A LG Electronics 3D TV at a promotional event : Wikipedia

Maybe not yet available in Malaysia, but the Japanese and Korean TV makers have already made available various 3D-ready models for the mainstream market in Japan and USA. Samsung 46-inch 3D TV is available now on Amazon at US$2,339, Panasonic has launched its 3D models this week whilst Sony will launch its first 3D models in June this year (est US$3,215 for 40 inch models).

To complete the scene, it has been announced at the recent Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, 3D Blu-ray players are arriving soon, as are channels of 3D programming from Imax, ESPN, Discovery, DirecTV, and other content providers.

Is this for real?

I am never a half-empty-glass kind of person but I sense disturbance in the force… Just take a look back at the novelty of 3D in the 60s and 70s that fizzled out. Well, not before I was introduced to the amazing 3D world through the binary-vision of ViewMaster (see pic below) in my early childhood.

Back in 2002, I met with Dr. Sadeg Faris – the scientist behind the ill-fated InventQjaya project of the MSC. He was trying to convince the Malaysian government and other investors to invest in his varied patented technologies, one of which is 3D Stereoscopic Imagingtechnology. I’m not sure what’s the status now after the debacle that followed. Nevertheless, despite the skeptics of the time (including yours truly), MSC could have been one of the front-runners in this trendy new thing.

3D TV. Imagine watching a football match in 3D. World cup final between Brazil and Spain. As Torres let loose a cannon shot to the back of the net – you can see the ball flying off the screen towards you. How awesome is that!

Success following success?

The global electronics industry is trying to recover from the 2009 slump and some industry players believe that 3D TV will be their savior.

The runaway success of Avatar at the top of all-time highest grossing movie has given the industry a boost. (Avatar was said to be filmed using 3D technology that is way superior than earlier methods). It was also pointed that over half of the top-10 grossing films in 2009 have made available 3D version which did quite well at the box-office.

Unbelievable as it may seem, the public seem to be biting. Despite the dorky 3D glasses, more and more cinemagoers are willing to pay higher ticket price to look dorky. But will they be willing to do so in the bright daylight of their living room rather than the safe dark cinema theaters?

Is is safe?

Let’s say that 3D tv will make it big and we will be spending more times with Astro’s byond – with the 3D paraphernalia on top of our nose. What will happen to our sight?

A number of consumer groups are already getting worried at the possible health hazard. Author and virtual reality expert Mark Pesce recently claimed 3D TV could lead to damage linked to a condition called “binocular dysphoria”. The condition is caused when viewing 3D screenings that require your brain to trust certain depth perception cues and ignore others – creating the effect of immersion.

“This condition… is the price you pay for cheating your brain into believing the illusion of 3D,” Pesce wrote on ABC website The Drum. He said the condition was usually harmless but could become hazardous after regular exposure, such as watching 3D TV every day.

Naturally, Sony came back and said that they have done their test and dismissed the notion. This view is also shared by a University of Sydney associate professor Colin Clifford, who said that the effect is no different than that of watching regular TV.

Lack of content

As it is, justifying the RM20 extra I’ve to pay for Astro byond is already tough due to the lack of HD content. How easy is it to get 3D content than?

My experience in production can confirm that to create HD content for TV require not much extra effort than in producing regular content. Heck… even a RM2,000 off-the-shelf camcorder today can shoot in 1080i HD.

But to shoot content in 3D? My discussion with Dr Sadeq’s team seven years ago left an impression of the monstrosity of the task. Imagine having to synchronise 2 cameras to get that perfect depth of field… But with the willingness of Discovery, Imax and ESPN suggest that the technology has sufficiently improved to make it possible.

The best bet for 3D content is obviously in games. The immersive and interactive nature of gaming will suit 3D technology perfectly.

Standardisation

This does not seem to big a big problem as there appears to be no competing standards (err…is there any in the first place). So there is no HDD vs Bluray or Beta vs VHS kind of war looming.

