This week as I set out to record the podcast, I am hoping that we have kept to schedule and what comes next is the second instalment of iWork: the section on Pages. If I am wrong, then that will cause the podcast to be somewhat late.

iWork Updated (2) Pages

As a teacher, I rather like the idea of starting them young. I was pleased therefore to see a simple new App on the App Store that was written by a young man in Singapore who is none years old. Lim Ding Wen has put out Doodle Kids -- I have a screen shot on the page that goes with the podcast as well as a link to one of the many articles that covered this last week, This is only a basic app, although considerably more than I could do, and designed more for amusement than any productivity, but when I took it into work and showed it to some people in the Computer Engineering Department, there was a certain . . . pain. . . .

Let me interject the latest iPhone rumours that have been floating around in the last few days. I think everyone should realise that there will be a new iPhone, primarily because Apple is a company that does not stand still.

This time not one new iPhone, but three are suggested. First up is a 32G iPhone, which does indeed make sense as there is already a 32G iPod touch; but the added flavour to this is a selection of colours. Also coming, according to the rumour that I found in Seeking Alpha, is a lower cost 2.5G iPhone; and finally a smaller handset that may be 40% lower in cost and aimed at China: $99 may be the price of this. This all comes from an analyst who may or may not have any real information. The comments from readers underneath are just as revealing.

Another rumour, this time in The Register, suggests that the next iPhone will have new processors and this time provided by Nvidia, which may be part of Apple's nice new relationship with this company: are they going to buy Nvidia?

I don't know if anyone takes the Bangkok Post on Sundays, but if you remember when the iPhone came out, so many critics were saying that people would never buy it at THAT price. Well it is here, now at that price, if you want to buy it outright, or for considerably less initial outlay if you have it on a month to month basis for a couple of years. The Gadgets section in the Brunch supplement was fairly blasé about a new carbon fibre Nokia phone with its price tag of just under 50,000 baht and no one in the other news sources blinks. I am afraid I want more from my phone than phone calls and telling the time.

Another iPhone app released last week that doesn't do much is from Coke, the beverage makers, called Magic Coke Bottle. It takes advantage of the accelerometers and requires a shake for it to work -- causing virtual Coke to gush out of the bottle top, then attempts to answer the questions in our minds. As we do not have any way to input data, like a question, it relies on random responses, which themselves are pretty enigmatic: bordering on the dumb. Graphics are good of course and this is simply an advertising gimmick.

I am just writing the articles for iLife which should appear in 2 or 3 weeks in the Post, Database: there are still two more iWork items to go [including the one today]. One of the things we have found is that the specs are high and some features will not work on older computers. Actually, in Thailand, some features will not work on the latest machines: I am referring to the Artist Lessons which are extra to the basic installation, but this still rankles with me. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) tells us that If you've got iLife installed on your old Mac and double-click on the Learn to Play files themselves (hidden in the folder /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Learn To Play/), they will run.

TUAW also has some news, or rumours at least, on the next version of OS X, Snow Leopard. Remember that this version is not going to have a lot of changes on the surface, but a lot of improvements underneath. However, it is suggested that there may be a Skyhook facility inbuilt.

I use this for my wifi location and I would urge anyone to send Skyhook their location as this makes locator services for all of us better: the more in the database, the easier it is to use location in Google Maps, for example on the iPhone or, particularly, the iPod touch. I covered this about a year or more ago in Podcast 131: the text is still online.

I also recently updated my version of Orbicule's Undercover, the application that still tracks my stolen PowerBook. This is now at version 3.0 and introduces the same Skyhook locator service. As I say, entering your location in the Skyhook database can help others. The Skyhook site is fairly clean but the link to enter your information is buried three levels down, so I have a direct link on the page that goes with the podcast.

I also noted when using the iPod touch that the location I had entered was not exactly right: maybe a couple of hundred metres out. I rechecked the coordinates (that is coming in a moment) and sent the new data to Skyhook. Less than 24 hours had a full acknowledgement of the change.

To find your coordinates, centre the location you want in Google Maps: double click on the map to do that. Then in the browser address bar, copy the javascript on the podcast page:

Back to Snow Leopard. Some of the changes that are supposed to be coming are beginning to find their way into rumours. One, reported in Insanely Great Mac, which I am not all that pleased about (at least right now) is that there may be no QuickTime Pro. having made a great effort to buy this, I don't want it dropped unless there is a proper replacement; and one that does not cost me too much. There will be a new QuickTime, but what the licensing format will be is not yet known.

