Its coming - Apple Tablet in March

Macbook Tablet

Apple may ship its much awaited multimedia tablet device in March, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Apple will announce the tablet later this month but the shipping date could change as plans have not been finalized.

The new device will come with a touchscreen sized about 10 inches to 11 inches and the company is working on two different finishes for the tablet, the report said.

Rumors about an Apple tablet have been floating for more than a year, and the Financial Times in December reported that Apple had reserved a location in San Francisco on January 26 for the possible launch of a tablet.

Financial analysts have said that the launch of a tablet-like device from Apple was imminent. The device is expected to be a larger version of the iPhone on which users can listen to music, play games, watch video or read electronic books. Kai-Fu Lee, a former Apple employee and previously the president of Google in China, recently blogged that the tablet would come with 3D graphics and a price tag below £1000.

Apple reportedly has already made deals with service providers to deliver content to the device. Apple’s purchase of streaming music provider Lala.com in December has also been linked to the tablet PC.

Enthusiast Web sites have speculated that the device may be called the iSlate, after MacRumors discovered that the islate.com domain name was owned by Apple

Web 2.0 Suicide good start for 2010

Web 2.0 suicide

(STOP THE PRESS - as i post this facebook seem to have the hump with web suicide and have now blocked their ip address…..)

Are you tired of living in public, sick of all the privacy theater the social networks are putting on, and just want to end it all online? Now you can wipe the slate clean with the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. (Warning: This will really delete your online presence and is irrevocable). Just put in your credentials for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn and it will delete all your friends and messages, and change your username, password, and photo so that you cannot log back in.

The site is actually run by Moddr, a New Media Lab in Rotterdam, which execute the underlying scripts which erase your accounts. The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a digital Dr. Kevorkian. On Facebook, for instance, it removes all your friends one by one, removes your groups and joins you to its own “Social Network Suiciders,” and lets you leave some last words. So far 321 people have used the site to commit Facebook suicide. On Twitter, it deletes all of your Tweets, and removes all the people you follow and your followers. It doesn’t actually delete these accounts, it just puts them to rest.

The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine runs a python script which launches a browser session and automates the process of disconnecting from these social networks (here is a video showing how this works with Twitter). You can even watch the virtual suicide in progress via a Flash app which shows it as a remote desktop session. You can watch your online life pass away one message at a time. Taking over somebody else’s account via an automated script, even with permission, may very well be against the terms of service of these social networks.

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR and to start this year the right way, below is a list of new technologies which will make a big impact this year. Some of them will be brand new, but many have been gestating and are now ready to hatch. If there is any theme here it is the mobile Web. As I think through the top ten technologies that will rock 2010, more than half of them are mobile. But those technologies are tied to advances in the overall Web as well.

1. The Tablet: It’s the most anticipated product of the year.  The mythical tablet computer (which everyone seems to be working on).  There are beautiful Android tablets, concept tablets, and, of course, the one tablet which could define the category, the Apple Tablet.  Or iSlate or whatever it’s called.  If Steve Jobs is not working on a tablet, he’d better come up with one because  anything else will be a huge disappointment. Why do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone?  We won’t really know until we have it.  But the answer lies in the fact that increasingly the Web is all you need.  As all of our apps and data and social lives move to the Web, the Tablet is the incarnation of the Web in device form, stripped down to its essentials.  It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines, and a portable Web TV.
2. Geo: The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app.  I’m not just talking about social broadcasting apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.  The advent of Geo APIs from Twitter , SimpleGeo, and hopefully Facebook will change the game by adding rich layers of geo-related data to all sorts of apps.  Twitter just recently launched its own Geo API for Twitter apps and acquired Mixer Labs, which created the GeoAPI.
3. Realtime Search: After licensing realtime data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their realtime search.  But realtime search is still treated as a silo, and is not regularly surfaced in the main search results page.  In 2010, I expect that to change as the search engines learn for what types of searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other realtime updates.  In the meantime, a gaggle of realtime search startups such as Collecta, OneRiot, and Topsy will continue to push the ball forward on the realtime search experience.  Realtime search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook.  The key will be to combine realtime search with realtime filters so that people are delivered not only the most recent information but the most relevant and authoritative as well.
4. Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year.  The Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows with an OS built from the ground up to run Web apps fast and furious.  Already a Google is rumored to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will show the world what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It sounds like it would be perfect for Tablet computers also (see above).  Chrome is a risky bet for Google, but it is also potentially disruptive.
5. HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5.  Already browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome (the browser, not the OS) are HTML5-friendly.  Once HTML5 becomes more widespread across the Web, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, or other rich applications.  They will all just be Web-native.  HTML5 also supports offline data storage, drag-and-drop, and other features which can make Web apps act more like desktop apps.  A lot of Websites will be putting HTML5 under the hood in 2010.
6. Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them.  As mobile data networks beef up their 3G bandwidth and even start to tiptoe into true broadband with 4G (which Verizon is heading towards with its next-gen LTE network), mobile video usage will take off.
7. Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps.  They add a layer of data to reality by placing everything from photos to Tweets to business listings directly on top of the live live image captured by the camera.  Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, Layar, GraffitiGeo and even Yelp are examples of augmented reality apps.
8. Mobile Transactions:Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid.  In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers.  There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more.  And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.
9. Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools.  This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise.  Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, it’s realtime stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also.  One area poised to take off in 2010 are mobile payments and transactions.  Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest startup Square turns the iPhone into a credit card reader.  Verifone has its competing product, as does Mophie.  The idea is that any mobile phone can become a point of sale, and those mobile transactions can tie into back-end accounting, CRM, and other enterprise systems.

