Apple's latest product is the eagerly awaited 'tablet' electronic reader. But no one knows exactly what it will do, nor whether it can duplicate the runaway success of the earlier iPod or iPhone. So what might we expect?

Here's a story from the near future. It's been a long day. Finally throwing aside the cares of work, you slump down on your sofa and pick up that shiny new device you bought the other day. Costing the thick end of 1,000, it's Apple's stylish new iPad (iTablet? iSlate?) a smooth 10in screen with no keyboard, like an iPhone on steroids. You pick it up, turn it on with one swipe of a finger, and begin to . . .

At this point, the picture goes hazy and freezes. The reason: while the invitations for the launch of Apple's "latest creation" in San Francisco next Wednesday have finally gone out to the great and good of the technology industry, still no one is certain what the hell their creation is actually going to be for, nor even what it will be called (though my money is on iPad or iSlate).

The device that Steve Jobs, chief executive and co-founder of Apple, will unveil at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is variously predicted to transform our experience of reading electronic versions of books, news papers and magazines (there are publishing executives clasping their hands heavenwards with that fervent wish); of watching TV and video; of surfing the web and playing games; even of making internet video calls. Perhaps it will do all of the above.

Not surprisingly, then, this is being called "a critical turning point for the way we get and use all sorts of media", and "Apple's reconception of personal computing". In the New York Times, the media columnist David Carr wrote: "I haven't been this excited about buying something since I was eight years old and sent away for the tiny seahorses I saw advertised in the back of a comic book." Another gasping fan wrote: "The only thing I know is that I'll take two."

A carefully leaked story in the Wall Street Journal at the start of the month gave the scantest of details of what to expect of the new tablet: a 10.5in "multi-touch" screen (more of that later), no physical keyboard, probably in two different colours, available to buy in March.

What is known is that HarperCollins and other publishers have already been negotiating with Apple to make their e-books, magazines and news papers immediately available on the new device. The Apple tablet's reading experience is expected to be much enhanced from the current crop of handheld e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, which launched in November 2007 and costs about 300. With its monochrome screen, plasticky white buttons and limited web browsing capabilities, you'd never mistake the Kindle for an Apple product, and industry rumours suggest it has sold no more than 1m devices worldwide.

"With big names like HarperCollins and Time magazine weighing in, the Apple iTablet is going to change digital publishing in a way Amazon's Kindle hasn't yet done," says Peter Moore, director of specialist publishers PSP Rare. "With a touch-enabled colour screen and a similar size format to current magazines, the experience should be almost physical with the added benefit of live content and links through to websites."

Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing, is eager to meet this new entrant in the e-reader market. "The fact that Apple is coming in is terrific. E-books are already happening with the Kindle we have been pleasantly surprised by the volume of e-book sales but this will accelerate it."

To truly revolutionise our lives, however, Apple's creation must go far beyond being the best e-reader in class, and change the way we view film and games too. And there the question remains: how different can it be from an ordinary laptop computer, aside from being pricier and without a keyboard? After all, Lenovo, Asus and Apple itself all make super-thin laptops that weigh barely any more than the A4 office envelope you can slide them into.

But that is to underestimate the common denominator of most Apple products: that they (almost always) take an existing idea and make it cool and desirable. The iPod, the iPhone and the flatscreen all-in-one iMac all redefined the idea of what a device ought to do, forcing everyone else to copy the new benchmark that they set. Which means that, in five years' time, the person picking up the tablet-thing in their living room might be you even if its maker isn't Apple.

Consider the iPod. Apple wasn't first into the MP3 player market in October 2001 but, says Ian Fogg, principal analyst for consumer products at Forrester Research, it instantly redefined music on the move by making the player smaller and its capacity far bigger (around 1,000 songs). The real revolution was its "scroll wheel" for navigating through all those songs obvious in retrospect; but the cool it exuded shot the iPod to immediate dominance.

Similarly, the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone capable of email or web browsing. "Those had existed for eight or nine years," says Fogg. "But the iPhone did it in such a different way." Effectively a handheld computer, it was iPhone details such as the ability to "double-tap" to zoom a column of text up to readable size that made it feel revolutionary to users not to mention the multitude of useful, funny and plain weird apps software that soon sprung up around it.

And so, goes the logic, it will be with the iPad/iSlate. Because tablet computers are already here, having been launched as long ago as November 2001 by none other than Jobs's arch- rival, Bill Gates. "I'm already using a [Microsoft] Tablet as my everyday computer," Gates told his audience at the Comdex show in Las Vegas back then. "It's a PC that is virtually without limits." He then added his own modest little prediction: "Within five years, I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."

But Gates was wrong. Today, the tablets market makes up less than 1% of sales of all computers, because they are usually cumbersome and pricey (about 20% more expensive than the equivalent laptop). This is because the majority are, in reality, dual-purpose laptops: turning them into a tablet requires twisting the screen to hide the keyboard; not a particularly elegant solution. The alternative format, the "slate", uses virtual keyboards that you poke at with a special stylus, or handwriting recognition that is hit-and-miss.

Apple, however, has already shown it can make a workable virtual keyboard on the iPhone, which people use to write quite long messages. So what, ultimately, is the revolution we are anticipating? In one word, multi-touch: being able to control the computer directly via its screen without the need for keyboard or mouse, using one or more fingers. With a hint of Tom Cruise in Minority Report, this instinctive, futuristic control system allows users to tailor their screen (even the size of the keyboard) and move from function to function effortlessly and with style.

A 2007 interview with the New York Times explained how, "Mr Jobs seized on the multi-touch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a 'safari pad', a portable web-surfing appliance. Instead, he saw the technology as something that could be used for a similar purpose in a cellphone." Now, having made the phone, why not finish the "safari pad"?

Multi-touch first came to public attention thanks to Jeff Han, a researcher from New York University. In February 2006 at the TED conference (an exclusive gathering of physicists, artists, futurists, comedians and Al Gore), Han gave a talk using a 36in x 27in touchscreen that wowed people by doing what iPhone users now take for granted: moving things around using his hands and fingers (you can find this on YouTube).

What Han did was a revelation. He moved pictures and files around the screen like someone shifting paper across a desk. But he also "pulled" them bigger, "squeezed" them smaller, flew over landscapes, tilted the view by holding two fingers down and pushing. The audience wowed and cheered.

"When I hear about the $100 laptop [a scheme to equip schools in the developing world with a low-cost machine]," Han told his audience, "I cringe at the idea that we're going to introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with the windows, mouse, pointer interface. I think this" he shuffled the pictures and then brought up a virtual keyboard "is the way to go."

He flipped some more pictures. "Isn't this great?" he said rhetorically, sounding exactly like Jobs extolling the latest item to emerge from Apple's labs. Watching him, you could only agree.

Since then, Microsoft has also added multi-touch to Windows 7 (although most PCs don't have the capability to do anything with it), but it is clearly rattled by all the talk around Apple's forthcoming device. Though dismissive about the price tag on Apple products Microsoft's brand manager David Webster last year sneered to Newsweek that, "Not everyone wants a machine that's been washed with unicorn tears" the company let it be known, through leaks to the media, that its chief executive, Steve Ballmer, would be showing off tablet computers in his keynote speech to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month. He duly did and it was the second time Microsoft has launched tablets and nobody took any notice.

Now, however, armed with a decent-sized screen, effortless multi-touch, sleek good looks and all those millions of apps, perhaps Apple's tablet will prove the holy grail of being the consumer favourite for watching TV and movies, reading e-books, surfing the web and playing games (entirely new multi-touch games, played against fellow Apple tablet users).

Among the newly unearthed Apple patents that have been sniffed out this month is one where the screen shows a three-dimensional view of items arranged on a sort of landscape. Is that what Apple is going to do to make the tablet feel even more futuristic?

This is where the head-scratching really starts. Whenever you talk to anyone about tablet computers and Apple, the conversation follows the same pattern: everyone reckons that tablets just aren't that workable, because they are neither fish nor fowl in computing terms. Yet still they believe Apple can create the device that will be on everyone's menu.

"There's no really clear series of applications which define what a tablet is for," says Fogg. "It is more defined by its form factor its shape and appearance than its use."

And, it should be remembered, Apple hasn't always got it right. The Apple TV, launched in March 2008, isn't a TV; it's a set-top box for playing videos or music from the iTunes Store or your computer. Not heard of it? That is because it has done underwhelming business. Similarly the Cube, a solid-looking 8in cubic computer launched in June 2000, was a pet project of Jobs's (who, in his previous company NeXT, had proudly unveiled a cubic black computer). Nobody could quite understand who the Cube was meant to appeal to. It cost more, but could do less than Apple's professional desktop machines. Apple, though, insisted there was demand for it. Then, a year later, it halted sales and said it was putting the Cube "on ice".

