A few days ago (17th November … cough), I picked up a new toy, a Kobo Touch E-Reader.  I made a tweet along the lines of…

Look, it’s an EBook reader that’s not a kindle! It is, rather good. Review in a day or so.

In my defence, I have been testing the device thoroughly.  So thoroughly, I’ve clocked 41 hours reading time on it and around six books.  If you don’t believe me, see the photo for proof.

It’s small (6 inch screen, quite thin border), it’s light, and comes with a touch screen.  If you need more space, just pop in a micro SD card.  The device supports EPUB, MOBI, TXT, CBR/CBZ and PDF.  It’ll also connect using Adobe EPUB if you’ve bought books from other stores.  The UI is amazingly intuitive: your bookshelf can be arranged in a variety of views and reading consists of flicks or taps to the left and right.  The font size, margins, line spacing and font can all be changed, so you can make your page look like a condensed cheap 70s paperback or as spacious as a modern best seller hard back.  Reading is an addictive pleasure.  If the on board fonts aren’t good enough, you can side load TTFs.  Finally, it comes with a pretty good webkit based browser, Sudoku and a sketch pad.  Battery life appears to happily be a few weeks with a couple of hours a day.  I personally, recharge between books.

Firmware updates are regular and come as OTA updates.  Firmware appears to be released every few weeks with new functionality each time.  Latest release (as of writing) brought notes, highlights and annotations to non Kobo Books.

One of the big winners for me, is the shop system.  Purchases can be made on the website, on the reader or on tablet/phone.  Books are delivered OTA (Wifi only).  Books purchased from the store are tracked as you read so you can pick up your position on any device, and keep track of your reading habits.  Sidloaded books are only tracked on the device.  Books purchased from Kobo can be downloaded as Adobe EPub to use on other devices.  Admittedly, my first purchase had a small hitch, but this was quickly resolved by the store and I was refunded the full value of the book as store credit, which was rather nice.

I am impressed.  Love the device, love the system.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting back to reading.

(Edit: Wired rather like it as well: page1, page2)

They brought forth to him tea,
It was tepid and weak.
What insult was this,
Did his patience, they seek?

Willing to forgive, he let this one slide.
And awaited the main to arrive with some pride.
Unbeat in battle, known far North was he.
As it’s mightiest eater, the pig slayer – me.

Out came the plate, brought to his table.
With quite some pomp, as if from a fable.
Insulted again, for what meat was this?
Reclaimed from the bits of the pig that were missed.

The sausage was plain, not Cumber’ or Lincoln,
They had managed to fail, with their miserable bacon.
The poor wretch had never seen a winter up North,
which would have hardened the meat, added taste to the pork.

The pudding had never seen innards or blood,
And the eggs had been pushed from the arse of a dove.
(For clearly not, the chicken had seen,
the great battle of foul of 2003).

Was this truly the all and the sum of the south?
That so soft were they, that their food left such doubt?
And all I could see was red in mine eyes,
That this was the best they could offer as tithe.

And as wont is all Northeners as is to do,
when treated as thus by as others shall too.
For whence and such as nerves are left this raw,
There was only one action left: to declare WAR.

Back in the North batallions were formed,
Regiments armed with real sausage, not Quorn.
And phalanxes grappled with spears made from bread,
formed and baked hard enough to crack a man’s head.

For where food is in battle, be in no doubt!
Our northern counterparts are tasty and stout.
So when presented forthwith with such a threat,
we go armed to the teeth, and very well fed.

Between Manchester and London the forces did meet,
and the Midlands did form the place for the feat.
All forces did bring, son, dog and daughter,
Lines of both sides threw themselves to the slaughter.

The battle was mighty, the battle was proud.
The Hodge was in Weatherspoons, where else to be found?
Our comrades did cleave though the soft sourthern masses.
Like a spork glides fast through a bowl of molasses.

On centre of field, two fighters sought out,
For Devon was held as the prize of their bout.
David and Daisy stripped bare to the waist,
Their udders displayed, a fight in poor taste.

Over so quickly, noone asked how.
Poor Daisy lay spent and dead on the ground.
The victorious bathed in the milk of the spoils,
It was clear right now, the Southeners recoiled.

In one final act, to cleanse and to pure,
Because dead bodies rot and makes harder to cure.
The earth was schorced to five thousand degrees,
a fitting end to Birmingham, sacrificed for we.

