• The big story of the week was Engadget getting blurry pics of a 4G iPhone prototype, Gizmodo buying it hot for five grand, the Gizmodo guys being a total douches by outing the name and picture of the guy who “lost” the phone and then posting a letter from Apple asking for the phone back, Jason’s Chen house being raided by the police and then the media covering wether ‘blogers’ are journalists and wether the police could apprehend a journalist’s work materials. Pheeeew. It also resulted in me delisting Giz cause they behaved like 13 year olds on the whole matter.

• So Adobe is playing going, going, gone be delaying Flash 10.1 to 2H2010 (has I had predicted). Nobody’s too upset though cause the first thing you do when you get a phone with Flash is getting FlashBlock to block the sulkiness.

• The ACTA Cabal released the draft text. I’m glad to note the ACTA Cabal fully supports rights to privacy and online anonymity. They support it by only publishing a text which “does not identify participants’ positions in respect of square bracketed options”. We understand individual governments being afraid of finding themselves publicly linked to the absurdities they promote and defend in private and in result publishing the ACTA draft Wikileaks style. Meanwhile, India overhauled its Copyright law with even more fair use protection.

• The Irish High Court ruled it’s OK to cut households from the Internet on suspected copyright infringement. The general idea the High Court seems to have of the Internet is it’s a thief’s den with no general interest or bearing in everyday life. Ireland, remember, is the country that recently made “blasphemy” (such as, God is delusion created by fundamentalist organized religions to ascend to power) a crime. Yes, Ireland, though crimes and cutting people off from free speech and information just because some random guy said so is clearly the way pull yourself from the current crisis. Forget Portugal, Ireland will be the next Greece as Google, Intel and all other high tech companies based there pull out. Happy potato farming Ireland!

• Speaking of Google, Google will publish information about Government requests to access to user data. Seems to be US only. More on Google, Youtube now has a fair use button that will relist a DMCA delisted video. It will also probably land you in court but, you believe you are right!

• This week was financial week. [Apple posted record sales and profit])(http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/20/apple-has-another-record-quarter-posts-3-07b-profit/) and Nokia had a good year but not good enough.

• Seems like the unit Engadget stole^Wbought^Wfound is the real deal iPhone 4G prototype. And the big splash on iPhone apps was Opera Mini for iPhone. Sucks just as much as Opera Mini anywhere else in case you’re wondering.

• Breaking news, SonyEricsson turned a profit this quarter. No, really, it’s true. They moved less units but at an higher price so in fact their market share went down. Seems the profit, along with the botched buggy handset launches, came from all the laying off on the previous quarters.

• As if HTML5 video wasn’t confusing enough Google is OpenSourcing VP8.

• Some Telcos in Europe are suggesting Google should revenue share the reason being Google knows how to make money on the Internet and they don’t. The general idea is the Telco’s infrastructure is piping the bits on which Google makes it’s money and there’s no way for money to flow back to them. Well, Telcos aren’t being exactly truthful as they can charge Google/Youtube for peering and block access otherwise. That, for some reason, isn’t happening. And if we look closely at how money flows, customer money flows to the Telcos but in fact the service comes from Google. Maybe it should be the other way around and the Telcos should revenue share with Google to keep the Internet interesting.

• On ACTA news, US won’t have any transparency and opposes the release of the actual text. Obama, I actually wanted you to win, wtf are you being different ? Meanwhile, just to underscore the stupidity of it all, the US Govt came forward saying the piracy dimension claims are made up. Meanwhile, the Pirate Party of Canada is official. The Pirate Parties showing up around the world are the democratic response to media industry bribing (or lobbying as it’s called in USA) the elected and unelected leaders make everybody a criminal. In case you think I’m exaggerating the RIAA/MPAA put together a plan that make the Green Dam and the Great Firewall of China hymns to the free world.

• The splash of the week was iPhoneOS4. It has some interesting stuff such as a social gaming platform and proto-multitasking. I’ve debated the polemic no-Adobe clause here and so did Gruber.

