However, with the new iPhone coming soon, Android expecting multiple releases and Nokia releasing a new version of Symbian as well as having Maemo in the wings I can’t help but wonder if we’re overly spoilt for choice. In actual fact, Samsung just released the Bada operating system at the Mobile World Conference and Palm’s WebOS is still a decent OS despite USA only hardware not to mention good old Blackberry.

You see, no matter what operating system you might have on your super phone it all comes down to apps these days. While the Android Market and the Nokia Ovi Store are good, they’ll never beat the iPhone app store, not at the moment. It’s simply a case of momentum, Apple has about two years lead and a single, unified device to develop for meaning apps gets made faster. In the end game, Nokia and Google have the ace up their sleeve that they provide hardware for multiple types of users as well as multiple price points but this is something for another time.

What Microsoft does have is the world’s biggest desktop operating system and with that, access to the worlds biggest development houses. Companies such as Adobe, Corel, Intuit as well as massive providers such as SAP and Oracle all provide Windows desktop software. On top of this, you’ve got the best Office software bar none with the Microsoft Office software you’ve got a killer team. Now add in game developers and you’ve basically got the ultimate development teams for your new phone OS.

My thoughts are that this choice in mobile phone OS is all that will eventually differentiate the top end when hardware starts to get fairly standardized. The problem with this is that the amount of development time that goes into building an app for every platform means that development houses will have to make a choice in what system they develop for.

I hope in the future we tend to have more of the traditional Windows/Mac/Linux setup on mobile phones like we currently have with desktops. This way, you’re spoilt for choice but developers can choose their playing field based on specific characteristics.

That said, Series 7 is a huge step forward for Microsoft and if they pull it off, something they should be really proud of.

Firstly, all these devices are purely touchscreen based devices and if there is one thing I can’t stand for real work it’s a touchscreen. As such (at least for me) a tablet will purely be a device to consume the Internet with. At the most I’ll be typing URL’s into the device and even then you’ll have to use one finger rather than two like the iPhone as the size is prohibitive to use both hands. The argument about us consuming more and more media on our phone’s and thus a tablet making sense as it can really give you a “web” like experience and I think a tablet would be a great device if it can overcome the following issues:

The first problem is that of connectivity. Obviously as a base connectivity option there needs to be wi-fi to connect to home networks and coffee shops but the next logical connection is that of a sim slot to connect to a 3G network. This unfortunately costs a fair amount of money and means that you’ll probably end up buying another contract either to subsidise the price of the device or just to get online. Now if you’re an iPhone Acolyte chances are you’re selling your first born child into slavery to afford an iPhone. This means for you to afford the data for an Apple tablet, you’ll have to sell your house and live in your car. I’m struggling to see a reason for a tablet and without a 3G connection I literally see no reason for the device.

The second issue is that it’s another device to carry. I’ve got a phone, a laptop and a Kindle (which I’ll use as a reference for a tablet) and quite frankly the Kindle stays in my bag when I take it out with me. Having an extra device isn’t necessarily going to make the web experience better and most importantly, I have a laptop for when I want to do something more than just check my mail or Twitter on my phone. A tablet would be another device I’d shove into my bag while running out the house that I wouldn’t really have a chance to use. Sure, if I was travelling on a bus or subway everyday then being able to use a tablet might come in handy but sadly I drive everywhere myself and can’t multitask well enough to do both. I check my mail and twitter on my phone while I’m in bed in the morning as it’s simple and I don’t have to find some ten inch device and fight through two menu’s to read my mail.

The third and probably most important point is the price point. It’s fairly likely that most tablets will use either an ARM processor or an Intel Atom chip for less power drain while still providing enough power for their stripped down operating systems. What this means is an inevitable comparison to Netbooks. In 2010 we’re seeing Netbooks reaching below the three hundred dollar mark. Yes, a tablet screen will cost more to build than a junky Netbook keyboard but you’ve also got to remember that it’ll be difficult to justify a tablet that costs more than six hundred dollars if you consider that for this price point you can buy a Netbook and a Kindle to perform any potential computing and reading requirements. If an Apple (or any other manufacturer) goes for the subsidised model which requires you to buy a twenty-four month data contract then you’re looking at thousands of dollars over and above the initial cost of the tablet.

