Yesterday I blogged about the fact that the whole world had convinced itself that Apple were going to announcement a tablet device. And unless you live in a cave or are appearing in a reality television show where you get locked in a house for forty days, you’ll probably now know that Apple did just that.

In a rather puny attempt to set myself up as an observer of future technology trends, I speculated that early adopters would probably wish they’d waited for the next iteration. Clearly others agreed… Wired published Ten Things Missing From the iPad while Gizmodo could appear to only manage eight things but carried on to eleven and positioned them as things that suck.

The business world was also unimpressed, as Apple’s share price fell by around $7. So, here’s my tip (now that we’ve established my credentials as a gadget futurist)… buy an iPad the moment it hits the stores. Queue for three days if you need to. Can you imagine how awesome that airplane landing game will be on a big screen? That’s gotta be worth the money. Also, Florida Steve has some Apple shares, and he’s banking on them reaching $270. So when the iPad 2 ships with some of the fix-list ticked off, throw away your iPad 1 and get the new one. I know this makes sense because I live in a house that contains three people and eight iPods.

It must be nice to work for Apple, knowing that the slightest rumour of Steve Jobs breaking wind will generate a billion news articles. Apple have trained the industry well, and now we’re all waiting for their announcement events knowing that that something desirable will be unleashed upon a waiting world. You may not need it, but you’ll want it… which reminds me of one of the best ever news spoofs to hit the Internet, the MacBook Wheel video on The Onion. I guess we’re meant to laugh at the nerdy devotee who says “I’ll buy almost anything shiny as long as it’s shiny and made by Apple”, but the scary thing is that there’s a bit of him in many of us – and that would include me if I could afford to do so.

With this in mind, today the world is waiting for the expected announcement of an Apple tablet. To my knowledge, no-one from Apple has said it will happen, but various bits of information and speculation have been pieced together to the point where we’re all expecting the iSlate / iSlab / iTablet / iWantOne to be announced. The combined world of technology media could end up looking pretty stupid if Apple’s announcements for today consist of a retractable tape measure being added to the iPhone and an LED torch being added to the iPod nano. But assuming the hype is correct, who’s going to buy a first-generation Apple tablet? History shows that early Apple adopters are often rendered green with envy or red with rage when an improved model is released six months later. Given that Apple products aren’t cheap (well, okay iPods are a pretty reasonable price) the initial market for the Apple tablet could be restricted to the stupidly wealthy or the hopelessly devoted.

It was actually quite scary how quickly this happened – a few weeks ago Mrs A finally agreed with Lolli that we would get a new dog, but plan it to coincide with the start of school holidays. The pair of them then started looking at where they would get the right dog from… the ‘right dog’ being a Yorkipoo, a Yorkshire Terrier / Poodle cross. This cross-breed has the advantage of being hand-bag sized and not dropping hair. While I was at Lotusphere they located a litter with a female pup, and by the time I got home we’d made an appointment to collect it, subject to certain conditions (i.e. a healthy puppy, seeing the mother, etc). A small fortune had already been spent on doggy equipment.

Mrs A had some last minute wobbles as we drove to Essex, but the doubts melted away when she saw the tiny black fluffy bundle. ‘Missie’, as Lolli has named her, came from a litter of five. We saw the mother (a lovely tiny Yorkshire Terrier who wasn’t much bigger than her offspring), and observed that the family who owned both parents had given the puppies the best start in life – everything was in order, and it was a very good sign when the lady insisted that we rubbed antibacterial lotion on our hands before touching the pup. You hear so many bad stories about dog breeders and puppy farms, but there were no concerns here. The initial vaccinations had been done, the puppies were already ‘paper-trained’ and had a proper feeding regime.

Missie is now back at Adams Tower, and Lolli is on cloud nine. Mrs A said that she’ll be cooking sweet and sour chicken tonight, but I have a feeling it’ll be delayed.

Click on the photo to see a larger version, and I’m sure there’ll be more soon. Lots more.

