AT IFA 2010 IN BERLIN J K Shin, the president of Samsung’s mobile telecommunications business confidently told the audience at the Galaxy Tab launch event, “Between smartphones and PCs the tablet market is going to grow very quickly.“

That might be wishful thinking on his part but the outpouring of tablet designs this year and at IFA in particular means that either everyone’s market research is saying the same thing or the tablet phenomena will be the worst case of herd mentality since the NINJA mortgage lending that caused the worldwide financial meltdown.

Whichever it is, the logic of tablets could equally be a case of self serving corporate interests persuading a populace to buy into a technology they don’t need. It wouldn’t be the first time. The conspiracy theory is this, in a world where everyone has a smartphone and they would not want to use such a small screen to access the services mobile broadband internet will bring, the next best form factor can only be the tablet.

Then again HTC said earlier this year that it sees tablet users as mostly female. Finally IT may have found a product that is as friendly for the handbag, as they have been for the manbag, aka laptop case. In his confident statement Shin referred to 13 million sales in 2010, a figure he is likely to have got from an August Isuppli report that goes on to predict 30 million sales by 2012.

As such the likes of Shin are promoting tablets as if everything including their investment in 3D tellies depended on it. While surveys show that 3D is likely to be shunned by all but the most dedicated of early adopters, tablets are getting off to a better start after years of dead ends.

After the demise of Microsoft’s various attempts with its Windows for pen computing, its Tablet PC and then the Courier, which died before it even reached the market, the prospect of internet access and ergonomically friendly touch screens has led to a more positive reception this year. But Microsoft is still in the wilderness.

Beyond Apple’s Ipad and it’s built in market of fanbois other companies have been lining up to garner the moniker “Ipad killer”. This would seem to be a moniker too far if Isuppli’s report is to believed, that the Ipad will lead for years.

This is based on an analysis that concluded that the Iphone led the smartphone market because nothing had features to compare. But what IFA showed is that there are tablets already out there with more functions than the Ipad and 2011 might even see the first stereoscopic, that’s no glasses required, 3D displays.

So what do Apple’s competitors have to beat? Apple’s Ipad for UK consumers will cost £699 for a 13.4mm thick 730g slab that has 64GB of storage, WiFi, 3G, a 1GHz A4 chip powering GPS, Bluetooth and a 1024×768 resolution 9.7-inch touch screen. And the pad has a nine hour battery life when surfing the web via WiFi. A criticism of the Ipad has been its lack of Flash and few ports with no USB. It only has a dock connector port, a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and a micro SIM card tray. But this SIM card tray only comes with the WiFi and 3G model.

Most prominent of the Ipad challengers is the Samsung Galaxy Tab, to some degree because of the huge marketing spend the company can support its new product with. But there are also tech spec reasons why Isuppli is very probably wrong and Apple could see it lose the tablet battle.

The Tab uses the hugely popular Android 2.2 OS, its processor has a clock speed of 1GHz, a model with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot for a further 32GB, GPS, it can be used as a phone, including video conferencing, with a Bluetooth headset, and can use its front and back 3MP cameras with a LED flash for photos, video and augmented reality for navigation enhancement. Its screen is TFT and while it can’t show 720p like Ipad it can output all HD content through its 30pin connector with a special cable. The Tab can play all the music files Ipad can and also has a 3.5mm earjack socket. The Tab has a 4,000mAh battery providing 7 hours of movie playing, however it is only a 7-inch WSVGA 1024×600 multi-touch TFT screen display but its only 380g in weight. And it has Flash 10.1.

While one report put its price at £670 others put it at half that. Either way, despite 30 per cent less screen and sub-720p resolution there is still more functionality and more ports for what will likely be a competitive price when the network operator contracts are finally announced. During its press conference Samsung was also pushing the Tab for business users. Samsung says it will only sell the Tab through network operators and Vodafone is already advertising it, suggesting third party confidence in Samsung’s marketing, or perhaps Ipad’s initial success.

Screen size and portability then could be the deciding factors for the winner of that Ipad killer mantle. Toshiba’s Folio 100 has aimed directly at challenging the 9.7-inches Ipad has to offer. The Folio has a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 resolution touch screen, like the Tab it has Android 2.2 and supports Flash 10.1, has an Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, 16GB of storage, WIFI, Bluetooth, accelerometers, has 1.3MP cameras, is videoconferencing capable and has ports such as mini HDMI for outputting 1080p, USB and an SD card reader able to take up to 32GB. While it can boot up in 30 seconds it doesn’t have 3G, which comes with a future model. It does weigh in at a hefty 780g but you get all of the above for a mere €399, which will probably mean £399 in the UK when it goes on sale in the fourth quarter.