The only problem might be in the 3D glasses standard. Will the 3D glasses supplied by Sony compatible with those by Samsung or Panasonic?

If that can be resolved – imagine the new spin-off industry. Designer 3D glasses that is a new must-have accessory for the young and trendy. Get the latest Gucci 3D for RM2,000 or if you cannot afford that get the Gussi knock-off at Petaling Street for only RM20.

Upgrade Fatigue

Imagine you just upgrade to spanking new 46 inch HD LCD tv to keep up with the Joneses. Now you have to upgrade to 3D version some more? Not to mention internet streaming TV that seems to be pushed to the back of the store for now.

Whatever it is… the future always look interesting and never say never. I” revisitthis post in 3 years time and see whether I’m being over-pessimistic or over-optimistic.

What say you?

Related articles :

• 3DSwitch Will Tell Your TV When You’re Wearing 3D Glasses, and Which Type of Glasses Too [3dTv] (gizmodo.com)
• 3D TV Makes a Big Splash at CES (prontotech.com)
• Panasonic Slashes 3D TV Prices By 50% For U.S. Market (inquisitr.com)
• Discovery, IMAX and Sony team up for a 3D TV channel (dvice.com)
• Are You Planning to Buy a 3-D TV? (abcnews.go.com)

It is a dilemma because in most cases the biggest hits on the web are sites that were not started to make money in the first place. Those that were started with the objective to make money, seldom did. Anybody among us who have tried their hands in building e-commerce sites, would most probably have experienced that bitter discovery. Making money on the web is hard (unless you join the dark side of porn or not-so-honest-MLM).

In Malaysia we’ve seen loads of money been thrown into sites like Catcha.com, Bluehyppo.com, Gua.com.my and innumerable others with negligible commercial success. Before anyone start self-humiliation thrashings, bear in mind that even global names like YouTube and Twitter is finding it hard to monetize the gazillions of traffic on their sites.

I don’t know what is the latest traffic count of YouTube today but you can bet that it’s huge. Now owned by Google that’s flooded with cash, they can afford to sustain but they’ll have to start to contribute to the bottom line soon. As far as I can see, Google is banking on the ad-supported model. You can see plenty of ads appearing on a layer above the YouTube videos nowadays. From what i can tell though, this model has not been bringing in the level of money required.

An interesting service is Twitter which has grown tremendously. Currently, they’re handling 50 million tweets a day, a 2000% increase from 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009.

With only 140 characters per post – certainly no room to squeeze in ad in the post.

Most of the Twitter users seldom visit Twitter websites either, relying on 3rd party apps to read and post their updates. So this make context-relevant Google-style ads on the website less effective.

The industry has been observing Twitter executives, how are they going to make money. And, until recently it seemed that they have no reliable plan in hand.

However, things have changed. Twitter has came up with a novel solution. They signed agreements with search giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft – so that they have access to all public tweets. In turn, they can then develop whatever tools to process and publish Twitter posts as part of their live search results. Twitter call it ‘firehose’ of tweets (you know like firemen’s hose with unlimited gush of water) as opposed to the rate-limited API being used for free by 50,000+ applications today.

This back room data-mining licensing arrangement has enabled Twitter to charge and collect money. It’s actually quite a good arrangement since the users are not affected directly. They never see any intrusive messages. Maybe there are privacy issues but public tweets are publicly available anyway.

What does it mean to us, mere mortals, though

The lesson here is – don’t just look for a direct way to make money.

Making money out of selling information has been available for a long time. The value of database has always been known though not utilised by many.

So if you have a popular blog, portal or applications, find out the characteristics of your traffic and think who will be interested in them? Maybe there’s somebody who is willing to pay for it.

Just a few months ago, I would have tossed aside such notion as nonsense and pure science fiction. Reason? The failure of WAP internet in late 90s and the poor state of mobile broadband data services in this country.

How things have change so fast in so little time. Today, anyone who failed to take note of this new trend will soon find themselves left behind and playing catch-up.

