• The big news week was Symbian going open source ahead of plan. I think they’re opening the S60v5 code base but after the renaming nobody can really tell.

• There seems to be a (geeky) video formats war going on with MPEG extending the H.264 royalty free period another 6 years. HTML5+Ogg seems to be viable enough to scare them into enabling HTML5+H.264 through 0 cost to end users. Btw, Flash keeps crashing with a more than year old bug and Microsoft decided SVG is something they might want to be involved with cause you know, they’re all about innovation!

• It was kind of expected but a US Senator is probing into the involvement of a number of US companies with the chinese government (oddly, Microsoft isn’t mentioned). A line on the sand will be drawn at some point and CEOs better figure out what side they chose to be on.

• On anti-censorship news an australian court rules ISPs are not obliged to filter content. This of course, flies in the face of the Government plans to force ISPs to block sites on a governmental blacklist. All for the children’s sake of course. Maybe the Australian Govt should get in touch with the UK Govt!

• Pervs are lining up to man the naked scanner booths at Heathrow and Manchester as kiddie porn laws are no match for TERRURISM laws in UK. Every man woman and child will be seen naked in the interested of keeping you safe against terrorists stupid enough to use materials the scanners can actually see.

• This week was iPad week. Already did a review and an evil review. That’s it.

• Fun mobile things: smart people at Nokia figured out how to turn an apparently normal 3G radio into a radar, Nokia revenue is growing again and “smartphone” quota too and NSN+LG hit 100Mbps on LTE.

• In a trust-us-do-no-evil move Google published an internet draft proposing a DNS extension do identify the original client. Basically, your end device usually queries names to a local server that either knows the answer from cache or goes and finds it out. Problem for Google is sometimes “local” isn’t so local and it throws off their geographical distribution system sending say, a UK customer to a Netherlands server. What they want is an extension (this is optional intermediary server) where the “local” server can tell the server that actually knows the answer who the client is so it can reply with the best mapping. This means everyone along the way can sniff and create an IP accurate name resolution log. The correct solution to Google’s problem is getting people to move to IPv6 and use anycast addresses instead of creating more DNS cruft.

• On IcantBelieveItsNotTerrorism news, a UK kids show was stopped basically for filming a scene with menacing hair-dryers. Cause you know, the UK Police can stop and warn/arrest anyone that’s doing terrurism.

• And while Virgin says it’s going to start do use DPI to sniff out “illegal content” the EU is going to start investigating them for spying on their customers. Virgin sells an all-you-can-eat music streaming/download package with Universal titles so it’s basically strong-arming its customers into signing up for that. The advanced DPI technology Virgin is planning to use looks at file names so it’s pretty pathetic. And at least in my part of the world this kind of thing is a crime.

• The people probably tried to take advantage of the iPad craze cause this was a ACTA full week. “Transparency” managed to make it to the agenda, just barely so and no in a very transparent way. A Canadian MP is demanding his government answer regarding ACTA, too bad we can’t do the same of the European Commission cause you know, they’re not actually elected so they don’t answer to the public. Meanwhile Michael Geist posted a What will ACTA mean to my domestic Law guide.

• On stupid news of the week, the future Ubisoft DRM makes you be online to play offline games. “Oh phrack, my internet connection is down, I’ll play some single player … oh wait … I can’t …”. So yeah, I’ll just take a pass on Ubisoft, m’kay ?

• On sad news Sun is gone baby gone.

Adobe is obviously annoyed at the “no flash here” broken plugin icons on the iPad. And people are pointing out Flash is a huge, bloated, crashy pig on the desktop.

Guess what, Flash is a huge, bloated, crashy pig on mobile too! My N900 has flash 9.0. It can play YouTube. But most of the time, guess what, I avoid it. I know you’re trying Adobe but the experience is just pain, pain, pain and then more pain.
And to sum it up the single greatest improvement in Fennec 1.0RC3 over RC2 was disabling Flash by default. And guess what, it got snappier.

Yeah, my N900 has Flash but for some reason the first extension I installed was AdBlock …

Everybody’s calmer and most of the giddiness has passed so now it’s time for the evil review.

• The UI is lukewarm. Everybody was expecting something new and brilliant in terms of interface. Turns out it’s a huge iPod. Same homescreen and all. And the onscreen keyboard is a dream to type on ? Really ? Didn’t hear anything about haptic feedback so it looks a lot like drumming your fingers on a glass table. And it basically fails for one hand input. Decent enough to type a quick email ? Sure. Dream to type on ? I’m sure Jobs had to force this words out of his mouth.

