HP PSG UK head: what's all this talk about us 'quitting' the PC business?

HP Hewlet Packard UK website. The UK head of its personal systems group says it isn't quitting the PC business. Yet. Photograph: Daniel Law/PA

HP's UK head of the Personal Systems Group – that's the part of HP that Leo Apotheker put on the block last week – has sent around a message for clients and customers, which we'll reproduce here, with our own comments.

A message from Paul Hunter, head of HP PSG UK and Ireland.

There's no denying that it's been a strange week at HP. I've spent 16 years with HP in the UK and I certainly can't remember a time like it. But change happens, and I fundamentally believe that HP and PSG are stronger following the announcements surrounding webOS and PSG.

I'd like to firstly clear up any misunderstanding that has arisen from the earnings announcement around the future of the Personal Systems Group. There have been a number of incorrect stories saying that HP is quitting the PC business.

Let me be absolutely clear in saying that at no stage has HP said it is quitting the PC business. Three options are being investigated, and whether the company is spun off, sold or kept in the HP portfolio, the team in the UK remains committed to creating and supporting great products and services.

Two out of the three options offered there involve HP quitting the PC business (because it wouldn't have a PC business in-house any more). And HP's overall profit margins would improve by about 2%, from 10% to 12%, if it got rid of PSG. Overall, PSG is the least profitable division, in percentage terms (ie profits/revenues) of HP by a substantial margin: its average profitability is about half that of the next-worst division, HP Financial (which does leasing, and is tiny).

Getting rid of PSG would raise the margin, which would raise profitability, which would raise the earnings per share, which would raise HP's share price. "Adding value for stockholders" is how companies are meant to work. Absent a long-term plan for transforming the PSG business (perhaps with tablets? Oh, perhaps not) it's hard to see the justification for keeping it in purely fiscal terms. There could be other justifications - that the experience in designing software or hardware feeds back into other parts of the company, or that winning PC business leads to more profitable services contracts - but the numbers themselves don't speak well.

Hunter continues:

I'd also like to reaffirm our commitment to our UK customers regarding both PC products and those that bought webOS devices. HP is the world's largest PC manufacturer. We are the number one PC manufacturer in UK and Ireland. HP PSG UK is only going in one direction, forwards and that means customers can have confidence that existing HP products will be supported under the terms of their warranties as will any future purchases. Likewise, all webOS products will be supported and HP fully intends to support the future development of the webOS platform, though again how that will be managed is still under discussion.

Clear as mud on WebOS. You can see that HP would be very worried that customers and potential customers might be deserting. I'd be astonished if Dell's sales force weren't on the phones all this week

Obviously the announcement has raised a number of questions outside those mentioned above. We are still working through some of these, but I wanted to try and address as many as I could.

Regarding PSG activity in the UK, it's very much business as usual. Actually, it's more than business as usual. PSG is a $40B annual business. We operate in 170 countries and have more than 180,000 channel partners. Whatever the future strategy, we have a mission and responsibility to all of our employees, customers and partners to continue to deliver fantastic products. To that end, you will see a ramping up of marketing and advertising activity in the UK as we look to raise awareness of our great products ranges like ENVY and TouchSmart for consumer and Elite and ProBooks for business users.

That's PCs, which have an uncertain future.

Another obvious question is why has HP decided to stop supporting webOS hardware devices. Due to market dynamics, significant competition and a rapidly changing environment, continuing to execute our former device approach was not in the best interest of HP and HP shareholders. HP is fully committed to the ongoing support and service of customers who purchased webOS devices.

We hear: for some reason the iPad didn't roll over at the approach of the TouchPad, even though ours was the same price, just slower and with fewer apps. Quite what the "rapidly changing environment" was, we don't know, and HP hasn't elucidated.

I know that questions will remain, and I will do my very best to answer these as and when they arise. I apologize that we have been slow to answer some of the questions around webOS. The sheer scale of interest in the discounted products took us a little by surprise. We are now working on ensuring everyone that owns a webOS device has a positive experience.

Translation: we're waiting for the rest of the stock, which was meant to last until Christmas but sell at a profit, to arrive so we can sell it at a loss. HP management wants this to happen.

And that is my focus now; to ensure each and every interaction with the PSG UK business, be that from a customer, reseller, partner or journalist is a positive one. These are changing but exciting times. My UK team and I are fully committed to leading this world class business to a new and prosperous future.

We're sure he is, and we wish him the best. It's just going to be tricky, that's all.

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Tech Weekly podcast: Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO

In a special programme we discuss the career of Apple guru Steve Jobs as he steps down from his role as chief executive. Jemima Kiss, Charles Arthur and Dan Crow of UK startup Songkick share their thoughts on the effect Jobs has on computing and the company that just two weeks ago became the world's biggest (by market capitalisation).

Dan, who worked with Jobs on his return to the company in the mid-90s suggests that Steve may be the greatest marketer of our time, because of his ability to understand products and what people find exciting in them.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also shares a story from a turning point during the early years of the company – the launch of the Mac – and how Jobs's tyrannical reputation was evident even then.

We also discuss Apple's new chief executive Tim Cook, and ask what the future now holds for Apple.

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Boot up: HP's WebOS conundrum, Autonomy sale, and more

A quick burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Rory CJ: "...while there's a promise that Autonomy will be run as a separate business, with Mike Lynch still in charge, this still looks like a sad day for British technology - and for Cambridge in particular."

"Those options could range from a sale to licensing. What to do with WebOS is just one issue facing HP as it attempts to reinvent itself. Here's a look at the options."

"An insider has given us details from an all-hands meeting HP just held with employees in the webOS Global Business Unit in light of today's announcement that HP will no longer make webOS devices. In the meeting, webOS GBU VP Stephen DeWitt made it clear that HP intends to continue to work on webOS and likely intends to license it. DeWitt was adamant, saying several times "We are not walking away from webOS." He detailed a plan to try to determine what the platform's future will look like within the next two weeks, although he admitted that "Clearly, we don't have all the answers today.""

Quite a lot. Though of course this shows revenue, not profit. The profit graph would be more interesting.

All you need to know about many Anonymous members in a single tweet: age, attitude, achievement.

Handy tips indeed.

Free phone charging? Think again. "Brian Markus, president of Aires Security, said he and fellow researchers Joseph Mlodzianowski and Robert Rowley built the charging kiosk to educate attendees about the potential perils of juicing up at random power stations. Markus explains the motivation behind the experiment:
"'We'd been talking about how dangerous these charging stations could be. Most smartphones are configured to just connect and dump off data,' Markus said. 'Anyone who had an inclination to could put a system inside of one of these kiosks that when someone connects their phone can suck down all of the photos and data, or write malware to the device.'"

Intriguing: "At a news conference following release of its first-half earnings, China Mobile (CHL) revealed Thursday that it has met several times with Steve Jobs to talk about Apple (AAPL) making an iPhone that would support its proprietary 3G standard, Reuters reports"

You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on delicious

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Boot up: Steve Jobs steps down, reaction and more

A quick burst of 11 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Nice collection.

"Steve Jobs's resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies."

John Gruber: "Apple's products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. ... The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like "How should a computer work?", "How should a phone work?", "How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?" he also brought to the most important question: "How should a company that creates such things function?"
"Jobs's greatest creation isn't any Apple product. It is Apple itself."

"The public release of the source code for the infamous ZeuS Trojan earlier this year is spawning novel attack tools. And just as hybrid cars hold the promise of greater fuel efficiency, these nascent threats show the potential of the ZeuS source code leak for morphing ordinary, run-of-the-mill malware into far more efficient data-stealing machines."

"The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) receives thousands of financial documents every day detailing the ins and outs of various publicly traded companies and publishes them on its website. Financial reporters who trawl through these SEC filings can often land a scoop, but it's a tedious and time-consuming task. Now, MarketBrief, a new start-up based in Mountain View, California, promises to publish over 1000 stories per day thanks to its software journalists.
"It's easier than it sounds."

Philip K Dick must be laughing somewhere; he coined the "homeopapes", self-driven journalist robots, which would do the interviews by doorstepping people too.

"Apple's iPad will retain its dominance of the tablet market through at least 2013, research firm IHS iSuppli said today.
"El Segundo, Calif.-based iSuppli upped its iPad sales forecast for 2011 from an earlier estimate of 43.7m to 44.2m, citing Apple's ability to solve its supply issues and the blunders by rivals, including Hewlett-Packard.
"'Apple has resolved the iPad supply issues,' said Rhoda Alexander, senior manager of tablet and monitor research in an interview today. 'It was never a demand problem.'"

In the first two quarters of 2011 Apple sold about 12m iPads, so this would indicate a huge ramp in sales.

There's the feeling of an idealistic thread of thinking running up against Google's deep need to be able to mine personal data in this debate.

Nice animation by @codepo8. HTML5 is coming along.