A recent article in a Symbian website commented that half of internet users in the world access it through a phone:

“…it is inevitable that soon the majority of internet access will be from mobile phones. As we’ve reported here, in many Emerging World countries form Bangladesh to South Africa the ratio is more than 4 to 1 and as much as 10 to 1 where more mobile users access internet services (including WAP services) on their phones than on PCs. Even many advanced countries like Japan and Taiwan report the same milestone having passed. Now Nokia says the global milestone has passed.”

Why do I think mobile web is an emerging power?

1. Improved Support by Telephone Companies

Needless to say, iPhone by Apple is the biggest contributor. Recent reports have proved beyond doubt that iPhone has made a huge impact on mobile web arena. Though iPhone only represent 5% of total phone users, last year iPhone users made 5000% more Google search than the nearest competitor. Since then, millions of iPhone apps were downloaded, many of which requires Internet connectivity.

Nokia also is no slouch. Its biggest contribution has been in making email access through its phone so much easier – especially in its E and N series. With integral support for Gmail and corporate POP mail, email on phones is as easy as SMS. I have always maintained that email will be the killer app for mobile web and with the runaway success of E71 – Nokia would agree with me on this score too.

The default browser shipped with mobile phones have also improved by leaps and bound. You can now browse the majority of websites well and not restricted to functionally-challenged WAP sites.

2. Improved mobile broadband service

Better late than never. The major telcos in Malaysia are all offering 3G services in major city areas and even where 3G not available, GPRS data services are not too shabby either. The competition has also forced the data plan to be priced at a more reasonable sub-RM50 package for basic unlimited data plan.

3. Improved mobile-centric services

We are seeing more and more mobile-centric services being offered. If you’ve a GPS enabled phone, try Google Map for mobile and be amazed with the details provided there. Unfortunately, beside the news sites like The Star and Business Times that have mobile specific sites, I have not seen many local sites that take advantage of this up and coming trend. Asiaspace have recently announced its plan to beam mobile TV – but I’ll believe it when I see it.

4. Increased sale of smartphones

1 out of 7 handsets sold worldwide in 2009 is a smartphone. And most smartphones today is basically a mini-computer where use of internet, social networking sites and email is at the forefront.

As you can see from the report by Gartner above. Symbian phones (led by Nokia) topped the chart but notice how fast Blackberries (RIM) and iPhones have catch up in 2009 compared to 2008.

Do you know that recent studies have shown that mobile users are more likely to use the mobile phone for online transaction than desktop users? This is another area that has failed to meet the promise but may soon emerge out from the cocoon.

If you are interested, we are not short of incentives here in Malaysia. There are various schemes by the likes of MDeC, MMMC and MOSTI that encourage activities in this area. Go and grab it !

Related articles:

• Over half of the world’s Internet users use it from a phone (allaboutsymbian.com)
• 2010: The Year of Mobile (beingpeterkim.com)
• Wireless carriers unite to take back momentum on cell phone applications from Apple, Nokia (taragana.com)
• Top 10 mobile inventions in the last 20 years (v3.co.uk)
• Apple complaint against Nokia to be investigated (v3.co.uk)
• 10 reasons why now is the perfect time to get started with the mobile web (slideshare.net)
• Score deals with your mobile phone (macworld.com)
• Apple iPad Raises The Bar for Mobile Connected Devices (teabreak.pk)
• Hulu’s Plans for the iPad, the Mobile Internet (gigaom.com)

Before that Google threw its hat into the OS arena with Google Chrome OS. In my earlier post, I was not so impressed but others seem to be excited with it.

Now listen…. they want to pick a fight with Facebook and Twitter in the social networking business as well. Google is rumored to be set to release new features on Gmail allowing users to update their status for friends to see as part of a move that sees the search giant embrace social media initiatives popularised by other social networking sites (SNS).

The new service is reportedly similar to the status-bar tools seen on Facebook and Twitter, and will further incorporate photo and video sharing.