I can’t help but wonder if the move towards a tablet PC is an aim to get “one device that does everything” and I’m fairly sure that this is a terrible approach to computing. The Kindle works so well as it’s a highly focussed device while the average smartphone tries to be a mobile computer and always has some sort of niggle that prevents it from excelling in all it’s attempted fields.

Of course this is all based on supposition and my vague opinions on a device (and category) that basically doesn’t exist yet. It will be interesting to see what happens at the end of the month when the Apple tablet is inevitably announced but I won’t be that guy camping outside a Vodacom store to spend even more money on a subsidised Apple tablet.

Since I don’t have enough to do with my life I’ve decided to spend some time interviewing people on camera for the sake of improving my interview skills. Basically I can watch these videos and see what I like and do not like. The aim is to release one every two weeks and hopefully I can stick to that schedule. If you’d like some free publicity then give me a shout.

Take a look at Motorola and to some extent Samsung. Motorola have basically used their last dying gasp of breath to create Android phones such as the Droid and the Cliq. These devices would have always been decent hardware but terrible software when using a Motorola operating system. Until today, the Droid was the hottest Android phone out there with Android version 2.0.1, a large screen and a relatively fast processor. Today though, all the money spent on developing and promoting the Droid is irrelevant as there is a bigger, better and badder phone on the block.

Sure, technology moves on but the important issue here is that this is a Google phone with the latest hardware and software, not a partner device. The big G’s intents here are fairly obvious, they want to run Android and partners be damned. Sure you can technically buy any other Android device you’d be fairly stupid to do this considering the technical advances of the Nexus One.

As a partner in the Open Handset Alliance I’d pretty much give up the game as the precedent has been set, Google made hardware will seemingly always be the top of the pile. In addition to this, devices such as the Nook and (as an example) tablets that use Android are not considered certified devices as they are not cellphone’s and are unable to access the app market.

Maybe it’s just me but this all seems a bit draconian for a company that has a mission statement to “do no evil”

Today the Nexus One Android phone is to be announced at a Google press conference and it is obviously an assault on the iPhone. Android is growing in leaps and bounds and has the potential (save for maybe Maemo but that’s not consumer friendly yet) to be much bigger and better than the iPhone has and ever will be. Unless Apple pulls something amazing out of the bag, the 1 Ghz processor and bigger screen on the Nexus One is a fairly appealing prospect. WIth Google buying Admob it makes sense for them to want to get more and more people mobile. Speaking of mobile advertising, Apple has recently bought “Quattro Wireless”, a direct competitor of the Admob network. See what I’m getting to here?

That said, the war between Google and Apple is not going to happen just in the mobile world. The Internet has been literally swamped with reports about an Apple Tablet but now there is also a report of how Google and HTC are creating a tablet running Android, a direct competitor to the supposed ‘iSlate”. The two companies compete in the browser space as well as online cloud services. Millions of people use Gmail, Google Calendar and other free services that Apple’s MobileMe will cost you $79 a year for.

While they don’t exactly compare Chrome OS to OSX there must be some thought on the side of Google to create a decent competitor to OSX. At the moment it’s a fairly ridiculous concept but has the potential.

The reality is that Apple has no choice but to use Google products. For example, Google search is the default option when making a search on the iPhone and realistically, if Apple wanted to totally lock out Google their only other options would be Microsoft’s Bing or Yahoo search. Both of these options are totally unrealistic.

Historically you’d expect Apple to totally shut out Google from their systems but as I’ve mentioned, this is totally impossible. What would be interesting is if Google cuts Apple out although the chances of this are minimal as it costs nothing for Google to be the default search provider for Apple.

I’d be surprised if Apple doesn’t pull a fairly aggressive move and decide to cut Google out completely to make sure they don’t loose any revenue to the Google. You’ve also got to remember that (as a category example) there is more than enough space with Smartphone’s as the category continues to grow. Nokia and Microsoft are also biding their time with competitive hardware and software platforms and have the potential to eclipse both Google and Apple as they squabble over a turf war.