It is, though, highly unlikely that Apple's tablet will meet the same fate. Jobs is smarter now, and the combi nation of multi-touch, cheaper screens and all that video must add up to something. Mark Mulligan, who specialises in media analysis at Forrester Research, says the tablet could "break down the 20th-century media product boundaries which we understand and define our media consumption by."

CDs, DVDs and so on have forced us to use different devices to watch films or listen to music. But a successful tablet could end all that. "In the age of media multi-tasking," Mulligan says, "it would join the dots between the multiple devices we live our digital media lives across."

It sounds exciting. But it still does not answer how. For that, we will have to wait until next Wednesday.

Data.gov.uk expected to be officially launched tomorrow, offering free access to huge wealth of public-sector data

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, is expected to lead the formal launch tomorrow of data.gov.uk, a new British government website offering free access to a huge amount of public-sector data for private or commercial reuse.

The aim is to encourage British web developers and companies to create websites and information feeds that combine the data with other information such as time, maps or other datasets and potentially to discover hidden patterns that may not be obvious from the raw information.

The beta version of the site was announced with a blogpost by the Cabinet Office's director of digital engagement last September, which sought web developers "to work with us to use the data to create great applications".

The government has previously sponsored a competition, Show Us A Better Way asking for examples of what people would do with public sector information and with a 20,000 prize fund. Among the winners were maps for local recycling, cycle paths, school catchment areas and postbox locations.

People who have seen early versions of data.gov.uk say that it contains tools that make it "much easier for [government] departments to produce structured, linked data". Harry Metcalfe, an independent developer who has developed and worked on a number of sites that use government data to produce public information, commented that "this is such an encouraging thing to see. No expensive procurement exercises for clunky, bespoke sites: instead we have the right tools for the job, joined together this is how government IT should work."

The US government already has a similar site, data.gov, set up by the incoming Obama administration last year and officially launched in May by the US's "chief information officer", Vivek Kundra. London also launched a "datastore" earlier this month, hosting a number of London-specific datasets corralled from government departments as well as Transport for London data.

After a long-running campaign by the Guardian which began in March 2006 demanding that the government make the non-personal data it collects available for unrestricted reuse, the launch marks a significant victory especially together with plans announced by Gordon Brown in November to make Ordnance Survey mapping data and some postcode data also available for free.

Berners-Lee was hired last June by Gordon Brown, to ensure "that government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people".

Berners-Lee had previously been critical of governments which blocked access to data collected by public bodies. "You have no idea of the excuses people come up with to keep data out of your hands, even when you as taxpayers have paid for it," he said in a talk to the TED conference in March 2009.

He devised the technologies used for the world wide web in the early 90s while working at the particle collider laboratory at Cern in Switzerland, so that researchers would have easy access to information for their next project the Large Hadron Collider.

Censorship row sees Google postpone launch of handset that incorporates its email and web services

Google today postponed the launch in China of a mobile phone incorporating its email and web services, after the row with the government in Beijing over censorship and hacking of its internal network.

"The launch we have been working on with [mobile carrier] China Unicom has been postponed," said a Google spokesman.

Informed observers said Google had decided it could not launch a handset which relies on the US company's services particularly the web search and Gmail applications, which would be "baked" into the operating system when it could not be sure if those will continue to be available in China.

Google last week accused Chinese hackers of compromising its internal networks to try to access the webmail accounts of human rights activists, who have been repeatedly targeted by the Chinese government. As a result, Google said it would end the self-imposed censorship of its search results there.

Though Google has begun talks with the Chinese government to see if it will be allowed to lift censorship, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said today that the search provider must obey Chinese law. That implies that Google will have to close its google.cn site, which would put most of the 700 employees there out of work.

"Foreign firms in China should respect China's laws and regulations, and respect China's public customs and traditions, and assume the corresponding social responsibilities, and of course Google is no exception," said Ma Zhaoxu.

Asked about Google's accusation that it had been hacked from within China, Ma said Chinese companies had also been attacked. "China is the biggest victim of hacking," Ma said.

Although there are mobile phones sold in China which use Google's free Android operating system, none so far has incorporated the Gmail and web search apps as the proposed one would. Sources familiar with Google's thinking said the company decided that launching the phone and then withdrawing the email and search service would "seriously compromise the user experience".

Google has not yet set a date when it will stop censoring search results inside China. The Chinese government insists that internet searches are censored to remove material deemed "subversive or pornographic", with human rights and dissidents' work deemed to fall into the former category.

My predictions for 2009 were about two-thirds right. Will I do any better this year?

Charles Arthur's results for 2009

It's prediction time again! Yes, I know that January is half-over already, but that gives me less time to make it all happen, doesn't it?

And remember, fully two-thirds of these should be correct, going by past performance. Although please remember that your home may be at risk if you bet it on any single one of these things happening.

So without further ado, let's get under way

Apple

1) Apple will launch a tablet computer. The drumbeats and careful leaks all point to it happening, in only a few days' time. What, you want more? Oh, all right: a multitouch interface that uses a 3D paradigm (as per the patent revealed recently). And in some models has mobile connectivity, like a big iPhone.

2) Apple will sell 5m tablets in the first nine months or so. (It sold 4m iPhone in its first six months in 2007.)

3) No viruses or self-replicating worms will be discovered that affect Mac OS X. Still a banker of a prediction, year after year.

4) Steve Jobs will remain as chief executive of Apple through to 2011.

5) Apple will not release a netbook. It doesn't need to the tablet will do the job.

Microsoft

6) Windows Mobile's share of the smartphone market, as measured by Canalsys, will continue to fall, while Apple, RIM and Palm grow theirs.

7) Steve Ballmer will continue as chief executive of Microsoft through to 2011, but shareholder pressure will grow as the company's revenue growth fails to match that of rivals.

8) Internet Explorer, having been revealed as the avenue for far too many hacker attacks, will continue to lose market share to Firefox and especially Google's much-advertised Chrome browser.

Google

9) The Chrome operating system for netbooks will be advertised on the basis that, among other things, "you don't need virus protection" (because the OS and apps can't be changed, except by Google itself).

10) Google's market share will continue growing in the US and Europe, prompting privacy investigations

11) More devices will be sold that run the Android operating system than the Windows Mobile. (This will be tricky to measure because Microsoft has recently become all shy about announcing sales figures for Windows Mobile, at just the time that Apple leapfrogged it with the iPhone.)

12) Eric Schmidt will not remain as chief executive of Google through to 2011, though he will probably stay as chairman.

Computing

We now have hard drives that can hold more data than we can ever create, and computers that can process faster than we can generally find use for. What we don't have is really long battery life and really light machines, except at a premium. So there's a market to go for

13) Three of the big computer makers (for example HP, Dell and Apple) will begin to offer solid state (Flash) hard drives for a growing number of their laptops, with SSDs becoming the primary option for some by the end of the year. (I'm not including the MacBook Air, which has an SSD as standard.) SSD prices are dropping fast: you sacrifice some storage capacity, but gain battery life and a lighter machine.

14) OLED screens will become a build-to-order option on laptops from major manufacturers (probably starting with Sony, Acer or Asus): they're brighter than LED-based ones.

15) On Apple's lead, more companies will tout their tablet (more precisely, keyboardless "slate") computers but won't see anything like its sales, despite Windows 7's multitouch abilities.

Ebooks

16) Despite all the excitement at CES about ebooks and ereaders, and the subsequent excitement about Apple's iTablet, they won't show much growth in revenues compared to 2009. Free ebooks are fine, but they're just a sop to people who have ereaders and consequently no cash left.

17) Copyright, and particularly file compatibility arguments, will continue to dog ereaders and ebooks, while the popularity of physical books will grow: more physical books will be sold in the UK in 2010 than 2009.

Government

18) The Digital Britain bill will fall as the election (in May?) intervenes and kills off legislation in progress.

19) The freeing of Ordnance Survey map data (in April) will see rival companies vying to produce paper maps specialised for various niches such as ramblers and climbers, and an explosion in websites that mash all sorts of government content against maps.

20) If elected, the Tories will also back the freeing of Ordnance Survey data (rather than privatising it) and of other government data.

Hackers and hacking

The Chinese attacks on Google and other high-profile US companies have put a strong spotlight on web security.

21) The use of Microsoft Windows in security-critical organisations will be seriously questioned. Although the developers of many of the high-profile companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter use Linux or Mac OS X, there is still a notable security hole in the people in those organisations who use Windows for example, in lower-profile areas such as accounting and finance. What's the cost of switching from Windows? And what's the cost of losing your source code through a hole in Windows? For a growing number of companies, the first number will become smaller than the latter. And what did those adverts for Google Chrome OS say?

22) Suddenly, encrypted email will start to look like a good idea. It might be time to investigate GPG, the freeware encryption system.

23) Hackers will resort to DNS poisoning (already used in some situations) as a corollary to phishing, because you're directed to sites that look like they have the correct URL (such as paypal.com) but are in fact fakes.