Interesting take from the DefCon conference about how hacking has been forced to grow up - sort of - and the troubles around Anonymous.

Some so-called infographics actually obscure more than they inform.

Adi Kingsley-Hughes isn't enjoying. (We haven't upgraded from Snow Leopard yet, so can't comment.)

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Boot up: Skype acquires GroupMe, HP's 'long-decade departure', and more

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates (right) discuss the future following the purchase of Skype by Microsoft. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"Skype will acquire group messaging service GroupMe, a service that was born at a hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York in 2010. GroupMe was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci."

What the Guardian thinks of software patents.

Horace Dediu: "But that's the nature of unforeseeable growth: you cannot foresee what will happen and plans never work out. Data and planning don't help. The lesson is that you need to plan for that which cannot be planned. When you are at your peak you must assume failure is imminent and when you are at the trough you must assume success is inevitable.
"All failures of strategy are rooted in the assumption that outcomes are predictable."

Robert Scoble: "If you want to be a leading platform today you MUST get third-party developers on your side. To rub that in a bit, today I was hanging out with Photobucket's CEO, Tom Munro. I asked him what he thought about the HP news. You can listen in on that conversation here.
"Don't know why Photobucket is relevant? They have nine billion photos. Flickr only has five billion. They just made a deal with Twitter to become the photo sharing system underneath Twitter. Twitter made a deal with Apple to become the official social network for iOS. IE, he's now the official photo sharing guy for Apple's iPhone and iPad.
"Developers like him keep telling me 'Apple is first in my mind, Google is second, and I don't have time for #3, but if I do, looks like Microsoft has the best future.'"

Google has been looking at malware attacks, with a big report: "The report looks at a number of evasion and defensive techniques employed by attackers and malware distributors and concluded that not only are the bad guys quite skilled at adapting to new behaviors by users and browsers, they're also doing some of their own innovation. One of the more interesting findings in the report is that socially engineered malware--the kind that uses various tricks to goad users into visiting a site or downloading a file--make up barely 2% of all malware observed by Google. The volume of socially engineered malware has been rising steadily during the course of the last few years, but Google's engineers said it's still a tiny piece of the overall picture."

From March; worth reading again in the light of HP's withdrawal from the tablet market.

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Boot up: Youth cybercrime linked to peer pressure, SQL injections uncovered, and more

Youth cybercrime ... all about friends' influence?

A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Showing you how SQL injection is spotted and what tools are used to get it done. The lack of response from the fashion site is concerning, though: this is someone who tried to do all the right things (no customer data leak, advising the site privately).

"Mr Jobs has been described in the past as Apple's best marketing tool. Today's announcement shows that he hasn't lost his ability to steal the headlines.
"Here are some of the stories which would have been interesting news today, if Stevey J hadn't sent that letter to the Apple board."

Your catchup-on-the-catchup service.

Linked by Oxblood Ruffin (see link lower): "Peer influence and low self-control appear to be the major factors fueling juvenile cybercrime such as computer hacking and online bullying, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University criminologist.
"Thomas Holt, assistant professor of criminal justice, said the findings reinforce the need for parents to be more aware of their children's friends and Internet activities."

Quad-core! Great. We think there may be more unreleased Windows slates than ones actually on the market.

"After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the 'future'."

Crap. Steve Jobs, OK, but CmrdTaco? (Still, outlasted Digg in usefulness, huh, Rob?)

Note source. But - sharp as a knife.

"Data theft is arguably the game changer.
"DDoSing or web defacements are one thing. Breaking into government and commercial networks is another. Already the clouds are forming. The Danish police wish to ban all anonymous use of the internet. The Indian Government wants real-time monitoring of Twitter, Facebook, and Skype. The OECD is seeking tighter regulatory control of the internet. And the United Kingdom is seeking stricter laws to deal with cybercrime.
"While it would be unfair to say that Anonymous is completely responsible for these reactions, it's certainly part of the problem. And when the whip comes down - and come down it will - Anonymous will have to accept part of the blame when online privacy rights are scaled back even further.
"Hacktivism, real hacktivism, has always managed to get things done without upsetting the apple cart. And even though Anonymous is more decentralised than traditional hacktivist models there's no reason why it can't muster more discipline."

In 1972, Jobs offered the first Apple prototype PC to HP. In a rainy August 39 years later...

Beatiful, timeless interactive of Steve Jobs' technical legacy at one of the world's most valuable companies by market cap.

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HP's problem with PCs, explained in three graphs

The announcement by Leo Apotheker that HP is "exploring options" around its Personal Systems Group (PSG) - might keep it, might spin it off, might sell it - has naturally got people wondering why the world's biggest seller of Windows PCs would want to get out of a market when it's leading it.

The answer's simple, once you delve into HP's financials, which I've examined going back to the November 2004-January 2005 period (officlally, the first quarter of its 2005 financial year). PSG is the worst-performing division in terms of profit margin. It's dragging the rest of the business down.

You can see it here with three graphs. First, here's HP's revenues by division:

HP revenue by division, Q105-Q311: PSG is the green chunk. Amounts in millions.

.

PSG looks pretty good - in fact, by revenue, it's the biggest, with only Services (the blue chunk) coming close.

But now we turn to profits. Here are the profits, in monetary terms (ie millions of dollars):

HP profits by division in monetary terms. Services in blue, Imaging in purple, PSG in green. Amounts in millions.

.

Suddenly it's clear that while PSG generates lots of revenue, it doesn't do the same when it comes to profits. (My calculation is that it sells about 48m PCs per year for an average of $800, on which it makes $40 profit each.) By contrast Services and Imaging & Printing (blue and purple respectively) generate much more profit per dollar of revenue. Perhaps not surprising, because both rely a lot on HP's own in-house expertise - unlike the Windows PCs, which use someone else's software (mostly) and hardware that is commoditised.

The picture becomes even clearer once you look at the percentage profitability of each division - its profit as a percentage of revenue. Now, PSG is not the biggest, but the smallest; an average, over the period, of just 4.6%, compared to 12% for Services and over 15% for Imaging & Printing.

HP divisional profits as percentage of revenue. Services blue, Imaging & Printing purple, PSG green.

.

The upshot of all this is that if HP were to ditch PSG without having any effect on its other divisions (a big proviso, since arguably PCs are sometimes useful to win Services contracts) then its profit margin would improve overall from an average over those 27 quarters of 10.1% to 12.7%.

Doesn't sound much - but when you're a company doing $30bn per quarter, these things add up. True, HP would only be a $21bn per quarter company if it dumped PSG – but it would have better earnings per share, which would mean better dividends, and the stock price would rise. Which is what chief executives are meant to make happen, aren't they? (Ignoring for a moment whether it makes sense.)

No doubt people inside HP know these graphs just as well - and they know how much benefit the PSG brings, or doesn't bring, to other divisions. The motive for sticking with PSG may be there. Perhaps there's a brilliant plan internally to boost the margins from PSG. (Run WebOS instead of Windows?)

But for now, those graphs tell the tale. Even for the biggest PC seller in the world, personal computers aren't a great business.

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Tech Weekly podcast: Has HP indicated the beginning of the end for the PC?

If the future of computer is iPads and smartphones then why is HP cancelling its webOS mobile platform and Touchpad tablet – after just 49 days?

The company also intends to buy the British Autonomy Corporation, and Jemima Kiss, Charles Arthur and Juliette Garside find out about their impressive client list and why that may hold a clue as to why HP are interested in purchasing the company and moving into business services.

Also on this week's Tech Weekly, Aleks Krotoski casts a critical eye on social media, asking what we can learn about ourselves and other cultures by looking at how we use the web.

Facebook's director of policy in Europe, Richard Allan, talks about openness, politics and debate, and how the company intends to keep its platform accessible in territories that want to censor information.

Finally, HP Labs' Bernardo Huberman offers insight into the differences in social media use in China, where 140 million people have signed up for Twitter-alike Sina Weibo. What do the Chinese tweet about?

Don't forget to...

• Comment below
• Mail the producer tech@guardian.co.uk
• Get our Twitter feed for programme updates or follow our Twitter list
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Looking for bargain-priced HP PCs

Exiting the PC business could easily take HP 12-18 months, if it ever happens. Photograph: Marcus Brandt/EPA

Now that HP has decided to exit the PC business, to which retailers should we look to pick up bargain-priced HP stock? What usually happens to inventory when tech companies exit a market?
Edward

Hewlett-Packard has not exited the PC business, yet, just the mobile phone and media tablet hardware businesses. In the UK, it knocked out TouchPad stocks via Currys, PC World and Dixons.co.uk. The 16GB version went for £89 (down from £349.99) and the 32GB model for £115 (down from £429.99). Those prices reflected the fact that there isn't very much software for the TouchPad's WebOS operating system, and it's not clear whether more apps will be launched. Also, if a TouchPad breaks or its battery fails out of warranty, could it be repaired?

