Of iPad and the elusive "third category"

Apple's chief says iPad will sit comfortably in the space between smart-phones and laptops -- except that such space probably doesn't exist | IslamOnline.net

Whenever Steve Jobs takes the stage, he’s guaranteed to amaze and disappoint, regardless of what he has up his sleeve.  The Wednesday uncovering of Apple’s long-anticipated, feverishly-rumored tablet-like iPad was no exception.  Almost immediately after Apple’s chief took the wraps off the new gadget, the blogosphere was humming with mutterings: too expensive; no slot for memory expansion; no removable battery; no physical keyboard; and no camera either.

As for the other camp, the immediately-amazed — judging by the volume and tone of comments on popular technology websites such as Engadget and Gizmodo — they’ve plenty to appreciate in the iPad.  That includes the expansive 10-inch brilliant screen, the familiar interface (resembling, but not copying, that of iPhone and iPod Touch), the compatibility of the whole repertoire of iPhone apps, and the new iBooks app that draws books from five major book publishers in an iTunes-like interface.

More convenience, less privacy

The Web offers a seductive bargain: you will get more of it if you will stop being nervous about your privacy | IslamOnline.net

Privacy online is like no other privacy.  That is not because the Web is a wild west full of sinister people bent on breaking into your digital lives (though, of course, some such criminals indeed roam the cyberspace). Rather, privacy on the web is a category of its own because of the peculiarity of the Web as a communications medium.

That peculiarity has two main features. One is the Web as the ultimate storage medium. The other is the Web as a medium that has given rise to a new breed of highly diverse service providers whom we entrust with vast amounts of information about ourselves. Think of Google, Yahoo, or Facebook.

Let Amazon decide for you

Technology companies' innovative spirit is taking them into new territory: devising their own laws on how you use their services and devices | IslamOnline.net

You own your PDF files — unless, or until, they think otherwise. This may come as bad news since, if you are like many, you probably use PDF (Portable Document Format) for saving a variety of file types: text documents, pictures, and scan images, among others. 

In fact, PDF has become so widespread that the ability to display (and even annotate) PDF files has become almost a standard requirement in smart phones and e-book readers, such as Amazon's and Sony's.

PDF, of course, does not think.

Kindle 2: Books in the Age of Distraction

With the capacity to carry more than a thousand electronic books, the new
e-book reader from Amazon is perhaps the computer geek’s or
environmentalist’s dream gadget. But is it the bookworm’s? |  IslamOnline.net

Clearly Amazon wants to be part of what is potentially the “next big thing” in the realm of text. Having snatched magazine-cover publicity for the first generation of its e-book reader, the Kindle, Amazon has uncovered the second iteration last week, with display and storage capacity  improvements.

The Kindle 2 offers about ten times the storage capacity of the 180 megabytes in the original gadget. It also sports 16 gradations of grey, instead of the Spartan black-and-white in the Kindle 1. This means that the Kindle 2 display (which utilizes the E-Ink technology developed at the MIT Media Lab) is getting even closer to mimicking the experience of reading paper books. E-Ink is a display technology that is different from liquid crystal technology common in laptops. The MIT-developed technology uses less power, is less bright (thus doesn’t strain the eyes as quickly as liquid crystal displays),
and is readable in daylight.

Newspapers in the Googlespace

Good news—for now—that Google is pushing major newspapers to open up their vaults | IslamOnline.com

With no fanfare the New York Times pulled the plug on its TimesSelect program this last September. Through TimesSelect, launched in October 2005, the Times started charging readers (who were not  subscribers to the print edition) for access to some sections of the online edition,fparticularly that of opinion columns. Clearly, the objective was to capitalize on the New York Times’ fame as one of the world’s best news papers to generate revenues through its online presence.

That was a fair thing to do. Why did the Times shut it down then?

The way the Times explained the closure implies it probably had to. In a short note, the Times cited “significant alterations in the online landscape” over the period TimesSelect was in operation that made it in the best interest of the New York Times readers and “brand” to grant full online access to all readers. Most important among those alterations was the fact that “[r]eaders increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources.”