Broadband and video

24) The demand for data through the BBC's iPlayer will make ISPs complain again about the strain on their networks. (Isn't it odd how that complaint went away, though demand went up?) Even so, iPlayer use will show a rising (if not exponential) growth. As a consequence, ISPs still won't offer truly unlimited broadband packages.

25) 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray will arrive and will be wildly popular among early adopters. Other people, who can't afford to upgrade their TV every two years, will sniff that they "still like their old DVD, thanks very much" while secretly coveting the new stuff.

26) The government consultation on how to encourage the building of next-generation broadband will generally get the response that government ought to encourage "outside-in" construction putting fast broadband in the far-flung places where it would never arrive if the market ruled. That's because those are the people who generally suffer the most from high transport costs when travelling to work.

Being social

27) Facebook's growth will level off in the western world. There's only so many people you can encourage to poke and friend you.

28) Twitter will start making money not just through searches (it charges Google and Bing), but also through charging companies for various sorts of access to its network and data.

29) AOL will sell Bebo and/or News Corporation will sell MySpace; in either or both cases, at a substantial loss.

And finally ...

30) Mobile phones with geolocation/GPS will comprise 5% of those sold in the UK. Ambitious, but we can hope.

There you go. Let's meet again to evaluate them on 7 January 2011. And what have I missed? Tell me in the comments.

Aleks Krotoski returns to the hot seat for this week's podcast, and herds podcast regulars Charles Arthur and Kevin Anderson through the latest in technology news.

On this week's roster, security expert Graham Cluley delivers the most recent developments in the Google-China standoff, while Kevin details the innovations in new media that have emerged in the Haiti crisis.

The creator of the CES best-in-show AR Drone helicopter, Henri Seydoux, talks with Charles about his prolific past as a tech entrepreneur, and why he swapped his job at a news desk for a life of invention.

All this, plus the latest news and your feedback from the blogs.

Don't forget to...

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PS3/Xbox 360/PC; 39.99; cert 3+; Eurocom/Sega

Games with official sports licences are often lumped in with games of films: one instantly suspects they exist as items of supporting merchandise, rather than for any meritorious reasons. Vancouver 2010 does little to dispel that impression.

While it has some impressive aspects, it shows clear signs of a rushed development cycle. Although it does just about contain enough quality to appease die-hard winter sports enthusiasts. It lets you compete in 14 events which will feature in next month's games, which sounds generous, but its event-selection is distinctly eccentric.

For example, three of the events are bobsleigh, skeleton and luge, and while the latter imaginatively employs a different control system, they are essentially identical. The mighty curling has been eschewed in favour of two stultifying (and bafflingly hard) skating events. Ladies' aerials boasts impressively original controls, but there's no sign of a half-pipe, which will alienate snowboarders.

By far Vancouver 2010's most impressive attribute is its graphical crispness, which is impressively true-to-life and endowed with a crucial sense of speed thanks to liberal use of motion-blur. Control systems err on the simple side, but are generally well thought-out and logical. If you are content with getting a sense of what competing in the Winter Olympics would feel like, Vancouver 2010 delivers at least.

As a game, though, it frustrates. You can stack events in whatever order you desire, and there are plenty of fun challenges (such as snowboard cross with the steering controls reversed), but the single-player game lacks structure. It is undoubtedly best when played online against humans especially given the difficulty of getting among the medals when competing against the computer. And when you do win a medal, the rewards are too paltry, consisting of a medal-ceremony in which, unforgivably, no medals are dished out.

The overall impression is that effort was expended on recreating the events as accurately as possible, at the expense of thinking about what would make a good game. Worth buying at a discounted price, perhaps, but ultimately disappointing.

Rating: 3/5

It seems that gamers are more interested in dancing and keeping fit than slaughter this week

Leisure software charts compiled by GfK Chart Track
2009 ELSPA (UK) Ltd

Japanese electronics firm puts back launch of motion-sensitive games controller for PlayStation 3 by six months

Sony has delayed the launch of its motion-sensitive rival to Nintendo's highly successful Wii games console by six months and it will not now hit the shops until the autumn.

The delay means that the Japanese gaming giant now has only a slim timing advantage over Microsoft, which is due to launch its revolutionary hands-free gaming interface codenamed Project Natal for the Xbox 360 in time for Christmas.

But it does mean that by the festive season, video gamers will have the choice of three different devices, all of which will use motion-sensitive control, giving players a far more interactive experience.

The news is an obvious setback for Sony, which was plagued by delays when it launched the PlayStation 3 three years ago. It also comes after the company last week admitted that the launch of hotly anticipated racing game Gran Turismo 5 has had to be delayed yet again. It has been more than five years since the last instalment of the popular franchise.

But the company stressed that the decision to delay the launch of its new controller was not linked to any particular hardware or design fault. Instead the company wants to ensure that there are enough games available that can use the new controller before launching it on the market.

The success of the Nintendo Wii, launched in 2006, has revolutionised the games market. Allowing players to ditch their joysticks and traditional button-heavy controllers in favour of a wand they can wave at their TV screens has helped widen the appeal of video games, taking consoles out of the teenage bedrooms and back into the living room.

Sony unveiled its answer to the Wii, a motion-sensitive controller for the Playstation 3, at the E3 electronics show in Los Angeles last summer. It uses a television-top camera to track a wireless controller held by the player. Sony claims it can track actions with "sub-millimeter accuracy".

Microsoft's Project Natal, however, is more ambitious and does not require players to hold a controller at all. Microsoft maintains it can track a player's movements in three dimensions. It can also recognise faces and react to voice prompts, greatly expanding the range of actions which software developers can use in their games.

NYT announces plan to charge online readers

The New York Times has officially confirmed that it is to charge its online readers.

A story just published on the NYT site says:

"Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper's print edition will receive full access to the site.

But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand."

There has been much speculation about the NYT's plans in recent weeks.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper, said: "This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that's going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about. We can't get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."

Janet L Robinson, the company's president and chief executive, added: ""There's no prize for getting it quick. There's more of a prize for getting it right."

Plans for charging for online content have been become more pressing for newspapers as the twin forces of economic recession and declining print revenue have gripped the industry.

Rupert Murdoch gave the debate even more urgency by revealing that News Corp plans to charge for online content.

The NYT report adds: "Two specialised papers charge already: the Wall Street Journal, which makes certain articles accessible only to subscribers, and the Financial Times, which allows non-paying readers to see up to 10 articles a month, a system close to what is planned by the Times."

This system of online charging has been attacked by critics such as Jeff Jarvis, who runs the website BuzzMachine.com and is a Guardian columnist, because it penalises the most loyal readers.

Angry users of Amazon's e-reader have been dishing out one-star reviews of Game Change in revenge for the unavailability of an electronic edition

Angry Kindle fans have sabotaged the Amazon rating of a bestselling new book, Game Change, an expos of the 2008 US presidential elections, to punish its publisher for delaying the digital edition of the book until February.

The New York Times called Game Change, by political reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, "a spicy smorgasbord of observations, revelations and allegations" and the Washington Post said it was "engaging and readable [with] some real reporting", but the book has been punished with one-star reviews at Amazon.com from frustrated Kindle users.

"I'm very disappointed there is no Kindle version available for this book. By the time it comes out, this book will be outdated and I will have forgotten about it. Shame on you publishers for excluding and alienating a huge market, that would have bought your book if you weren't so short-sighted," wrote H Watson yesterday, one of 142 reviewers to give the book one star. Fellow protester Mugdha Bendre agreed, writing "we want to read topical books like this one right away. Not wait a month for the ebook version to be available. I'm afraid I won't be buying this book after all and will have to subsist on the excerpts published in newspapers."

Some reviewers have questioned the fairness of the one-star reviews, which have brought Game Change's overall rating down to 2.5 stars, saying they have nothing to do with the book's content and calling on Amazon to delete them. "This is a terrific, insightful look at the 2008 campaign. Why are all the Kindle owners punishing the authors with lousy ratings because of the publisher's and amazon's marketing ploy? It's mean-spirited and unseemly," wrote Laurence R Bachmann, giving it five stars. "You can't review a book unless you've read it for heaven's sake."

HarperCollins published Game Change subtitled Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime and billed as "the real story behind the headlines" in hardback on 11 January, but the Kindle version is not out until 23 February. Despite the negative reviews, it is currently the online bookseller's bestselling title.

HarperCollins is not the only publisher delaying release of its ebooks. Last year, leading publishers Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group both told the Wall Street Journal that they would delay ebook editions which are generally priced significantly lower than the hardback by up to four months for some titles in 2010. "We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of ebook reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible," Simon & Schuster chief executive Carolyn Reidy told the WSJ.

Amazon.com pointed out at the time that "authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot. If readers can't get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all."