At IFA Archos also produced a 10.1-inch touch screen tablet, its Archos 101 model, which is 12mm thick and weighs only 480g but it has also launched a series of other smaller “Internet tablets”. They are the 70, which is 7-inches, the 43, which is 4.3-inches, the 30 for 3-inches and the 28 for 2.8-inches. But which size will be the winner? This range of sizes is not unique, Viewsonic has launched a 7-inch Viewpad 7 and 10-inch Viewpad 100 tablet and Samsung is to unveil a family of tablets next year. Shin told the Tab press conference that a larger tablet that used Android 3.5, also known as Honeycombe, would be launched next year.

Then there is the emergence of what might be called the near-tablet products. Pandigital’s 7-inch Novel has all the hallmarks of a tablet, a Samsung ARM 11 mobile processor, 1GB of memory, Android 2.1 for its OS, a 800×600 colour TFT LCD touch screen, virtual keyboard, web browsing, it plays MP3, WAV and AAC files and MPEG4 video, has a 1,600mAhr battery, accelerometers for portrait or landscape orientation and an SD card slot for up to 32GB. And it will likely sell for under £200 as its $150 in the US. But for all that it is a hefty 540g.

However even these could pale in comparison with the tablet that will use Sharp’s stereoscopic 3D technology. Its IFA stand had a 10-inch stereoscopic 3D screen and Sharp told The INQUIRER a tablet product could appear next year. Apple may come to regret the market success that its Ipad had, because it has given companies the confidence to invest in products that beat Steve Jobs 720p drinks tray hands down in features and price. IFA could make 2010 be remembered as the year Apple’s gadget leadership began to falter. µ
[Inquirer]

Verizon Wireless subscribers are now spoiled for choice. The Samsung Fascinate ($199.99 direct, with contract) completes a quartet of excellent Android smartphones on Verizon’s network. The Fascinate is slimmer and easier to hold than Motorola’s Droid X ($199.99-569.99, ), and it’s faster than HTC’s Droid Incredible ($199.99-529.99, ) and Motorola’s Droid 2 ($199.99-599.99, ). For many people, it’ll be a happy medium and an excellent cure for iPhone envy.

The Fascinate is part of the Samsung Galaxy S family, which also includes AT&T’s Samsung Captivate ($199.99-499.99, ), T-Mobile’s Samsung Vibrant ($199.99-499.99, ), and Sprint’s Samsung Epic 4G ($249.99-499.99, ). All of these top-rated products have a bunch of things in common. They’re all bright, speedy 1-Ghz Android phones with Super AMOLED screens and 5-megapixel cameras, and they all run Android 2.1 with Samsung’s TouchWiz extensions. Each model looks a little different, though, and they’ve all been customized by their respective carriers.

Physical Features and Phone Performance
Like all the Galaxy S devices, this is a slim, well-proportioned slab of a phone (4.9 by 2.2 by 0.4 inches HWD, 4.1 oz) with a positively brilliant 4-inch, 800-by-480 Super AMOLED screen that’s very viewable even outdoors in the sunlight. The Power button is on the side. Although the black plastic back cover feels a little flimsy, the phone feels solid and reliable overall.

The Fascinate makes calls and connects to the Internet via Verizon’s CDMA EVDO Rev A network here in the U.S. It’s a good voice phone, with similar reception to the Droid X, although it sometimes over-reported its signal slightly (displaying one bar when it should have shown zero). Voices through the earpiece sound great. They’re loud and clear, without the gain buzz you hear on the Droid X at top volume. The speakerphone absolutely blares, which is a big plus. Transmissions through the mic, though, aren’t nearly as clear as on the Droid X, because the Fascinate has lousy noise cancellation; too much background noise came through. I wonder what happened to the excellent Audience voice processor in the Samsung Captivate.

The Fascinate paired easily with our Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99, ) Bluetooth headset. Voice dialing worked over Bluetooth, but not reliably. While I could trigger voice dialing and issue some commands, the phone had trouble recognizing spoken numbers.

Like all Verizon Android phones, the Fascinate comes with integrated Skype. The service uses Verizon’s voice network to make its calls, so quality is very good.