This new development – which is widely expected to be formally announced sometime this week – comes one week after Facebook marked its sixth birthday by revealing it has more than doubled its number of users in the last year to 400 million.

Google and Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, have recently looked to incorporate social-media services to make their offerings more relevant for users also active on SNS. In October, both Google and Bing announced they would adopt a Twitter function to reflect audiences’ growing interest and trust in social commentary. Microsoft was first to launch its Bing Twitter Search function and further connected with Facebook to offer search results on users’ updated statuses.

Further blurring the lines between search, portals and SNS, Friendster and Yahoo Southeast Asia last month also entered into a multi-year strategic partnership that lets mutual users more efficiently share information.

Now what?

Gmail certainly has a lot of users nowadays because of its simplicity to use. Many users have ditched Yahoo mail because of the clutter of news and other content that Yahoo tried to shove down the users throat. Will this move marked a grave mistake by Google?

As it is, Gmail is already pretty heavy to load with all the complex pageload. On days when the trust-worthy Streamyx typically hit bottleneck speed – one will have to switch to basic-view. Imagine, if status-update and more photo and video is added – can the users cope?

Whatever it is – welcome to the social networking bandwagon, Sir. May I introduce you to your fellow latecomer… Tan Sri Vincent Tan from Malaysia. Please get acquainted!

Update Wed 10 Feb 2010

Here it is! I checked my Gmail account this morning and there’s a new line ‘Buzz’ at the left menu column. Just under the Inbox link. Clicking on the link, it opens up a new Buzz page with a welcoming note that informed me that Gmail has conveniently made me follow 14 other people in my contact list – but for some reason none of them has a reciprocal follow on me. It also tells me that my post on Picasaweb photo services will be automatically posted into my Buzz.

If anyone is concerned about Facebook privacy… by comparison Google has even less care about my say who I want to follow or what I want to share with other people. If earlier, I was saying about how Yahoo shove unwanted content at its Yahoo! mail service… this time Google just shackle me down with forced connections. What if I’m a minor and some of those my contact list is shady characters? (contact list is, by default, automatically added based on your email sent put)

The cheek and arrogance of them. In fact Google executives were reported at the Buzz launch to say that online social networking has become so widespread and disorganized that only Google, with its massive reach and immense computing power, can make sense of it all.

“It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem,” Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, said at the launch.

Yes… Gmail may have 176 million users. But not everyone is an active user and as I speak, a few people I checked who are inactive registered users, noted that the Buzz component isn’t in their page.

Related articles:

• Google Takes On Facebook, Twitter With ‘Buzz’ (wired.com)
• Microsoft, Yahoo Diss Google’s Buzz (wired.com)
• Facebook is the new threat to Google (guardian.co.uk)
• Google’s Bad Buzz: Microsoft, Yahoo Mock New Social Product (dailyfinance.com)
• Google flexes muscles against social networks (ubergizmo.com)

Yes… we’re talking about Apple’s newest product tagged by them as ‘Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price‘. Heavy isn’t it… not only is it most advanced technology and revolutionary – it is also magical. BTW, it is also unbelievable.

I’m not going to do a review, since I’m sure CHIP team will soon dissect and make a thorough review soon. But I can’t resist making a few notes.

1. I’m happy to report that my prediction in the earlier posting has been mostly accurate. Smug . Except the part of a revolutionary new GUI.
   
    
2. Our new blogger, C3PO, must be a mighty confused droid right now. Just two days ago, he was hankering for a Nook eBook device. I wonder whether this shiny new iPad will cause a change of heart.

It seems that the media critics today are not sure what to make of this new iPad. Most of them are left disappointed though. Like alien worshippers that have waited for years for an alien mothership to come and bring them to a wonderful sanctuary. Only to find that when the alien do come, other than the sleek mothership with cool maneuvering techniques, they look just like us and their home planet is no less screwed than planet earth.