The arrest of a man for making a joke about terrorism on Twitter is the inevitable consequence of a paranoid, risk-averse society

It seems one can no longer make jokes about terrorist bombs without risking arrest. At a juncture in history where terrorists have taken to sporting exploding underpants, this is unfortunate to say the least.

It's hard to muster much sympathy for the unnamed German airline passenger who was arrested recently for making a joke to security about the bomb in his underwear. He deserves his fine for wasting the time of security personnel, plus another for aggravated stupidity and perhaps a third for bringing the German sense of humour into disrepute.

The case of Paul Chambers, however, should cause us all rather more concern. He was due to fly from Doncaster's Robin Hood airport to Ireland in the New Year, but heavy snow intervened. In frustration, he sent off a tweet to his friends. "Robin Hood airport is closed," he wrote. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Not the funniest comment ever to grace Twitter for sure, but utterly banal the kind of throwaway remark that any one of us might say out loud to our friends, or thoughtlessly bash into the box on a social networking site or a newspaper comment forum. South Yorkshire police didn't see it that way. Last week Chambers was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and questioned for seven hours before being released on police bail. He has been suspended from work and his computer, iPhone and laptop have been confiscated and he has been banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, which may be the only saving grace.

Police say they were alerted to the comment on his closed Twitter feed by a tip-off, although it's a reasonable assumption that the phrase "blowing the airport sky high" might have tripped a few alarms on electronic signals intelligence systems at GCHQ. I know how these things work. I've never missed an episode of Spooks. Nonetheless, one would hope that somewhere down the line a real human being might intervene, decode the hidden messages contained within those 140 characters and detect the presence of an arcane cipher known as a "joke". If that proves beyond the capabilities of our intelligence services, then in this age of body scanners and electronic imaging, perhaps a gadget could be invented that could detect the presence of humour in a sentence from 25 feet away. They could test it on ITV sitcoms to eliminate the risk of false positives.

On the one hand, it is easy to dismiss this as an isolated case of police over-reaction. File it alongside the Muslim schoolboy questioned after uploading a photo to Facebook of himself posing with a gun (he was playing paintball at the time); or the unfortunate man recently cleared of an extreme pornography charge after prosecutors accepted that the animal involved in the bestial scene was actually a cartoon tiger, not a real one. Or the arrest of photographers taking pictures in public; or any of the hundreds more seemingly isolated recent instances of people being detained or arrested for activities that barely tickle the toes of criminality.

Perhaps the most telling and frightening detail of the Chambers case is the explanation given by the arresting officer: "It is the world we live in." The world we live in is a surreal, incomprehensible collage of inflated authority and over-bearing bureaucracy which cannot differentiate between schoolboy humour and a death threat. Arrests like this one are an inevitable consequence of a society where paranoid risk aversion has run spectacularly out of control. In our desperate urge to prevent atrocities such as terrorist attacks, child abuse or violent crime, we find ourselves chasing shadows, just in case danger lurks beneath.

One price we pay for safe passage at the airport is that we need to avoid making tasteless jokes in questionable humour. Like most sensible people, I accept this and abide by it. But I refuse to accept that one price worth paying to protect our way of life should be that we refrain from making tasteless jokes on the internet from the comfort of our own homes and offices. For some of us, making tasteless jokes on the internet pretty much is our way of life.

Hackers place Palestinian flag and anti-Semitic messages on newspaper's homepage

The Jewish Chronicle's website was suspended for around 18 hours after an attack by hackers who placed a Palestinian flag and anti-Semitic messages on its homepage.

The site was breached at around 4pm yesterday and was suspended shortly afterwards to allow technicians to fix the problem. It only went back up at 10.30am today.

Superimposed on the image of the flag, hackers left a message supporting "Palestinian Mujaheeds" that contained quotations from the Qu'ran and anti-Semitic views in a mixture of English and Turkish.

The Jewish Chronicle editor, Stephen Pollard, said the attack had come from a Turkish IP address and that technicians were working to learn more about its precise origins.

He said the Metropolitan police had been informed about the incident, the first of its kind to affect the Jewish Chronicle.

It follows recent attacks by a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army on Twitter and the Chinese search engine Baidu.

 To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Linking to public internet sites is right for democracy and journalism and News Corporation is wrong to impede it

Linking is more than merely a function and feature of the internet. Linking is a right. The link enables fair comment. It powers the link economy that will sustain media. It is a tool for accountability. It is the keystone to free speech online.

But News Corporation has made good on its threat to fight the link, preventing the UK aggregator NewsNow from linking to several of its newspaper sites.

It's true that internet protocols make it easy to block crawlers from search engines or aggregators; one simply adds a line to the robots.txt file on the web server. And News Corp's rationale regarding NewsNow seems on the face of it to make sense: the argument is that NewsNow charges for its service, separating it from free aggregators such as Google News and Daylife (in which disclosure I am a partner).

But NewsNow has fought back, launching a campaign in support of the link at right2link.org. "Linking is not some kind of digital theft," the NewsNow founder Struan Bartlett says in a video. Linking via headlines, he adds, "is not substantial reproduction of a newspaper's intellectual property, so it's perfectly legitimate fair use".

Right. Linking is not a privilege that the recipient of the link should control any more than politicians should decide who may or may not quote them. The test is not whether the creator of the link charges (Murdoch's newspapers will charge and they link). The test is whether the thing we are linking to is public. If it is public for one it should be public for all.

We in the media tend to view the internet in our own image. But the internet is not a medium. Instead, as Cluetrain Manifesto author Doc Searls argues, it is a place. Think of it as a public park. You may not be selectively kept out because of your association with a race, religion or aggregator. "Linking," says Bartlett, "is a common public amenity."

I fear that what is really in danger here is the doctrine of openness on which journalism and an informed society depend. Pertinent are the arguments around Google's Streetview, which takes pictures of buildings and the people who happen to be in front of them. Some object that these photos violate their privacy. But they are in public. What they do there is public.

I understand that people caught on Streetview might not want us to see them strolling into a drug den or brothel. But if we give anyone the right to restrict our use of that image or information, then we also give the mayor the right to gag us when we want to publish a picture of him skulking into that opium parlour.

What's public is public that is, we, the public, have a right to observe, point to, share, and comment on it. And the internet is public.

Mind you, neither NewsNow nor I are arguing that being in public gives anyone the right to copy and steal content. We both agree that copyright and intellectual property must be respected. But linking is not stealing.

Indeed, in the link economy I've written about here, linking is distribution; it is a benefit. That's why I argue News Corp is a fool not to welcome, encourage and exploit links to its content. Links do not stop people from reading it; links bring readers to it.

As Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed response to Rupert Murdoch on the value of search and aggregation, it's up to the recipient of the link to take advantage of the relationship it creates and Google creates 4bn such opportunities for publishers a year.

By trying to cut off links, News Corp is also endangering journalism. As an economic matter, the link is how our work will gain audience.

As a journalistic matter, we reporters depend on the ability to read and analyse public statements and documents from government, corporations or newsmakers and it should make no difference whether that reading is done by a person or their agent, an algorithm. We depend on the right to quote from what we find and online, the link is our means of doing so. In fact, linking to source material footnoting our work and the provenance of our information is fast being seen as an ethical necessity in digital journalism.

In the end, this fight is over control. News Corp is desperately trying to maintain its control over access to and packaging and pricing of information that now flows freely from many sources. Thanks to the internet, it is losing it in more than one sense.

Jeff Jarvis is the author of What Would Google Do?

Armed with a few screwdrivers and a child-like curiosity can Robert Llewellyn fix his broken video camera?

I've always been fascinated by gadgets. They're so tiny and complicated: we use them all the time but know so little about how they work. Most of us wouldn't dare to open them up when they go wrong: I am certainly dubious about fiddling with things I don't know much about. But that all changes when, during a house clear out, I come across a video camera I'd forgotten all about.

The camera had fallen on to a stone floor seven years ago and, in an attempt to hide all evidence of my clumsiness, had been relegated to a box. But now it is in front of me and I am curious. What delights might it hold? Could I watch any of the tapes that I'd filmed so long ago? Not so, it turned out. But I am determined to get it working.

I delve through the remnants of my once well-stocked toolbox, retrieve a few screwdrivers I think may come in handy and get to work. I reckon I'll encounter a multitude of tiny parts once I open the camera up, so I lay down a few lengths of gaffer tape to cover the area I'm working on: should my keen eyes and quick reactions fail me, little pieces that try to roll off the table will find themselves trapped to the sticky surface. It's a trick anyone tackling a gadget repair should take note of.

With screws unscrewed and clips unclipped, I pry open the camera and catch the first glimpse of its innards. It's like I've opened a door to a miniature city I never knew existed. I'm not entirely sure I know how to proceed, but I hazard a guess that the rattling noise the camera made when shaken means I need to remove something perhaps a little piece of gravel or reattach something that's come loose.