And the lands were divided and owned by the North,
apart from Devon which Dave had claimed as his fort.
And the land was now once quite again sure,
that no breakfast again would be served, quite so poor.

Dennis Ritchie, the father of C and Unix, was responsible for developing the operating system and language which underepins almost every machine which matters in the world.  With no C, despite your own personal views, there would be no Objective-C, no C++, no C# and no Java.  Programmers, computer scientists and anyone with any attachment to a computer owes this man a drink.  The man was quiet, quite reserved, and I think this reflected in his work.  There will be people the world over quietly raising a respectful glass in his honour.

Steve Jobs was a visionary,  driven by a desire to commodotise and make the things computers can do accessible.  With no Steve Jobs, I am pretty confident that certain areas of user interface design and product design would be at least a decade behind where we are now.  Jobs’ lasting legacy is not the products that he’s introduced, but the ideas.  It’s surprising to see the effect Apple’s rising has had on other producers in the industry, switching from a “good enough” viewpoint to consumer-centric.  Whether intentional, he did build a cult around himself and became worshipped by customers, worshipped by others in the industry and worshipped by fellow engineers.  When he passed away, there was a global out cry, and scenes of fans out-pouring their grief over what they saw as their loss.  This was also appropriate in its own way.

There have been complaints that Ritchie’s accomplishments were greater, his legacy larger, and yet his death passed relatively unnoticed by the mainstream media, and that this was unjust while the death of Jobs was plastered for several days across the major news channels.  The people who will mourn Dennis Ritchie genuinely appreciate his contribution to the industry, and will know it every time they use a tool he has influenced, be it mobile phone, desktop, server, programming language or toolchain.  People grieve for different people in different ways.  Both will be missed.  Jobs and Ritchie will be remembered for different reasons, and the way they will be remembered will reflect that.

Overall Impressions

I pre-ordered the European 3G Xoom from the Carphone Warehouse.  This edition comes with a silver, metal back which makes it look faintly similar to it’s chief competitor.  The tablet comes with a dual-core Tegra, clocked at 1GHz, some RAM (does it matter?  See below), a decent camera on the back and a respectable web cam on the front.  It’s also packing 32GB of onboard storage, and whilst there *is* a Micro-SD card slot, it’s not working yet pending a firmware update.  Not overly clever, but I think there’s genuine reasons for that.  On top of all that is Honeycomb – Google’s latest iteration of the Android OS designed specifically for tablets.

Size and weight wise, especially with the silver back, reminds me of an iPad 1.  It feels good in the hand, if I could be persuaded to take it out the case once in a while (yes – I’m mildly paranoid).  It’s a good form factor for a variety of jobs and so far in the past week this thing has been out to a picnic (where it took a few very good shots), managed chunks of my business (e-mail and documents primarily, and in general been a very nice bridge device between my phone and my laptop.  I am impressed.  The general approach by both Motorola and Google has been to aim for this bridge approach, and does make me wonder if Chrome OS is possibly a little redundant.  Details such as the e-mail client’s pane approach and the new notification system are clear indications of a real re-think as to how Android should work on a tablet, and even the way native 2.x applications work on the tablet has subtle differences which make for an enhanced experience.

Honeycomb

Honeycomb has had a complete UI redesign to target the tablet market and it shows.  There’s no point of me posting my own images here, 30 seconds googling and you can find your own.  The home interface is still based on the same widget based interface you know and love, but have taken some of the features on board from third party home screen replacements.  Scrolling widgets are now native (although not *yet* resizable – shame), and with extra collections of smart folders, feels more like a desktop.  Normal third party widgets work fine – I don’t think I could really live without the Pure widget collection.

Navigation and notifications are distinctively different between 2.x and Honeycomb.  Notifications are not displayed across the top of the screen, but pop up in the bottom right of the screen, before fading away and leaving an icon.  Tapping on the bottom right will display a list of notifications, just like pulling down the top bar.  Navigation is handled by soft buttons in the bottom left for back, home, application-switching and (for 2.x applications), menu.  Applications with a Honeycomb specific UI do not require the menu button, since they now use a slightly different model.