In a way, the new iPad (thank god it’s not called iSlate) is just like that. It’s a sleek tablet PC that look and work like a oversized iPod and/or iPhone. It’s no geek nirvana but geeks don’t bring in billions of ringgit to Apple’s coffers – mass consumers do. Even when Apple’s biggest product, iPod, was launched, nobody think twice about them. “Bah.. MP3 players… plenty of them in the market” so thought the critics.

I believe that the crux to iPad’s success or otherwise will be down to one key ingredient usability. This has often been Apple’s strength and also the achilles heel of run-of-the-mill tablet PC. So we’ll have to wait and see till March when the product will actually be made available and for the general public to get their hands on the latest shiny gadget coming out from Cupertino. Two months… plenty of time for Apple’s PR machine to flex their muscle and for developers to beat the queue to build new apps for iPad.

So… how do we look at this? In my mind, the greatest desire for a tablet PC is to enable us to enjoy computing in the living room, bed room and on the throne. Bill Gate’s dream of ‘a PC on every table‘ is so 80’s. Today, we, the 21st century citizens, want it everywhere now. As any hardworking career executives would testify, after a solid 10 hours staring at the office’s PC or notebook, you want something enjoyable that wouldn’t remind you of work.

Socialising

With its sleek 1.1cm thin profile, dainty 1.5lbs and 10 hours battery life, I can imagine myself taking this sexy thing to bed and spend hours of fun with it. No wires, no keyboard, no mouse. Just my fingers to get my iPad do stuff that I’ve never had in bed before. Facebooking, Twittering and emailing….

If only it has a built in camera… that will open up another dimension of socialising I can do.

Showing Off

One of the reasons why people like me still prints photos is because digital photos are just so damn difficult to show off to other people. Getting uncles and aunties to squint at the 4″ screen of the phone or camera is so cumbersome to them. Passing around your notebooks to show your last holiday pics in a party is so not cool.

But I can imagine me (or most probably my better half) showing off this sleek tablet AND the photos to friends and family in the living room or at the porch. Pinching at the screen to zoom in and out… My cool-geek status would be considerably increased. Oh ya.. it will be fun to them as well.

Apparently, the iPad will also double as a digital photo display whilst it’s being charged and docked.

Me time

Again, with its spec mentioned above, the iPad would make a great company for the all important ‘Me time’. e.g. when you want to sit in your favorite chair in a corner on a nice Sunday morning, reading the newspaper or a nice book. The only question is about content and availability of it. How many titles can you get – and whether Apple will limit to just titles from its iBookstore (likely) or can you download your own titles? Can I read local content like NST, The Star or Business Times in iPad optimised version?

It seem light enough to bring to the small-room’s throne. That will help to avoid the clutter of mags there.

Family Time

The iPad is also claimed to be able to play movies and videos – including an apps for YouTube. In other words, it’s a portable media player as well.

This is great news. The balik kampung this year will be a peaceful one as the little passengers at the back will be busy with Upin & Ipin movie. 10 hours battery time will buy me time from KL to Alor Star easily.

Of course, I can’t forget the Apps Store. Apparently the iPad can play almost everything that the Apps store has. All the 100,000+ titles. However, I’m not an iPhone user and have no first hand experience in this matter, so can’t really say how excited I’m with this prospect.

So what’s your take? Will you be queuing for it or wait see first?

Fast Tube by Casper

Related articles:

• Apple Ipad – Will you buy it? (trak.in)
• Three Things Apple Needs To Do To Make Its Tablet A Breakthrough Device (paidcontent.org)
• First Impressions of the new Apple iPad (Walter S. Mossberg /Mossblog) (techmeme.com)
• Apple Tablet iPad Features and Specification (shoutmeloud.com)
• The Goldilocks device (speedcommunications.com)

I read that customer demand continues to be strong and that new orders will be made available come February 2010. This beauty is not without flaws — but Barnes & Noble has since fixed the bugs.