• RIM bought QNX and Palm is up for sale which is kind of sad but rather predictable. I believe Google could actually use the Palm people and the patent portfolio wouldn’t hurt either. Oh well.

• On the week of iPhoneOS4 Microsoft announced project Pink. Turns out it’s Sidekick Danger evolutions.

• This week the kill Digital Economy Bill was rushed through UK Commons. The enlightened MPs seem to believe IP address means Intellectual Property address which is probably like a street address but smarter. Someone has kindly made a preview of the future of British Internet. Dear UK technologists, Portugal has nice weather and while a incompetent and corrupt Government might be persuaded to pass such a law the ineffective Judicial system would never see it enacted. And on the subject of Western Government, UK MPs avoided the ID cards and exempted themselves of the Freedom of Information Act. Cause you know, that’s a lot of medling in their personal business and they won’t have it (on themselves!).

A number of people asked me if I’m in line for an iPad. The short answer is, I’m not. I lack a clear use case for it and that kind of money can buy my kids some nice holidays. But the iPad is a beautiful machine. It looks like something out of the future and while I haven’t held one yet I’m pretty sure it feels like that too. Somewhat like the guy who designed the first flipphone cause he wanted a Star Trek tricorder, but totally better.

I don’t have a use case for the iPad but then again I’m not the typical user. We already have a netbook on the couch the wife uses for Facebook games (which, for the time being, is about the only reason Flash is important on something) so that’s covered. I myself have been, as of late, living on my N900 and while sometimes annoying for lack of horsepower (and little Maemo5 snafus) it has been rendering my workstation more and more as the thing I use to do development and gaming on. The N900 is a proper computer and fits in my pocket which are two very important requirements for me. The 98% of the population who isn’t like me will use the iPad exactly as I use the N900 and for them it will slowly and steadily become their personal machine. So, to the people saying the iPad isn’t a real computer and won’t catch on cause it’s neither a PMP nor a notebook I say poo poo. That’s a weak argument if I ever heard one.

Meanwhile, iPhoneOS 4.0 has came out which will bring, among other things, proto-multitasking to the iPad enabling IM, music player and VoIP. Next year an iPad2 will surely come out with a front facing camera, iChat and Skype videocall. If everything goes according to Apple’s plan, Flash will be a memory like Java applets are now and the iPad will be the personal device.
Speaking of Apple’s plan, the iPhoneOS4.0 SDK basically kills the upcoming Adobe Flash iPhone cross development GUI app. That gotta sting, not only Adobe but also all the Flash developers who were planing to code the next iFart in Flash and become millionaires. They’ve become upset and trash talked Apple and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lost profit class-action suit cropped up (please oh please do, that would be so entertaining). My take on the whole thing is, iPod/iPhone/iPad is a closed system, Apple never made representations otherwise and if you want to make money off it you listen to Apple and play by Apple rules. Don’t like them ? Pack up, leave and develop for Android which is an open system or buckle down and learn Objective-C/Cocoa. Either way, shut up.

• In case you didn’t notice the iPad is out. The most amazing app so far is the iDisplay, we discovered moderns MacBooks have a USB 12V/1.2A high power mode and within the lauch weekend the iPad was jailbroken.

• Wanna know how much the war between Google is Apple is on ? Chrome is gonna bundle Flash. Google did a 180 on Flash just cause Apple is betting on HTML5’s inability to generate proper distribution channels.

• It was bound to happen, China starting blocking some search terms on Google search. Bing, as expected, keeps “following the local laws”. On the topic of Microsoft, the Ballmer Microsoft is back with a couple of sketchy claims of Chrome user privacy vs IE and ignoring the OOXML standardization process cause it didn’t go its way.

• The LHC started colliding at 7TeV. That’s a lot of energy. Where’s still here. Hooray.

• Exploding boobs. I wonder how the TSA will handle that.