I work methodically, taking bits out and laying them in a line on the gaffer tape. There are setbacks I come across elaborate circuitry and electronics so beyond my understanding that they might as well be alien in origin but choose to keep going. There's no point giving up now: my camera was heading for the bin anyway, so I may as well prod about a bit more, safe in the knowledge that I can't make anything worse. Eventually I experience a eureka moment: I find the gravel that was rattling around except, of course, it isn't gravel but a tiny connector thing. I join some wires, dab on some superglue and reassemble.

I plug in the mains adaptor, turn the camera on and wait. Soon there's a "pring": a welcoming noise indeed, clearly recognisable from seven years ago. Nothing is guaranteed to work yet but there is an overwhelming feeling of pride creeping over me. I may have helped build a house, installed our sewer system, re-shaped our garden with an eight-tonne digger, but those were all big, chunky things: if anything, fixing something so small and complicated seems much more rewarding.

Then, disaster: where there should have been a close-up of the desk I'm sitting at, there is just a blank screen. All that effort for just a satisfying but essentially useless "pring". Right now it seems like the most appealing way to proceed is to smash the camera back down on the floor and see the pieces fly everywhere. But I don't. I wait. I wait and soon my patience is rewarded: I spot a tiny little glow from the eye piece. I lift the camera to my eye and, yes, there it is, I can see my desk!

I flip open the side door and there are more signs of life: whirrings and whizzings and exciting noises that quickly erase the pain of the last few hours. There's an old tape I want to try first: it's marked Kids 1998. A quick flick of the playback button and I raise the camera to my eye once more.

On the tiny screen I watch my daughter, aged two, running around our old house. She's wearing a pretty pink dress I had forgotten she had. Then there's my son, aged five. He's doing a funny dance and asking, in a breathy, blocked nose voice: "Can I see the film now, Dad?" I've not seen these images in years. Suddenly I'm remembering the tender delight of my young children. A tear trickles down my face.

I'm not embarrassed these are memories I could so easily have lost until I'm caught, mid-sniffle, by my teenage children, who have just retuned from school. Now transferred to hard drives, the footage is safely backed-up and available to induce tears with three clicks of a mouse. I'm just thankful I had the good sense to have a tinker before assigning the camera to the scrapheap.

Robert Llewellyn is an actor, presenter and writer

Who wants to see poor people? Soon, technology will allow us to airbrush them out

According to technophiles, experts, and that whispering voice in your head, 2010 will be the year that augmented reality makes a breakthrough. In case you don't know, "augmented reality" is the rather quotidian title given to a smart, gizmo-specific type of software that takes a live camera feed from the real world and superimposes stuff on to it in real time.

Being a gadget designed for people who'd rather look at a screen than the real world, the iPhone inevitably plays host to several examples of this sort of thing. Download the relevant app, hold your iPhone aloft and gawp in astonishment as it magically displays live footage of the actual world directly in front of you just like the real thing but smaller, and with snazzy direction signs floating over it. You might see a magic hand pointing in the direction of the nearest Starbucks, for instance a magic hand that repositions itself as you move around. It's incredibly useful, assuming you'd prefer to cause an almighty logjam by shuffling slowly along the pavement while staring into your palm than stop and ask a fellow human being for directions.

The Nintendo DSi has a built-in camera with a "fun mode" that can recognise the shape of a human face, and superimpose pig snouts or googly eyeballs and the like over your friends' visages when you point it at them. You can then push a button and save these images for posterity.

For a while, it's genuinely amusing ("Look! It's dad with a pair of zany computerised bunny ears sprouting from the top his head. Ha ha ha!"), until you realise there are only about six different options, two of which involve amusing glasses. If you could customise the options, you could make it automatically beam a Hitler moustache on to everyone in sight, which would improve baby photos a hundredfold but you can't customise the options, probably for precisely that reason. You could print the picture out and draw the Hitler moustache on yourself with a marker pen, but that wouldn't be very 2010.

But while current examples of augmented reality might sound a tad underwhelming, the future possibilities are limitless. The moment they find a way of compressing the technology into a pair of lightweight spectacles, and the floating signs and bunny ears are layered directly over reality itself, the floodgates are open and you might as well tear your existing eyes out and flush them down the bin.

My goggles would visually transform homeless people

Years ago, I had an idea for a futuristic pair of goggles that visually transformed homeless people into lovable animated cartoon characters. Instead of being confronted by the conscience-pricking sight of an abandoned heroin addict shivering themselves to sleep in a shop doorway, the rich city-dweller wearing the goggles would see Daffy Duck snoozing dreamily in a hammock. London would be transformed into something out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

What's more, the goggles could be adapted to suit whichever level of poverty you wanted to ignore: by simply twisting a dial, you could replace not just the homeless but anyone who receives benefits, or wears cheap clothes, or has a regional accent, or watches ITV, and so on, right up the scale until it had obliterated all but the most grandiose royals.

At the time this seemed like a sick, far-off fantasy. By 2013, it'll be just another customisable application you can download to your iBlinkers for 49p, alongside one that turns your friends into supermodels and your enemies into dormice.

And don't go thinking augmented reality is going to be content with augmenting what you see. It's a short jump from augmented vision (your beergut's vanished and you've got a nice tan), to augmented audio (constant reactive background music that makes your entire life sound more like a movie), to augmented odour (break wind and it smells like a casserole), and augmented touch (what concrete bench? It feels like a beanbag). Eventually, painful sensations such as extreme temperature and acute physical discomfort could be remixed into something more palatable. With skilful use of technology, dying in a blazing fireball could be rendered roughly half as traumatic as, say, slightly snagging a toenail while pulling off a sock.

Some people will say there's something sinister and wrong about all of this. They'll claim it's better to look at actual people and breathe actual air. But then they've never lived in Reading. And anyway, even if they're right, we'll all ignore them anyway, because the software will automatically filter them out the moment they open their mouths.

In other words, over the coming years we're all going to be willingly submitting to the Matrix, injecting our eyes and ears with digital hallucinogens until there's no point even bothering to change our pants any more. Frightening? No. In fact, I'll scarcely notice.

Operator of music file-sharing search site Oink found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud

The first person in the UK to be prosecuted for online music sharing has been acquitted of conspiracy to defraud, scuppering the music industry's hopes that it would have a homegrown equivalent of last year's high profile Pirate Bay case in Sweden with which to deter British music pirates.

Alan Ellis, 26, was accused of making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Oink website, which he operated from his flat in Middlesbrough. Before it was shut down in a police raid in 2007, the website had more than 200,000 members who had downloaded more than 21m music files.

Music industry figures last night blasted the verdict at Teesside Crown Court as completely out of line with successful prosecutions in other jurisdictions.

Last April, a court in Sweden found the four men behind the The Pirate Bay website guilty of breaking copyright law and handed down jail terms and a $4.5m ( 3m) fine. Neither The Pirate Bay nor Oink actually hosted unlawfully copied material; both merely made it easy for active members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.

Unlike the Pirate Bay, which was open to all-comers, Oink was invite-only, with users earning the right to ask their friends to join. Reports from the seven-day trial said that the court was told that users had to pay a donation in order to be able to ask friends to join; the court heard that these donations amounted to $18,000 ( 11,000) a month for Ellis. [This was later disputed by some users of the site. One of those contacting the Guardian through Twitter said that while it was possible to make donations to Oink, invitation rights were granted for contributing material to the site, not in exchange for donations.]

"This is a hugely disappointing verdict," said a spokesman for music industry body the BPI. "The defendant made nearly 200,000 by exploiting other people's work without permission. The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection."

A jury at Teesside Crown Court unanimously cleared Ellis, who maintained that he created the website to help him hone the computing skills he was learning as a student at Teesside University. He created it from a free template on the web and it was a hobby. The prosecution said he told police officers: "All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website."

News of Ellis's acquittal came as senior figures from the music, film and television industries as well as sports and union representatives yesterday published an open letter supporting Lord Mandelson's controversial plans to grant the government wide-ranging powers to change copyright law to combat any new forms of online piracy that may emerge in the future.

The business secretary's proposals, included at the last minute as clause 17 of the Digital Economy bill currently progressing through the House of Lords, have been roundly attacked by privacy campaigners as well as internet giants including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and eBay as paving the way for a future administration to introduce "arbitrary measures" in the fight against piracy.

Earlier this week, the government tabled a list of amendments to the Digital Economy bill which watered down the controversial clause so that the law can only be amended in future if there was a "significant" new threat of infringement, but the government has resolutely refused to comply with demands that it be scrapped completely.

In their open letter, 17 industry figures including TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, head of independent television producers body Pact John McVay, Christine Payne from the actor's union Equity and Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore warned that copyright infringement jeopardised British jobs.

"Without the action proposed by the government in the Digital Economy bill (DEB), before Parliament, job losses will be felt right across the chain not only for recording artists, but technicians, manufacturers, musicians, writers, freelance photographers and many others."