Exiting the PC business could easily take HP 12-18 months, if it ever happens. HP's Personal Systems Group has an annual turnover of $40.7bn (£24.8bn) and must have manufacturing contracts for the production of tens of millions of HP and Compaq computers. HP is now considering whether to spin PSG off as a separate company, or try to sell all or part of the business to someone else. Either way, PSG is expected to continue trading as normal. Buyers might put a lower value on HP's products, but there is not much chance of a TouchPad-style clearout.

Even if PSG has to dispose of a few million PCs at reduced prices, this might not have a big impact. Most of HP's PCs have well-known Intel or AMD processors and standard screens and hard drives. They also run Microsoft Windows 7 and will run Windows 8, which is intended to require fewer resources. (Windows 8 will also appear on less powerful ARM processors so it will need to be efficient.)

HP's "overstocks" will not be orphans. They will run millions of Windows programs, they will work with all popular websites, and they will be repairable by independent service companies. Buyers will still expect these laptops to last for three or four years, or longer, so they probably won't be offered at fire-sale prices.

Also, HP is a tier-one brand. It can drop its prices slightly and shift the problem to suppliers of second-tier and no-name laptops that sell mainly on price.

Acer, the giant Taiwanese PC supplier, has a problem with unsold stock, having discovered "abnormalities in terms of channel inventory stored in freight forwarders' warehouses, and in the accounts receivables from channels in Spain," and is taking a $150m write-off. Some other companies may also have unsold stock because, according to Gartner research, UK sales of PCs fell by 15% in this year's second quarter to 2,462,000 units. It's a good time to look for bargains but you may not see significant reductions until just after Christmas, when Intel releases new chips.

Sometimes suppliers want to shift a load of PCs quickly, either because they're discontinuing a particular model or because they are bringing out a new range. However, they usually don't want to sell them via their usual outlets (Currys, PC World etc) because that would upset everybody's idea of orderly pricing. These are good candidates for discount websites, or they can be sold as "supermarket specials".

Over the years, I've seen great deals in a variety of places including Aldi, Morrisons, Argos and Staples. These are not places I'd normally look for a new PC.

Of course, buying a laptop that really is a special offer means you won't get much choice of specification or brand.

There are plenty of websites where you can hunt for laptop bargains including Amazon.co.uk, Laptopsdirect, Save On Laptops, Laptopshop.co.uk, ebuyer.com, Misco, and Tesco Direct. Compare prices to make sure the savings are real and, as usual, caveat emptor.

Many online stores sell "open box" products, which means the original customer returned it, possibly because he "changed his mind". There are also "Grade B" products, which means there can be cosmetic damage on a new PC, such as minor scratches. Finally, some sites sell refurbished laptops, which may have been heavily used. The Laptop Centre, Student Computers and Portable Universe have lots of refurbished laptops, as do many other sites.

Dell Outlet sells returned and refurbished Dell PCs, while Apple UK sells Apple Certified Refurbished machines.

When new laptops cost £1,500 to £2,000, there was plenty of incentive for bargain hunting or buying refurbished PCs. Now that you can get a netbook for £200-£250 or a decent laptop for £350-£500, the potential savings are much smaller. If you save £100, that's only £25 per year for four years, or 50p a week. If it means buying a laptop you'll hate rather than one you'd like, it might not be such a good deal.

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Untangling the Web Education

It's the first day of school and you're set for a new academic year: you've got all your supplies jammed into your new school rucksack: the pens and notebooks, coloured pencils and stapler, three-ring binders and textbooks.

Now add your laptop or tablet, a wifi connection, a list of usernames and passwords, account details for blogging platforms, social networks, photo sharing sites, cloud-based research resources, collaboration tools and digital 3D learning environments.

That's one heavy bag.

The Web is the ultimate distributed network of information, so how has it transformed the learning process in the last twenty years? For this fortnight's Untangling the Web, I'm dissecting the beating heart of today's education system to discover how people are using the web in classrooms, at home and in libraries, from nursery to university, and whether it's helping or hindering the education process.

It's an enormous topic, with many vested interests. I'll be focussing on pedagogical theories, online education enablers, novel learning techniques and approaches that the web affords rather than focussing on the following themes (which demand their own columns):

- games and learning
- education regulation and policy
- key stages and Internet safety/citizenship
- disinformation
- specific classroom technologies

Do you have a digital education story to share? Add your comments below, or send an email to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk. You can also tweet me @aleksk.

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Steve Jobs: the great communicator, though maybe not via email

Many of Steve Jobs's email replies came from his Apple iPhone. Photograph: Kimberly White/Reuters/Corbis

Steve Jobs may effectively be gone from Apple, but he is far from forgotten by those who worked inside and outside with him. His style in dealing with customers could be astonishingly blunt, yet never what you would call directly rude. His email address became known around the web, and people would contact him through it. Those emails began to be collected by various blogs.

And while Jobs might have been known as a great communicator when up on a stage in front of an audience, when dealing through email, "terse" barely begins to describe it. Here's a selection:

September 2010:
Customer: "Steve, Enjoyed the presentation today. But … this new iTunes logo really sucks. You're taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let's both cross our fingers on this…."
Jobs: We disagree.

June 2010:
Customer: "Any reason battery performance on a 3GS running iOS4 should be worse than it was running OS3?"
Jobs: Nope.

June 2010:
Customer: "Mr Jobs, Newsweek just ran an 'obituary' for the Mac saying the mac has been 'relegated to the steaming dung heap of the past'. I hope he's wrong. I believe and hope that the Mac will remain a vibrant, vital part of Apple's future and one of its (admittedly many) product lines. So, as you view it, does the mac have a long and important history ahead of it?"
Jobs: Completely Wrong. Just wait.

May 2010:
Customer: "Do you hate Adobe and their products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) or do you just hate their view on Flash?"
Jobs: I respect and admire Adobe. We just chose to not have Flash on our devices.

May 2010:
Customer: "Why no printing on the iPad? What gives?"
Jobs: It will come.

And then there was the entire thread between Jobs and Ryan Tate of Gawker in May 2010, in which Jobs suggested that the iPad and Apple Store combination offered "freedom from porn". (Context: Gawker's parent company faced legal charges over its display of the then-unreleased iPhone 4 prototype, and there had been some police presence at a Gawker writer's house in California.)

Here's how it went. Tate began:
"If [Bob] Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company? Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with 'revolution'? Revolutions are about freedom," Tate wrote after seeing an iPad advert.

Three hours later, Jobs replied: "Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."

There follow an argument about Flash, batteries, Objective-C, porn ("you might care more [about not having it] when you have kids", remarks Jobs), whether Apple has a private police force that kicked in a Gawker person's doors ("You are so misinformed," Jobs retorts. "No one kicked in any doors. You're believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports").

Jobs concludes: "Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform that they want. If people don't like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did.

"As for us, we're just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure."

And then a final, very Jobs-ish little parting shot:

"By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticise others [sic] work and belittle their motivations?"

Yet Tate himself said that "came away from the exchange impressed with his willingness to engage". Tersely, of course.

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Boot up: spam kingpin mugged, smartphones in Africa, coding kids and more

A man on the phone at an internet cafe in Nairobi, Kenya. Smartphone next time? Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty images

A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Go on, enjoy the schadenfreude.

Rom Miller: "When it comes to greenfield economies, the fastest way to the Internet is via a cellphone. It's a lot more affordable for a country with little infrastructure to put up some cell towers, and the phones are cheaper than PCs, laptops, and tablets for individual citizens. "That's why it's so interesting that Safaricom, a Kenyan ISP that reportedly has over 17m customers, has decided to get into the low-end smartphone business. And over 350,000 Kenyans have reportedly bought the cheap phones. "The phone itself is the Huawei IDEOS. Click through and have a look. This is not half bad for the money. It runs Android 2.2 and includes WiFi, a camera, and, of course, access to the Android app store. "I can't say how well the smartphone works or how responsive it is. When the Website itself claims 'higher overall performance compared with previous releases,' you can infer that it might not be the highest-quality phone on the planet, but it's not supposed to be."

Interesting roundup of languages to let your ...eight-year-old upwards?.. teach themselves with. (Perhaps with a little help.)

Arik Hesseldahl: " Thus our range is somewhere in the neighborhood of $140 million to $300 million spent on hardware alone, depending on how many units ordered." Where the units ordered are reckoned to be between 500,000 and 1m.

Google+ does browser security the right way: no sniffing, HTTPS only, no framing. Facebook? Not so much.

Jack Schofield again, interesting in retrospect: "Was it a good idea for Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest computer company, to buy Palm – which now specialises in mobile phones – for $1.2bn?
"The initial response from analysts has been as mixed as you'd expect – see the comments from Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Informa, and Ovum below – but almost everything depends on what HP intends to do with its new company."

