Over at CRN - the best place to find out about what's happening in Australia's sales and distribution channels, I offer some opinion on whether the iPad could spawn a grey market in locales where the 3G version doesn't arrive promptly through Apple's official channels.

Apple's distribution model for the iPad tablet looks, smells and feels a lot like its approach for the original iPhone. And if history is any guide, that means a strong potential for a grey market.

Here's the full story.

The entire blogosphere and more than a few traditional news outlets are all saying that Apple is going to be announcing a tablet during the big event they've scheduled for 27 January 2010 (3.00AM on the 28th for those in Australia). While the idea of a tablet has some attraction to the market, I'm not convinced that they're going deliver one.

CES saw many many companies release and announce tablets and eReaders. At the moment, it's fair to say that on the eReader side of things, Amazon owns the market with a device that has the entire book buying and reading process refined. When Apple released the iPod there were other MP3 players around but none had high capacity hard drives and Apple managed to nail the usability through the iPod/iTunes ecosystem. In other words, they weren't first to market but they were arguably best to market.

With the tablet, Apple won't be delivering something new or something that hasn't already been well done by something else. For Apple to turn the hype of a tablet into market success they'll need to not only create a great product but fulfil a need that the market may not even know it has. Remember the hysteria surrounding the MacBook Air. Sure, the Air is a damn sexy product (I've owned one) but its limitations and the introduction of the 13-inch MacBook Pro have rendered the Air to all but obsolescence.

So, if Apple doesn't announce a tablet, what will they unveil. I suspect that it will be something from the shopping list below.

1 - A new Apple TV with integrated tuners making it a full PVR solution

I've got an Apple TV. If it had a high definition tuner and Apple applied its software engineers to the task of making this Steve Jobs hobby project easy to use then they'd have a winner. For the win, they could release a software update so that existing Apple TV units could install a USB tuner to the unused port at the back of the Apple TV.

2 - A netbook (they described this as a "nascent market" last year and hinted that they were doing some product development)

The establishment of the 13-inch MacBook Pro line basically made the MacBook Air into a firth wheel. I suggest that the 13-inch MacBook Air will be superseded by a lower cost 10-inch MacBook Air. However, if this happens, Apple won't be calling it a netbook in order to avoid the stigma that comes from some of the cheapest, more underpowered netbooks it would compared with. Also, unless it costs less than $800 USD it won't sell.

3 - The iPhone nano - a smaller, cheaper iPhone (fits their iPod strategy)

This one's less likely but still on the cards. While Apple might not be the biggest seller of handsets on the market, they practically own what David Pogue calls the "app phone" market. recent research from Gartner says that Apple owns practically all mobile application sales. While I'm not sure that Gartner's figures are 100% correct (What about the installed base of Palm and Windows Mobile apps? How about sales from independent software vendors?).

A second model, appealing to the portion of the market that wants a more compact form factor would be a sure-fire winner.

4 - A new iLife and iWork update (an anticlimax for all the hype)

iLife updates were typically released at the Macworld Expo. Although Apple is no longer attending the Expo, an iLife update is on the cards. iWork is less likely although the paintball effect on Apple's media invitation could point to an expansion of iWork to include a drawing program. The establishment of features like Instant Alpha in the other iWork apps makes me think this is a possibility.

5 - A huge shock: Steve Jobs to resign as CEO (stay on as chairman)

Let's face it - Jobs is a busy guy with many interests and the company didn't go belly up when he took his medical leave of absence in 2009

I've been a very busy little bee over recent weeks. However, a number of my stories have appeared around the place. One was on the subject of CAPTCHA - those boxes of hard-to-read characters that are designed to stop automated web-bots from working.

You can find the full story in the technology section of The Age by clicking here.

Even though I've been busy that doesn;t mean that my work has stopped cropping up on the Intertubes. Here's a smattering of stories that have appeared around the traps.

Hydrapinion

• Staying Social on Holidays
• Facebook Lite Trims the Fat
• Why Social Media Will Prevail
• Twitter Rules the US Open
• Has Twitter Jumped the Shark?

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
This is one of favourite stories: Computer dream sees light of day

I've also had stories appear in the latest issues of APC, Australian Macworld and AusCam but for those you'll need to hit the nearest newsstand.