Battery life, at 7 hours 23 minutes of talk time in my tests, is excellent for a Verizon phone. That power-sipping Super AMOLED display may have something to do with the good score.

Android and App Performance
Like all the Galaxy S phones, the Fascinate is an Android 2.1 phone with a 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird CPU. It benchmarked identically with other Galaxy S phones, and at similar speeds to the Droid X and Droid Incredible, with one exception: the Hummingbird’s graphics performance (and thus, its gaming performance) is better than the other two Verizon phones. To show it off, the Fascinate comes with a demo of EA’s Need for Speed Shift, and gameplay was unusually smooth. Verizon says an update to Android 2.2, with Adobe Flash 10.1, is coming later this year.

Samsung’s TouchWiz improves the Android experience in a few meaningful ways, most notably by folding Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Microsoft Exchange nicely into the overall experience. The Fascinate’s calendar merges Google, Exchange and Facebook events, and the address book brings everyone together, letting you swipe over from a contact card to send a message by various means.

To enter text, you can use Swype or the standard Android touch keyboard; both work well in both portrait or landscape mode.

Samsung’s home screen widgets are a notch below HTC’s, but are better than stock Android. The Twitter and Facebook widgets are largely useless because they don’t auto-update more than once an hour. Nobody wants hours-old Tweets. But the the Rolodex-style graphical buddy list is quite nice, and Daily Briefing combines weather, stocks, and news.

Verizon’s bloatware is harmless clutter, including an NFL app, visual voicemail and a useless City ID app. Verizon removed Google Maps and replaced it with Bing, but you can still download Google Maps with free navigation from the Android Market. When I did, my GPS location locked in quickly and accurately. VZ Navigator provides a GPS alternative, but it costs $10 per month.

The phone connects to the Internet using Verizon’s 3G network or Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (but not on the 5GHz 802.11n band). The Fascinate can work as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 5 devices; this feature costs $20 a month extra for 2GB of data per month. I didn’t achieve great speeds (around 600Kbps down), but that’s more of a network issue than a Fascinate issue — Verizon is now the slowest of the major providers.

Multimedia and Conclusions
The Fascinate comes with a roomy 1.4GB of onboard free storage and a 16GB MicroSD card, which fits in a slot under the back cover. Video and audio playback are plain terrific. You can use wired headphones plugged into the 3.5-mm jack or a Bluetooth stereo headset, and the Fascinate supports an unusually wide array of formats. For music, MP3, AAC, WMA, and OGG all played well; for video, I played H.264 and WMV up to 720p HD, as well as standard MPEG4 and even DivX and Xvid. There’s even a simulated 5.1 surround sound option. Spectacular.

The Fascinate syncs songs with Windows Media Player or Rhapsody using MTP mode over USB. Verizon’s own V CAST Music with Rhapsody lets the phone sync songs with PCs, and offers downloadable tracks for $1.99 each; I had no problem downloading an Arcade Fire song. V CAST Video gives the phone plenty of content from various TV and Web video providers for $10/month, but it’s pretty jerky. Still, though, V CAST Video is better quality than the Fascinate’s YouTube app, which looks fuzzy and blocky without an option for HQ mode.

The phone will soon have two movie and video stores. Samsung’s Media Hub is coming on September 16. When I saw a brief demo of the service on a Sprint Epic 4G, video downloaded promptly, though is seems expensive, with $12-$20 movies and $3-$4 rentals. But that beats the built-in Blockbuster app, which is the same price and had trouble downloading media to the phone.

The Fascinate’s 5-megapixel camera is very good. There’s no appreciable shutter delay, and pictures are quite sharp with good exposure balance. I only got occasional blurring in low light. The video mode takes smooth 30-frame-per-second 720p HD videos, although they get grainy in low light. Compared with the Droid X and Incredible, the Fascinate takes sharper photos with fewer pixels.

The Motorola Droid X and HTC Incredible each earned a 4.5-star rating. The Fascinate is just as good as those phones, and it has its own strengths. So I’m giving it the same rating, although the Droid X remains our Editor’s Choice. The Incredible offers better social-networking integration and earlier access to Android 2.2; the Droid X gives you far better noise cancellation on voice calls, more accurate voice dialing, an FM radio, and more built-in memory. The Fascinate’s screen is truly beautiful, its processor is the fastest in the business, media playback is terrific, and its size strikes a happy middle ground between the Droid X and the Incredible. This is another winner for smartphone fans on Verizon’s network.
[PC Magazine]

I was traveling last week to cover Apple’s iPod and Apple TV event Wednesday (and writing an extra column based on that). So this week, I offer questions taken from Friday’s Web chat.

