Padfone

Image credit of engadget

Asus is making it's way into the tablet market with the new Padfone concept. The Padfone is exactly what it sounds like: A pad with a phone inside. The phone docks in the back of the case when you wish to use the pad. The pad has an extra battery so you charge your phone while it is in the case. The pad has a 10" screen and will be running what looks like Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). As you can see from the picture, the case has a cutout for the camera so when you take pictures you will use the phone's camera.  The phone itself also will probably be running Android 3.0, and has a front and back facing camera. 

This new take on the tablet market is interesting as it combines the tablet and the phone into one product. The only downside to this is it requires Asus to force more power into the phone, which may adversely effect the performance of the phone/pad. Although the concept is good, I can only hope that Asus take into consideration important things such as power consumption.

Google Announces Cloud Service

Google announced yesterday that it will be introducing a cloud based music services. This is the second major company to make this shift, the first being Amazon. www.music.google.com is where you can go if you wish to sign up for the beta program. If allowed in, you will have the ability to upload your personal library and stream it on the go. However, this will only work with Android devices and regular computers. iOS mobile devices will not be able to use this service, or, at least, not off the bat. Knowing Google they will deliver service to iOS devices later on once they know people will use their service. Amazon made the same move on not allowing iOS devices, but later on made capability available. This announcement begs one question: Is Apple getting a cloud based service ready? There have been rumors, and of course they all sound convincing. People around the web suggest that Apple may have built a data center with PETABYTES of storage. Every petabyte is 1000 terabyte, just to put it in prospective. We will have to wait and see who wins the cloud wars.

~Dave

How Will Others Respond?

With an Apple event right around the corner, it is interesting to think about what other companies will say and do after the event. If the rumors hold true, tomorrow's even will get a new iPad witha camera, and possibly the next iPhone. The iPhone may or may not have a sliding keyboard and a larger screen. In addition, Apple will most likely boast about its new OS Lion, hitting store shelves this summer. So what does this do for the competition? For one thing, Android is working on its OS known as "Honeycomb", which boasts many nice features the iPad doesn't have, such as a much nice multi tasking system. Then there Motorola who just announced the Xoom, the product known as the "iPad Killer". They may have beaten Apple to the camera, but Apple has beaten them in price. There is of course the HTC Thunderbolt, which is the first LTE phone on the Verizon network, can that out do the next iPhone. That one is unclear. And then we get to Microsoft, who, only two three years ago, released Windows 7. Windows 7 received its first service pack this past week. To put that in prospective, XP had three service packs before Vista, and Snow Leopard has 6 big updates. So would that mean Windows 7 is here to stay for a while, or will Microsoft jump ahead and announce Windows 8? Sure they have said it is in the works, but does that mean they know what to do? For all we know that could be a PR statement just put out to satisfy customers.
Remember, almost everything Apple has done in the past couple of years has forced the industry to try and keep up. What ever move they make tomorrow will pretty much dictate what the year will be like in terms of technology.

~Dave