Tech Blog

[#1]

Apple
iPad - Dominated the week, first with speculation and rumor leading up to the announcement, followed by critique, opinion, and outrage as the details on Apple's Next Big Thing(TM) became clear. Future Shop Techbloggers covered the event, including our own pre-announcement speculation and post announcement opinion. Read all about the Apple Tablet (now called the iPad) here.

Rather than delve into all the other details around the web, I'm going to point you to:

• Techmeme's Apple coverage
• Ars Technica's coverage

Now that we got that out of the way, let's move on to the rest of the Tech World.

Microsoft
Google pulls IE6 support from Docs and Sites

For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year.

First build of "next-generation" Windows Home Server leaks

That said, the leak indicates that there will be Home Standard and Home Premium editions (Microsoft started considering splitting WHS in two back in September 2008. Furthermore, you'll need a 2GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, as well as a 120GB/160GB primary hard drive (NTFS is the only supported file system).

Social Media
Twitter as an emergency response channel

Within three days, they had co-opted a shortcode, 4636, that had been used for weather information in Haiti. They rushed to get several other partners like Ushahidi, which provides an open-source platform for tracking crisis communications, and Google on board. A non-profit that specializes in using technology for disaster relief, Instedd, built an emergency information system using the shortcode. On a very late Saturday night, a cobbled-together team of a half-dozen organizations or so launched ‘4636′ as an emergency number.

Twitter knows what's going on around you

Local Trends will allow you to learn more about the nuances in our world and discover even more relevant topics that might matter to you. We’ll be improving this feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our API.

Gaming
Playstation 3 hacked -- finally. Joins Wii, Xbox, DS, etc.

This should give any aspiring minglers full memory access, and while he's only tested it with firmware version 2.4.2, he "imagine[s] it works on all current versions." A guide might follow sometime in the future, he says, but if you're really antsy to get your coding kicks, we wouldn't wait up.

Sony Kill Switch?

In Japan, a surprising number of consumers really do claim to believe that Sony products are programmed to break as soon as the warranty expires.

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Your Turn
So, did I miss anything? What online story really got you going this week? Link to it in the comments!

[#2]

It was nice to see that Google is finally pulling support for IE6.  It's time to let IE6 die off and for people to move on.  And I'm interested to see what's going to happen with the Sony PS3 hack.  There is still a long way to go before the hack can actually be used for anything, but the code has now been posted for others to help.  And even more interesting will be to see what Sony's response is, if there is any response at all. 

Some other news that I saw that I thought was interesting is that a major online book retailer pulled support for Macmillan books in response to demands by the publisher to increase prices following the introduction of the iPad (which this e-book retailer doesn't want to do).  I'm curious where this is going to go...

Another expected anouncement is set to come soon that should excite Windows Mobile users.  Looks like Windows Mobile 7 should be announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Maybe this will be the kick start Microsoft needs to get it's mobile software back in the game.  (Yes, I still keep track of this as I had an iPaq that used to run Windows Mobile 2003 and I really liked it, even though I've now moved on to BlackBerry).

There was more news worthy stuff, but most of it got drowned out by the iPad announcement.

[#3]

Thanks for these Krypto; it's hard to pull everything together and I do appreciate the additional news items!

The publishing kerfuffel is going bigtime no? It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes down as Apple's iBooks store gets up and running, independant online booksellers review the situation, and the big boys line up against Apple.

And yeah, I too would think it neat for Win Mobile to get going again. The mobile space could use more competition.

[#4]

The publishing kerfuffel is indeed going big time!  And agreed, it will be very interesting to see what's going to happen and who will win or lose.