Last week I took a look a Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed. I suspect that the real story isn't a social networking one but a real-time search business proposition.

...he fight for your eyeballs and advertising dollars is now escalating. After a few years of the market simply rolling over and conceding all to the Google juggernaut the world has discovered that Google's search (which is being updated with a new beta version released this week) doesn't cope so well with the "real time Internet".

The full story story can be read at Hydrapinion.

Business cards are a fact of life. But filing them and being able to find the right card quickly is a major hassle. For the last few weeks I've been scoping out a business card scanner but the cost is, in my view, prohibitively high given that it's a piece of hardware that I'm only likely to use a few times a year.

Most scanners come with some software that performs optical character recognition, or OCR, on cards and then uses the text to populate a new entry in your address book. CardSnap turns your iPhone into a business card scanner. Rather than loading all the OCR onto the iPhone, CardSnap lets you photograph a business card. Once you've checked that the image is OK you send the card up to an online service where the OCR is performed. A couple of hours later, the scanned card comes back and you review the result of the OCR.

I put CardSnap through its paces by scanning a pile of 80 cards. Each card was photographed with my iPhone 3GS. It's worth noting that this app relies on the 3GS's superior camera. If you've only got a first generation iPhone or a 3G then you'll need to shell out for Griffin's Clarifi iPhone case as CardSnap relies on a decent camera to get the best result from the OCR.

Once a card is photographed it goes into a queue that you can view using the "Cards" button. From submission to return it takes about 24 hours although we received some cards within a couple of hours.

The OCR process was quite accurate although we did encounter some problems. For example, where the business card didn't have a country on the address the software populated the field with United States. I'd prefer to have an option to set the default country. Also, when an address had a dash or slash in it, like 2-4 Smith Road, the dash or slash was omitted.

Once a card comes back from OCR processing, it's important to review the card. As the photo of the card is retained this is reasonably easy although having a way to review the card and see the photo at the same time would make that much easier.

As well as testing CardSnap with a batch of cards we've used it at meetings to quickly capture the cards of other people. It works well - there's lots of "cool" factor when you do this - although it does mean that my meeting trick of arranging cards in front of me on the table so I don;t forget names is not longer practical as I don't keep the cards any more.

At $9.99USD ($12.99AUD) CardSnap is much cheaper and more portable than a business card scanner. It works quite well and the OCR accuracy is over 90%. The daly between scanning and receiving the result is annoying but given that I'd probably not carry a scanner to every meeting it doesn't make the actual workflow any slower.

If you collect lots of business cards and lack the time or discipline to enter all the details into your contact list then CardSnap is excellent value.

Score: 3.5/5
Pros: Great graphics, excellent gameplay
Cons: Not enough levels
Cost: $5.99USD
Buy from: Apple App Store

Id Software's Doom probably sold more PCs than any reseller. In it's time, the early 1990s, it needed some pretty grunty hardware to keep up with the fast-moving bad guys and what ever they were throwing or firing at you. Doom spawned its own ecosystem of add-on levels and eventually was superseded by Quake and a host of other first-person shooters. Doom Resurrection is a re-birth of Doom, specifically made of the iPhone and iPod touch. It's not a straight porting of the original game - these are entirely new levels although the premise of the story is the same.

I won't rehash the storyline of Doom as it's adequately covered over at Wikipedia and lots of fan sites as well as Id Software's own site.

Storyline

You're the last surviving marine on a remote research facility on Mars. You start the game unarmed (although that's not the case for too long) and have to negotiate your way through the facility, killing all manner of demons, zombies and other nasties along the way.

In other words, shoot anything that moves, don't get killed and save the world!

Gameplay

Given that the iPhone lacks a keyboard, Doom Resurrection puts you on rails. This means that you don't have any control over your own movement during the game. This takes a little getting used to. One of the features of Id Software's First Person Shooters, or FPS, is that you can freely walk around the game space and explore. The goal in the original game was to find secret passages and other secrets hidden behind walls. There are secrets in Doom Resurrection but they're not well hidden. The trick is to seem them and shoot them to open them before you go past them. You can't stop your onward movement to the destination at each level.