Jack Schofield (formerly of The Guardian) thinks Samsung is the only likely buyer because it's so big and would want a big PC division: "Although it hasn't been widely discussed in the west, it looks as though HP has been talking to Samsung for many months. For example, the Taiwan-based Want China Times ran a story in March, Samsung's planned acquisition of HP sparks market concern, which said that 'rumors that HP would sell its PC business have been circulating in the market for some time now.' It adds: 'there are also reports that HP has talked with Hon Hai [Foxconn] and Chinese high-tech giant Lenovo to explore the possibility of a deal.'"
Makes a lot of sense, apart from the penultimate sentence, which says "PSG could be Samsung's Trojan horse in the US market, enabling the innovative giant to take the battle to Apple." Er, what battle, exactly? Mac buyers aren't likely to be tempted by Samsung/HP Windows PCs.

Which is why you should not upgrade to PHP 5.3.7 (or downgrade if you have). Perhaps a new function in 5.3.8, regressiontest() ?

Ryan Block turns out to have been prescient about Colligan shrugging off the threat from the iPhone - two months before it was made visible outside Apple: "No, the iPhone will have its own set of annoying issues, but believe you us, Ed, Apple will 'just walk in', so you'd better have a few and-one-more-thing-s up those sleeves of yours if you're thinking about stopping a mass defection."

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Boot up: China's PC market overtakes US, Windows Phone 7 – the (preliminary) verdict, and more

China's PC market ... now bigger than US's

A quick burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"PC shipments in the China market have exceeded those of the United States in the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11). Approximately 18.5m units worth US$11.9bn shipped in China during the quarter, compared to 17.7m units worth US$11.7bn in the U.S. China represented 22% of the global PC market's unit shipments compared to the US at 21%."

Nice implementation in HTML5 - though of course you'll need a compatible browser. Code at https://github.com/emmasax/Phone-hacking by Emmasax.

"Look, I recognize that no phone is perfect, no mobile OS is perfect, no technology is perfect, I'm not perfect, all of that. And Mango is, by and large, a good effort. But at this stage in the game, it's got to be on point if Microsoft has any hope of convincing people to turn their adoring eyes from iPhone or pull them away from the massive marketing machine of Android. Mango is good. A lot of people could use it every day and be totally happy with it. But it's not great."

Molly Wood is usually thought of as a Windows fan. (Thanks @Avro for the link.)

"Pretty much ever since Paul Buchheit suggested "Don't be evil" as a corporate values statement (and Amit Patel begun writing it on whiteboards around the office), any time Google does something people don't like, they begin calling it 'evil' and complaining that Google is violating its prime directive.
"But surely 'evil' means something more than just 'wrong' or 'bad'. If the girl across the street peers through your window to watch you undress, we might say that was bad and wrong and awful, but I don't think anyone would try to claim it was evil."

Thoughtful: captures the essence of how Google, and companies that succeed in building loyal customer bases, think, and how it differs from those which don't.

Intriguing investigation of how the ability to build stuff has leaked away across the Pacific: the two companies given as examples make an interesting contrast.

"The series of pie charts shows the sales of various music formats: Thus, you can see cassettes begin devouring the LP, and then CDs devouring cassettes, and then, of course, downloadable MP3s decimating CD sales:"

The trouble though is that it's jerky and less easy to follow than the same data as a straight line graph. Only us?

Includes Michael Dell.

"Robert McMillen, president of Portland, Ore.-based All Tech 1, a security solution provider with a strong mobile security business, said his company wasted no resources on the WebOS software or the TouchPad hardware because neither offered a value proposition for his customers.
"'We never had a single meeting with our staff about supporting [the HP TouchPad] platform,' he said. 'There was almost no information on security for this product. It wasn't built for business, it was built more for consumers. It wasn't even a blip on our radar.'"

And he's not alone. HP has burnt a lot of boats with this move.

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Good news, Mr Jobs - Taiwan's CGI wizards have recapped your career

Your life achievements haven't properly been recognised until they've been rendered into faintly dodgy CGI by the Taiwanese outfit NMA. (Tiger Woods, you were so honoured.)

But we're happy to say that Steve Jobs, who resigned as chief executive of Apple on Wednesday, has been duly recognised. (In fact it's come up so fast that we suspect they might even have had this prepared, which we didn't think they were allowed to do under their "make it look as weird as possible" conditions. To say that it's a figurative - nay, symbolic - rather than literal representation only begins to scratch the surface.

As Bitterwallet points out, "Obviously, it covers all the key points in the life of Jobs – the LSD-fuelled epiphany, that time he gave birth to a computer, the vicious lightsaber fight with Bill 'Darth Vader' Gates and his subsequent bout with the Grim Reaper. It's all there – a fitting tribute if ever we saw one."

To which we'd add that it also has the time he fought off an attack of killer Android bots in his boardroom, upon which he was helped by someone who we can't actually recognise but seems to be wearing a rainbow flowerpot on his head. Mark Zuckerberg? Honestly, it's like Madame Tussauds in there. Anyway, enjoy.

Steve Jobs's life and career, as rendered by Taiwan's NMA

It's like Picasso was writing and reporting the news, isn't it?

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Boot up: Google Android phishing scare, Anonymous retaliates for arrests, and more

Android badges at WMC 2011 ... gotta get'em all!

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Families also get a voucher entitling them to a new computer for $149.99.

"Every technology company I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits that are the biggest bunch of bullshit ever. Every week it seems like a new one comes up. Between having to pay our lawyers a lot of money to review each, to increasing insurance rates and settlement costs because we can't afford to pay to fight the nonsense, it's an enormous expense. So much so that money that would have gone to new hires to improve and sell the product has to be saved to pay to deal with this bullshit."

"The group of hackers known as Anonymous says it has hacked into about 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the US, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation."

"Researchers have discovered what they say is a design flaw in Android that could be used by criminals to steal data via phishing or by advertisers to bring annoying pop-up ads to phones."

"...we've been surprised by the optimism among companies we're talking to, and they're not just having wishful thoughts. The specific reasons: Google+ is a respectable product, it's grown quickly, there are clear social communication channels like Streams where developers could promote discovery and engagement, and the transaction fee is likely to be quite low."

"Twice this year, Google's been fairly frank and vocal about something competitors have done that it feels is unfair. Twice, I've watched the technosphere largely react by beating the company over the head with a "You do whatever you want and copy everyone else" stick. Does that measure up, and more so than for Google than other companies?"

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Tech Weekly podcast: what's next for BlackBerry?

On this week's podcast, Charles Arthur finds out what's in the pipeline for BlackBerry-maker RIM after the company's smartphone was caught up in the London riots. He discovers the future of a company that recently announced plans to cut 2,000 jobs, and a huge loss in market share in one of its key territories – the US – but how its new operating systems and its handheld Playbook should change its fortunes.

We also demystify the process of getting funding for your great digital idea. DFJ Espirit's Nic Brisbourne, the funder behind travel social network WAYN and social media consultancy service Conversocial, and author of Equity Kicker, is in the studio to talk us through Series A, Angels and VC funding. He also drops a few hints about the next big thing: where and what is going to make money over the next five years.

Don't forget to...

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Wanted: a PC to browse the web on a TV

Acer's Revo includes a RevoPad multi-touch pad that recognises gestures or can be switched to work as a keyboard. You can slip it back into the Revo's case when it's not in use.

I have a three-year-old Panasonic plasma TV – great picture, great sound, no need to upgrade it yet. However, I would like to use it to watch movies and catchup TV available on the net, and maybe do some web surfing. How do I best achieve this without having to go down the Apple TV route? I already have an LG PVR attached, but that limits me to YouTube and Picasa, and has a horrible alphanumeric entry system. I understand there are PCs that I can attach to the back of the TV and connect with HDMI, and that use wireless keyboards or new-generation mice like the Loop.
Matt Coomber

If you want to connect a PC to a flatscreen TV, then almost any current machine with an HDMI port and Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium will do the job. HDMI carries both video and audio signals, so it avoids having to use separate audio cables, as you do with DVI. Windows 7 includes the Media Center software that was originally designed for use in home entertainment PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition, and it works well with a remote control. Windows Media Center has PVR (personal video recorder) features and now "Internet TV" (ie you can get movies from Zune, Netflix etc, if they are available in your country), so it might possibly replace your standalone PVR. You can certainly use it with a Loop and the Kylo made-for-TV web browser.

Windows XP Media Center PCs died in the marketplace because they were much too expensive for the home TV market, and there were alternatives such as streaming audio and video to the TV set from an existing PC. That's still a cheaper option, using devices such as the Boxee Box. One day, Google TV products such as the Logitech Revue might also be a more attractive option.

However, the PC-centric approach returned with the arrival of "net-tops" such as the Asus EEE PC Box, MSI Wind Box and Acer Revo. These were, roughly, netbooks without screens, so they were very small, relatively cheap, and reasonably quiet. You may be thinking of the EEE PC Box because this can be clipped to the back of a flatscreen TV set. The new more-stylish version of the Acer Revo, the RL100, can be stacked flat or used as a very skinny tower: it's just 300mm high and 25mm thick, and that includes a DVD or Blu-ray drive. Its main rival is probably the Zotac Zbox.

