a camera. The iPad should’ve at least came with a 3-megapixel camera built in. As it stands, this means no iChat/Skype chat for you. Good move Apple, good move.

4.) Huge Ridiculous Adapters
Want to access your camera or plug in something USB… well there’s an adapter for that, actually 2 separate adapters both excessively huge.

5.) Same Touch Keyboard
The iPad needed to re-revolutionize the keypad for touchscreen devices, make it easier to use. So what did we get… just a larger version of what we already had. It’ll be incredibly hard to type on, unless you’re lying flat with your knees holding the device up, or you buy the iPad Case (essentially a book cover).

BONUS: No Flash (We just couldn’t stop at 5)
Most of us are probably accustomed to Apple devices not being Flash compatible, but if Apple is truly wanting to compete with other Netbooks they need to remedy this. With a larger screen comes more responsibilities, i.e. you can’t just leave gigantic holes in the middle of webpages if you claim it to be “the best web experience you’ve ever had“.

The iPad is still in its infancy, so we’re sure that it’ll get better with time. Only time will tell if Apple’s iPad will be a success or an iFlop.

Now read on… BBC’s ‘clicks’ made a good comment, too. It’s the netbook, the smartbook, people don’t want to buy a keyboard as an accessory. Can you see any student reading a book without listening to music? So we are back to Chromes OS, the fast emerging market of the netbook and the software which makes best use of it. Like Netbook Pack, a Chrome OS version ready for your Netbook today.

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Basically, this transforms Google Docs into a file storage system. Actually, I already store a lot of my files through Google services. Most of them are online as Google Docs-format documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. I’ve also found that it’s convenient to store many of my non-Google Docs files as attachments in Gmail, especially if they’re documents that I’m working on with other people. But of course email isn’t really built for that purpose, and there can be a lot of hunting for the right attachment. Now you can use Docs to store and share files in any format, such as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. Files can be up to 250 megabytes in size, and you get up to 1 gigabyte total storage for free. Now Chrome OS or systems like Netbook Pack can store any file, which was a previously impossible.

This should also make Google a more effective competitor against collaboration tools from companies large (Microsoft Sharepoint) and small (Box.net). Microsoft Office is really the standard format for business documents, so the fact that you had to change the format in order to use those documents in Google was probably a dealbreaker for many companies.

But even though Google now allows you store these new formats, it hasn’t built much collaboration functionality around them. Google Docs really is just a file repository — there’s no system for multiple team members to work on a Word document, the way you can with a Google Docs-format document. There’s no a file checkout system, either, which would at least ensure that only one person is working on a document at once.

Bangaru added that his team discussed the possibility of a checkout system, and would definitely consider adding one if it’s a big user request. Google is also working with partners who want to build on top of its storage services. For now, you can use Google Docs as the backend storage while you synchronize and collaborate on files using Memeo Connect or Syncplicity, or share tasks and documents with Manymoon. Google wants to build “a nice ecosystem” of other services building on top of its APIs, Bangaru said.

Get your Netbook Pack here.

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