This is what iPad mini may look like

Here are pictures of what the new iPad mini might look like. The guys at Gizmodo.com have created these great pictures of an iPad & iPad mini. Their assumption in creating the pictures is that the two will have similar designs:

Here's the original story:

http://gizmodo.com/5932809/this-is-how-the-ipad-mini-will-look-next-to-the-ipad

Microsoft's Surface Intention

Notebook PCs with Windows tend to be dull. There are exceptions, because the most attractive ones are colorful, some are wrapped in expensive feeling metal or plastic. So I say "tend to be".
Notebooks come in many sizes, storage capacities, connectors and CPU performances. The human interfaces are a screen and a keyboard with a touchpad in one packet plus a mouse. The concept has remained unchanged for about two decades, because it's so good!
Microsoft has long been interested in a touch interface and they seem to have thought there would be products if they put touch into Windows. With few exceptions that has rarely happened. The Windows PCs offering touch UI have not taken off, because the products were too expensive and didn't handle well. People didn't really know how to deal with them. Here's an example scenario: "I need to write a document, so I'll use the keyboard now. Where's the cable, ... type, type type,  ... Ok. Done. Turn it off.". Whatever the intentions were when turning the PC on, the user mostly ended up using the keyboard. Touch didn't add anything really. The graphics wasn't made for a touch interface and neither was the product as a whole. The price/experience ratio was poor.
Time went by, iPad came and Microsoft had to admit it seems to work fine and Apple had beaten them again. "Let's make our own touch PC, since no one else can be bothered to do it correctly", they must have thought, and Surface was born. (Surface is an iPad competitor: http://proctele.blogspot.se/2012/06/whats-microsoft-surface.html).
I think they are right about doing both the hardware and the software themselves, just like Apple. It's essential for getting it right. Microsoft have made some good mistakes along the way, so it's possible they've learned enough. Hopefully enough to make the Surface+Windows8 an excellent product. 

Microsoft Surface available on October 26

This beautiful Microsoft device, which I hope will be as nice to use at its looks indicate, will be available to buy on October 26. 

At least that's what Microsoft says in its SEC-filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312512316848/d347676d10k.htm

Here's an earlier blog entry I wrote about the Surface: http://proctele.blogspot.se/2012/06/whats-microsoft-surface.html

New iPhone probably on September 12

It seems like it's going to happen on 12 September, the unveiling of the next iPhone. 
The first buyers will get their hands on it on 21 September. This is according to www.imore.com. A smaller type of iPad will also be unveiled. There might even be a new iPod touch too, but an iPod nano seems certain.
The new iPhone screen is likely to be 4 inches diagonally and have a 16:9 aspect ratio unlike the current 3:2 ratio. The whole device will be thinner and have a new smaller connector. The new software for it - iOS6 - has already been released, so at the moment we know more about its brain than its body. 
Here's a post about iOS6 I wrote earlier: http://proctele.blogspot.se/2012/06/whats-new-in-ios-6.html

Hey Facebook, here are some ways to make money

Facebook is not doing well economically, but they have an awful lot of users; probably a billion users soon. They can't survive indefinitely without making money. Here are some ideas for them.

1. Facebook will not be able to get enough money from selling ads, the way they do it now. For research I clicked on four ads just to see what would happen. Two of them were probably from crooked companies, because they led me via strange links to gambling sites. 
2. They could sell a different type of ad. Clicking on it would only lead you to the company's FB page and that page would of course give you the intended message. Any links from that page would be forbidden. This arrangement would increase user's confidence in Facebook ads and more of them would be sold. It would also keep users within Facebook. 
3. Facebook should try to get a user fee from its users. It would be a small sum for private users and a lot more for companies. It would still be possible to get FB for free, but there would be a price tag on some things. One thing people value is privacy, so a lot of privacy would cost. Big corporations would pay perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
4. Facebook could create a FB app store. They might take 30% of earnings. 
5. They could generate a summary of user posts (over some user-selected time-period) and friend's posts and sell it as a nice hardcopy to the user; a sort of photo-book with lots of pictures and text. I'd suggest they buy some existing photo service provider. 
6. They could encourage schools to use Facebook for teacher-parent communication. Schools would have to pay for this service. Of course security would have to be much improved, because here it's essential. 

If you see some of this happening, remember you read it here first ;-)

Google things you might not know

Here's a few things Google provides that you may not know about.

The search box can do more than just search. It knows some units you've never heard of.
Example: "1 smoot in meters" gives 1.7018 meters
It can calculate. "pi * sin(pi/12)" gives 0.813104011
It can translate: "the word house in spanish" gives: house - casa
Pacman game: http://www.google.com/pacman/
Donkey Kong game: http://www.google-pacman.com/77/donkey-kong/
Tetris game: http://www.google-pacman.com/39/tetris/

Try entering google into the search-box and you'll find a lot of fascinating google sites, like:
maps.google.com earth.google.com translate.google.com groups.google.com docs.google.com news.google.com images.google.com books.google.com mail.google.com sketchup.google.com google video google reader google apps for business google webmaster tools google alerts google calendar toolbar.google.com google webfonts google web-browser google wallet google trends scholar.google.com

If you're more keen on using the web through your mobile phone, then it's good to know that many of these Google services have their own API. That means programmers can create nice apps, which use the same data that the google sites use. Examples of this are feed-reader apps for the iPhone. Many of those use your Google Reader account and present it to you in a much better way than the browser does.

Amazon smartphone coming?

There are rumors of an Amazon smartphone, so it seems Amazon think they have something new to offer in smartphones. What might that be?
Are they going to offer even cheaper or better Android phones? Probably not. A new mobile OS and an Amazon app store with apps for Amazon devices only, hooked up to their other business? Maybe. I think there's room for several mobile ecosystems. It has to be done well enough though. What's needed is great devices, an ocean of apps and good marketing. But has Amazon made enough mistakes to be able to succeed? Probably not. If I were Amazon, I would go for the tablets, because they're in the book business.

I'll finish by noting that iTunes is now available in Asia! Japan, Australia and New Zealand used to be the only Asian countries with iTunes. The new countries/territories are Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. However, China is still not included.