Specification issues are much the same as with netbooks, as discussed last week (Wanted: a netbook for business trips). In general, I'd go for a dual core CPU, and if you plan to play movies, some sort of graphics processor. The standard over the past couple of years has been the Nvidia ION, which is capable of playing full HD (1080p) video. The drawback is that a (literally) hot graphics chip can rev up the cooling fan, increasing the noise level.

The latest version of the Acer Revo 100 has a 1.3GHz dual-core AMD Athlon II Neo K325 processor, ION graphics chip, up to 4GB of memory, a large hard drive (500GB, 640GB or 750GB), a DVD or Blu-ray drive, multi-format memory card slot, USB, Ethernet, S/PDIF and HDMI ports, Wi-Fi, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. It often includes a built-in digital TV tuner. A slot in the tower case holds a somewhat odd remote wireless gesture-capable touchpad that doubles as a keyboard. However, the RL100 will also work with a vast array of Windows mice and keyboards, and with XP/Vista/Windows 7/Media Center MCE remote controls.

Acer also provides Clear.fi software that, according to its blurb: "automatically connects all of your household digital devices, including your smartphone, mobile internet device, notebook, all-in-one PC, HD media player, etc" – it should detect any DLNA-certified device. Clear.fi lets you share media content, play it to other devices, and upload it to popular social networks, though you can use your preferred Windows programs instead.

Since it is, obviously, a PC, you can run standard Windows software, browse the web, play videos in Flash and other formats, and all the usual stuff. You could also use it to run the free, open source XBMC networked media-player/home theatre software. (XBMC has no connection with Microsoft, it just happened to start life on the original Intel-powered Xbox games console.)

While the AMD K325 seems to be (according to the benchmarks) a bit quicker than a comparable Intel Atom, it's not a speed demon, and it isn't going to compete with a Core i3/i5/i7 – as fitted to the ASRock Core 100HT-BD home theatre PC – for general purpose computing or gaming. Depending on local prices, you might be able to build a better Shuttle or "barebones" media computer for a similar price. You could also use a Windows laptop, and most of these now have HDMI as standard plus either DVD or Blu-ray drives. However, the Revo RL100 does the job in a plug-in-and-go format that's quite close to the size of a slimline DVD or Blu-ray player, and will sit happily under your flatscreen TV set without looking like a computer.

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Boot up: 200,000 BitTorrent users sued, Spotify reaches 1.2m US users, and more

Tuning in to America ... Spotify convinces 12.5% of new US users to pay Photograph: Andrew Testa/Rex Features

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"If you're not familiar with Bagcheck, it's a fun way to create and share lists of the things you are passionate about using on your computer, in your kitchen, for photography, when parenting, and everything in between."

This seems a scaled up version of the speculative invoicing scheme mastered by ACS:Law - although these alleged filesharers apparently settle for $2,500 each on average.

"LinkedIn (Debut: May 19) -- $75.16, down 18 percent

Zipcar (Debut: April 14) -- $21.59, down 10 percent

Renren (Debut: May 4) -- $6.75, down 11 percent

Pandora (Debut: June 15) -- $12.55, down 7 percent

Zillow (Debut: July 20) -- $26.17, down 7 percent

Fusion-io (Debut: June 9) -- $24.78, down 5 percent"

A 12.5% conversion rate already. Remember how long it took to reach that in Europe?

Charlie Kindel explains more about his decision to leave Microsoft.

Microsoft veteran Charlie Kindel walks away.

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Boot up: Apple's projector plans, Angry Birds maker 'seeks $1.2bn valuation', and more

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Nilay Patel: "There is a fundamental problem with patents in the United States.

"It is us.

"By that I mean all of us: the companies and people who directly interact with the patent system, the media that reports on those interactions, the analysts and experts who inform the media, and finally the large, active, and vocal readership that we try and service with our reporting. As a group, we have accepted and let lie the lazy conventional wisdom that the patent system is broken beyond repair, a relic of a previous time that has been obsoleted by the rapid pace of technical innovation, particularly in software, and that it should perhaps be scrapped altogether."

Apple has "plans of integrating mini or pico-like projectors into future iOS devices while introducing a likely projector accessory for MacBooks"

"Rovio Entertainment Oy, the Finnish creator of the "Angry Birds" mobile-phone game, is in talks to receive funding that would value the company at about $1.2 billion, two people with knowledge of the discussions said."

Zuckerberg calls a Chill feature "lame". Here's Chill's response: "So what are we going to do? We've already removed this feature." Lame.

How Google+ hopes to beat Facebook: undercutting it. "For the launch of its Google+ social games platform, Google has found one way to differentiate itself from Facebook. For in-game transactions, Google is only going to be charging a 5 percent commission to game developers instead of the 30 percent that Facebook charges."

"Today we're adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life."

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Boot up: Google buys Motorola – all the links you need, and more

Motorola has tried to build quality managemtn ever earlier into its manufacturing processes. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"As opposed to being protected, for which MMI's patents appear to be too weak, those other Android device makers are going to become second-class citizens. Google has set its priority. I said before: don't overestimate the patent part of the deal. This is about Google maximizing its control over Android for the reasons and with the effects I roughly described herein, and on which I'll comment in greater detail going forward."

"That's not to say it wasn't a bold, brash move, or even to say it wasn't the right move for Google and for Android as a platform. But that's all relative to the position Google was in -- and that position was a weak one, and to pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious. And don't forget that it leaves Google in a tenuous situation with the two leading Android handset makers, Samsung and HTC. I think Apple and Microsoft probably feel pretty good, competitively, about having forced Google into spending $12.5 billion for Motorola -- a handset maker with rapidly declining sales, no recent profits, and misguided management."

"According to Infonetics, Motorola Mobility was the leader in set-top box revenues last year, and was also tops in hybrid IP/QAM set-top boxes -- that is, the boxes used by operators like Verizon that combine broadcast TV and over-the-top applications. By leveraging Motorola's position with carriers, Google can better solidify its bid to expand Google TV and Android into the living room."

"Google Inc. agreed to pay Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. $2.5 billion if it fails to close the purchase of the mobile-phone maker, said a person with knowledge of the situation, a fee more than six times the typical amount."

"Our sources say that Motorola was in acquisition talks with several parties, including Microsoft for quite some time. Microsoft was interested in acquiring Motorola's patent portfolio that would have allowed it to torpedo Android even further. The possibility of that deal brought Google to the negotiation table, resulting in the blockbuster sale."

Reading between the lines of Microsoft's redactions: Linux is no longer a desktop threat; Apple and Google are "mainly" its desktop rivals; mobile matters; online battle is now inside the browser; and security is in, innovation is out. Worth reading in full.

Microsoft is finally ready to talk about Windows 8. Here's the new official blog.

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Google's $12.5bn Motorola deal is good maths

Google co-founder Larry Page is good with figures. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google's Larry Page will no doubt wish the mood music for his first major announcement as chief executive was more uplifting.

Instead, the conference call following Google's blockbuster acquisition of Motorola Mobility saw analysts line up to ask whether its largest takeover was also its most defensive.

But Page is a genius mathematician, and spending $12.5bn (£7.6bn) – in cash, no less – on more than 17,000 mobile patents (7,000 more than Nokia) must have been an appealing transaction.

The deal comes just 11 days after David Drummond, Google's legal supremo, complained publicly about Apple, Microsoft and other rivals waging a "hostile, organised campaign" against its Android software.

On Monday's conference call, Drummond was tentatively upbeat. "This is a transaction that will require regulatory approval, certainly in the US and in Europe and other countries, and we're quite confident that it will be approved," he said. "We believe it is a pro-competitive transaction. Android has clearly added competition, innovation and user choice, and we think protecting that ecosystem is pro-competitive, almost by definition."

As a future investment, Motorola Mobility's treasure chest of intellectual property make for better bargaining chips. But, as resident patents expert Florian Müller points out, they failed to deter the ongoing legal actions brought by Apple and Microsoft.

More cynical still is the suggestion Google will simply keep the patents and sell off its newly acquired smartphone manufacturing business. For all its talk of mobile being the future, Google (like Facebook) has shown little interest in making smartphones.

Horace Dediu, the former Nokia manager, notes that if Google really did want in on the hardware world then it would have bought Taiwanese giant HTC, a firm favourite of the Android brand.

And what of rival manufacturers? According to the press material, they welcome the move. According to Andy Rubin, Google's "Mr Android", execs at the big five phone makers showed "enthusiastic support" for the takeover when telephoned with the news on Sunday. But then again, all of them would be hard pushed to say any different.

Nokia shares were up 12% on early trading in New York; BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion jumped 4%; Microsoft rose 1.3% and Apple was up 1.8%. Google was down about 1%.