Either way, I foresee a big spat between the two giants with 2010 having the opening salvo.

Let me jump straight into it:

Starting off with the good, the world of Pandora is truly something amazing. What blew my mind me so much is how insanely intricate everything was. From bugs to animals and to tree’s, the world is perfectly detailed and works in sync. There is a heirachical food chain as well as a wide array of plants and animals that fit perfectly with each other. I honestly don’t think there was a single leaf that felt out of place in that movie.

My second favourable aspect of Avatar was the acting. Unlike certain directors (*cough* George Lucas *cough*) who seem to make good actors sound wooden and dull the cast of Avatar was flawless. Sam Worthington as lead character Jake Sully was a particularly good casting and I honestly believed that every person in that movie was perfect for their roles. Sigourney Weaver was also great and even though Giovanni Ribisi had such a small role, his portrayal as a troubled corporate boss with a directive to complete was great.

Obviously the 3D effects were pretty amazing as well, especially in light of how amazingly detailed the world of Pandora is. Now lets move on to what I didn’t like.

The first and biggest problem with Avatar for me was the fact that the story was so poor. If you haven’t seen the movie then I’ll save you some time and money: go dig out your old Star Wars (the first trilogy) boxset, take some acid to add the visual effects and you’ve basically got the Avatar experience for a fraction of the cost and in the comfort of your own home. Quite simply, it’s a “unlikely hero goes on to save the day despite going against his own people and being a total screw-up in his past” story. The plot was a mashup between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings just with better visual effects and 3D. While the story was as old as time, the issue here is that you ended up with a dull, plodding movie.

In a two and a half hour movie, you need to do a lot to keep people’s attention and at least an hour of the movie was self-indulgent effects for the sake of it. Again, the highly predictable storyline meant that there was never any tension of pacing. You always know the hero will survive and succeed “against the odds by way of sheer tenacity and determination” and as such, you’re never left worrying about his success. For that matter, the whole reason for the human’s to be on Pandora is to mine “Unobtanium”. Surely, with 15 years of development, James Cameron could have come up with a better name for a mineral than “Unobtanium”? Anyway, I might have a short attention span but I found myself quite bored through long stretches of the movie and never once caring about whether the main characters lived or died.

On a final note, I think 3D must be the biggest gimmick of all time. Sure it’s nice to have things swishing around infront of your face and “being there” but the simple fact is that it doesn’t add to the story and just seems like a lazy device to add an extra, unnecessary layer of graphics to an already overloaded world. 3D is going to make film makers lazier as they can rely on a graphical boost rather than working their plot harder.

I can’t help but wonder whether I hadn’t seen Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” the day before I would have seen Avatar in a better light. “Basterds” is about the same length, has ridiculously long dialogue’s but retains the most important part of a movie: pacing and tension. Avatar fails on both counts due to the fact that it’s slow but more importantly never builds tension and as such never allows you to really connect with the characters.

If I had to judge Avatar purely on storyline I’d give it a three out of ten at the most. However, taking everything else into account I’d give it a six or even a seven out of ten. I’d recommend everyone to go see it as it really is a marvel of movie making but if they’d just tweaked the storyline to be vaguely difficult to predict, I’d imagine this would have been the movie of the decade.

A lot of focus has been placed on how Manto sacrificed her life to walk to Tanzania and the go to Russia to learn Communism and Medicine. This supposedly shows her dedication to the ANC struggle cause but to me this seems like another nail in the coffin of her reputation. You would assume that this overseas experience should have made her more worldly but I posit this time overseas made her lazy, an alcoholic and a crony of Mbeki. Msimang spent her time overseas close to Mbeki and that is how we found her in the presidency, a friend of the president rather than a competent representative of the people and their needs.

There’s been plenty of debate about how her policies between 2000 and 2005 killed around three hundred thousand South Africans. While it’s difficult to run those exact numbers the human cost needs to be considered as well as the reputation cost. Quite simply, Manto made us look like fools on an international stage and regardless of the number of people that died directly or indirectly, this is unacceptable in my mind. Her Kleptomania, Alcoholism and preference for medical treatment was shameful. How many people died because Manto received their liver? Was Manto better than any other South African? I’d say she was worse off for her moral and intellectual failings.