Back in October 2008 I blogged about the BlackBerry Storm, RIM’s first touch-screen device. At the time I was totally seduced by the idea of having a full-screen BlackBerry… until I tried it. The usability of the original Storm was deservedly much-maligned, and indeed I spent ten unsuccessful minutes trying to enter my name into the contact list, eventually resulting in the word ‘Dappem’. No, I’m not joking. The design of the device was lovely, the big screen was bright and crisp, but it really was a pain to use… the scrolling was jerky and the movement-sensed screen orientation (executed so well on the iPhone) was random at best. It also didn’t have Wi-Fi, which seemed a major omission that RIM were responding to the iPhone juggernaut.

A while ago I was offered a Storm 2 to try out, and I took possession of it a few days ago. Cosmetically it’s almost identical, the only difference I can see is that the control buttons are now part of the screen panel rather than being separate buttons. Some of the specifications are the same… for example, the screen and the overall dimensions. The key differences (I should say ‘improvements’) are under the hood. The whole touch-screen experience has been revamped – the one under-screen physical button of the first version has been replaced by four corner-located piezoelectric sensors. The result is an all-round better touch experience and more accurate typing. Okay, it does take a bit of getting used to but it doesn’t take long – at first I was hitting ‘r’ instead of ‘e’ every time, but that bad habit has already disappeared. I will admit that the physical keyboard of the other devices is easier to use, but it’s early days and I am speeding up.

Other aspects associated with navigation show huge improvements, namely scrolling (now very smooth) and more reliable screen orientation.

The Storm 2 supports Wi-Fi and 3G, so there’s no longer any major connectivity omissions. It has a 3.2 megapixel camera – not an astounding feature these days, but it has a flash (a win over the iPhone), the picture quality is very good and the fact that you can use a swipe of your finger to zoom in and out is really rather cool.

And there’s a number of other things which are well-implemented – the dialling screen allows you to quickly switch between the dial-pad, call log and contacts (maybe this was in the original Storm, but whatever, it’s a step above the previous BlackBerry devices I’ve used). The message-thread approach to SMS messages is also very good – this may be a feature of OS5 and therefore available on other devices, but I like it anyway.

In summary – the touch-screen experience is a vast improvement on the original, and any small disadvantages in not having a physical keyboard are compensated for by that gorgeous big screen which almost all applications benefit from. If you tried the original Storm and were put off, I’d recommend that you give the new model a chance to win your affections.

Going to Lotusphere? Do you use Lotus Notes? Do you have an iPhone or a BlackBerry. If you answered ‘yes’ to the first question and ‘yes’ to any of the others, then you’ll be interested in some resources offered by Geniisoft and The Turtle Partnership.

Firstly, Ben Langhinrichs has once again provided the Lotusphere agenda and session planning database. This is a Notes application which you can store locally, and then inspect the sessions and add them to your personal calendar.

The Turtle Partnership have taken Ben’s application and hosted in on their server, so you can get up-to-date information via replication. You can open the application from lotusphere.turtleweb.com and then grab a replica.

If you have an iPhone or a BlackBerry you can also access the session information from native mobile applications (created by The Turtle Partnership) on these two devices. Check the Turtle Partnership’s blog for instructions, but the easiest way to grab them is to go to the respective app stores for either device and search for ‘Lotusphere’.

Many thanks to Ben and the Turtle team for providing these resources to the Lotus community. I hope you’re kept in free drinks for the duration of Lotusphere.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing called Twitter, apparently it’s quite popular. The Lotusphere team will be updating the Lotus Knows Twitter stream with information about the event. So if you’re attending, or if you’re stuck somewhere less interesting and want to keep up with the latest news, you should follow LotusKnows.

Here at Adams Tower we love Christmas, and every year I have to persuade Mrs A to hold back on playing the Christmas music until a reasonable date. 1st November is too early, even though the Harrods Christmas department opens in August. As we get to late November, and the sound of Bing Crosby’s crooning and whistling wafts out from the iPod speakers, I consider how ridiculous the lyrics of White Christmas are… for traditionally Christmas in the South East of England is a rather grey affair. Tree tops seldom glisten, and the only sound children listen for is their parents telling them it’s stopped raining so they can go outside on their new bikes.

What a shame, I’ve always thought, that Christmas doesn’t live up to that romantic image conjured up by the songs of Bing, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Perry Como and, of course, Shakin’ Stevens… until now.