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Boot up: US antitrust probe on Google Android, Apple goes after Motorola Xoom, and more

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Surely it's the (hardcore) few that are the influencers? Of course the group en masse doesn't agree - where would they go inbetween bouts of crippling state websites? - but that doesn't matter.

"Google's online Hotel Finder app reveals a stunning lack of vision at the search giant -- and a glaring weakness in its ideas about innovation."

"News Corp lost $254 million on MySpace, the company said as it reported revenue that beat analysts' expectations."

It goes on.

"U.S. antitrust regulators are focusing their investigation of Google Inc. on key areas of its business, including its Android mobile-phone software and Web-search related services, people familiar with the probe say."

The background. What ever happened to the careless Apple engineer?

"We are pleased that the District Attorney of San Mateo County, Steven Wagstaffe, has decided, upon review of all of the evidence, that no crime was committed by the Gizmodo team in relation to its reporting on the iPhone 4 prototype last year. While we have always believed that we were acting fully within the law, it has inevitably been stressful for the editor concerned, Jason Chen, and we are glad that we can finally put this matter behind us."

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Boot up: Apple may invest $1bn in Sharp, HP Tablets 'not selling' at Best Buy, and more

Apple chief Steve Jobs at Apple the of the second generation iPad. Sales of the tablet last quarter were three times the sales in its first three months Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"Apple Inc may invest $1 billion in Sharp Corp's Kameyama factory to secure the supply of screens for iPhones and iPads, MF Global FXA Securities wrote in a sales note on Wednesday, sending shares in the Japanese consumer electronics maker up more than 2 percent."

"In a note to investors on Tuesday, Jeffries & Co. analyst Peter Misek concluded that Apple is likely to "strike back" by acquiring patents from rivals such as Nokia or Research in Motion as a response to Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility. He also mentioned InterDigital, which has been widely viewed as a potential target for acquisition by Apple and other major players in the smartphone industry."

"At an event last week, Facebook director of game partnerships Sean Ryan had some choice words for his new competitor. "Google has emulated aspects of our system, which is what they have the right to do," he said. "We just need to be better." He's referring to the way the companies make money from casual online games like Farmville and Words With Friends. Players pay for play time or virtual goods within the games, and the social networks take a cut of the sales. Currently, Facebook reportedly takes 30% from game developers, whereas Google takes just 5%."

"In other words--and I never thought I'd say this--Steve Ballmer was right. Android isn't free. In fact, it's not even cheap. As Daring Fireball's John Gruber points out, the $12.5 billion that Google is spending for Motorola amounts to almost two years' worth of the search company's profits. No company--not even Google--can throw around that kind of cash without envisioning a direct return on its investment"

"According to one source who's seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory."

Microsoft is finally ready to talk about Windows 8. Here's the new official blog.

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Untangling the Web serendipity education lifestages home intellectual property death

Over the next two months, I'll be untangling the effects of the World Wide Web from six more human social phenomena, documenting findings from the academic research and interviews with experts on the Untangling the Web blog and in the fortnightly columns in The Observer.

I've already looked at a whole host of topics including social change, love, hate, sex, health, family, religion, disability and Britishness - among many others.

Looking forward, I'll be asking how digital media has - or hasn't - transformed the experiences and functions of serendipity and discovery, education, life stages (from birth to old age), home, intellectual property and death.

Send your thoughts on these topics to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or to @aleksk, and I'll try to include your responses on the blog and in the column.

First up: serendipity.

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Boot up: Hands on Google+ games, Apple 'hikes iPhone orders', and more

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"Google passes the test so far. It can essentially duplicate Facebook's platform for games and bring over a lot of games that already exist elsewhere. The next test is to see how many games it can get and how the performance works when the games scale to millions of players. Facebook may not be that worried about Google for now, but it definitely has to watch its back because its platform is not so hard to clone."

"Apple has upward adjusted the total order volume for iPhones, consisting of iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone 5, for the second half of 2011 by 12-13%, from 50 million units originally estimated at the end of the second quarter of 2011 to more than 56 million units. iPhone 5 will account for 25.5-26 million units, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers."

So-called digilantes ditch their mission ... because the tech wasn't good enough. I'd wager that's got as much to do with the balaclavas as the tech.

"...Those movies include titles like The Hills Have Thighs and Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros."

Buddy Media, the Facebook advertising affiliate, now worth about $500m, according to its latest funding round.

"The idea came up during a "what if" conversation with my wife Brigitte, while walking along University Avenue in Palo Alto. What should Apple do with its almost beyond comprehension $76B in cash? The COO of the Gassée family is creative and practical, an abstract painter turned "lumber VAR"-she builds or rebuilds houses in Palo Alto. She's not enthralled by technology and takes a utilitarian view of computers, phones, navigation systems, tablets...an attitude that provides a useful counterpoint to my sometimes overly-enthusiastic embrace of anything that computes."

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Boot up: Apple blocks Samsung Galaxy Tab, Nokia pulls Symbian from US, and more

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 was launched at the company's headquarters in Seoul. Photograph: Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters

A quick burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 20 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. There were three notable inventions presented today. The first relates to Apple's "Integrated Touch Screen". The invention allows the touch display to be manufactured with fewer parts and/or processing steps as well as ensuring that the display itself may be thinner, brighter and require less power."

"Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha now says he'd be interested in shipping Windows Phones if Motorola could get the same kind of deal that Nokia got from Microsoft."

Good luck with that.

Not looking good for Dropbox: "I've spent a bunch of time talking to entrepreneurs who are building companies in and around the cloud storage space. It's not a space I like very much because I don't think we'll be using files in the cloud. Now Dropbox is a brilliant company and an amazing service and they are doing very well, but will we need a service like Dropbox when everything is in the cloud? I don't think so."

'Citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account, Anonymous hopes to "kill Facebook," the "medium of communication [we] all so dearly adore."'

"Today, Facebook released their Messenger app and seconds later, we see that there is a video component to the application"

"Nokia plans to stop selling both feature phones and Symbian-based smartphones in the United States and Canada as it tries to put all of its muscle behind the company's huge bet on Windows Phone."

Samsung: "Samsung is disappointed with the court's decision and we intend to act immediately to defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings in Germany and will continue to actively defend these rights throughout the world.

"The request for injunction was filed with no notice to Samsung, and the order was issued without any hearing or presentation of evidence from Samsung.

"We will take all necessary measures to ensure Samsung's innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world."

"There are differences in competition law between Germany and the Netherlands, which is why Apple filed separate lawsuits. In Germany, Apple asserts not only an infringement of the said Community design but also cites unfair competition grounds, denouncing the Galaxy Tab as an iPad imitation."

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Untangling the Web Serendipity

The chocolate cookie was a serendipitous discovery. Photograph: Colin Campbell for the Guardian

Serendipity, the enigmatic process that's been credited with producing everything from penicillin to the chocolate chip cookie, is the almost-magical convergence of a (happy) accident and the sagacity of knowing what to do with it.

The web has been described by some pundits as "the greatest serendipity engine in the history of culture", and commercial companies - like Google - are looking to harvest your enormous cloud of data to deliver serendipitous experiences before you even know what to search for.

But other pundits have decried the web's filtering mechanics for reducing serendipity, and potentially stifling innovation rather than creating it.

So who's right? Is the web a serendipity machine or a tool for cultural homogenisation? Or is it, like so many things, not nearly so black and white?

This fortnight, I tackle a pet topic: what is the web doing for (or against) serendipity. Follow the progress on the Untangling the Web blog for all the links, interviews, photos, videos, articles and academic research on serendipity and the web that will feed this article.

Send your thoughts to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk, comment below, or @ me on Twitter @aleksk. I look forward to being inspired.

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Boot up: Apple's mobile head jumps ship, tech firms eye InterDigital, and more

A host shows off the side of Apple's iPad. Photograph: Kimberly White/Reuters

A quick burst of 6 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"Apple Inc, Nokia and Qualcomm Inc are among several technology companies pondering bids for InterDigital Inc, sources familiar with the situation said."

Google is not out of the picture, either, according to these sources.

"Sources said Miller -- who sold Quattro Wireless, the mobile advertising company he co-founded in 2006, to Apple in early 2010 for $275 million -- will become a general partner at Highland Capital, the Boston-based venture firm that had funded Quattro."

Very slightly smaller, at least in terms of circumscribing circles (or circumscribed circles).

Patents in the mobile industry go for a basement price of around $500,000 each. Rising somewhat when you get to the Nortel ones bought by Apple, Microsoft, RIM et al.

Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows division, explains how you size your Windows team: "When folks do the math and come up with the number of developers on the team, we usually hear one of two reactions: "wow, that is a lot, and there is no way that can work," or "wow, you build a product for a billion people with a pretty small number folks." It is to our benefit to have the smallest number of people on the team possible, but it is to your benefit to have the largest number of people adding all the things that folks might want. So, we find a place in the middle. We want the team to be manageable and able to produce high quality, full-featured code."

