Yessir, I’ve been just a tad bit busy with things, so here’s a consolidated update: I have an iPad! It is gorgeous and it’s replaced a subset of tasks my laptop once stood in for. The battery life is amazing and everything that’s been promised, and it’s great for general web stuff, though I’d kill for a basic adblock or something. More on this at another point. iOS 4 was released this morning, and I reluctantly let go of the jailbreak in order to play with it. The decision was difficult in some ways, as I’d gotten quite comfortable with my modifications, but the temptation to play with shiny-new-thing was too much. (Maybe I’ll get the best of both worlds shortly.)The main things I’d had jailbreak for were: ...

We’ve been here before. I wonder if anyone else recognises it? (Well, I haven’t, though I’ve read about it. Let me explain…) There’s an eerie sense of deja vu about the computer industry right now, if you look at it the right way. The PC wars were pretty much over by the time I was born, definitely so by the time I was old enough to be conscious of a computer, but from what I’ve gleaned from my history books and a little recent reading, things weren’t always so straightforward in the computer industry as they’ve been over the last few years. ...

Interesting article over on Satyajit Das’s blog on China and its place in the global economy today - especially the opening insight: China’s economic model is reminiscent of 17th century mercantilist policies. Thomas Mun, a Director of the East India Company, in England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade (1664), wrote that the purpose of trade was to export more than you imported. At the same time, a country should amass foreign ‘Treasure’ that would be the basis of acquiring foreign colonies to allow control of essential natural resources. The strategy required reducing domestic consumption and imports and export of goods manufactured with imported foreign raw materials. ...

Google recently created a page where they revealed government take-down requests for their services, with some interesting figures revealing Brazil topping the list of take-down requests, followed by Germany, India and the United States. Australia ranks 10th with 17 take-down requests, of which Google has complied with 52%. China however considers the take-down requests themselves state secrets and so Google cannot reveal that data without legal trouble. While this is all well and good in Google’s campaign for internet openness and freedoms, what this ultimately makes me even more curious about is the corporate take-down requests they get - where are the stats for those requests, Google? ...

It’s amazing how Apple has set the agenda in the mobile phone space, and it’s only been too evident in the last few days. Apple’s iPhone OS 4 event last week not only drew the tech media but managed to splash out headlines across what might be termed, for want of a better word, the “mainstream media”. The BBC, ABC, SMH and other generalist/unspecialised all reported on the event in a way they would never have done for Nokia. ...