Since the dawn of Android, Google has encouraged people to use layouts for their applications which are designed to scale well to different sized screens, and made this pretty straightforward with their layout engine.  This has been positively reinforced (despite the moans) by manufacturers, who stubbornly refuse to use just one screen size and insist on producing a multitude of different devices.  A such, if you wanted your application to gain a wide-reach in the market, then it must have already been robust enough to work on these differing handsets.  This sets Honeycomb in good stead, since most 2.x applications simply treat it as a bigger screen and scale appropriately.  I’m currently writing this blog post in AndroNoter, which has correctly placed it’s main three buttons across the bottom of the screen and given me a huge writing area to work within.  So far, there are very few applications I have found which don’t scale in a similar way (ironically – the WordPress application being one of them).

As for Honeycomb targeted applications, Google has added a few more niceties into the mix.  Applications now have access to an application bar which is displayed across the top of their application.  The application bar contains the title of the application, an icon (which in some cases acts as a home icon for the application), the toolbar for the current activity (copy, paste, zoom, forward, archive, etc) and an icon which when clicked, gives a drop down menu.  There is also an enhanced menu interface for options and dialogs and a few other goodies to boot.  Here again, we’re looking at a halfway house between a mobile and desktop experience.  There are flavours of both, whilst making them work very well on a large touch-screen device.  These motifs will not scale down to smaller screens, which appears to be one of the reasons why Google is hesitant about releasing the source for Honeycomb before Ice Cream is ready.

Google’s own applications and third party applications are already adopting the extra Honeycomb goodness – Gmail, Talk, Picsay Pro, QuickOffice HD and Due Today are apps I use daily which have already had Honeycomb face-lifts.  Could we do with more?  Hell yes, but it’s currently a young eco-system, and I’m happy with the way 2.x applications work for now until most of them get a Honeycomb facelift.  It would be nice if Google added a filter to the market for tablet specific applications – (and I think the US may have it), but that’s just a small nicety.

Applications

An Android device wouldn’t be an Android device without shipping with a few Google Apps.  The usual stack is here, GMail, Calendar, Maps, Talk, etc, and most have enhancements specific to Honeycomb.

The Browser

Most of my workflow now exists in the cloud.  My business is managed via FreeAgent, my documents are managed via GDocs, diagrams are done via Gliffy, etc.  In general I now look for a cloud app before I look for a native app.  So now I’m going to make a pretty bold statement:

The browser in Honeycomb is the best browser I have used from mobile to the desktop.

There – I’ve said it.  Let the hordes of angry people tear me limb from limb, I don’t care.  Google brought a tabbed browser to what was already a pretty strong Chrome on mobile browser, added in a few bells and whistles and turned out what I think is the best browser to far.  This thing is faster than Chrome on my desktop, handles every web app I throw at it (even Gliffy – which is flash based), syncs bookmarks with Chrome desktop and comes with an Incognito mode (which has more uses than porn – stop your giggling at the back).  The UI is Honeycomb based goodness and the whole thing just gels.  It’s a genuinely glorious experience.

Specs – Does It Matter

It’s quite exciting that we are starting to move in to a strange, post PC world where raw crunching power is taking a back seat to overall user experience.  It’s a game Apple and Google have been playing for a while, and the rest of the world is just about starting to catch-up with them.  The Xoom packs quite a meaty punch under the hood, but the raw specs of the machine itself are almost irrelevant.  What is relevant is that it takes about 20 seconds to power up, about one second to unlock, zero seconds to switch between applications, applications start in a second, and the whole experience is buttery-smooth.  It multi-tasks *very* well, and is absolutely silent in it’s operation.  90% of people could quite happily throw their PC away and just settle for a tablet and a keyboard.  Apart from coding – I think *I* could.

Accessories

And now, we come to the shameful part.  For Google and Motorola have released a genuinely superb tablet, which makes good use of the Android Market system and is very well polished.  But Motorola managed to score a few own goals with the accessories.  I’m currently writing this post using an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard – since I already had it hanging around.  My tablet came shipped with a “standard dock” (promotional pre-order freebie from Carphone Warehouse) and I purchased a “folio case” from Mobile Fun.

Standard Dock

I have had many smartphones over the years.  For most of them, I’ve purchased a dock.  When consumers purchase a dock, they usually expect it to do two things:
1) Charge their device.
2) Provide a means of file transfer to that device (usually via USB of some sorts).

The Motorola Xoom standard dock fails in 50% of the required objectives.  When you’ve eventually faffed around with getting your Xoom on to the dock (it’s not an easy fit), your device will indeed charge (although despite what the manual says, will front light on the dock does not light up).  The dock itself also contains a micro-usb male connector which fits in to your Xoom.  But there is no USB leading away from the dock.  Whilst your device is in the dock, you can not transfer files, nor debug, over USB.

