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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Frankly – am I missing something? The iPad, as discussed in whytwitter many times cannot multi-task. Yet, the iPad is supposed to be the computing platform of the future even so it is like going back into the early ninties. You explain to your friends your new device has: no USB, no camera, no flash capabilities, optional keyboard and you cannot multi-task. But you paid serious money for it. You can only use it in your own home (or wherever you find a WiFi connection) – and you need another PC to set it up. Hmmm.

You will be looked at rather strangely – unless you talk to a ‘Apple lover’. Who will explain to you in detail that you do not need to listen to music whilst browsing the Internet. And if you really want to- you use your other Apple device. And what a cool experience it is not to have ‘Flash adverts’ – looks a lot better with big white boxes on the page. Not sure about that – in fact – it looks like something is ‘broken’.

Anyway, Apple will add multi-tasking, mobile advertising and an ebook reader to its hugely successful iPhone when it releases the fourth version of the phone’s operating system later this year.

Announcing iPhone OS 4.0 to developers at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters in California earlier, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO said the new operating system would allow multi-tasking to the iPhone for the first time. He said: “We weren’t the first to this party but we’re going to be the best.”

The iPhone and iPod touch already allows multi-tasking for certain apps made by Apple but Jobs said his company had been trying to find a way to allow third-party apps to multi-task without slowing the device to a crawl or draining its battery life. The new OS will mean that third-party applications such as Spotify can continue to play music while the user checks email or surfs the web. However, multi-tasking will work only on the iPhone 3GS – older versions of the phone and older models of the iPod touch will not be able to use it.

Other features comprising what Jobs described as seven new “tent pole” features for the OS included the addition of Apple’s bookshop, iBooks, a gaming platform – called Game Centre – that allows people to challenge their friends, and a unified email inbox, allowing users to bring multiple email accounts into one place.

Ernest Doku, of mobile price comparison website, Omio.com, said: “With OS 4.0, Apple has finally addressed the issue that many iPhone users have been clamouring for by unveiling multitasking. Also, the introduction of the iBooks Store and Game Center network turns the iPhone and iPod touch into a portable e-reader and a fully fledged online gaming machine, broadening the appeal of the Apple’s handset beyond mere communications.”

But here comes my real question. Why do I need an iPad? The iPhone does most of the jobs. For the time being, I stick with my iFlop theory.

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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.

Have you been suspended? Let us know!

Although the “thud” wasn’t verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago. According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

Do you see Facebook consistently beating Google as the most-visited site? Comments welcome.

The graph visible below makes the changeup pretty clear (blame the sloppy enlarged bit on us, not Hitwise). What’s more, it doesn’t look like Facebook’s going to relinquish its lead anytime soon.

Heather Dougherty explained, “The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.”

Then here’s one more interesting fact, courtesy of Dougherty: “Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.”

Anyway, this development represents a major win for Facebook. The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue. A further snowball effect in terms of user interest might occur, too, since most people like to be part of something that’s popular.

But shouldn’t we also look at all the new sites coming up fast – and not forget established ‘older’ ones? eBay for example or Twitter being two of them. Service websites like Pix2Press will undoubtedly grow over the next years to come and revolutionize the way how photo or video media is distributed to newspapers, magazines or TV. If sites like Pix2Press combine their powers with social networking sites, we have Millions of photographers feeding the world-wide media. Back this up with Twitter – there is no place to hide for any celebrity.

Comments welcome.

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.

Google’s open source king Chris DiBona talks Chrome OS and Android-powered microwaves

During a visit to Google’s London HQ Dan Grabham grabbed some time with Chris DiBona.

He’s the Open Source Programs Manager for Google, overseeing everything the corporation does that’s open sourced and making sure it’s “correct and useful.”

He talked Google Chrome and, later, Android. Dan put to DiBona the issue that if users buy a netbook, they still tend to expect Windows on it, so will they take to Chrome OS?

“Yeah. Windows or Mac. Is this going to change? We’re going to find out. We’re willing to say, you know what, let’s give it a try, let’s see if it works.

“We think it can, obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it. For some people it will be for an auxiliary machine, for others it might be a primary machine. But we’ll see. And the only way to know is to try it.

“People haven’t really tried small, thin, practically disposable computers. There’s still this regret if a computer breaks. We want to make one where that’s not the case… so if you leave it on a plane… you’re not worried about your data. It’s a different approach. And if someone’s going to do it, it might as well be us.”

Encouraging open source projects

DiBona has a wide-ranging role, and is also responsible for Google Moderator, the polling locations API.

“My whole job is about making it easy for engineers to release software,” he explains. DiBona seems relaxed and is happy to talk candidly about Google’s work on Android and Chrome OS. “[My team] helps with the licence strategy from the very beginning. When you use as much open source as we do, you can screw up and we don’t want to do that.”

“We have been [encouraging open source] as much as possible. Then you have bigger projects where open source is a key part of the strategy, such as Android and Chrome OS where we feel making it open source helps drive the platform at a speed we haven’t seen before.”

“You can especially see this with Android – devices are coming out all the time that we know nothing about, and that’s pretty great. Sometimes we know about them and just don’t have the time to help.”

The Android strategy

So how does DiBona feel that Google can keep Android partners close? “We feel that if we continue to execute and make a very good mobile operating system then as those people create new devices [developers will]… stay close to what we’re doing because we’ll continue to move the platform forward. It will pull all the fragments and little forks with it.”

Some devices provoke amusement: “At CES we had a microwave running Android and it’s like ‘really?’ Obviously we’re not going to optimise the environment for popcorn! Ostensibly you could run an app on a microwave I guess.

“[Android is] a young operating system but I think we’re doing OK. ”

We asked DiBona what he felt about a potential conflict between Chrome OS and Android now that Android has started to appear on some netbook-type devices. Does he think it’s confusing?

“It is yes. See Android is really not targeted at netbooks. I don’t think you’ll see a lot of Android netbooks… that are commercially targeted. Chrome OS is very different… it’s optimised for that kind of experience.

“It’s a different approach towards getting online. A very stripped down approach. A very web approach. It gets out of your way and says ‘here’s the web’.”

Asked DiBona how Google seems to be able to release products such as Android so quickly in comparison to other companies: “Well there’s no reason for it to be slow. A lot of companies get wrapped up in how software is valuable and for Google software is valuable because of what it allows our users to do [as well as external developers].”

by Dan Grabham

Comments welcome.