• Did it have to be microsim ? Everybody else does really well with “regular” sims, even the people doing tiny phones. Were those extra couple of cubic mm really needed for something else ? The truth is obviously no, that tiny extra space could be sacrificed for compatibility. The real reason is appeasing the carriers. It’s unlocked, but they can control the deployment on their network by supplying (or not) the microsims. And since nothing else uses the microsims they’re also a price point tool, carriers can create special iPad packages, cheaper or premium. Yesterday I wrote I’d probably get the 3G version. That was obviously a mistake. Not with microsims and $130 premium, there’s a wonderful world of Joikuspots out there that manage to bridge that gap.

• No DisplayPort ? No USB. For something that’s supposed to be nearer a computer than an iPod the connectivity looks pretty ipodish. And most of all, no front facing camera ? Just imagine Steve doing iChat AV on stage with the Pad, that would’ve blown everybody away. I’m also told college kids really like videochating hotties. Forcing people to see my ugly mug isn’t high on my list but it will probably hurt on the college market next September.

• This thing has iPhone 3-year plan written all over it. It’s not like I can see into the future but I can see a 3rd gen iPad a couple of years from now with front facing camera and USB and regular sim slot. This isn’t exactly a cheap toy so people might just hold out for the next model, the one that’s really great.

• And the elephant in the room is, this isn’t 3 years ago. 3 years ago the iPad would reign supreme and the closest “competition” would be from an HTC or HP “slate” running Vista (Intel, 2h of battery) or WinMo5 (350MHz ARM, 4h of battery) and it would be utterly irrelevant. Now, however, I’d be holding out for the snapdragon powered Android “pad” someone (my money is on Asus) someone is going to release in the not so distant future. It won’t be aluminum, the screen won’t be as stunning and it probably won’t be glass. But it will have a front facing camera, it will have have USB and 3G people can actually use. And it will be in the same class as the iPad.

And Jobs came forth and gave us the Pad . The good names like Tablet and Slate were already taken and Pad fits in the iP theme so cutting a long story short, iPad it is. In the usual list style:

• It’s big. It’s carry in a bag big. The screen is nearly 10” and there’s a bit of border so it’s about the size of a big netbook. It’s clearly designed to be much closer to a macbook than an ipod despite the fact it’s an overgrown iPod. The screen is IPS which I never seen upclose but I’m told is brilliant and has excellent colour accuracy. That means it’s perfect for delivering digital versions of high quality, glossy magazines. And that’s obviously part of the plan as are books which might not work so well. The buying experience is itunes simple but the price point seems higher than amazon and the screen might not be easy on eyes for long reading periods. In the end it might just be down to Apple’s ability to negotiate price and DRM.

• This truly the best “handheld” Internet experience simply for sheer screen quality. And the builtin apps, from Mail to iPhoto seem great but if Apple wants to the iPad to muscle out netbooks it needs to be much less controlling about apps than it is on the iPhone. The first step is there, the 3G version is carrier unlocked and the fact Apple got a prepaid (and unsubsidized) data plan from AT&T (which by the way is not cheap, is just normal Europe rates) is a first great step towards a less restrictive approach to apps. Communication apps like Skype or Fring (or Google Voice) shouldn’t have any issue going into the iPad. Of course the lack of a front facing camera will always hurt on that side (it will never get a videocall button like my N900 has) and Apple’s bold (and strategic) stand against Flash will kill some of the market (no Farmville for you!) but in the end the overall experience will probably come out ahead.

• The iWork version actually looks useful which is much more than I expected. And each app is $10. And you have VGA out via the dock connector. That adds up to a clear and bullseye shot on Microsoft’s cash cow. If you’re a sales guy doing a pitch at a client you better show up with an iPad and a micro projector. Only losers use Toshibas and PowerPoint. And you better use the stunning Keynote transitions instead of the crappy PowerPoint animations too. All the cool kids are doing it!

• No business guy will use an iPad as primary computer. College students on the other hand will. Why should you carry around a bunch of huge books when you can have them all inside less than 1kg ? And the PadWork (that’s what I call iWork on the iPad) is probably GoodEnough. The case and keyboard dock look custom made for this market and the fact is good deal cheaper than a MacBook doesn’t hurt either. What might hurt on this market is the lack of Flash and videoconferencing. There seems to be USB host “connection kit” so there might be a webcam dock in the not so distant future.

Will I get one right away ? Definitely not. Will I get one when the netbook we use around the house kicks the bucket ? Depends if the wife kicked the Farmville habit or not. Will it be the 3G version ? Most certainly yes!