Dubbed as the world’s most advanced eBook reader & also the Best New Gadget of 2009 by the TechCrunch Crunchies Award, I could only think of this: “Be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the present. – Master Qui-Gon Jinn”. I hope this will generate better reading society at the very least. They have a competitor — the Amazon Kindle 2.

So perhaps a little bit of comparison investigation would be good. Amazon Kindle has this feature – Text to Speech where it can read newspapers, magazines, blogs and books out loud to you, unless the book’s rights holder made the feature unavailable. Impressive. Nook on the other hand, features touch color screen.

Fast Tube by Casper

A droid does needs color in its life. Nook wins hands down with the content availability. There are more than a million titles available and more than 500,000 free eBooks. I am swooned over by these facts and the review from Time Magazine on the Nook helps – “One of the 10 Top Gadgets of 2009, and Best Travel Gadgets of 2009. It’s the stuff around and behind the screen that makes the nook cool. Like that color touchscreen… support for wi-fi, SD cards and PDFs.

The nook also comes with a classy book-lending feature.” – Time Magazine. What not to love about it? And oh, I want one with a Kate Spade New York designer covers, thank you!

Unfortunately it’s only for BT customers in UK. Sorry yek.. not in Malaysia.

Never mind… on this cool Saturday midnight, just imagine that kind of speed. What can we do with internet… Cloud computing? kacang putih High-def IPTV? why not? Join forces with cousin in JB to shoot the aliens to smitherens online? get the whole clan also can 24×7 web cam to see the lonely kitty at home? no problem. These are old stuffs – I’m sure there are lotsa things we can do.

Since we can’t have #yorais jokes here.. we can also do good stuff like distance learning. Not just the usual kiddy stuff, think of online cookery class with Chef Wan or gardening etc. Not sure what exactly iPad that Apple gonna launch next week – but I bet it will be very useful to have it hooked on a WiFi-N class wireless router and bring it to bed or toilet.

How much will the 40mbps cost in UK? £19.99 per month around RM110 per month. Now, now… close your gaping jaw friend. I know it’s what we’re paying for a 1mbps Streamyx currently or Maxis 3G HSPA service. It’s not a related subject….

Related articles:

• BT Infinity pricing to undercut Virgin Media (computing.co.uk)
• BT ’super fast’ broadband to kick start price war (telegraph.co.uk)

This question is relevant to us since the only mega project happening in Malaysia today is the RM11 billion+ High Speed Broadband by Telekom. (The only other I can think of is Iskandar Malaysia development, but that’s a long term township development program). Out of that RM2.4 billion bill will be foot by the Government. So it’s our money being spent here and we need to be sure that it is spent wisely.

Extract of a study conducted by Oxford University and sponsored by Cisco. (chart by Malaysian Insider)

One thing for sure is that Internet services in Malaysia need to be improved. Just go through the blogs, forums or Facebook statuses and one will come across slow-internet-frustrations vented in capital letters and nasty symbols. Social critics like Lim Kit Siang and Malaysian Insider have quoted a study by the business school of Oxford University which ranked Malaysia a distant 48 out of 66 countries.

This state of affairs has been noted by our Government and to be fair to them, many initiatives have been taken. The HSBB project and issuance of new licenses to aspiring wireless broadband are some of them.

Sorry… let’s not divert from my original topic.

In an article in gigaom, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, naturally agreed wholeheartedly:

The impact of broadband has been similar to that of the (USA’s) national highway system in the 1950s. Until then, our nation’s roads were slow and the quality was unpredictable, which hindered commerce and travel. The modern highway system made our country accessible and in the process, created new industries — transforming our economy and by extension, our society.

This view seemed to be confirmed by a new study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California. It concluded that employment grows faster in places where access to broadband has expanded. (Get copy of report here).

However, once you finished reading the report, you will see that some of the findings of that study are not so enthusiastic. In doing the study, Jed Kolko, an associate director at the PPIC and also author of the report, compared changes in several economic outcomes with the extent of broadband expansion.