According to the Met Office…

…the definition of an official white Christmas used most widely, notably by those placing and taking bets, is for a single snow flake (perhaps amongst a shower of rain and snow mixed) to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25 December.

That’s a bit of a swizz really, because a single snow flake (or even a few) isn’t going to make the tree tops glisten or children listen to… okay, you get the point. We did get a fair amount of snow on 17th December, so much in fact that I didn’t drive my car again until Christmas Day itself when there was still an extensive covering around Adams Towers, making the landscape rather white. But I don’t think any snow fell on that day… so officially it wasn’t a white Christmas. And that’s a bit daft.

So, do I want a white Christmas for 2010? Right now I’d have to say “not really”. As you’re probably aware, Britain is in the grip of the coldest Winter for many years. It may be my fault actually, because while in Finland a couple of months ago I remember saying to someone “we rarely get snow”. Irony, we are told, is a fickle mistress. The “cold snap” has dominated the news and caused chaos for millions, thus leading to the perennial debate about Britain being generally crap as a nation in dealing with the white stuff. While some people are wondering what the fuss is about, spare a thought for us.

Two days after the main fall of snow we’re still stranded up here in the heights of Camberley. To get to Adams Towers we go up our avenue (and I do mean ‘up’ because it slopes upwards), and then up a narrow lane (again, up) and then our drive slopes down. So typically I have to reverse up the drive to get out – and because of my BMW being rear-wheel drive (I think) that doesn’t work very well in snow. The narrow lane, because of the lack of traffic, tends to stay snowy for a long time – and that makes it very difficult to get back up.

Mrs A’s Mini is far better at dealing with these conditions, but even this brave little vehicle has it’s limits. The snow on our drive was (is, still) eleven inches deep. Okay, I know we can clear that in a few hours and throw down some grit from the dwindling supply. Mrs A’s idea was to clear two tracks (one for each path of the wheels) to get up and down the lane. However, the snow was so deep that it would have piled up as the car pushed it… so she spent around five hours clearing the entire lane (using hitherto unknown muscles and crippling herself in the process). However, the avenue is covered with six inches of snow which has been compacted by numerous vehicles. That in itself is very difficult to negotiate.

So how can we get better with tackling the snow-related problems. I know some things now… don’t step on the snow you intend to clear, stay off it so that it doesn’t get compacted. Buy yourself a big shovel and have your own personal supply of salty grit (don’t rely on the grit bunkers in the avenue, it’s all gone). What else could I do? Buy one of those much-maligned four-wheel drive juggernauts? Oh yes, the owners of those gas-guzzlers are looking a bit smug right now.

Bing, me old mate… White Christmas… nice idea and provides some good photo opportunities but, to be honest, it’s a pain in the backside. I think I’d rather stick with the grey ones, just like I’ve always known.

A couple things to add to this ongoing saga. Clearly we’re on the threshold of an apocalypse, because the supermarket (name withheld for legal reasons) in Camberley town centre had run out of milk. Later in the day, as if to illustrate the British approach to managing life in the snow, a removal van attempted to get up around the bend on the avenue and failed miserably. It reversed and tried again. And then again. The smell of it’s burning clutch permeated my nostrils, despite having just got over a life-threatening cold. An hour later, it was joined by another removal van… 18:15 in the evening, and the new residents were still waiting for their furniture. I don’t know the final outcome, but it wasn’t looking promising.

Then Mrs A asked why, if global warming is taking hold, are we having such a cold Winter. I explained… as the polar ice caps melt they dump lots of fresh water into the Atlantic. This has an effect on the cycle of salt water which brings warmth from the South West regions of the ocean, thus causing temperatures to drop in our neck of the woods. And then I realised that was the basis of the plot for ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and therefore may not be totally true (even if it does sound feasible).

I’ve already blogged about IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5 but IT Jungle have posted a good overview of all that’s new in this recently-released version. And actually, reading through the article, you realise just how much new stuff has been packed into this release.

If you want to take a look at Sametime 8.5 you can find some videos on YouTube, narrated by John Del Pizzo and presented in fabulous high definition.