Epic fail.

Luckily, you can use windows shares quite happily using ES FileExplorer.  Which admittedly is no different to how I transfer files on my phone anyhoos, but I’d like the option of using USB if not for file transfer, then for file debugging.

Folio Case

When it rains – it pours at Motorola’s Fail department.  Whilst the standard dock is an annoyance, albeit a bearable one, the folio case comes down on the heavy side of fail.  The premise is simple – a light case your Xoom clips into which allows you to use your Xoom in a variety of positions: help for reading, tilted on the desk for typing, higher for viewing, and flat on the desk – for whatever flatness you require.  Motorola have been advertising this accessory as the primary accessory since announcement.  Oh, and it comes in leather.

Which it doesn’t.  The original plan was for two versions – one in leather, one in “durable”.  When it came to shipping, they only shipped the “durable” version which meant anyone who ordered a leather one got one of these plastic things.  I raised this with MobileFun, who were as confused as everyone else, and they did offer a full refund for shipping the wrong product.  I decided to keep it when I found out that Motorola aren’t going to ship the leather version, at least not yet.

There has also been complaints about the case scratching Xooms.  My European version has a metal back, so this doesn’t appear to be a problem on my unit.  But the two lugs at the bottom of the case designed to hold the Xoom in are quite aggressive – and I can understand the worry some users may have.

When in the stand up position, the giant plastic clasp protrudes from the front of the case, sitting anywhere up to six inches from the device.  This means that if using a bluetooth keyboard with the case, your bluetooth keyboard has to in front of the clasp – which does not make it ideal if working in tight environments.  Total footprint when using the case with an Apple bluetooth keyboard – longer than a 12″ ruler.  That’s a bigger footprint (in depth) than my 15″ Macbook Pro.

The final fail of this case is in charging.  You can not charge the device while closed in the case.  The charging port presses up against the side of the case when closed, which means to charge, you need to open the case and lay it flat out.  The same problem occurs when using the case in the stand position – the charging is on the bottom of the device.  One observant person pointed out that since most apps will re-orientate themselves just fine, simply flip the tablet and use it upside down.  This is perfectly acceptable for desktop use, since you’re not likely to want to use the rear camera at that time, but is still an epic fail on the part of the tablet, and Motorolla accessories.

Charger

The charger I’m in two minds about.  One of the nice conveniences with the iOS portfolio of devices is they all charge from the same cable, which in turn powers from USB.  I had become used to, at least with phones, MicroUSB being the standard for charging devices of this type.  The Xoom comes with a brick.  Admittedly, a small brick, but a brick nonetheless.  Not even an integrated plug/transformer, but a separate, honest to God, brick.

I was just a little gobsmacked.  Welcome to 1999.  But then I charged it.  And it took a couple of hours to charge from completely flat to full.  That raised an eyebrow – I’m used to devices taking a little longer to get their juice.  One decent length bath is a pretty respectable amount of time.  The device does not charge at all over MicroUSB, not even a trickle, which means while travelling for longer than a day I will have to carry the brick with me.  But oddly, I think I’ll be happy to put up with that.

Delivery and Management

If Motorola are the king of accessory fail – Carphone Warehouse are the kings of communication fail.  On pre-order of the Xoom, they put a hold on the amount in your bank account.  I’ve no problem with this – it’s the only way of ensuring that the cash is there when the device arrives.  Plenty of other people were caught out by this and were expecting to pay a deposit and balance on arrival.  -1 point for clarity.

Carphone Warehouse then managed to fail in specifying a delivery date.  We knew the device was “supposed” to arrive mid-April.  It said so on CPW’s website.  But any communication with CPW led to a response of “we don’t know” and “it’ll be in stock when it’s in stock”.  Not even an estimate.  Distinctly unhelpful when they’ve taken 600 GBP of your hard earned cash.

On top of this, panic ensued when CPW changed the date of the website from “mid April” to “late April” with no notification, and removed the free standard dock from the listing.  This led to me wondering if there was any intention of shipping the standard dock, so I phoned CPW customer services for clarification.  At that point I was told that the Xoom has shipped already, would be with me that day, and no they weren’t sending out the standard dock despite it being part of the order.  I was told the manager was unavailable, could I leave a number for callback and the assistant said they would “try” to add the dock to ship later, as an apology (apology – I paid for the damn thing).

So I waited.. and waited.. and waited…  And it failed to arrive that day.  Funnily enough, there was no callback from CPW either.