"Given new technologies are constantly evolving, the DEB needs to deal not only with the harm caused by current techniques for unlawful filesharing (particularly peer-to-peer), but the emerging and future threats too. Clause 17 of the Bill does precisely that, by giving parliament the ability to approve amendments that keep the law up-to-speed with technology.

"Responding to the initial concerns raised by the House of Lords, the government has made a further amendment, which will increase the levels of scrutiny and consultation required before any changes are made. On behalf of the employers and workers whose livelihoods depend on the passage of the Bill, we support this change," the letter added.

This article was amended on 20 January 2009, to insert rebuttal of a court report that members earned the right to invite friends to join Oink by making donations to the site.

Asperger's sufferer faces lengthy prison sentence in the US for breaching US military and Nasa computers

The home secretary may have acted unlawfully by pursuing the extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, a high court judge said yesterday.

Extraditing McKinnon, an Asperger's sufferer who is facing a lengthy prison sentence in the US for breaching US military and Nasa computers, raises "stark and simple issues", Mr Justice Mitting said.

In a letter, the judge described medical evidence that McKinnon would be at high risk of suicide in an American jail as "as yet unchallenged and unqualified".

That evidence may require the home secretary "to refuse to surrender [McKinnon] to the government of the USA" Mitting said, in a letter yesterday. "It is arguable that the [home secretary's] decision was unlawful", the letter added.

The decision is seen as a dramatic change from the approach of the high court in previous hearings on McKinnon.

His mother, Janis Sharp, said: "I can't believe it some common sense at last. This judge has made such an honourable and decent decision. Gary's health has badly declined it's been traumatic to see. I hope this brings him comfort that the right decision will be made, even if it requires the courts to impose it rather than our government to reach it."

Last July, the court rejected arguments that the extradition would violate McKinnon's rights, after lawyers argued the prospect of up to 60 years' imprisonment in an American "supermax" jail would cause mental harm because of his Asperger's syndrome and depressive illness.

The court was influenced by assurances sent to the home secretary by the US government, including a guarantee McKinnon would be assessed by doctors and psychologists in jail, and would get "appropriate medical care and treatment".

But yesterday's letter suggested that new evidence sent by McKinnon's team last October, including a report from consultant psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk, may have changed the legal position on extraditing McKinnon. Turk said the Briton was at "exceptionally high risk of self-harm and even suicide."

The Home Office rejected that evidence in November but yesterday's decision from the high court could make that position untenable, experts said.

"These remarks really highlight the very weak nature of the secretary of state's position if he continues to resist", an extradition expert who had seen the letter said. "I think he may now withdraw with some grace rather than fight a humiliating stance despite the problems he faces as highlighted by Mitting."

Can't read things? Photograph them with an Intel Reader and it will read them back to you. It could be a boon for people with limited vision or dyslexia

You probably don't own any Intel products, as distinct from products that contain Intel chips. But one of the devices that the company has designed and manufactures is the Intel Reader, which is a product of the Intel Health division. It's a fattish Atom-powered portable that converts print into large print and, if you want, reads it aloud. It's aimed at people who find reading difficult because of impaired eyesight or dyslexia, for example.

The Intel Reader needs to be portable so that you can carry it around. When you run into something you can't read, you use the Reader's built in camera to photograph it -- it might be a restaurant menu, a ticket, a notice, or the instructions on a bottle of pills. It's not simply an electronic book system, though it can be used to read ebooks including (hip hip hooray) books in the Daisy (Digital Accessible Information System) format used by the RNIB.

So why did a company that normally provides chips create a whole product? At CES 2010, I asked Intel's Tracy Counts, the Reader's marketing manager. She said the product's developer is dyslexic and knew how hard it was "to get printed text in a format he could listen to and understand. He went to the general manager of our group and pitched the idea, and Intel Heath got behind it because it fits with the whole idea of digital health, which is helping people to be independent."

The Intel Reader isn't so much a consumer electronics device as a health product with a limited market (people with poor vision, the blind, the dyslexic), and that's reflected in the 999 price at Amazon.co.uk. It could also find users in schools and libraries, and Intel is showing the Reader at this week's BETT educational technology exhibition at Olympia in London (13 - 16 January 2010).

The Intel Reader was one of the Top 10 devices in the Last Gadget Standing competition at CES, and Engadget put it through its paces in a hands-on video, below:

Despite the recession, this year's Consumer Electronics Show was still big: very, very big. More new exhibitors turned up than ever before, visitor numbers were good, and the taxi drivers in Las Vegas said it was busier than they expected. Just like every year, the showfloor went on forever - and after what seemed an eternity of walking the halls, I'm home - and extremely glad to be done.

Regardless of the gigantic displays and vast number of companies in attendance, though, it still felt a little underwhelming. Even with a bit of distance, I can't think of too many standout technologies on display, and I've already explained my thoughts about the expo's often laughable green push. Still, there were serious pushes for some technologies that might make be fixtures in our lives in coming years: 3DTV, ebooks, netbooks and so on.

But the lack of big winners doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot to learn: so here are the lessons I'm taking away with me.

You don't have to be at CES to be at CES

I've said it already, but the biggest success story at the show was the one company that never makes an appearance. Steve Jobs wasn't here, but he exerted an influence far beyond anything . Will it release an iPad device later this month? Probably. Do we know what it's going to be like? Not really. Did that stop dozens and dozens of companies trying to get in on the act? No. As Andy Inahtko, the author and journalist, suggests, the threat of Apple was enough to send companies like Microsoft (and therefore everyone who relies on Microsoft) into a panic.

Don't underestimate Android

Google's decision to launch its own branded phone the day before the conference might have set the show off on a strange note, but it wasn't just about the Nexus One. The halls were stuffed with Android devices, from a smartbook produced by HP to the slightly odd Alex e-reader. Not all the gadgets are there just yet, but it's clear that manufacturers like the idea. And with Google's Chrome operating system due later this year, the internet giant is really starting to stake out its territory.

There's still room for the little guy

The show is, unsurprisingly, dominated by the big companies. Microsoft opens proceedings. Sony gets plenty of coverage. The likes of Intel, Samsung, LG, Panasonic and others still get the lion's share of coverage and the majority of the crowds turn up at the show's central hall - where most of the big firms dwell. But that doesn't mean that the smaller companies can't make an impact. Parrot proved a surprise hit with their AR Drone, and among the herd of ereaders, the Plastic Logic Que really impressed me. Yes, it's a little tedious to look through row upon row of iPod cases - but there are genuinely interesting ideas needled away in the haystack.

Next year, I hear, the show plans to spread the big companies out around the halls, rather than have most of them concentrated in one place. Will that encourage more innovation? Almost certainly not, but it will at least get more eyeballs on the interesting smaller things. Still, I'm interested to find out how these trends pan out over the next year. Given the blisters on my feet and the general air of exhaustion, I can't believe I'm going to say this - but roll on CES 2011.

Take a look at some of the gadgets being unveiled at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

The new Polo: is it clever, or dull, or what?

It's longer, it's wider, it's lighter, it's more fuel- efficient... It's the new Polo and it's, well, not that different from the previous Polo. No, no. It's obviously not the same at all, what with that extra 54mm in length and 32mm in width, and the weight watcher of the year drop of 7.5% in body mass.

And yet somehow it looks, feels and drives just like all the other Polos that preceded it. Is that clever or dull or what? That's the sort of profound question that may require the pens es of great philosophers or, failing that, perhaps someone who really cares. But, for my money, it errs on the side of deeply boring.

The other thing to note, though, is that not only is the new Polo instantly reminiscent of every other Polo, it's also strikingly similar to every other Golf. For what is a Polo if not a smaller Golf, even if it is 54mm less smaller than it used to be. The Polo is VW's second most successful car after the Golf and, taking all the evidence into account, it's reasonable to assume that a great deal of its success rests on the fact that it is a Golf in all but name and size. The new Polo, then, is the old Polo, which is the new Golf: ie, the old Golf.

Except that is possibly an oversimplification. It's just that the steady evolution this is the fifth generation Polo, and each one has undergone mid-term tinkering has disguised the dramatic extent of the underlying change. I used to drive a Polo getting on for 20 years ago and, looking back, it was a bit of a tank, roadwise. Not so much a challenge, as a Challenger. At the time, it didn't seem like that. In the era of nine-point turns, before power steering had much power, it felt kind of bright and democratic, a modern supermini before the "supermini" was a recognised market segment.

By comparison with that much earlier version, the new Polo is a dream to drive. Alas, though, that's not the comparison that potential buyers are going to make. Instead, they'll probably compare it with, say, the latest Ford Fiesta, which is a much jauntier proposition the Polo accelerates like a hearse with a lead coffin on board.

Yet the new Polo is not without its own distinct strengths. The diesel may sound like a tractor, but it delivers on fuel efficiency. And the interior boasts the ergonomic nous and sensible styling in which VW specialise.