Surprisingly, his research shows that expanded broadband availability has not increased the likelihood that workers telecommute, or have home-based businesses. Telecommuting is one key area always put forward by broadband-proponents. In reality, communication with workers by video is sophisticated and requires expensive hardware and much faster Internet connection. It can also be explained by the fact that corporate cultures discourage telecommuting.

Though the report found strong link between broadband expansion to population growth, it also points out that the average wage and the employment rate are unaffected by Internet expansion.

Broadband has a “probably causal” relationship to job growth, and it may bring other benefits, including better health information, educational opportunities and civic engagement, although those benefits are hard to measure and evidence is “quite limited”
Kolko said.

What a dampener. So what does means? There goes my dream of working in shorts from home with 20% raise?

Related articles

• Broadband Boosts Economic Development to a Point (gigaom.com)
• Canadian broadband is world-class: ISP-funded report (cbc.ca)
• Telekom expects HSBB project to boost GDP

It all started with the frenzied rumor that Apple is coming out with a new device that is said to be a tablet PC.

As many of you may remember, about 5 years ago tablet PC is touted as the next hot thing and most PC manufacturers came out with their version of tablet PCs. They did find take-up in niche market but the general consumer didn’t embrace them. Underpowered, unwieldy, inefficient use of stylus and tablet PC fizzled into oblivion.

In fact, if I’m not mistaken I still have that piece of Fujitsu tablet gathering dust somewhere in the shelves.

So why would anyone bet on them making a comeback this year?

For one, the idea of a computer device that can be operated by natural human movements is still very much in favour. Think of Tom Cruise’s hand controlled computer operation in the film Minority Report and you will get the idea.

Tom Cruise in the sci-fi film Minority Report

But why now? I suspect, they would not want to be a laggard to a market that the oh-so-trendy Apple is planning to go into. Especially after being caught napping with the runaway success of iPod and iPhone, Microsoft especially do not want to be left behind and play catchup again.

It was rumored that Apple will lift the veil later this month though Apple, as usual, has been very secretive and give little away.

So what should they do? Potong jalan of course. Steve Balmer must have decided that the best way is to steal the thunder. On Saturday at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he showed off 3 models of tablet PC from HP, Pegatron and Archos that will be launched soon. To add impact to the presentation, a new term ’slate PC’ was introduced. Unfortunately, not much details were released other than the PCs will be using (wait .. wait..) Windows 7! How very exciting… not.

Fast Tube by Casper

Personally, I don’t think the Microsoft approach is going to make much impact. It really is just an old horse in new makeup. Do you know that Microsoft has also another touch-screen-PC line called ‘Surface‘? You don’t? There you go…

My prediction is that Apple’s tablet PC will resemble more like a bigger, more powerful iPod Touch rather than a small one-piece Macbook. It will probably sport a new GUI that make heavy use of muti-touch-tactile-screen operations. Like iPhone and iPod, it will not be designed to be an all-singing multi purpose equipment but designed for limited specific uses only (but do it very well).

I may not opt for an iPhone and I have not converted to the Mac. But I do like my iPod Touch and if Apple’s track record is anything to go by – I will soon be queuing in line for Apple’s new tablet thingy (iSlate?).

Related articles :

• What is a tablet, anyway? (cnn.com)
• CES 2010: Gadget show begins ‘year of the tablet’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Microsoft CEO unveils new HP tablet (canada.com)

So is it worth the hype?

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, holds the Google Nexus One phone during a news conference at Google headquarters Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010, in Mountain View, Calif.