Accompanying you on much of the journey is a small flying droid called Sam. Sam gathers data from the few remaining data terminals so that you can send the data to base an avert the seemingly inevitable teleportation of demons from hell to earth. Same only appears when she's integral to the story. Otherwise she's not floating about, cluttering up the limited screen space.

As there's no way to control your own movement, the left corner of the screen is set as a dodge control. When one of the demons throws a fire ball at you, the dodge control will let you duck out of the way, letting the fireball harmlessly sail by. The trick is to time your dodge correctly so that you don't go too early and get hit. When possessed soldiers are firing their guns at you the dodge control lets you hide behind conveniently placed crates or pillars so you can stay out of harms way until there's a break in the shooting and you can retaliate.

Weapons

One of the great things about the original Doom was the array of different weapons you could discover. The most basic weapon is a machine-gun. This weapon's magazine holds 60 rounds but you somehow have an infinite supply of refills. While that sounds silly it has the advantage of not leaving ammo lying around the screen all the time.

There's also a pair of shotguns you find as your walk through the research facility. The single barrel unit packs enough punch to kill most humanoid bad guys with a single shot to the head. You can hold eight shots at a time with that weapon.

The double-barrel shotgun can kill many of the larger mutants that come your way with a single blast providing you wait for the mutant to get nice and close. But beware - reloads take a second or so and that's enough time to get badly hurt if you don't make the kill on your first shot.

There's a plasma rifle as well. Its magazine holds 40 rounds and can kill most things with about half as many shots as the machine-gun. However, the plasma ammo is best saved for when you get your hands on the BFG.

The BFG, or Big XXX Gun, fires forty rounds of plasma in one fell swoop and will kill several bad guys at a time. However, it takes a while to fully prime so you'll need to time its use carefully.

Controls

The on-screen controls are easy to use. Each corner of the screen is designated for a specific function. The top-left corner lets you toggle between weapons, the top-right reloads your weapon. The bottom-left is for dodging incoming enemy fire and the bottom-right is for shooting. There's also a small pause button on the top of the screen should you need a break while playing.

Each weapon has a different set of crosshairs for aiming. You direct the crosshairs by tilting the iPhone as the aiming mechanism uses the device's accelerometers. My only complaint was that it's tricky to aim correctly unless you're sitting still - something that's difficult if you're playing on a train.

Criticisms

I really enjoy playing Doom Resurrection. That's why I was really disappointed as there just weren't enough levels. I managed to play all the way through from start to end in a couple of days. Sure, that cut into stuff like eating and work, but I got a lot more gameplay out of the port of Wolfenstein.

Also, the "on rails" approach to movement is a great way to eliminate the use for complex controls that take away from the available screen space but it did take some getting used to.

Should you buy it?

If you enjoy playing FPS and have a few spare bucks then I'd recommend Doom Resurrection. Although I've finished the game, I'm still playing it, using the "Free Play" option to go back to various points in the game.

Back in May 2007, I wrote a feature for Australian Macworld on batteries and power solution. You can read the entire yarn here [22MB PDF].

In that story I recommended that users should regularly cycle your notebook or mobile phone's battery. That means letting it run all the way down and then fully recharging it.

Today, I came past this story over at ZDNet. It seems that Apple has a nifty diagnostic app running on an iPod that can diagnose whether a failed battery's condition has come from neglect or from a defect.

One of the telling things about this particular visit to the Apple Store was something the tech told me. He said that he would replace the battery with a new one because it has be “used correctly.” When I asked him to elaborate on what that meant, he told me that Apple’s notebook batteries last longest when they’re routinely charged and discharged.

Apple's batteries are more sophisticated than a simple collection of single cells. There are "smarts" built into them that retain information like the number of charging cycles and let you check the remaining charge by pressing a small button either on the battery (for older Macbooks and MacBook Pros) or on the unibody for more recent models.

If you're a mere mortal and don't have a fancy iPod gizmo for testing your battery, you can achieve much the same with iStat Pro - a widget created by iSlayer. In addition to all the useful system information it provides it's able to access that interesting battery data.

As it turns out, battery life is very much a "use it or lose it" proposition. In order to get the most out of your battery, both in terms of longevity and capacity make it a habit to run the battery down regularly.

