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It seems Lenovo is jumping into the tablet market with the LePad tablet which is scheduled to be launched in June, worldwide. The LePad was actually shown in the January CES show in Las Vegas. The breakdown of the device is quite the norm with most of these tablets: a 10.1 inch screen that will be running the Android 2.2 OS with a 1.2 GHz snapdragon processor from Qualcomm.

The pricing is going to be much less than most of the major tablets like the Xoom for example. The pricing is going to between $399 and $449. Currently China will be getting in first in March as Lenovo has been dominating the Chinese market as of late.

It seems like everyone is following on the coat tails of Apple by making these tablets. Currently tablet shipments are expected to be around 54.8 million units in 2011 which is up over 180% for last year, this according to the research firm Gartner.

It has been said that Google has been working on a creating a social network type product. The inception of this product is called +1. Well from what I have been seeing and reading Google maybe testing a toolbar that is directly related to this product.

So far here is what I got from the breakdown the new toolbar shows your name and shows your gmail account and gives you the normal option to sign out of your account. Then you have your usually settings menu and normal search setting and account settings. So nothing too special to speak about at the moment but Google did release a statement on the new bar. “Last week we tested a new top navigation bar, which increases consistency across most of Google’s properties and is a visual update over the previous top navigation bar. We are now rolling this new bar out widely.”

So the Google word is this is just a visual upgrade but some inside sources that have seen this +1 product have stated it looks a lot like +1 and this could be a step in a gradual process to get some buzz going.

Apple has announced a new in-app subscription charge to the companies that have applications on the itunes market that offer subscriptions through the app via your iPad or through your iPhone and iPod touch. So for example say you have an iPad and found the Netflix app while searching on your iPad for new apps but don’t have a subscription set up for this service. Well if you sign up through the application on your iPad, apple wants to take 30% of that application subscription. It’s always been the case that no matter how a person subscribes to a service the company who created the service would keep it.

So is this a good idea? It could be to make apple richer. But what does that mean for the customer? Well hopefully the companies that have apps for the Apple brands find ways to get customers to subscribe for their service outside of the itunes store, like via the web. But if there is still a massive influx of people subscribing on the App store will it force companies to sit there and take the hit or just leave the app store all together. Now you could pose the argument to me that the companies could just charge a bit more on the app store to make up the difference in lost profit. Well I am sorry to shoot you down but Apple has asked that the subscriptions be the same deals as you could get outside of the app store. So if you paying 9.99 a month for Netflix, it won’t be a different charge if you signed up in the app store.

Now the final piece to the puzzle that makes this so grand is competition. The Android marketplace is also going to be releasing a subscription service. Allegedly it will be a 10% charge versus Apple’s 30%. This could mean companies could jump over to Android and leave Apple behind. Apple does still have a strong hold on the market share however Androids being clawing up the ranks. Android is making a smart move by undercutting Apple here. Apple is setting a precedent with these charges and Android is following just a very small rate. With this, Android could see an increase in market share if companies decide that doing subscription services through Apple just isn’t work the money they would have to pay out to them. So what do you think? Is this a good idea or bad idea? I personally am not sure yet.

Google is being sued by a company VoIP inc. for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to an online voice technology. Apparently this stems from a contract signed in 2005 in which VoIP agreed to provide Google with its patented “Click to call” technology. This technology is supposed to give users the ability to contact companies and advertisers with a click of a button. As of right now VoIP could use the money as they are currently going through Bankruptcy.

It seems that Google entered into a joint venture with eBay and Skype in 2006 related to the type of service that VoIP was supporting Google with. Google did break the agreement in 2007 claiming they had breached the nondisclosure agreement by mentioning that Google was their client. However VoIP said that by them terminating the agreement was “a pretext” to give the company an opportunity to exploit VoIP’s confidential information. This included source codes, algorithms and the “know how” for monetizing internet calls in the dealings with eBay and Skype.

If you want to know the latest on the case it filled under the New York Supreme Court, No. 650380/2011. We will see if the Google giant can withstand this lawsuit. Only time will truly tell.

Ah, it is February 14, 2011 and I wanted to write something that had a bit of technology and love to mix this article up for the fact it is Valentine’s Day. Alas I couldn’t think of anything that mixed both things, so I figured today I would talk about something in the tech world that I think I am in love with. That is streaming Netflix on your Android. Now I personally watch Netflix on almost a daily basis. I do this by streaming movies and TV shows through my XBOX or PS3. Now that down the line I could do it with my phone while I am traveling? Well that just makes it that much more special.

The breakdown is simple. Qualcomm is creating a new snapdragon processor that will allow you to play Netflix on your Android mobile device. This new technology is suppose to give users instant selections unlike on most mobile devices where watching a streamed video on a mobile device has been anything but instant. Now this new technology will be in smartphones and tablets and the new processor can run at 2.5 GHz and has the ability to process data 150% faster than most of the fastest mobile chips to date. The finally bit of information about this hardware will be able to play movies in high quality but also keep your battery life efficient.

In yesterdays article I touched upon the fact Apple is in development of a cheaper iPhone and that the share of the global market. With a cheaper iPhone it helps make Apple make deeper inroads in markets such as China and India.