The iPad’s future Concerning the iPad, will the projected update in OS include Flash (or deal with it’s lack of)? Will Apple ever make a camera/mic attachment that makes it Skype friendly?

No. I won’t say you’ll never see Flash on the iPad or the iPhone. It would be a Nixon-goes-to-China moment for Steve Jobs to take back all the nasty things he’s said about Adobe’s product.

But the odds are excellent that you’ll see a front-facing webcam on the iPad. Apple spent too much time Wednesday talking up the appeal of FaceTime videoconferencing on the iPod Touch for it not to add that to all its iOS mobile devices.

Sony or Kindle? Sony increased it’s cheapest price to $179 but made it touch screen; Kindle dropped its price to $139. Countless free books at www.archive.org. Which is a better value for basic reading, the Sony or the Kindle, or would you wait until either pre- or post-holiday price drops?

The Kindle hardware looks pretty old and is due for a replacement with a touch screen (see this New York Times piece from Wednesday). But I’m unsure about the prospects of any current e-readers; if they ‘re not going to get wiped off the map by tablets like the iPad, they’re going to need to get cheaper still but also acquire screens that can display color as well as black-and-white.

Android loaded down? I have read a lot about the openness of Android, and to counter that, Android haters have pointed out that the service providers have loaded the devices down with their self-serving applications. What is your opinion on this, and how difficult are these applications to remove, esp. on Verizon? How does the openness of a Verizon device compare to the iPhone and iPhone unlocked?

We’re talking about two kinds of openness:

1) The ability of developers to ship the software they want for a phone, and;

2) The ability of users to customize the phone as they wish, by adding and removing applications.

Android is far more open on the first point. On the second, Android phones have a problem that the iPhone does not — Apple doesn’t let AT&T bundle any junk apps on the device, while all the carriers are at liberty to exercise their bad taste with Android phones. It’s true that you can’t remove some core iPhone apps. But nobody is going to argue that, say, Sprint’s NASCAR app is anywhere as essential as the Mail app on an iPhone.

If you want to compare jailbroken iPhones, though, you also need to factor in Android units that have been “rooted” and updated with home-brewed variants of Android like CyanogenMod.
[Washington Post]

Google Inc. has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a private class-action lawsuit that alleged its Buzz social networking service violated users’ privacy, according to court documents filed on Friday.

Most of the money will help fund organizations focused on Internet privacy policy or privacy education, with slightly over $2 million going to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Seven users of Google’s email service, called Gmail, had alleged the company violated privacy law in February by exposing their email contacts to users of Google Buzz, which is built into Gmail and borrows elements of Twitter and Facebook by allowing users to share comments, photos, videos, and Web links with other users who “follow,” or track their updates.

Buzz first created a network of contacts based on a user’s contacts in Gmail, and each user’s network was visible to other users. After an outcry, Google changed the settings so that contacts were kept private by default.

The proposed settlement of the case, filed in federal court in San Francisco, requires Google to make further announcements about the privacy aspects of Buzz and fund Internet privacy efforts by public-interest groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Google continues to deny allegations that it violated the law, the proposed settlement noted.

The Mountain View, Calif., Web-search giant is facing scrutiny for other privacy lapses. Government authorities in the U.S. and abroad are probing Google’s admission that vehicles it sent to photograph city streets for Google Maps also captured personal data traveling through unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

On Friday a Google spokesman said of the Buzz settlement: “We are satisfied with the agreement and are glad to move forward.”

Gary Mason, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the fund will be “of great benefit” to the public and his clients were “pleased.” Google agreed to pay $2,500 to each of the named plaintiffs, as well as pay their attorneys’ fees, he said.

“Google clearly rushed Buzz out of the door without giving much thought to users’ privacy,” said Justin Brookman, a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, in a statement.

“To their credit, Google responded immediately to the uproar from its users and quickly fixed Buzz’s most glaring problems. This was another great example of users standing up to big Internet companies and taking back their privacy,” he said.

Buzz now suggests to its users who else they might want to follow. The service also can automatically pull in updates that its users post to their accounts at other social network or photo sharing services such as Twitter and Flickr.

Google has made numerous updates to Buzz since its launch, and it will be part of a broader social-networking service that currently is under development and has been referred to as “Google Me” by company employees, people familiar with the matter have said.