In today's Green Guide, the IT and TV supplement in Australia's best daily news paper - The Age, I have a story on creating your own website.

Titled, "Mastering your own Domain" it tells you about such technological wonders as DNS, IP Addresses, domain registrars and webservers.

You can read all about it by clicking here.

Much is made of Apple design excellence and their innovativeness. However, I suspect that when we look back on 2009, we'll see this as the year when Apple consolidated its technology, focussing on stability and refinement rather that adding stack of new features of marginal value.

iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3G S

Outwardly, the iPhone 3G S looks almost identical to its predecessor, the iPhone 3G. Other than some changed decals the body is the same. The changes that have been made to the hardware include a faster processor, improved graphics performance and a much needed increase in camera capability with more megapixels and the ability record video and do some basic video editing. In other words, the new hardware is, to a great degree, catching up to market that has moved on over the last year and some evolutionary improvements on the software front.

In fact, a close look at the iPhone OS reveals many subtle changes that improve the user experience hugely without being the sorts of "sexy" features that grab headlines. For example, the font used to display email is clearer. When sending a SMS, the progress bar has been shifted to the top of the screen and doesn't take up nearly as much space as it used to. Also, messages that aren't sent can be more easily resent.

The ability to search inboxes and the introduction of Spotlight to search the entire contents of the phone is a great benefit as well. As I use the notes field in the address book, this is a great boon as it makes it easy to find specific contacts. However, there's still room for improvement with messaging as different email accounts still have separate inboxes. As soon as Apple or some third party introduces a unified inbox for ALL messaging, they'll have my money.

Notebooks

Since the aluminium PowerBook G4, Apple's outward notebook design has only changed marginally. Even the introduction of the revolutionary Unibody manufacturing process has resulted in only incremental outward change. I would argue that although there are many benefits to the Unibody process (environmental benefits, slightly lighter bodies, increased strength) that benefits to end users are incremental.

The new MacBook Pro's introduced last week (designated as the mid-2009 MacBook Pros in Apple's support documents) represent refinement on the models introduced earlier this year. The addition of an SD slot to the 13" and 15" models and return of Firewire to the 13" product line represent a response to customer demands. Again, this is evolution but no revolution.

Snow Leopard

September 2009 will see the release of Snow Leopard, the latest incarnation of Apple's OS X operating system. The summary version of what Snow Leopard will bring is a bit like the superhero, The Atom. It's going to be fast, powerful and small. According to this informative article by David Pogue

And sure enough, Snow Leopard really is faster--and smaller. Yes, smaller: The OS occupies only half the disk space of the previous version, saving you a cool 6 gigabytes. That's a first in the history of OS upgrades.

Apple says that everything is faster, too: Snow Leopard installation is 45 percent faster, shutting down is 75 percent faster, waking up 50 percent faster, 55 percent faster joining Wi-Fi networks, and so on. (These are all Apple's measurements, and they're all "up to," but still.)

In other words, Snow Leopard is all about doing everything you do today. You'll just do it better. Again, evolution and not revolution.

Why consolidate?

I have a strong suspicion that Apple's strategy is based around the future of its enigmatic leader Steve Jobs. For least ten years, Apple's fortunes have been strongly tied to the fortunes of Jobs. When his health was questioned the stock price suffered, disproportionately in my view. Over the last few months, Jobs has been absent due to ill health and the need for him to take some time to get himself healthy. What we've seen is that the company has continued to operate successfully and develop new and improved products.

I don't think there's any surprise that Apple has been in product consolidation mode over the time when Steve Jobs' health has been in question. In fact, when one considers the long-term future of Apple it's clear that this year is incredibly important. I doubt that Jobs has been 100% hands-off this year but providing opportunities for his other executives to stand up has shown that for Apple there is life after Jobs.

Apple's next test will be whether its able to successfully conceptualise, develop and commercialise a new product. For example, without Jobs, can the Apple TV move from a "hobby" project to a commercially viable powerhouse like the iPhone? Is there someone in the management team with the force of will Jobs is reputed to have that can create something new. Only time will tell.

However, I'm certain that 2009 will be seen as the year Apple consolidated its product lines and market position. Perhaps, 2010 will be the year of Something Big. Maybe Something Big will be Jobs' "one more thing".