It seems Apple has done something similar to this before. In ’04, the sales of original $299-plus iPod were still rising; the company introduced the $249 iPod Mini. Then in ’05, the Mini was discontinued for a cheaper iPod Nano. Apple is selling an iPhone 3GS for $49 but it would require you to sign a 2 year contract.
With Apple able to get discounts from suppliers due to the massive amount of iPhones being sold and by Apple signing long term contracts this will enable them to make the moves needed to make a cheaper iPhone to penetrate markets globally that may not be able to afford an iPhone with a 2 year agreement. The company has actually executed some long term agreement that total in the area of $3.9 billion in the past few months.

This will now also affect what is seen to be Apple’s biggest competition to date in the mobile phone market, Google. The Android was able to penetrate the market not only by making more affordable phones with a decent operating system but has also had the market covered in versatility as Android phones are available on multiple carriers. Apple understands this and has countered by offering the iPhone on the Verizon Wireless platform. If the iPhone can be cheaper and still keep the allure I think Apple might have something and they can finally penetrate the markets like China and India.

In the midst of the Android gaining ground the iPhone it looks like Apple is working on newer versions of the iPhone. The first version would be cheaper and a bit smaller then the latest iPhone 4. Even with Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple is still involved with making strategic decisions while on medical leave. He would use lower prices to make the iPhone’s appeal to a larger market. This would help keep the iPhone from losing more ground to the Android. This will definitely put pressure on other companies to make to keep competitive with the cheaper versions of their phones.
It now seems that Apple understand that they are not the only powerful phone on the market and knows that there is a bigger share to be had. Charlie Wolf, who is an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York, stated “Instead of targeting 25% of the global mobile phone market, Apple is going after 100%.” This would be a big move for Apple especially after knowing Google’s share of the global Smartphone market as more than tripled to 32.9 % in the fourth quarter. This is passing what seems to be Apple’s meager 16% which is according to Canalys.
The thought process is sell the phone for around $200 but the big deal about that is this phone would sell for that price with no contracts to sign to get the phone down to said price. Currently the latest iPhone sells for $200-300 dollars but that is with signing a contract with mobile phone providers that carry this phone.

It is has been speculated for some time now that there had been a partnership in the works with Nokia and Microsoft. Well that speculation is now put to an end as Microsoft and Nokia have officially announced a partnership.
Now nothing has been put officially into place what there are some steps Microsoft and Nokia are working towards. First Nokia will us the Windows phone as its main Smartphone. With the innovations and ideas on Nokia’s side they plane to contribute heavily to the Windows Smartphone newer hardware designs help bring the Windows Smartphone to more people with a bigger range of prices and market segments and geographies. They will also work together to bring marketing initiatives to help evolve the future of mobile products. As most would have assumed Bing will be the search services used on all the Nokia devices. Nokia maps will be integrated with Bing. With Bing, Microsoft will also have a strong adcenter for an advertising platform that will give a unique local search and advertising experience. These are just a few things this partnership will bring to the table.
With this partnership at hand it finally looks like Microsoft has finally made move they needed to do to be taken seriously in the mobile market. Could Microsoft finally rival the likes of the iPhone and Android with this new partnership? It seems that only time will tell.

It just about that time for Microsoft to start doing what it does best, fixing issues with its operating system that didn’t have time to fix before they launched. Now don’t get me wrong, we also have some cool updates to go along with it but the service pack also provides fixes for your Windows 7 OS that you may need.
The update I am most excited about that comes along with SP1 is the Remote FX. What the Remote FX does is it provides 3D graphical updates. This will allow for full remote experiences including multiple displays. So the RemoteFX is able to do these renderings of the 3D graphics by locally rendering the screen image on the remote PC after being compressed and sent down to the remote host. This will help improve video streaming across remote sessions which right now is a major issue of virtualized computing.
Now that Windows 7 is over a year old it is about time for the SP1 to launch and I am actually very happy to see that they have added something as significant as RemoteFX. This will surely improve the experience of people who remote into desktops from home or work. Thank you Microsoft for adding a nice improvement to Windows 7 in SP1.

Sony is making an aggressive attempt to go after anyone who has posted or is “distributing” the first ever jailbreak code for the Playstation 3 console. The company is not just going after these people but they are going as far as demanding Google give the IP addresses and any other information they may have of people who have either viewed or commented on the jailbreak video that is on a private youtube page.
This aggression stems from a lawsuit against George Hotz, 21 years old from New Jersey. He published a video about a month ago showing code that would make the PS3 able to play pirated games. Currently the video has been taken off the site as a U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered it to be removed. It does seem Hotz has breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
So DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) has been created for a civil or criminal offense to traffic in wares meant to circumvent devices protecting copyrighted works. However, one of the more interesting things about the DMCA is not what is in the act but what is not. If you were to perform the same type of hack to a mobile phone it would be completely legal. It seems that over the summer the U.S. Copyright Office exempted cell phone jailbreaking from being covered by the DMCA (somebody must have gotten slammed with overages). So if you have a mobile phone you can run the apps of your choice on a mobile phone without fear of being criminally or civilly liable for a breach of the DMCA. It does make you wonder why the government would let you jailbreak a phone but not other types of digital devices. One has to wonder the logic behind letting mobile phones be jailbroken but keeping a strong hold on devices like the Playstation and XBOX. Maybe the government doesn’t like their cell phone plans and just wants to torture the mobile phone providers?