With Buzz, Google was attempting to catch up with Facebook, which has more than 500 millions users, and Twitter, which has more than 140 million. It’s unclear how many Gmail users are active on Buzz.

Google has made other attempts in social networking. In 2004 the company introduced Orkut, a Facebook-like service that didn’t catch on in the U.S. but garnered tens of millions of users in Brazil and India.

Over the past year Orkut’s growth has stagnated while the rival Facebook has grown rapidly in those markets. It’s unclear exactly what role Orkut will play in Google’s upcoming broader social-networking service.
[Wall Street Journal]

The Mexican army says it has killed 27 suspected drug cartel gunmen in a clash near the US border.

The army said a patrol came under fire as it approached an apparent training camp that had been spotted during an aerial search.

Two soldiers were wounded in the fighting in Tamaulipas state.

Tamaulipas has been a major focus of violence between drug cartels competing for control of smuggling routes into the US.

Continue reading the main story
MEXICO’S DRUGS WARBattling the cartels
On patrol in Mexico’s most dangerous city
‘Family values’ of Mexico drug gang
Beltran Leyva gang
The rival Zetas and Gulf cartels have been waging a bloody turf war there.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon ordered the army and federal police to fight the cartels in 2006.

The rising violence has led to growing criticism of Mr Calderon’s drug policy, with opposition groups saying it has done nothing to stop the flow of drugs to the US.

In his state of the union address on Thursday morning, the president admitted the violence was worsening but defended his approach, saying the cartels were being weakened.

“The capture or killing of important criminal leaders has made the crime organizations more desperate,” Mr Calderon said.

“It is an ever more bloody war between organized crime groups fighting for territory, markets and routes.”

Mr Calderon insisted the fight had to go on.

“If we want a safe Mexico for the Mexicans of the future, we must take on the cost of achieving it today,” he said.
[BBC News]

Nvidia on Friday announced seven new GeForce 400M series graphics cards for laptops, which could provide parallel-processing capabilities to accelerate Web browsing and 3D image rendering.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have either implemented or will soon include the capability to off-load tasks like rendering of HTML 5 or Flash video content to graphics processors. Nvidia’s new GeForce graphics cards will be faster at processing those tasks than CPUs, which should make Web browsing snappier.

The new graphics cards will be around 40 percent faster than the earlier 300M series at execution of tasks, said Ken Brown, an Nvidia spokesman.

While the CPU remains at the center of running tasks, developers are writing applications to harness the parallel-processing capabilities of graphics processors to speed up applications, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

“That’s one of the changes with the new browsers, is they support that capability,” McCarron said.

Laptops with Intel’s latest Core processors already have a graphics processor integrated in one chip next to the CPU. However, discrete GPUs have a faster and wider pipe to run applications, McCarron said.

But graphics processors can draw more power than CPUs or integrated graphics, which can affect battery life of laptops. Nvidia’s graphics cards support new switchable technology called Optimus, where specific tasks like video rendering can be seamlessly switched between the CPU and GPU. The GPU kicks in only when needed, saving laptop battery life.

Nvidia declined to comment on the power drawn by the new graphics cards, citing company policy. The company in the past has taken charges for faulty dies and weak packaging material used in its graphics chips that led to laptops overheating. Those issues have been resolved for a while, Brown said.

“Nvidia GPUs are made with a different manufacturing substrate to prevent chips from experiencing thermal issues over time. Our GPUs run in the tolerance level of their specification and the notebook chassis design constraints,” Brown said.

More laptops are shipping with discrete GPUs as users look for stronger multimedia capabilities, McCarron said. Nvidia will be trying to extend its presence in the market with the new products, and it will have to compete with rival Advanced Micro Devices, which already offers Radeon HD laptop graphics cards.

Beyond Web browsing, the graphics cards will provide a better gaming experience and bring Blu-ray 3D movie playback to laptops, Nvidia’s Brown said. The graphics cards will support DirectX 11, Microsoft’s latest graphics technology included in the Windows 7 OS.

The new offerings include the GeForce GT 415M, GT 420M, GT 425M, GT 435M, GT 445M, and the faster GTX 460M and GTX 470M graphics cards. The cards will be available only through the PC makers, and Nvidia did not comment on when the laptops would become available. The graphics cards will be offered through PC makers including Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.
[PC World]

The crowded music streaming market just got even more crowded. Sony has announced that it will be launching a music streaming service for the web and many of its devices as well.

