The iPad does a great job in advancing the ability to pick up an instantly available interface to web content and a range of other data services. Devices such as the iPad provide great availability; they don’t provide any concept of shared access. I’m sure vendors would love everyone to have one (or more) pieces of hardware each, but who wants half a dozen 10 inch LCD panels on the coffee table?

Availability means it is ready to go the moment I want to use it. No waking from sleep mode, no finding a power lead due to low battery charge, no clumsy net-book sitting on the coffee table (my wife doesn’t like it). I don’t want to wait 30 seconds to take a photo to use my digital camera and I don’t want to wait that long to access information.

Where all current technology falls down is the personal aspect. Concurrent logins is how a laptop can have more than one person logged in at the same time, each seeing their own personalised view. This provides good separation of information but consumes more hardware resources (including power) and is relatively slow to switch from one person to another – it is simply inconvenient. In practice you end up with a laptop sitting around relatively unsecured with the inconvenience of having to log in and out of facebook etc every time you pick it up.

So what do I want to buy? I’d like something instantaneous like the iPad with a simple interface to provide a personal view. Are you listening Apple?

On reflection of my life in recent years, I felt the need to remind them even at this early stage in their lives, that you need to always keep in mind that the objective is to work to live – not live to work and that money wasn’t everything despite the immediate appeal. I left them with that thought with little hope it would be remembered very long but perhaps at least for a few minutes.

A thing I have learnt about children is that our ability to interact, and therefore convey information, is a series of trial and error bludgening examples observed through a welding mask. For some things they can be easily malleable whilst others are prone to me caving in to the fact of someone more stubborn than myself.

You don’t have to love the job you do, but you do have to like it if you intend to use it as your main earner AND/OR consumer of time. You may tolerate a job that gives you nothing beyond remuneration, but it will drain you in the long run and likely affect your social and personal life.

As the market became saturated, producers tried to differentiate their stick by using different colours or new materials for “high end” sticks. Eventually though, everyone has a stick and unless it is a particularly special stick, noone goes “ooh! ah!” when your neighbour comes home with a new stick.

Like a stick, at some point the market became saturated such that a car is no longer innovative or novel, it is simply a commodity and becomes a low margin item. Where the true boundless opportunity arises is where we take a commodity and use it to create a service.

In the case of a car, it becomes a means of transportation of people and goods which is focussed more on the capability that the commodity provides rather than any inherent value the car has in its own right. A car as a transportation device is therefore an enabling technology for the provision of transport related services.

In the early 90′s my parents would proudly tell their friends that I was “in computers” and they would respond with appropriate exclamations at how clever I must be to understand such wondrous technology that was beyond the grasp of mere mortals.

Nowadays pretty much everyone carries more processing power in their mobile phone than the combined computing resources of a major university in the 60′s and entirely takes it for granted. Being “in computers” is no longer special, it too has become a simple commodity. Again, computing technology has become an enabler for the provision of a vast range of services.

Many industry pundits are pointing at cloud computing as the next wave of technology to sweep home and industry. I ponder what this pervasive and immersive communication technology will enable and the effect it will have on societal social structures.

Call me naive but somehow it just strikes me as just wrong that a religious institution is taking funds raised for various charitable works and putting it in the stock market. Isn’t that gambling, which is viewed most dimly in the bible?

Likewise the Catholic church has suffered due to currency fluctuations. My mind boggles at the concept of an investment advisor listing the Pope as a customer. Of course the church does have significant expenses including the millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements for sex abuse cases.

They truly are church’s by the people (and their associated investment interests) for the people. Don’t even get me started on religions in name only (and associated tax free status) such as scientology.

Despite a few slick titles on the XBOX, the most exciting use for that hardware was the hacked mediacentre that made it a very nice media server; despite Microsoft’s attempts to block the hacks.

I see no significant innovation in XBOX360, which is not dissimilar from the PS3 in offering nothing really new other than gruntier hardware. I have no doubt Microsoft are in for the long haul, but I doubt XBOX360 will see them take a significant seat in the gaming market.

It is interesting to see that Nintendo have chosen to stay out of the “mine’s bigger than yours” battle and instead try to turn the industry in a new direction, most noteably with their new split controller.

Like the DS, the new Revolution controller promises an entirely new user experience. Only time will tell if software titles are sufficiently novel to create a separate market segment for Nintendo.

I think the future is rosy for Sony, uncertain for Nintendo, but gloomy for Microsoft. It will be interesting to see what happens when all three products are in the market place.

We’ve just pledged $1b in aid to Indonesia following that terrible tsunami. One could be cynical and say a chunk of that was a calculated cost for better business relations, regardless, my taxes contributed to that generous pledge and I guess I should be pleased that it is going to a worthwhile cause.

Unfortunately I don’t feel so pleased now as I may be paying more for airfares following an announcement by the Government that there would be $200m of security upgrades at major airports and the cost may be recovered at least partially via a levy.