CHIP team members have been checking their emails, IMs and faxes. Unfortunately, the good people at Mountain View has forgotten to send the invite to yesterday’s launch. And thus no first hand review to be had and we had to rely on modern-day sleuth technique – Googling…

Let’s get the facts straight:

• The phone is manufactured by the Taiwanese company, HTC
• It’s powered by the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm
• It uses the same Android 2.1 OS that runs other Android phones
• It’s thin @ 1.15cm and light @ 130 gm
• On the front are four “hardware” buttons (just touch-sensitive spots on the display): back, menu, home, and search
• Navigation device is a trackball that lights up to tell you a message has come in, with different colors to indicate whether it’s an e-mail, text message, or part of a chat.
• Sports voice-recognition software that will transcribe spoken messages if you prefer reading to listening.
• It has a five-megapixel camera and (wee) a flash
• You can buy it from Google’s Online Store
• They’ll ship to UK, Singapore and Hong Kong – unlocked – for US$529
• It featured built in GPS receiver which we assume will integrate well with Google Maps

Now tell me… any of that salivate you enough to take the next AirAsia plane to Singapore and make the order? Aside from the I-must-have-the-latest-gadget geeks, I suspect not many do. I know for a fact that I don’t.

The fact is: this Google Phone is no earth shattering, revolutionary iPhone killer that many have hyped it to be.

Look at this official picture from Google website. What does it reminds you of? Does Palm Pre come to mind?

I’ve nothing against Palm but the fate of the Palm series is not something that you aspire to be. Not if you’re the mighty Cloud King with billions of cash in your war-chest.

It has been said that Google has openly said that the decision to come out with its own Google Phone is largely down to an anti-Apple strategy. For all the resources that they command, is this all they can do? The stock market took note: Google stock dropped slightly after the announcement today. Apple’s stock went down slightly as the hour of Google’s announcement approached, but then recovered.

But then again – Google has always been a software company and not much of a hardware manufacturer. So I suspect that they have not really put in as much resources into it as they could have.

In light of their ongoing search-engine and online-apps running battle with Microsoft, this new battle in the mobile industry must be part of a bigger overall strategy. What i will call the “Our banner-ads kingdom will not last forever, look for new sources of income” strategy.

After the veil was lifted last Tuesday, many has noted that the revolutionary part of the Google Phone is not the phone itself – but the decision by Google to go into retail and sell the phone itself. As was captured by a post in Arstechnica:

The real news at Google’s event this morning—news that could shake up the mobile industry just as thoroughly as the original iPhone announcement—wasn’t a phone at all, but a URL: http://google.com/phone. An online storefront that, if successful, could knock one of the major pillars out the current, much-reviled US carrier model and result in faster, cheaper, more flexible service for mobile users….

By offering a lineup of phones that is essentially carrier-independent (with the radio compatibility caveat), Google has separated the two previously interlocked parts of the phone/plan-buying experience—phone selection and carrier selection—and has done so in a way that threatens one of the most important enablers of carrier lock-in….In short, what Google announced today wasn’t just the Nexus One, but the world’s first carrier-independent smartphone store.

This sentiment is echoed by Good Morning Silicon Valley:

No single device is going to “kill” the iPhone, and that’s not really Google’s intent anyway, iPhone users being the heavy Web traffickers that they are. But Google does have a strong interest in fostering enough competition to keep Apple from dominating the mobile market, which is why it chose the strategy it did — providing a strong and improving platform that could support multiple manufacturers offering multiple models to multiple demographic segments across multiple carriers. Google doesn’t need to tear down the iPhone; it just needs to make sure there are plenty of attractive alternatives for smartphone shoppers who for various reasons don’t feel compelled to join the Apple-AT&T axis. As an Android flagship, unlocked but initially aligned with T-Mobile, the Nexus One fits as part of that plan.

It’s still early days. Reports have came out from lucky-testers in USA that have generally said that the Nexus One is ‘better than other Android phones’ buy have come out short of saying ‘this is better than an iPhone’.

I believe the real trick will be in the roll-out of 3rd party application developers. There are millions of iPhone apps available at AppleStore compared to 17,000+ apps so far available on Android platform.

Until one unit magically lands itself on my desk… not much I can say about user experience. Hopefully the day will come soon… eh So, I sneaked a visit to the Google phone store and was warmly greeted by the message ‘Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.‘.