Last week, we asked if you thought the iPad was a flop, and many of you told us exactly why.
In that comments thread, you joined us in collective head-scratching and fist-shaking over the price point and the lack of certain key features. It's clear that many of us won't be flocking to the nearest Apple store to pick up one of these gadgets. But there may be alternatives. In the event that a competitor releases a tablet device, what features would you want it to have? Give us your wish list in the comments; hopefully, manufactures are listening.
Ah, yup. Between the price point, the locked-down App Store approach, the spiffy design, the tech specs, the lack of camera, the lack of multitasking, the lack of phone, the cool iBook Store, the corny iBook shelves, the impending transformation of personal computing, the impending collapse of Apple stock, the green light for 3G voice-over-IP apps, the telco deals, the publisher deals, the rumor fact checks, the comparisons with Windows, the Kindle-killing, the not-Kindle-killing and the just-have-to-wait-and-see, all of the good points are taken.
Okay, except maybe pointing out how disappointed cartoonists are that there's no pressure-sensitive stylus. But That Would Be Self-Serving, so I won't say it.
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The big news of the week was the keenly awaited announcement of Apple's new tablet, called the iPad. Read on for our extensive coverage and analysis of this news. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web, Internet of Things and Augmented Reality.
New! We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week (in this case, iPad). Let us know your thoughts on the new format.
There are 15 events in five countries and on three continents in February. Lucky for you, four of them have discounts for ReadWriteWeb readers. Conferences, roundtables, and if you're in San Francisco, free tacos from the famous El Toynaense Taco Truck - it's gonna be a busy month.
How do you like your ReadWriteWeb events guide? As a world map? As a downloadable iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can even import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.
A while ago, I wrote a rather condemning post on how most "social media for social good" efforts were heavy on social media activities but came up short on actual social good.
Still, there are organizations such as Kiva, The Extraordinaires or SocialVibe and many others that do turn user microactions and technology to affect change and do good in very tangible ways. Those are just three of the tech nonprofit or philanthropic organizations I can think of at the moment, but we at RWW would love to know more. Tell us in the comment what your favorite tech nonprofit is and why.
Mozilla just announced that Weave, its official synchronization tool for Firefox, has just hit version 1.0 and is now generally available. Weave is a free browser add-on that can seamlessly sync bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs between different computers that run Firefox. Weave also runs on Mozilla's mobile browser for the Nokia N900.
According to Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos, "millions of people now own Kindles." Sadly, Amazon has always kept the exact number of Kindle sales under wraps. According to some analysts, consumers in the US bought roughly 3 million e-readers in 2009 and the majority of these were probably Kindles. Amazon also doesn't release any data about how many e-books it sells. In a press release that accompanied the company's Q4 earnings report, however, Amazon yesterday announced that it now sells six Kindle books for every 10 physical books when both editions are available.
Google just made it a little bit easier to call ahead for reservations or to order a pizza for pick-up while you're on the go. In addition to its recent addition of location-based search suggestions, Google has added the ability for businesses to include a clickable phone number in their listings, making it even easier to use the search engine on your smartphone.
Google just announced that its Apps Script scripting language is now open to all users of the Google Apps Standard Edition. Until now, Apps Script, which allows users to create scripts that automate common tasks in Google Docs, was only available to paying Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users. Every Google Apps user can now, for example, create scripts that automatically import stock prices into a spreadsheet, convert foreign currency based on today's exchange rate or email team members when their task status is updated.