Google project shows when Web content is hiding

Google published a tool Wednesday called Browser Size that lets Web developers gauge how much of their pages are visible in people’s browsers.

With its own analysis, the search giant found that a lot of people couldn’t see the download button for Google Earth because they had to scroll before it would show in their browser. Revamping the page increased download rates 10 percent, according to a blog post by Browser Size team member Arthur Blume.

The tool loads a Web page behind a pastel overlay that indicates what fraction of people can see a particular point on the Web page. The upper left is of course 100 percent, but when the point is farther down or toward the right, fewer and fewer can see it. The overlay statistics are based on a fraction of the people who visit the Google.com home page, said programmer Bruno Bowden.

“For example, if an important button is in the 80 percent region it means that 20 percent of users have to scroll in order to see it,” Bowden said.

I’m intrigued by this sort of data. It’s interesting to see the jump between old-style screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio and newer HD-style models that usually are in a wider 16:10 proportion. I’d be particularly curious to see how the overlay changes from one Web page to another–for example, I’d imagine gaming site visitors have bigger screens than mainstream Web pages.

Augmented Reality Fashion Show Demo

Augmented Fashion

The fashion industry seems to be a great niche for augmented reality as we’ve seen the success of the Esquire and InStyle magazine using AR together with their magazine to boost sales and differentiate themselves from their competition. Now, introducing the folks from Laboratory4.com who have created a unique concept called the “Augmented Reality Fashion Show”. This innovative concept developed using the FLARToolkit shows the possibility of having a few svelte models strutting their stuff on a “virtual runway

Augmented Reality Implementation by Fashionista

Fashion Augmented Style

Great use of Augmented Reality. Fashionista.com  is an on-line shopping website, has virtual dressing room with hundreds of dresses waiting to be tried on. Take a snapshot, share it on Facebook, and the process is elevated to a form of social fashionista networking

Googgled by google goggles?

Google Goggles

A picture is worth a thousand words.No need to type your search anymore. Just take a picture.  Not on the Iphone ….yet?

Oasis vs Kate Bush? introducing nextbigsound.com

Next Big Sound

Stumbled across a very interesting site called nextbigsound.com, in there words ‘actionable intelligience for the music industry’.  Track how millions of fans interact with music online everyday

Bing Maps Beta: Very cool, but limited

Bing Maps

Microsoft’s Bing took a major step forward Wednesday in adding rich mapping and image data to its search engine, but until it assembles more data, pretty pictures aren’t enough to beat the Google Maps juggernaut.

Bing Maps Beta was released during a presentation at Microsoft’s offices here. It’s a Silverlight-based application that runs inside Bing Maps and adds Microsoft’s version of Google Street View–called Streetside–to Bing Maps, as well as enhanced “bird’s eye” images that let you swoop over cities.

I spent some quality time Tuesday night with the new Bing Maps Beta, zooming through the streets of San Francisco and New York and testing out various searches. The best part about Bing Maps Beta–by far–are the rich transitions between high-resolution street-level or bird’s-eye view photos as you move around a city, making it feel like you’re actually driving down the road. Nice

Brilliant Interactive Ad Campaigns - with a difference!!

Ad Interactive

Here you can see a couple samples of brilliant interactive ads campaigns to inspire you.