Slate devices not the next sliced bread?

In case you have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks: Apple has just announced it's slate device, the iPad. Apple fanboys have hailed this new device as the next big thing in mobile computer. But not everyboby seems to agree. Lenovo just updated it's line of tablet capable business laptops. They decided to not release a slate device because businesses don't want them. The biggest problem is that users want to have a physical keyboard. Even the youngest users prefer a physical keyboard over a virtual one.

Read more at cnet

Publishers vs. Apple

When the iPad was announced, Apple also announced that five major book publishers would bring content to the iPad. But there was no word about magazines or newspapers. Turns out the publishers are not quite happy with the way Apple handles the sales of these products. The publishers want more control over the pricing and subscriber information.
Apple uses a fixed 70/30 (70% for the publishers, 30% for Apple) split on all the items in the Apple store. Publishers find it hard to accept they "lose" almost a third on every sale they make. Especially with recurring payments, like subscriptions, this is hard to swallow.
And as always Apple refuses to share consumer information with the people they do business with. This is a big issue for the publishers since they use this information for marketing purposes or deciding what the content of their publications will be.
This two issues could be potential dealbreakers, but I doubt it will come that far. With physical newspaper sales declining even more every year I don't think the publishers will pass on the opportunity to increase sales.

More information:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6530db6e-1a70-11df-a2e3-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Google's 1Gbps experimental fiber network

Google has announced that it is planning to build and test a high-speed (1Gbps) fiber network that will be open to 3rd-party users. This is a very interesting move by Google. I was expecting them to enter the ISP market, but not this soon. By offering these very high-speed connections to the public Google will probably force other ISP's to speed up their own networks.

More information on Google's blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our-experimental.html