Overnight I received tracking notification saying that the product was *now* shipping to me and would be with me the following day.  Which it did.  And lo-and-behold contained the standard dock I’d ordered as part of the package originally.  We then spent a good part of the afternoon having fun with the device.

Summary

When you buy a device like this, you’re buying in to a post-PC experience (there’s a painful term to coin).  Your accessories should “just work”, they should perform the function they’re designed to fulfil and your customer support should be second to none.  The whole thing should *gel*, making getting you up and going as comfortable as possible and then keeping you going as comfortable as possible.

Motorola and Google have pulled together a *fantastic* device in the Motorola Xoom.  The device itself is excellent, the operating system is superb and the app support is excellent.  But the overall experience is let down by poorly thought and executed accessories which hinder rather than help and a support system in CPW which sees the consumer as something in the way, who should be kept in the dark at all times.

I do not wish to incur the wrath of the dark lord, but this is something Apple got, get and do very well.  You buy a iPad, it does exactly what’s said on the box.  You buy an Apple case for it, it does it exactly and demonstrated and advertised.  No problems with charging and using your Pad at the same time.  No brick to carry around.  You also don’t get the product announced for pre-order four months before it ships.  The buzz machine dies down in that time.  This stuff is hard, but important for the acceptance of these devices with the general public.

These devices live and fail on providing an integrated experience.  I *want* to see the Xoom succeed, I want to see *other* Android tablets succeed.  I think they have a huge amount to offer the general public, but these teething problems with the whole ecosystem need kicking in to shape *now*, not six months down the line.

There are other accessories by third parties turning up.  Some of the cases look good, _come in leather_, and answer the problems I’ve raised above.  This is what I expect a good third-party eco-system to do.  But I also expect the manufacturer to get it right, since they make the thing in the first place.  If you’re thinking of getting a Xoom – it truly is an awesome device, but bear in mind some of the caveats above.

I posted the following whilst on the train in to Manchester today:

Possibly a little flippant, but touched on a nerve that effects a lot of freelancer – poor payers. Every freelancer has good payers and poor payers, and the poor payers are a continual fly in an otherwise quite pleasant ointment. My little remark must have sounded a note with my freelancing brethren, since as soon as I posted it, my phone started buzzing with people (manually) re-tweeting.

And with Twitter’s native re-tweet function, it’s just hit 95 from 91 whilst I’ve typed this post. That’s not an epic amount of traffic (not even close), but it’s enough to make you think.

Update

@technicalfault just spotted I’ve got a “Top Tweet”. Awesome.

Well, that’s a very good question Mr Hodge. There’s not much on the market just yet, but let’s see if we can answer that.

Dell Streak

This first tablet from a big name to become available on a network in the UK, the Dell Streak is really a large Android phone. Running 1.6 (slated[1] to move to 2.2 soon-ish), this is still a phone, but capable of being used as a tablet. Dell are certainly marketing it as such, and is now available from O2.

Dell also have plans of releasing bigger versions of the device in the near future to complement the product line.

Motorola Tablet

Motorola have been busy, with a good run of Android handsets over the past year. They’ve hardly been able to keep the Milestone/Droid in stock, partly thanks to an aggressive and quite clever marketing campaign in the US.

At CES 2010, Motorola waved around a 7 inch tablet running Android, with an expected launch date of July. We don’t know a lot, but we do know it’s running a NVidia chipset, probably Tegra 2.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

Described as a “Galaxy S on Steroids”, it’s not far off… The big brother to the Galaxy S, the Galaxy Tab is scheduled for a release in November and (should be) shipping in three sizes (initially 7 inches), so suit all suitcases.

There’s also a promise of a tweak to the UI, on top of TouchWiz to better support the larger format. Not sure where that’s going yet, but I’m quite curious to see.

Notion Ink Adam

The geek in me gets a little wet over this one. The device was waved around at CES last year and promises some goodies that make is stand out from the competitors:

• 1GHz nVidia Tegra 2 Dual-Core A9.
• Dual mode screen – LCD for full functionality and a reflective e-paper mode for reading in sunlight.
• 3 USB ports (USB, not some random dock interface)
• Android by default, support for Chrome OS and Ubuntu.

There’s been quite a lot of hype around this device and expectations are high, it’s very much a toy for the geeks. Plenty of juice, plenty of expansion, and the ability to run multiple OSs on it make it a good choice for the true mobile geek. And the screen is a god-send.