Though he doesn't say how many that actually is in practice.

"Each and every Chinese IPO failed investors in 2011 so far. This doesn't mean Tudou (NASDAQ:TUDO) will fail as well, but it raises a red flag."

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Tech Weekly podcast: Google-Motorola, riots and social media,

Join Aleks Krotoski and Juliette Garside for a packed edition of Tech Weekly. This week, the politics of social media: what role should the UK government have in regulating our access to services such as Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter? Author Jeff Jarvis weighs in on the debate and finds that there is currently a demonisation of technology.

Also, search giant Google has moved into the mobile manufacturing business: blogger Stasis Bielinis broke the news of Monday's Motorola Mobility deal – worth $12.5bn – back in June. We find out what's in it for Google, and how the mobile ecosystem will settle after this bombshell.

The UK government has announced the next phase in it's high-speed broadband plans – corporate partner BT has pledged to bid for some of the £530m in grants to connect out-of-reach rural communities to fast connectivity. We hear from Bill Murphy, MD for Next Generation Access at BT about the details of its plans, and where it intends to invest.

Finally, what's in store for the long-standing Fifa brand of games? Keith Stuart speaks with Andrew Wilson, senior VP of worldwide development at EA Sports about its plans for cross-platform entertainment.

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Boot up: Apple's Secret Service call, Android's crucial summer, Twitter ads coming and more

US Secret Service agents escort Barack Obama. He didn't put the software on machines in an Apple store. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"Artist Kyle McDonald installed a program on computers in two New York Apple Store locations that automatically takes a photo every minute. Now his personal computers have been confiscated by the U.S. Secret Service."
Artist has bad idea. Has quality of idea forcibly demonstrated to him. Perhaps next time, ask first?

"The innocent-seeming "1 Tip" ad is actually the tip of something much larger: a vast array of diet and weight-loss companies hawking everything from pills made from African mangoes to potions made from exotic acai berries. Federal officials have alleged that the companies behind the ads make inflated claims about their products and use deceptive means to market them. "The take so far: at least $1 billion and counting. "The "1 Tip" ads are the work of armies of "affiliates," independent promoters who place them on behalf of small diet-product sellers with names such as HCG Ultra Lean Plus. The promoters profit each time someone clicks through to the product seller's site and orders a free sample. The sample, however, isn't always so free."

"This is a crucial summer for Android. It rose to prominence as the anti-iPhone, but has managed to unite Apple, Microsoft, and Research in Motion in a consortium of competitors who are trying to hit Google in its most vulnerable spot. "As [Andy] Reback related years ago, modern patent litigation isn't really all that different from a protection racket: you pay, or you get hurt. If Google wants to keep the Android miracle rolling, it's going to have to find a way to offer its own brand of protection before its partners opt for peace of mind over loyalty."
The question is, what?

Read it, and then write your own punchline.

"As Twitter raises even more money, it's getting more serious about making money. The service is set to start showing ads in users' "timelines" within the next month, following through on plans it has talked about for more than a year.
"Twitter is pushing a new ad product called "Promoted Tweets To Followers," set to launch by early August."
This will either go very well (nobody will notice them) or catastophically (everyone will notice them).

"The day would simply feel incomplete without a spicy rumor about the next iPhone, and today's is a spicy one indeed. According to a photo that surfaced on the web yesterday, the next iPhone iteration will be known as the iPhone 5, but the more interesting part is that the smartphone will pack dual cameras on its back, presumably for capturing 3D photos and videos."
Which a bit of playing with Photoshop reveals as fake. Isn't there a site where you can upload photos to see their fake-ness?

Fascinating, detailed read.

"From Brazil to France to Australia to India, new laws and platforms are giving citizens new means to ask for, demand or simply create greater government transparency. The open data movement has truly gone global, with 19 international open data websites live around the globe. This week, the world will see another open government platform go live in Kenya."
Amazing.

"Omar Khan, the Samsung CTO who was responsible for the rise of the GalTab and other Android-powered smartphones, is moving to Citibank to handle that company's global digital banking initiatives. He will be replaced by Nick Dicarlo and Gavin Kim in 'product and service spokesperson responsibilities for Samsung Mobile.'"
Techcrunch suggests this indicates a certain amount of "political infighting". Or, possibly, not a big enough raise?

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Boot up: iPad forecasts, Google 'knew of Oracle infringement', Flickr+Twitter=?, and more

It's raining iPads! No, possibly not. Bert Foord during a television Weather Forecast from the Meteorological Office in 1963.

A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

"When you're visiting an unfamiliar location, Google Maps for mobile is great for getting an idea of how close you are to your destination, where streets and landmarks are in relation to each other, or just for getting "un-lost." But what if you don't have a data signal, or you're abroad and don't have a data plan? We say that if you use Google Maps for mobile, you'll never need to carry a paper map again. The "Download map area" lab in Google Maps 5.7 for Android is a step in making that statement true even when you're offline."
Neat.

"It "appears possible" that Google knew that its Android mobile operating system would violate Java patents held by Oracle, but decided to go ahead with the effort anyway, the judge overseeing the companies' intellectual property lawsuit said in a letter filed Tuesday."Judge William Alsup made the statement in connection with the so-called Daubert motion Google has filed in hopes of excluding the findings of Oracle's damages expert. Both sides have submitted briefs in connection with a hearing on the motion, which is scheduled for July 21."'In reading the Daubert briefing, it appears possible that early on Google recognized that it would infringe patents protecting at least part of Java, entered into negotiations with Sun [Microsystems] to obtain a license for use in Android, then abandoned the negotiations as too expensive, and pushed home with Android without any license at all,' Alsup wrote in the letter filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California." Hmm.

Iconfactory (which makes Twitterrific) already has an extension. This is all going to play out forever.

"That's an artifact of population density and Flickr and Twitter users. What's more interesting though are the areas outside of the city dominated by blue and orange. For example, in the North America map above, the east is dominated by blue, whereas the west seems to be more orange. "What compels people to tweet over taking a picture and vice versa? Or are we just seeing a Twitter scrape that happened in the early morning, before the west coast woke up?"

"Google's "continuous beta" approach that it used to build [Google search and Gmail] will not satisfy the customers of two new market segments that Google wants to win: smartphone software and enterprise software. "Let me start by saying that Google's move to create its own smartphone platform (Android) was a mystery to me from the beginning. It was unnecessary. Google could have simply focused on creating great mobile software and search products for all of the main smartphone platforms and it would have accomplished its primary goal, which was to create a mobile platform for AdWords."
Quite entertaining to read something that misses the point so well.

That's a pretty big range, but the average is 7.93m. (The median is 8.09m.) Either way it's more than double the 3.2m sold in its first quarter a year ago.

Interesting how HP, with its big corporate sales, is faring worse than the industry average.

"We've never been interested in rights broader than what we need to run Dropbox. We want to get this language right so that you're comfortable using Dropbox with no reservations: what's yours is yours. Instead of trying to add clarifications to the terms, we've rewritten this part from scratch..."
Suitable for those concerned about it?

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Tech Weekly podcast: New government data, smartphone explosion

On this week's programme, we're reporting on the smartphone market, a handset ecosystem that's set to reach critical mass in the next 23 months. Once more than half the UK population has access to all the features, what will this mean for how we consume online content, and for trends in the UK software development market?

Also, David Cameron launched the UK's latest open data initiative, releasing a new tranche of public data for use by developers. What new insights can be gained, and has this data been specifically chosen to advance the Tory agenda?

We spend a lot of time talking about privacy issues on this podcast, but most of it related to the corporations behind social networks, search engines and other publishing systems. So what about punters who hijack computers for the sake of art? A New York-based artist has been detained by the US secret service for "fraud and related activities" for uploading software on public computers at Apple stores around the city and then capturing images of shoppers looking at the screens.

Plus Jemima steps into the Elevator with Mark McLaughlin of Ticket ABC.

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Microsoft's Windows XP countdown widget: oh, the irony

Hilarious, but true. Microsoft, as part of its drive to get people and companies to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 (and you really ought to, you know: Windows 7 is more secure and it was designed in the 21st century so it knows about things like SSDs, which make your computer go like a rocket) has developed a little Windows widget that you can use to count down the days until that moment in 2014 when XP hits its End of Support (which gets its own TLA: EOS).

So, that's a widget to get people and companies off Windows XP. With us so far?

And here's the page. Mmm... yes... System requirements... "Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista."

Microsoft's XP countdown widget: it won't run on XP.

We look forward to lots of stories and people who upgraded so that they could run the widget to tell them how long it was until they had to upgrade.