In short, it's a perfectly adequate, useful and not unappealing little (but not that little) five-door car. But at the football summarisers' favourite hour, the end of the day, it's really just a Golf for smaller people who want to spend less and go slower. And there's nothing bad about that.

Government and armed forces to continue using version of browser attacked by Chinese hackers in Google security breach
The IE zero-day vulnerability, Google, and you

The British government and armed forces are to continue their widespread use of the version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser that was attacked by Chinese hackers who broke into Google's corporate network even though both the French and German governments have advised people to stop using it.

The Cabinet Office, which oversees the deployment of computers in government, said today that "it doesn't think the issue [of being open to hacking] would be resolved any better by going elsewhere".

But over the weekend the German government advised citizens to stop using any version of Internet Explorer because of the possibility of attacks against it which could compromise the user's computer without their knowledge and lead to the theft of data or incursions into corporate networks.

Today, the French government followed suit, issuing an advisory suggesting that all versions of Internet Explorer, which is included with Windows, are vulnerable to the attack that was used against Google, Adobe and an estimated 30 other western companies, by hackers originating in China.

Google said the attacks were used to steal intellectual property and compromise email accounts, and identified Internet Explorer as the weak point that was exploited.

The specific version of the browser known to be vulnerable to the attack mounted on Google is Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), which was first released in 2000 and is standard on Windows XP, which was released in 2001. Despite its age and known weakness to hacking, IE6 is still the most widely used browser in the world, ahead of newer, more secure versions and rivals' alternatives such as the free Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers.

IE6 is extensively used by the British government, including UK armed forces: in response to parliamentary questions asked last year by Labour MP and former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, the Ministry of Defence, which has 300,000 desktops worldwide (including ships), said it was sticking with IE6, "and at the current time does not have a requirement to move to an updated version".

Watson said today: "The government's own advice to businesses and consumers, through its Get Safe Online site that it helps to fund, is to not use IE6. So other than the fact that they aren't taking their own advice, it's preposterous that they wouldn't take this threat seriously. With the added security threat, all departments should certainly ditch IE6 and upgrade."

Microsoft sought to play down the risks of the vulnerability in a blog posting on Sunday, saying that "we are only seeing very limited number of targeted attacks against a small subset of corporations. The attacks that we have seen to date, including public proof-of-concept exploit code, are only effective against Internet Explorer 6."

However both the French and German government advisories say that there are weaknesses on newer versions of Internet Explorer on all versions of Windows, including the recently released Windows 7.

Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer browser was the weak link used by hackers to attack Google's systems in China.

The world's biggest software company today issued a security advisory and warned of a loophole that was used by Chinese hackers to attack dozens of US companies - the same attack that led Google on Tuesday to announce its plan to drop the censorship of its search engine in China.

"In a specially-crafted attack... Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution," said Microsoft in its security alert.

The company added that it had not yet fixed the vulnerability in the world's most popular web browser, which is used by around two thirds of internet users.

The attacks, which apparently attempted to steal personal information on Chinese dissidents and the code that runs some of Google's critical services, also hit a number of other companies, said to include Yahoo and US defence contractor Northrop Grumman.

Microsoft confirmed the existence of the loophole after an investigation by internet security firm McAfee and information from Google and Adobe.

"As with most targeted attacks, the intruders gained access to an organisation by sending a tailored attack to one or a few targeted individuals," said George Kurtz, McAfee's chief technology officer, adding that the hackers would then use the Internet Explorer bug to infect the victim's computer.

"Once the malware is downloaded and installed, it opens a back door that allows the attacker to perform reconnaissance and gain complete control over the compromised system. The attacker can now identify high value targets and start to siphon off valuable data from the company."

The company's admission is at odds with earlier consensus - largely based on a report from security firm iDefense - that it was Adobe's own software that had been used for the attacks.

Earlier this week experts had suggested that a "zero-day vulnerability" - jargon for a previously unknown software loophole - had been used to exploit a "major document type", thought to be Adobe's PDF format. By sending an infected document to target users, iDefense suggested, the hackers had been able to compromise victim's computers and launch further attacks.

Now, however, it appears that the strike - which analysts are now calling "Operation Aurora" - was carefully orchestrated using the hidden bug in Microsoft's systems.

The Chinese government yesterday issued its first response to the claims by Google, saying that it was opposed to computer crime and had been the victim of cyberattacks itself in the past. However, the statement, issued by the country's foreign ministry, also contained a veiled threat to other companies who may be considering following Google's stand.

"China has tried creating a favorable environment for internet," said a spokeswoman. "China welcomes international internet companies to conduct business within the country according to law. China's law prohibits cyber crimes, including hacker attacks."

Authorities blamed for hacking into Gmail users
Phishing scams and malware used as weapons

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised.

They came forward after Google's announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China said they had repeatedly suffered from hacking and blamed the authorities .

Ai Weiwei, one of China's best-known contemporary artists, said he detected problems with email accounts two months ago.

Teng Biao, a law professor and human rights lawyer, and Zeng Jinyan, activist and wife of the jailed dissident Hu Jia, both said their email had been hacked as long ago as 2007. They realised the issue had recurred when they checked their accounts in light of Google's statement.

However, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, told a press conference in Beijing: "Chinese laws prohibit any form of cyber attacks including hacking."

On Tuesday, Google said hackers had gained limited access to two accounts in December's attack. It is understood the firm contacted the account holders.

Tenzin Seldon, 20, a US student whose parents are Tibetan exiles, said Google had checked her computer and confirmed an intrusion. "My email account was likely hacked because I am a Tibetan activist," she said.

Google said its investigation also showed that the accounts of dozens of Gmail users in the US, China and Europe who are advocates of human rights in China had been routinely accessed by third parties. This had not happened through an intrusion into its infrastructure, but probably through phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

Ai, who helped to design the Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympics, came under pressure from authorities after leading a volunteer attempt to list all the children who died when their schools collapsed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

"We realised two months ago that our Gmail account [for the Sichuan investigation] had been invaded by someone who was transferring our emails so whatever we got, they got," he said. "Of course we changed the password but we later had problems again."

Ai said he had checked the account after detecting other forms of monitoring, but was unsurprised to detect the problem because people involved in protecting rights in China had told him it was very common. Although it was impossible to know, he believed those responsible "must be the same kind of people" who recently visited his bank government security officers.

He added: "From my experience dealing with Sichuan I started to understand very clearly the character of local government. They will do anything they tap your phone You will never really wrongly accuse them of anything because they do everything."

Zeng said her account had been hacked repeatedly. "I checked it up yesterday and found all my emails have been copied to another email address which I did not know. I think it must be done by the authorities, because I am not interesting enough to attract other hackers," she said.

Teng, who has acted in many sensitive cases and often speaks out on rights issues, said he was not surprised he had been targeted.

"In September and October 2007, my Gmail was used by others to send out emails to people with attachments containing viruses. Later, the Gmail I had used for three years was no longer accessible. I had to abandon the account and registered a new one," he said.

"This time I found that all my emails have been forwarded to [another] address. Of course, I have no evidence to say who did this, but I think only the government's security department is interested in human rights lawyers."

Another well-known activist, Yao Yao, tweeted: "My Gmail was hacked five times. I changed to a stronger password, then my emails were forwarded to an email account I had never seen."

It is not clear how the accounts were compromised, but malware-laden emails sent to rights activists, foreign media and others in China have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years.

In October, assistants for several foreign media organisations in China were sent carefully tailored messages with attachments carrying malware.

Earlier last year researchers at the University of Toronto said they had discovered a vast electronic spy network which seemed to have targeted embassies, media groups, NGOs, international organisations, government foreign ministries and the offices of the Dalai Lama, the leader of the Tibetan exile movement.

Computers were infected when users clicked on links in emails or documents attached to them.

The team said the "GhostNet", which had infiltrated hundreds of computers and stolen documents, was apparently controlled from computers in China. But they added that they could not identify who was behind it.

Google says at least 20 other large companies have been targeted in cyber attacks, but none of them has come forward

Yahoo and Adobe appear to be among the companies that suffered the sort of cyberattack that led Google to threaten to withdraw from China. In its original announcement, Google said that "at least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses including the internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors have been similarly targeted".

However, Google did not name any names, and it did not actually say that the attacks were made by people acting on the behalf of the Chinese government.

Most large companies "face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis," as Google said, but so far none of them seem to have come forward.

Adobe said in a blog post that it was investigating a "coordinated attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe and other companies", and the timing suggests it could well be related to the attacks on Google.

Bloomberg reported that Yahoo "was targeted by a Chinese attack similar to the one that affected Google Inc, according to a person familiar with the matter", but this has not been confirmed. The company said: "Yahoo does not generally disclose that type of information, but we take security very seriously and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach."