This is the tablet I am waiting for. I will be one of the first in-line when it is finally released.

[Update] – Eken M001

After I made this blog post, Orinoco popped his head up to say:

A quick google shows this to be a WIFI only tablet device running Android 1.6 with a 7″ resistive screen and a 600Mhz processor, but the nice part is the price – $100. Orinoco bought his for £65 from eBay, 1/6th the price of an iPad. It looks great if you use it as nothing more than a mobile web browser.

[Update] – Roll Your Own

One of the niceties about the Android OS is it’s (mostly) Open Source and there’s been a great hacking community built up around it with people porting it to all sorts of unexpected devices, including legacy HTC Windows Mobile devices and even the iPhone.

The Android-x86 project has been working on a version specifically tailored to working on x86 devices making it perfect for existing notebooks and tablet devices. You lose Google Market (only available to official devices and builds) but you can still happily run third party apps through other sources, since you can happily install any .apk that meets the system requirements. It looks like they’re working on 2.1 at the moment, cool times.

The one piece of kit screaming for this attention is The Asus Eee T91, which is supported (alas at the moment with VESA modes). This is a netbook-tablet with a rotating top which allows you to switch between the two modes. Who needs a separate keyboard when you can do that? Yummy.

Everything Else

There’s plenty in the pipeline. Unlike the iOS platform, which needs a dictator to steer the direction – creating the market for new devices as they go, Android devices turn up as the market demands. If people want them, they will be made. A quick search for the word tablet on Phandroid shows plenty of interest from manufacturers. Like Android phones, expect them to start popping up in quite serious numbers shortly towards the end of the year, and some understanding and development of the market (read second generation models) next year.

Of course a device is only as good as the software which runs on top of it. There’s been very little serious interest from Android developers in writing applications for the tablet format yet (well why would you when there are so few out there), but hopefully with a serious crop of tablets turning up in the next 12 to 18 months, that position will change. Unlike the iOS eco-system, there’s not so much fan-fare around device releases, it’s up to individual developers to decide when there’s enough demand in the market for them to port their app to better support the bigger platforms. I personally reckon it’ll take 18 months to 2 years for Android tablets to really take off in a useful way and start upsetting Steve Jobs again.

[1] pun intended.

One of my clients has recently been developing an iPad application for one of their major clients, and I’ve helped with the planning stages and keeping an eye on the delivery of the project. As such, we’ve had a few of these things knocking around the office and I’ve had my hands on them and played with them a bit.

My first impressions are underwhelming. If I put on my uber-geek hat, it’s a giant iPhone. It comes with the iPhone limitations and strengths. You can’t really tinker with the thing, it’s locked down tighter than a nun on retreat, and you can only really do what Apple says you can do with it. It’s less portable than an iPhone, and (I) found it quite heavy to hold for an extended period of time. The technical geek in my says “for the love of God – WHY?”.

But when I take off by technical-geek hat and put on my consumer hat, it’s a different game. Yes, it’s a giant iPhone[1]. And the iPhone has two major things going for it – App Store apps and Mobile Safari. Now the apps are pretty cool, and I’ve seen some that I’ve been suitably impressed by for mobile productivity (Things for starters, Mail is a definite improvement). The drawing apps are also suitable impressive and I was definitely tempted when I saw the venerable Omnigraffle on the iPad (for those unaware, I toiled with Visio for years. Then was shown Omnigraffle and cried tears of joy).

But for me, the biggest, the biggest and bestest (I know that’s not a word, but I don’t care) thing about the iPad is having a nine-inch, decent web browser. Because that provides a portal to stuff that Apple don’t have control over (not yet). Steve Jobs said in the WWDC keynote yesterday that HTML5 was their first platform, and the App Store second. With Android looking to go the same way, all bets are on HTML5.

And a nine-inch iPad is just about the right size to throw down in a meeting and have a small table of people peer over. It makes a great collaboration tool. I’ve used it a couple of times now in planning meetings for sprints and despite a couple of glitches JIRA and Greenhopper works great on the format. The format allows you to throw ideas together and plan sprints collaboratively without needing to lug a laptop, projector and designated minion to manage it all. You can put the screen flat on the table, making people feel part of the process rather than just talking to the man with the laptop.

So whilst it’s a great personal productivity tool, for me the great benefit is collaboration. I can see Balsamiq or Omingraffle (not tried it yet) being the next move for collaboration, getting people around for throwing UML use cases or interface designs together and getting all that lovely input together.

