Naturally with the e-book market about to get a full gust of wind in its sails, Microsoft feels it's now time for them to enter the race. They have recently announced the upcoming release of their new e-journal, the Courier.  This little guy looks to be sporting two screens, though it remains to be seen whether either of them are long-term staring friendly. 

Even if you aren’t willing to void the warranty to make the screen easier to look at, you might get  a kick out of the iPad as a competitor to the Kindle.  Heck, if certain surveys are correct, you will almost certainly chose it over the other e-book readers on the market.  Without drawing too much attention to the fact that thee sales would likely have more to do with the oscars than technology, this begs the question as to what effect the iPad will have on the e-reader/e-book market as a whole?

 

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If you decided to skimp on the warranty for your laptop or have no problem voiding it, your in luck. Custom maintenance and modifications are going to be made available. By Pixel Qi later this year.  Specifically, they are offering DIY kits to convert your laptop screen to an e-ink LCD screen.  No more glare from the sun; no more putting up with that cracked screen; and no more headaches from spending too much time in front of the screen without taking eye breaks.  

The great thing is that this conversion kit might actually make the iPad a viable competitor with other e-book readers.  The biggest problem with the iPad as an e-reader was that, while the battery life can last practically forever, your eyes can only look at its normal screen for so long without straining and causing headaches.  This solves that problem and makes it actually better than the kindle.  The only problem is that this would almost certainly void AppleCare, and the accompanying “it done broke, here’s a newer better one” policy of fixing every problem.  

Well, if failing to fully support their operating system  like they’ve promised us wasn’t enough sabotage, apparently the Nexus One’s hardware is starting to fail.  First, the screens are already starting to develop cracks in them after only months of having been released.  Upon inspection, apparently these cracks are a result of wear and tear from pressing buttons and (get this) being put in people’s pockets.  The representative actually said "people sometimes forget that they don't go in pockets."  Maybe companies sometimes forget that they DO go in pockets.  Only half of us have purses to carry our phones around in thank you very much.

 

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Well, when Google isn’t sabotaging itself, all that “wrench in the gears” mastery is artfully turned on their competitors.  If there’s one thing that they haven’t forgotten how to do, it’s how to ruin the day of someone charging for software that they think should be free.  This time, Google has upped the ante in their freeware crusade against Microsoft office by acquiring DocVerse.

 

As we all know Google has been quite good at fighting and sabotaging Apple in their smartphone war. From hacking their way around app bans, to interceding on court cases that have nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, while they are remembering the first rule of competition, they seem to be forgetting another "first rule": don't forget about your own product, while you're trashing your opponent's. As some analysts are pointing out, the fragmentation effect to open source and free software is already taking hold. With just months between their releases, Android 2.0 and 2.1 are different enough that compatibility issues are becoming a major problem. We're not completely ready to give up hope for the Android platform. If it wants to be a real OS, Android needs SOME stability.

There is one slight glimmer of hope left for HTC in their upcoming legal battle.  Google has publicly announced their support for HTC.  At first this may seem a bit strange, but it really shouldn’t be that surprising.  Not only have Google and Apple been feuding and taking potshots at each other for quite a while, but given the precedents at stake the Apple HTC suit is more of an attack on other smartphone providers as a whole than it is about HTC in particular.  What then happens if HTC successfully defends itself (perhaps with the help of Google)?

What sort of precedent would an Apple victory set for the world of smartphone technology? Given the fact that Apple apparently is now revealing that they have patents to technology used by every smartphone on the market, things could be looking bleak for everyone who isn’t them. Heck, if you want to use a proper touch screen or even icons, you technically have to ask Apple’s permission. If they are successful in this lawsuit, the precedent will be set that every remotely user friendly smartphone on earth would be made illegal to produce or sell, except by Apple of course. Even the pundits in the video below agree.

It’s official, smartphones are to 2010 what PCs were to the mid 90’s.  Apple is formally suing HTC for patent infringement.  They are claiming that the touch-screen interface of the HTC’s phone line is too similar to the apple iPhone.  Technically they are right; HTC phones and their Windows Phone OS interact with users very similarly…but this is because it’s a smartphone.  There are only so many things that can be done with a touch-screen and a cell-phone sized computer interface, but somehow apple has managed to enumerate and patent most of them.

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Whether you support the increased security of the Digital economy bill or oppose its reduction of freedoms, you can’t deny that it’s a game changer.   In addition to setting a precedent of security over freedom within the internet, which was its intent, there may well be some other effects of the bill that were certainly less than intentional.  The most revolutionary and potentially disastrous of these would be an increased demand for genuinely anonymous ISP providers.

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Every Cloud has its silver lining, and the Data Economy Bill is no exception.  Yes it will prevent businesses and individuals from creating free wireless hotspots.  Yes it creates an unpleasant environment for those who cannot afford their own internet.  Yes it is an affront to the entire premise of the internet and free communication. Like many Draconian measures, it will bring with it a great deal of security.

Well, it had to happen sometime, somewhere, but it is still disappointing when it does.  With the passing of the three strikes law in France last year, it was inevitable that other European countries would jump on the web restriction bandwagon.  Unfortunately sometime is now, and somewhere is the UK.  Serious deliberations have recently begun to bring the Digital Economy Bill into effect.  The bill is a massive collections of regulatory measures on the internet. The most publicized of which, is a regulation that would make free public internet hotspots illegal.

Symbian just released a preview video for their new Symbian 4 interface, and reception has been less than ecstatic. The product doesn’t look particularly bad; in-fact the interface looks like quite the balance between usability and mutability.  The showcased default settings and touch screen commands look fairly intuitive.  The picture browsing seemed easy enough.  The customization seemed easy enough.  They are even more hardcore about their open source than Google.  All of these factors .were there, and yet somehow we couldn’t bring ourselves to care.  It was fundamentally sound, but irredeemably boring.

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Well, the French hyper luxury, hyper artsy tech company Celsius X VI II has just released a few small bits of information about their upcoming phone.  Unsurprisingly, both the product and the information about it seem appropriately hyper artsy, hyper luxurious, and French.  It is to be called the Papillion. What little information has been released is rather interesting, if not a bit over the top.  Like any piece of art, this one has a shtick, and this shtick is quite a doozey: a fully mechanical cellphone.

It may come as a shock to hear from this author, but the latest portable iProduct seems pretty ingenuitive, straightforward, and useful.  The recent announcement of the iTab release has semi-tech-savvy artsy types excited; and if it doesn’t it should.  It seems that these Apple copycats are finally remembering what market iStuff targets and what their products actually do before advertising.  They are making no unreasonable promises; and the product seems like something that artists who want to keep up with the tech curve (but don’t want to spend the effort to stay on the bleeding edge) could actually use.