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Boot up: 1-Click patent rejected, more open data, why Ballmer is at CES and more

A click to buy doesn't win a patent in Europe, even if it does in the US. Photograph: Muntz/Getty Images

A burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Nice try, Amazon: 'One-click' payment too obvious to patent >> The Register
"A payment system devised by online retail giant Amazon is too obvious to patent, the European Patent Office (EPO) has ruled. "Amazon had hoped to patent the way its customers pay for products through the click of a single webpage button. The company was previously granted patent rights to the payment system in the US.
"An appeals board at the EPO ruled that the "one-click" method was too obvious as it relied on existing inventions, called "prior art" in patent law. Inventions must be new, take an inventive step that is not obvious and be useful to industry to qualify for patent protection."
Perhaps we could hire the EPO out to the US to get their patent system into shape?

Cameron unveils the transparent society >> UKAuthority
"Data on the performance of GPs, schools and details of sentences passed by individual courts is to be released in open, standardised format under the government's latest transparency initiative, to be announced on Thursday. "A letter on the new Number 10 Downing Street website, launched on Thursday, promises 'the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world.'"
Other events may have overshadowed this, but it's very significant.

A Pun About Google Plus and The Circles of Hell >> Terence Eden
"This is something Nik Butler and I have discussed. "Google needs to let people choose which circles to follow. "I imagine a UI which allows me to set a circle as private ("Work", "Family", "Political ranting") and set some circles as public ("Kitten pictures", "Industry News", "Political thoughts"). "When you follow me, you can say "I hate kittens, but I love politics – I'll follow one circle and ignore the others." "At the moment, I don't have the time to categorise 200 people into what I think they're interested. And they don't want to be bombarded with QR codes when all they really want is LOLCATS. "So, come on Google, sort it out – let people choose which circles they want to be in. "Please RT!"
The irony of that final request being offered for Twitter not lost, we hope.

DNA is now DIY: OpenPCR ships worldwide >> OpenPCR
"The price of a traditional PCR machine is around $3,000. So, do people in garages have great PCR machines? Not really. Howabout high school or middle school teachers? Nope. Howabout smaller medical testing labs or labs in India or China? Nope. Even some big bio labs try their luck on eBay. We set out to change that. "Josh and I prototyped OpenPCR over about 4 months — it was a lot of fun. Last May we unveiled the first OpenPCR prototype to all a bunch of crazy people on Kickstarter, 158 people gave us a total of $12,121. With that we designed and manufactured a repeatable, works-all-the-time device — it took a lot of hard work. Now we're done and ready to share!"
PCR is polymerase chain reaction - the method by which you magnify a small sample of DNA. Now, anyone can play.

Currys.co.uk and the missing phone call >> Sarah Parmenter
The strange case of how an oven couldn't be bought because the confirmation calls kept not coming through to her iPhone. Stranger than it looks at first glance.

This is why Steve Ballmer keynotes at CES >> CES Twitter account
The CES notices what we speak of, and provides its explanation.

China-based white-box vendors expected to ship 8 million tablet PCs in 2011 >> Digitimes
"China-based white-box vendors have launched many models of low-price tablet PCs mainly equipped with inexpensive ARM processors developed by Qualcomm, Nvidia and VIA Technologies for domestic sale and exports to emerging markets, with total shipments estimated at 2m units for the first quarter of 2011 and expected to reach 8m for the year, according to sources from Taiwan-based makers.
"White-box notebook players started cutting into China's tablet PC market in early 2011, targeting mainly the entry-level segment with price levels below US$250. [Even though] their operating system choices of only Android 2.2/2.3 or Windows 7 are rather weak compared to the mainstream operating system choices in terms of software or applications availability, their low prices still attract demand from some consumer groups."
Not quite the "50%" market share that DisplaySearch was talking about, and Digitimes does seem to know the suppliers.

Browse your Oyster travel and fare history >> GitHub
Requires you to have your own server, and written for Linux (or Mac OSX). Clever, if you have the chops to make it work.

How to take screenshots on your Android phone without rooting - Recombu
"A handful of the Android phones we've recently reviewed allow you to take screengrabs - pictures of what ever is on the phone's screen at the time - simply by pressing the power and menu button simultaneously. Finally! "Big deal, you might think. Except that it is - it's a really useful feature. As well as making our lives here a little easier when we're writing up app stories, it has plenty of potential uses. "From capturing incriminating texts from friends/colleagues/ex-partners (perfect for uploading to Facebook, if you're feeling evil) to proving that you've three starred each Angry Birds level (including all of Seasons and Rio), there's loads of ways that this can be useful."
Confirmed to work on Samsung Galaxy S II, for a start.

My Summer at an Indian Call Center >> Mother Jones
"While we idle in interminable traffic, my coworker Nishant asks where I'm from. 'America?' he says. 'I'll tell you about America.' "I must look wary, because he quickly explains that, after years of 50-hour workweeks, he's probably spoken with more of my compatriots than I have. 'America is not all honey and roses the way they tell you,' he informs me. 'Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world.'"
Fascinating insight. The comments - including one from someone who admits they would be the idiot customer from hell - are also enlightening.

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Skype calls on Facebook: A win-win-win

Mark Zuckerberg was in fine, jaunty form for last night's presentation about Facebook's new features. He looked more at ease and sounded more fluid than ever, rattling off an anecdote about a comment form a elderly neighbour who'd put in a request for video calling. Tick!

• Firstly - that main announcement of integrated Skype calling. The timing is absolutely right. Two of the biggest names in consumer web services, both mainstream enough to have major take up and at a time when consumers are finally beginning to overcome that inhibition about talking to their computers. Zuckerberg's anecdote about the elderly neighbour illustrated that, but I also know that when my Mum is talking about 'doing a Skype' that this really must have hit the mainstream.

Facebook demonstrates its new integrated Skype feature

• Zuckerberg made a fairly crude attempt to deflect attention away from those possibly stalling growth numbers. Active monthly unique users is no longer the metric of choice at Facebook Towers, he would like us to believe. He declared that to be so, despite confirming that Facebook has now reached 750 million users - so that's 250m added in less than one year. No doubt when Facebook does finally reach that one billion target, active monthly users will become de rigueur again, but until then, Zuckerberg wants us to believe that the volume of shared pieces of content is a better representation of activity on Facebook. And that's 4bn every day, doubling from this time last year.

• Off the back of that explosion in sharing, Zuckerberg mentioned that to support growth, Facebook would be establishing more data centres after it opened its first in April this year. No more detail, but he said: "We're definitely on this trend now where it makes sense for us given the scale of usage and the information flowing through the network where we're probably going to be building our own data centers, rather than leasing."

• He made several subtle but interesting digs at Google, cleverly reinforcing his strategy of describing Facebook as the default social infrastructure of the web on which all other services will deploy their social elements. Default MySpace friend Tom Anderson wrote a good post, published on Google+, about Zuckerberg's comments on Google, but it is also worth noting that Zuckerberg described Google+ as just another company experimenting with social tools. With a touch of humility, Zuckerberg conceded that if Facebook doesn't keep innovating, it will be a different social infrastructure company that takes its place.

• On the press call after the presentation I asked what the roadmap for the development of this feature looks like, especially given how exciting Skype calls within Facebook's mobile apps could be.

"Our philosophy to is to build the best experiences for people on Facebook and we want lots of those experiences as soon as we are able to build them," said Peter Deng, Facebook's video call project manager.

"I was part of the original team that built Facebook Chat back in 2007 and over time we've added more features, observed how people are using the service, what they like and don't like, understand what is the right move to make…. it's more of an iterative process [than a planned roadmap] when we do product development. We're going to try to get next features out as quickly as possible, but understand how people use those products first.

"We don't have a timeline to announce right now, but we're working on improvements already."

Video calls on mobile through the Facebook app would be a direct rival to Apple's FaceTime (still think that's a dreadful name) but with a powerful social driver to initiate calls from within Facebook. That's what makes the video call so compelling from within Facebook though that said, I think many people might have the same reaction as me - to thoroughly review and clean up their Facebook contacts. Hovering over profile thumbnails and bringing up the 'video chat' option made me realise how few of these contacts I'd really what to talk to! If we haven't spoken since school, there's probably a reason for that. But that's for another day.

• From the analysts:

Ovum's Eden Zoller said Facebook/Skype is a blow to Google and Google+ Hangout. "We would expect the Facebook's video chat service to develop a strong mobile play given that at least half of Facebook's user base interact with the social network via mobile and also because Microsoft is determined to take Skype in this direction. A deepening Facebook, Microsoft and Skype alliance is on the cards and is a powerful prospect and one that will keep Google awake at night."

Frost & Sullivan's Jake Wengroff noted on Twitter that as only 6% of Skype users pay for services, the tie-up is unlikely to make anyone any cash. It's about strategic alliances. "I see it as a way for MSFT, Skype's new owner, to find a way to work with FB."

Colin Gills at BGC said it vindicated Microsoft's $8.5bn acquisition of Skype: "This deal helps explain the purchase price… Facebook is going to drive ubiquity for Skype."

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