There is some other really interesting stuff likely to be coming to Snow Leopard that could make it considerably slimmer, so Prince McLean tells us in Apple Insider. One of the suggestions is that only the printer drivers needed will be loaded and the saving should be considerable. I am not sure this is completely positive as an attraction of OS X is having many common printer drivers ready to go, and the idea of downloading when needed may work in the US or other countries that have excellent Internet connections, but I would hate to have an emergency driver download at my office. The online discussion of the implications makes for some interesting reading.

An oddity this week concerning the other famous founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who people still fete as a celebrity and ask his opinion on everything. That includes the illness of Steve Jobs and Woz said people should lay off. He is to be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars: an elimination contest.

It was Woz who in the early days nearly killed himself while learning to fly and he does try a lot of things. Now, I am not a lover of reality shows -- change channels or even turn the TV off if one of these comes on -- but this is a sort of odd one and it is an adaptation of a BBC show called Strictly Come Dancing: somewhat updated from the Come Dancing we used to suffer when I was a kid.

Season premiere in the US is March 9.

The security company called Kaspersky -- or should that be former security company -- has had an SQL injection attack, not for the first time, that has potentially exposed customer information. There is a full report on this from Dan Goodin on the Register pages.

There was a twist later on Monday when the Register filled in some more blanks after Kaspersky's brief acknowledgement of the weakness. The hacker who found the hole, first tried to notify Kaspersky via a number of emails but there was no response.In common with other such situations, he went public and published information about the vulnerability. In a CNET article that I mention later, the company claims that they only had one hour in which to respond.

A Register reader was able to duplicate the attack and Kaspersky comes out of this with three problems: poor reaction to the initial information which allowed the weakness to go unfixed and then another hacker to try it out; vulnerabilities for its customer data; poor response with its PR spin. Part of the problem may have been a conference that several company employees were attending, but you don't leave the hen-house open while you go to market.

On Monday, CNET was reporting that Kaspersky have hired a US expert to analyze the problem; not that they are saying that anything is wrong, of course. While the original hacker has had a go at another so-called security site, that of BitDefender.

Microsoft, who tend to follow Apple on almost everything, if you are biased like me, has another gambit. We have the iPhone from Apple, and the cloud computing service is called Mobile Me; so what does Redmond call its cloud service? My Phone, this was in another item by Prince McLean of AppleInsider. I wonder who they will get to advertise this?

I hear that on Thursday of this week (12 February) there is the reopening of the iStudio store in Central World, which has been expanded from one shop to four times the size. I thought I might be going but as no one has sent me an invitation, and I am reluctant to wander all the way into central Bangkok on the off-chance, I am going to stay at home.

We mentioned Nvidia's apparent happy relationship with Apple, although things are not that rosy for the company as Brooke Crothers in CNET News tells us that the company posted a 4th quarter loss of $147.7 million after demand dropped in November as it did for other companies who produce chips. Maybe my idea earlier was not so off and Nvidia is ripe for plucking by Apple.

Apple's shares had been clawing their way back up after the debacle round Steve Jobs sick leave and had reached $102, but at the beginning of the week another market panic arrived and they dropped back to just under $98. According to Benjamin Pimental in Wall Street Journal's Market Watch this was in line with several other tech stocks which were reacting aversely to President Obama's plans to deal with the banks.

Here's one that we hope local authorities don't follow. As from April all those who buy mobile phones in Mexico will also have to provide fingerprints so that criminals sending SMS and making calls can be tracked. There are always reasonable theories behind the control; although to be fair, Mexico does have something of a drugs-related crime problem. I am surprised that, thus far, non-Thais with non-tourist visas like myself have never been asked to provide fingerprints. Messy job: the last time I did that was in 1971 when I joined the police in the UK, although I took them from people a number of times.

Apple may be taking its AppleTV a little more seriously. A number of reports this week, including one in Apple Insider, have the news that Cupertino has set up an online survey for those who have the device.

Despite all the cutbacks and the talk of recession, as well as problems for Nvidia and other chip makers, Intel is expanding. The company is to spend $7 billion over the next two years to upgrade its chip factories in the US. Good news and congratulations to Intel for taking this step at this time.

And, to end, as far as I can see, at this juncture, there are no updates available for anything I have.

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