Sony Music Unlimited, as the new service will be called, will allow users to access millions of tracks from Sony devices but also over the web. The new product integrates with Sony’s existing video-on-demand service Qriocity.

“‘Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity’ brings together the features cited as most important by music enthusiasts. With access to a huge library of songs through the cloud, users can discover new music through channels personalized to their tastes on multiple devices and without the requirement to manage digital music files,” Sony said in a statement.

“The convenience resulting from this new consumer music experience will further enhance the value of music, thus creating new opportunities for the industry. Details of the service plan will be announced in the future,” it added.

Qriocity will be available first in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. The video-on-demand portion of the service has already been available in the US since earlier this year.

For now, only movies and TV shows will be available through Qriocity, but music will be added later in the year. No pricing details have been announced.

It is not the first time Sony has tried its hand at an online music service, it launched Connect in 2004 in the US. Connect was a download service which proved unsuccessful and was dropped in 2007.

The video-on-demand and music streaming markets are going to become very, very disputed. Google is working on a video rental service with YouTube and a music streaming service as well.

Apple has just announced Apple TV, a video-on-demand service. Amazon is also expected to launch a video service to compete with Netflix the most established player in the market.
[Softpedia]

Sega has confirmed that release of the Xbox 360 demo of Shinji Mikami’s Vanquish will be delayed until tomorrow (September 2).

However, the PlayStation 3 release is on track and players will be able to download the demo later today.
Vanquish is currently scheduled for release in Europe on October 22nd, for both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The intense third-person shooter is the latest game from Resident Evil 4 creator Shinji Mikami.

Vanquish has been getting a bit of high-profile attention recently, Ratchet and Clank developer Insomniac said it was the best game at this years E3.
[Computerandvideogames.com]

Sony has unveiled three new ebook readers to compete with Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle

The three new devices – the Pocket Edition, Touch Edition and Daily Edition – are only available in the United States, and feature improved eInk screens with clearer displays, slimmer designs and touch-screen controls.

The Pocket Edition, which features a 5in screen and the same eInk Pearl display used on Amazon’s Kindle, will cost $179.99, while the Touch Edition has a 6in screen, improved display and memory card expansion slots, and costs $229.99. The Daily Edition, which allows users to download books directly to the device via Wi-Fi and the AT&T 3G phone network, has a slimmer, neater design, improved battery life and more storage, and will cost around $299.99.

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading unit, said that consumers wanted a touch-screen product, and were willing to pay extra for it.

“Lowering prices to get cheaper and cheaper is not our direction,” he said. “Our plan is not to race to the bottom.”

Sony will hope that the new ebook readers will enable it to compete more closely with key rivals, such as Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle. Book retailer Barnes & Noble has also launched the Nook ebook reader in the US, and both the Kindle and Nook, which can wirelessly download books straight to the device, are available for less than Sony’s Touch Edition.

The Japanese consumer electronics giant also announced plans to launch a Kindle-style “app” for iPhones and Android-based smartphones, which would allow people to download and read Sony’s ebooks on their mobile device. Sony said the Reader Mobile Edition would be released “later this year”.
[Telegraph.co.uk]

Lesson one in how to handle criticism: If someone insults your film in 89 words, don’t spend 1,374 words fighting back. Especially if the movie in question is Piranha 3D, and especially if you’re fighting against James Cameron. Last week, Cameron told Vanity Fair that Piranha 3D was “an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D.” He continued: “It just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.”

Piranha 3D producer Mark Canton responded Tuesday in an e-mail sent to reporters that not only circumvented Cameron’s initial point, but also engaged in much of the same behavior that Canton accused Cameron of. For instance, if you’re going to slam Cameron for name-dropping some notable directors, you shouldn’t mention that you watched Piranha 3D with J.J. Abrams, who “had nothing short of the fabulous, fun 3-D experience that the movie provides.” I agree that it was inconsiderate of Cameron to single out Piranha 3D. Cameron could have easily made his argument without condemning a specific movie. But if Canton thinks Cameron “should be taking the high road,” the producer shouldn’t declare that he found “the 3-D in Avatar to be inconsistent,” and that he had wished “Avatar had been more original in its storytelling.” Mr. Canton, hidden not that deep within your dissertation was the only response you needed to make. And it would have taken all of 11 words: “My sense is that Mr. Cameron has never seen Piranha 3D.“
[Entertainment Weekly]