The Washington Post, reporting a "vast espionage campaign", claimed that "at least 34 companies including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources."

The attacks seem to have been performed by "spear phishing" that is, targeting company employees with infected email attachments. According to a widely-reported statement by Eli Jellenc, head of international cyber intelligence at Verisign-owned iDefense: "The attack bears significant resemblance to a July 2009 attack in which attackers launched targeted email campaigns against approximately 100 IT-focused companies."

This type of attack has been part of the computer scene for several years, and Chinese involvement has often been suspected. It would be surprising if Google had not been attacked before. In this case, it's not the attack but the response that is unusual.

Personal data and tutorials in hacking offered online
Founder of site traced to London internet cafe

To the casual observer, there was little to distinguish the Java Bean internet cafe in Wembley from the hundreds of others dotted around the capital. But to surveillance officers staking it out month after month, this unremarkable venue was the key to busting a remarkable and sophisticated network of cyber criminals.

From the bank of computers inside, a former pizza bar worker ran an international cyber "supermarket" selling stolen credit card and account details costing the banking industry tens of millions.

Renukanth Subramaniam, 33, was revealed today as the founder and a major "orchestrator" of the secret DarkMarket website, where elite fraudsters bought and sold personal data, after it was infiltrated by the FBI and the US Secret Service.

Membership was strictly by invitation. But once vetted, its 2,000 vendors and buyers traded everything from card details, obtained through hacking, phishing and ATM skimming devices, to viruses with which buyers could extort money by threatening company websites.

The top English language cybercrime site in the world, it offered online tutorials in account takeovers, credit card deception and money laundering. Equipment including false ATM and pin machines and everything needed to set up a credit card factory was available.

It even featured breaking-news-style updates on the latest compromised material available, while criminals could buy banner adverts to promote their wares.

So vast was its reach, with members in the UK, Canada, US, Russia, Turkey, Germany and France, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which helped bust it, said it was "impossible" to put a figure on how much it cost banks worldwide.

Subramaniam, who used the online soubriquet JiLsi, was remanded in custody at his own request at Blackfriars crown court today after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud and five counts of furnishing false information. Judge John Hillen warned it was "inevitable" he faced a "substantial custodial sentence".

A Sri Lankan-born British citizen, Subramaniam was a former member of ShadowCrew, DarkMarket's forerunner, which was uncovered by the US Secret Service in 2004. "JiLsi was one of the highest in cybercrime in this country with what he managed to achieve setting up a forum globally. No JiLsi, no DarkMarket," said one Soca investigator.

Its 2,000 members never met in real life. Quality, not quantity, was the key. DarkMarket was fastidious in banning "rippers" who would cheat other criminals. Honour among thieves was paramount.

It operated an "escrow" service, with payments and goods exchanged through a third party "like a PayPal for criminals", the judge observed, and an arbitration service resolved disputes. To keep off the radar, the rules were strict: no firearms, drugs or counterfeit currency.

Built on a pyramid structure, administrators decided who joined, moderators ran specific site sections, and reviewers vetted wannabes each demanding 5% or 250 per transaction as a fixer's fee.

To get on, criminals had to present details of 100 compromised cards free of charge - 50 to one reviewer, 50 to another. Reviewers would test the cards and write an online review of customer satisfaction just like eBay customers. "If the cards did what they were supposed to they would be recommended. If not they weren't allowed in," said the investigator.

Payment was via accounts on WebMoney, or E-Gold. "It was the QuickTime method of sending money anywhere."

Subramaniam was one of the top administrators. He kept his operating system on memory sticks. But when one was stolen, costing him 100,000 in losses and compromising the site's security, he was downgraded to reviewer. Surveillance officers caught him logging on to the website as JiLsi unaware the fellow criminal MasterSplyntr he was talking to was, in fact, an FBI agent called Keith Mularski.

Considerable money was exchanged, though actual transactions took place away from the site for security reasons. One buyer spent 250,000 on stolen personal information in just six weeks.

Described as "a very quiet man", Subramaniam worked at Pizza Hut and as a dispatch courier. "He owned three houses but was largely itinerant," said Sharon Lemon, Soca deputy director. "The key to investigations of this sort is finding the evidence to connect the online persona with a living, breathing person."

Harendra de Silva QC, defending Subramaniam, said the "evidence was unchallenged" but said the "question of interpretation does arise in certain areas" and there would be submissions on "nuance" of the fraud in so far as it applied to his client. He is charged alongside John McHugh, 66, known as Devilman, also a site reviewer who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and at whose Doncaster home officers found a credit card-making factory. The two will be sentenced later.

But the battle against cybercrime continues. "This was one of the top 10 sites in the world, but there are more than 100 we know of globally, and another 100 we don't yet know of," said the investigators.

In the DarkMarket

DarkMarket price list

Trusted vendors on DarkMarket offered a smorgasbord of personal data, viruses, and card-cloning kits at knockdown prices. Going rates were:

Dumps Data from magnetic stripes on batches of 10 cards. Standard cards: $50. Gold/platinum: $80. Corporate: $180.

Card verification values Information needed for online transactions. $3-$10 depending on quality.

Full information/change of billing Information needed for opening or taking over account details. $150 for account with $10,000 balance. $300 for one with $20,000 balance.

Skimmer Device to read card data. Up to $7,000.

Bank logins 2% of available balance.

Hire of botnet Software robots used in spam attacks. $50 a day.

Credit card images Both sides of card. $30 each.

Embossed card blanks $50 each.

Holograms $5 per 100.

It's a household name in Britain, thanks to its popular digital radios. But can Pure Digital make inroads in the US, where the idea has never taken off? The company's Colin Crawford explains why it is time to take on America.

Plus, we delve further into the chances for UK technology firms to make an impact at CES by talking to the people trying to cheerlead the nation's entrepreneurs: the chaps from UK Trade and Investment are on hand to discuss the chances for British companies to make it big.

The subject is picked up by our guests, Michael Brook from T3 magazine and Tasha Eichenseher of National Geographic, who also discuss their favourite moments from this year's show and ponder what it means to be green amid this orgy of gadgets.

Meanwhile Scott Cawley finishes up his tour of the halls, before we all head away, exhausted, from Las Vegas.

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In the beginning there was Mosaic, and then there was Netscape Navigator, and from August 1995 there was Internet Explorer and the first browser wars began. By 2004 IE had a market share of around 90%. There have always been alternatives: Safari (mostly on Macs), Opera (especially on mobile phones) and Firefox, from Mozilla, a collaborative, not-for-profit foundation. All have their champions and the battle between them has been good for the web, improving speed, stability and security, and keeping the internet out of the hands of one corporate giant. Microsoft has been the loser in the second browser war, which is now under way. In December 2009, Firefox 3.5 is believed to have overtaken Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular single version of a browser though IE in all its forms still has about two-thirds of the market. This week the French and German governments called on web users to drop Microsoft's browser entirely to protect security. The recent assault by Chinese hackers on Google apparently exploited a weakness in some versions of IE although Microsoft, not surprisingly, denies there is a particular problem with its browser and argues that its rivals are less secure. The dispute comes at a tricky time for the company: Google is busy promoting its Chrome browser, which until now has been a minority player but is growing fast. The battle is on to offer the public the safest and most reliable way of working online and all free of charge. It is a contest from which web users can only gain.

Plot isn't everything - a dash of comedy can make a game a classic

Guybrush Threepwood was the first game character I ever loved. While Mario, the moustachioed plumber, and Link, the warrior in the Zelda series, were a little on the dull side, Guybrush the wannabe pirate hero of the early 1990s Monkey Island games possessed the quality that still charms me: humour.

The Monkey Island series was witty. Instead of swordfighting, you had to win battles through banter. "You fight like a dairy farmer," says your opponent. "How appropriate. You fight like a cow," you respond. KAPOW! You win. How could one not love a man who wins fights with repartee? Twenty years on, Guybrush hasn't been forgotten: The Secret of Monkey Island has been re-released as an iPhone app and Telltale Games has recently made a very worthy sequel.

Truly funny games tend to occupy a special place in gamers' hearts. The darkly comic game Grim Fandango whose hero is a travel agent for the dead still has its own fan sites. I suspect that the delight taken in Valve's games Team Fortress 2 and Portal is as much due to their amusing lines and scenarios as the undeniably interesting gameplay. Portal's "portal gun", which lets the player create mini-wormholes between any two spots, was innovative. But the standout moment is when, having been promised "moist delicious cake" for completing all the challenges, the player finds scrawled graffiti warning "The cake is a lie!" a slogan celebrated on geek T-shirts everywhere.

It can be hard to create great stories in games. Classically, plots have a sense of inevitability, while games need to give the player at least some choices or autonomy. It's not impossible to reconcile these two demands, but it is difficult. Good writing, however, isn't just about plot. As I learned from Guybrush Threepwood, a devastating way with one-liners can be all you need.