Born 2010. Died 2012.

Life is so fragile, even for those born to rich parents.

The creator of Gmail (and founder of FriendFeed) says Chrome OS will perish or be merged with Android next year. The fact he now works for Facebook makes this look like sour apples (a New York way of saying he is motivated to make negative comments).

But Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, actually says Chrome and Android will merge over time. We're thinking Chrome OS will live through 2011, but not much longer... Continue reading...

A former Apple manager with responsibilities for the company's contract manufacturing in Asia was arrested for accepting kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories.

He allegedly was paid for confidential Apple information he shared with contractors to help them secure Apple business on reasonable terms.

If he hadn't left the company…if only he had wiped his drive… then Apple would have never discovered a Microsoft Entourage database of e-mails and a cache of Hotmail Continue reading...

Heinz Nixdorf died on the fairgrounds at CeBIT. That thought keeps coming back to me. And he probably had minions to carry his bags.

It's 8pm on the evening before CeBIT 2010 officially opens and I am exhausted from laboriously dragging my too-many bags from the train station at Hannover-Laatzen across the people-mover bridge to the Hannover fairgrounds.

All the important folks are in warm seats at the Opening Ceremony but I am late, cold and walking into the show. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is on stage tonight which tells you how important the CeBIT show is in Germany.

I descend from the covered people-mover that arches high over the flat landscape, wondering if my final distance will be 2km or 4 km by the time I reach my Hall. CeBIT takes the measure of a man.

Outdoors now, the cold hits me. It's a penetrating Northern cold...the type that bites your nose instead of nibbling your ears.

No one and no product could have lived up to the hype that preceded the Apple iPad launch. Not even Steve Jobs who cranked up the hype machine in the first place.

Steve Jobs stood there on stage, iPad in hand like Moses with The Tablet, and a list of his own Commandments: Thou shall create a product category between smartphones and netbooks. Thou shall not have strange devices before you. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s goods...

But this time, this very time when we knew what we wanted, when we knew what to expect...somehow it didn’t turn out to be the Second Coming we expected. (Actually for Steve it’s the Third Coming but why quibble?) Continue reading...