August is have half done with
already and like the esteemed TechCrunch, we have been in ‘light posting mode’. However, there are some great stories this week that are worthy of a mention, so here’s a swift mid-month round-up.
It’s all gone a bit Pad-tastic this week with HP announcing that they are ceasing production of their pad and Samsung facing a huge lawsuit with Apple over their version. Apple also made another little bit of history this week when BA announced that its flight crews will now be equipped with iPads and that theses will replace ‘the manifest’, a document that has been compulsory on board a plane since the beginning of commercial aviation. The BA iPads will also contain timetables, safety information and even detailed profiles of everyone on board.
So it’s been a fairly peachy week for Apple on the iPad front, but not so sweet in other areas, with 27,000 Koreans currently taking them to court over the fact that their iPhones were collecting location data, allegedly to ‘gather information on wi-fi hotspots’. One Korean has successfully been awarded compensation and a whole lot of others thought they might follow suit – one to watch for sure.
In other news, Google has ruffled Android feathers by buying Motorola Mobility; Google+ is lacking mainstream reach (an assertion which Facebook agrees with) although a study by Experian Hitwise indicates that there has been a subtle but noticeable demographic shift towards affluent people with children living in suburban communities, something that we would assume Google would welcome and it will be interesting to see whether Google+ ever rivals the mainstream platforms or if it finds it’s own niche within well-defined demographics.
Rounding off the news mid month, Wannabe riotors who used Facebook to try and organise violent protests are feeling the full weight of the law , those Foursquare people are hitting the headlines with users now able to find out about gigs in their locality, as well as what President Obama is up to and the first football match was broadcast live on Facebook this week.
Enjoy the rest of the summer break and Something for the Weekend will return in September.