Thabo Mbeki’s spokesperson has come out saying that Manto had never said anything about HIV not causing AIDS and how her promoting vegetables was merely a supplement to ARV’s. Sadly, this a lie and Manto acted like a mini dictator during her tenure. Her support of Mathias Rath, a doctor that promoted taking vegetables and vitamins proves her clear indifference to the suffering of her fellow countrymen and women. A lot of talk comes on how Manto tried to promote women’s rights but again this is patently wrong. If Manto has wanted to promote the rights of women, she’d have provided ARV’s to young mothers so that they could have seen their children grow up. This sudden statement that Manto never said HIV doesn’t cause AIDS is laughable, it was clearly a policy of the incompetence and pathetic “head in the sand” mentality of Mbeki and Msimang. Their legacy should be shamed and a massive black mark placed on both their heads.

I don’t in any way think it’s good that she died but lets stop pretending that she was anything but an incompetent minister that did cause the death of many people who could have lived longer on ARV’s and not beetroot. At the end of the day, if Charles Manson died you wouldn’t think “shame, he was a bit of a mass murderer but his aim in life was to empower the disenfranchised”. It’s just ludicrous to give Manto ANY positive comments.

Let the woman go peacefully and stop making a fuss over someone that doesn’t deserve it. If anything, you should be giving the same press time to the people that died under her regime.

Every year, the Vodacom and MTN summer advertising campaigns launch and fight for domination of consumer spending. This year, MTN is fighting back on its loss of revenue by pushing their latest marketing genius, the “Ayoba” campaign. From what I’m told, “Ayoba” doesn’t have a direct translation but basically means “cool”, “hip” or “just generally great”.

The radio campaign (which is played so often it makes you sick to listen to the radio) basically entails a fairly fabulous man answering calls on the “MTN Ayobaness hotline” to which people phone in with stupid queries of whether their totally ridiculous requirement is Ayoba or not. The simple fact of the matter is that while these adverts are absolutely horrible, lack any entertainment and frankly are lies. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of phoning an MTN call-center you’d have an experience similar to the following:

First of all you get bounced around through an IVR system where you’ll have to put your cellphone number in while also choosing from around three menu’s that have nothing to do with your actual query. Eventually, you’ll get an operator after a while.

Caller: I need help with my cellphone/datacard isn’t working
MTN: Sorry, you’re in the wrong department. I’ll transfer you to the right one (this will add another 30 seconds onto your call. Round about now your cellphone is heated to a temperature similar to the face of the sun.)
IVR: This call is being recorded for quality purposes (really?)
MTN 2: *bzzz* *garble* *hummm*
Caller: Sorry, I can’t hear you. What did you say?
MTN 2: What is your cellphone number for our records?
Caller: I’ve already put my number in though? Anyway, can you help me with my cellphone/datacard?
MTN 2: No sorry, you’ll have to call your service provider.

Now considering you’ve waited for around twenty minutes all to be told your service provider is the only one who can help you is enough to make you take the leap to another cell provider.

Here’s the thing, MTN is spending gazillions on what I’d call an absolutely shocking and annoying advertising campaign while at the same time their service levels continue to drop. Between expensive call and SMS rates, dropped calls and poor call centers MTN isn’t exactly Ayoba.

Do us all a favour, drop the campaign and make sure Vodacom’s Mo the Meerkat remains the worst cell advert in South African history.

The tech world is buzzing this week about the beta launch of the latest Google product, Chrome OS. About a year ago Google released their Chrome Browser to compete against both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser has made some pretty impressive strides in its time and runs much faster than either of its main rivals. So far, so good.

This week though, Chrome OS was finally shown to the world in a press event. What we do know about the OS is that it takes a very minimalist system and is essentially just a browser but what makes it an operating system will be support for drivers. It’s quite literally the hardware interface with an attractive browser built on top. With Google investing so heavily on Cloud services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Contacts and many more, the system won’t have programs installed but will rather use the Chrome browser to interface with these services. Traditionally when you needed to write a document, you’d open MS Word or Open Office while now you’ll be opening the Google Docs interface. I may have missed something but Google does provide an interface (Google Gears) to use those service such as Gmail and Docs offline so one can assume you’d still have a system with a fairly large drive. Considering you can’t install software in the traditional Windows model, you shouldn’t need a particularly large hard drive and could probably get away with a smallish flash memory drive.