It probably goes without saying that I won’t be getting an iPad for myself. I’ll be waiting for a device like the Notion Ink Adam, running Android of course.

[1] I’ve just been corrected by Caius the pedant that since the iPad does not make calls, it is infact a giant iPod touch, not a giant iPhone. I stand corrected.

In return, they’ve only asked for one thing which has been denied of them – to be hated. So far, they’ve not received a single complaint. They’ve even gone so far as to shoot a clanger (artist’s rendering above) in an attempt to generate complaints.

So if you’ve been enjoying the broadcasts, please show your support for The Vote Now Show by registering a complaint with dear aunty.

For added humour, why not treat it as the traditional audience question? If you complain, leave your “complaint” in the comments section below. Mine is…

Summary of Complaint: Shooting of Clanger – Contravention of Hunting Act 2004 Full Complaint: I had tuned in to the nightly Vote Now Show expecting pleasant and perfectly middle class humour. I was disgusted to hear the live shooting of a wild clanger, which had been outlawed since the passing of the Hunting Act 2004. The vile and insensitive performers of the show should be made to issue an immediate apology – as THIS white, middle-class worker is shocked and distressed. Yours, Kian Ryan

Over the past few weeks, you’ve been a little bit shocked in the rise in popularity of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Clearly you feel threatened since the Torys briefed the Murdoch papers on smearing the Lib Dems (which backfired) and Labour clearly have it in their mind that a Lib Dem vote is a protest vote (I’m looking at you Mr Milliband). For a long time power has bounced between red and blue, changing sides like a game of cricket. A major influence in this has been the media who tended to pick the winner and then smear all other opponents; but its not worked this time. Often discussion has been how it is the turn of “the other side”.

A Lib Dem vote is not a protest vote, we are not voting against something – we are voting for something. A Lib Dem vote is not a wasted vote, enough people vote and constituencies change – even “safe” ones. We are not the naughty children, nor are we “anti-politics”; in fact – this campaign has been the most attentive, pro-politics we’ve seen, with leaders debates on TV and open discussion on free new media. We are the people who didn’t really have a say, since we are not in traditional occupations to influence voters. Scientists, engineers, geeks, bloggers and more, we’ve always been here and been a significant number of people, but we are no longer the group of people who just keep quiet and accept the given situation.

We want change. We want our politics to keep up with the changing pace of technology. We want our freedom of speech, we want to be who we are (goth, gay, punk – whatever), and we want our vote to matter. We think the idea of a hung parliament is possibly a good thing, since it means MPs will have to work to pass their policies, and we are intelligent enough to see the potential impact it may have (economic and otherwise). We want open debate every year, not just every five years. We are intelligent and educated – not by Eton or Westminster, but a lot of us are educated to at least the same level as you – smear and fear campaigns just irritate us. We want electoral reform so that we know every vote really does count in the most important way possible. In many ways we don’t care what colour your policies are, just that they work for us. Tom Watson, despite being Labour, became a hero to many during the recent DEB farce.

There’s a couple of weeks left to this campaign. Your traditional tactics have failed to work. What can you do to rescue yourselves in our eyes in this campaign?

1) Engage in honest debate on policies. Stop the fear mongering – its just getting ripped apart and parodied online (and the beeb are going a good job on picking it up as well). 2) Talk about your own policies. It’s almost shocking how much time is being spent talking down the policies of other parties rather than talking up the policies of your own. Tell us why we should vote for you, not why we shouldn’t vote for the other parties. 2) Talk to the people you want to represent – a good proportionate sample of them. Get out of your comfort zone and see what the entire field is like. 3) Accept this is a three way race. Stop trying to marginalise the third party – its not working. The numbers are indeed nuts. So start fighting for those voters.

That’s it! Fight an honest fight and we will respect you for it. And an MP without respect might as well have a duck-house.

Yours,

A Voter

I e-mailed HTC and T-Mobile asking when the situation is going to be rectified. I got the following response from HTC (none from T-Mobile).

Dear Kian, Thank you for contacting us. We are aware of this issue and will be pushing out an update to rectify this issue. Please check your phone for updates, As these will be made available via an Over The Air update once they become available. Kind Regards, HTC Europe

I think that’s a reasonable enough response. Admittedly, it’s a cock-up that shouldn’t have happened, but they’ve responded with a reasonable answer. Now can we have some accessories please?