On first impression this is revolutionary, game changing and since it’s specifically for netbooks it’s playing in an arena where people care more about price and only require a small amount of functionality, specifically web surfing. I think Google is on the right track, I just think they’re going about it in the totally wrong way.

Here’s the thing, Chrome OS is built on Linux and is in conjunction with the people that make Ubuntu. Considering Ubuntu is also free, also offers a browser but at the same time so much more it’s all a bit confusing. You’ve also got to remember that a company created a version of Linux called “GoS” which basically interfaced with Google cloud services although you’ve probably never heard of this OS as it was a critical failure. Here’s the thing, Google already has the Android platform they use for their cellphones and it has already been ported to Netbooks. If Google used Android there would be more emphasis for developers to make applications for multiple devices. This is great for the developers as there are more revenue streams for them. If we look at trends from the past the iPhone originally started with purely web applications, something that users hated and was rapidly changed in favour of actual apps. If developers were pushed to create apps for phone’s and Netbook’s, Google wins the war on both fronts.

Another important issue is that of price. With Netbook’s costing anywhere between $300 and $450 how on earth do you actually cost a machine with Chrome OS on it. Previously, Netbook’s that came with Linux were about twenty dollars cheaper than their Windows counterparts. For twenty dollars I’d much rather have the Windows license to use if I want and then install a free Linux operating system myself. The problem for Google is that they’re going to have to make the price point particularly appealing, in excess of fifty dollars cheaper than a Windows Netbook to be a fair proposition. Microsoft won’t stand for that and will likely lower the costs of Windows 7 for Netbook’s (starter edition) to compete. Considering how a Netbook is supposed to be a cheap and cheery device, a cloud services only device ruins the appeal for many in the third world.

Living in a third world country with dubious Internet I still find the cloud unappealing. In my experience trying to work on an Excel spreadsheet in Google Docs is pretty painful on a 384K ADSL connection. I’m also somewhat reticent with regards to sending all my documents, information and contacts to the Google cloud. I’m not perturbed with Google having the information, I’m just worried about them loosing it.

In the past day or so Sergey Brin of Google has come out to say that Chrome and Android will probably merge into one platform but I think they need to skip the teething problems of Chrome OS and go straight to Android desktop.

Impulsively I went onto the Amazon site and added two Kindle’s and a protective case for each one. Before I went to the checkout though, I felt an urge to see what books I could find on the site. I’d heard this horrible rumour that the book store was basically neutered so I thought I’d check it out. Sadly, I was correct and once I logged into my Amazon account I was taken to the “African” store.

In the African store the bestseller is a book called “When Night Falls” which is according to the categorisation, a romance novel. Of the top 5 bestsellers, three are romance novels. Now I love a bit of saucy literary works but surely this lack of books is a major turn off for most people?

In order to make sure it wasn’t just African users having terrible taste in books and thus artificially affecting the bestseller list I did some random searches. First up, I looked for Ayn Rand as I’d really like to read both “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”. I found about ten different copies of her first book “Anthem” but none of the other books. Still, Ayn Rand isn’t exactly mainstream so I decided to search for popular illiterate, Dan Brown. Strangely enough, there was no Dan Brown books in the African Kindle store. We also get the free books that you can get in the US store for two dollars which is basically the premium we pay for not being in the US. While it’s a bit ridiculous to pay an extra two dollars for a book, it’s still cheaper than buying it in SA.

My moral is this: If you want to buy a Kindle then just make sure you can find the books that you might actually want to read rather than Project Gutenberg rejects. I cannot for the life of me understand why there is a specific licensing issue considering we’re actually paying for the content. Let me put it this way, the moment the store gets better books or is opened up to all the books available in the US store there will be a Kindle with my name on it shipping to SA. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy those saucy romance novels.