A Spanish paper has broken news of the price of HP's tablet computer, the HP Slate. The Slate - the big rival to Apple's iPad should be be selling for 400 euros or £359 for an entry level model.

That puts it just above cheaper end netbooks and directly challenges the iPad on price: coming in almost exactly the same bracket. The cheapest iPad will sell for $499 in the US, (£330 at current exchange rates) but given that tech is usually a bit cheaper in the States, we can envisage a £350 price tag minimum for the Apple gadget.

And the specs? Sounds like the Windows 7 device will have an Atom processor, USB ports, memory card reader and - unlike the iPad - a back-mounted webcam and Flash support.

It's expected in shops before September.

[via engadget]

I find it hard to read on coaches, never mind brainstorm viable business ideas, yet South by Southwest (SXSW), the multimedia festival, have just challenged some e-trepreneurs to do just that.

They are putting 12 entrepreneurs on a 48hour coach ride from Vegas to the SXSW venue in Austin and want them to come up as many start-up ideas as they can.

This sounds like a recipe for feeling really sick IMHO, and any savvy business mind would surely realise it's more effective to lose 4 hours getting a plane, then spend the other 44 doing some work in an enviroment that doesn't bump around and make you feel queasy, but a publicity stunt is a publicity stunt and the start-up bus it is. It's leaving Vegas sometime in the next few days.

SxSW Interactive is March 12-16 see website here

"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of broadband access."

That's the third article in the UN's 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, adapted slightly. Things have changed a bit since the late forties and according to a BBC survey, a majority of people around the world think that internet should now be a human right, like clean water, a name, and life and liberty.

"Liberty, Equality and High Speed Broadband for all" wouldn't have made such a great slogan in other manifestos of human rights, like the French Revolution, but in this data-fuelled internet age, it is increasingly clear that people left off the internet freeway fall far behind very quickly.

What do you think?

Frankly incredible story this one.. a school lent laptops to its pupils to take home with them, and then used the webcams built into the computers to spy on what was going on in the pupil's homes, according to a court case cited by Boing Boing. The webcams could be remotely activated by school administrators.

Surely this would be illegal if the CIA did it, never mind Harriton High School in the Lower Merion district of Philiadelphia.

The surveillance came to light when one boy was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The boy's parents Robbins are now taking a court case against the school board, and the rest of the pupils given the computers (1,880 of them) are part of the class action.

I can only imagine the school didn't want their students accessing youtube or facebook or other non-work related sites on the computers they gave them, but really they should have locked down the browser or put on 'parental' controls or something. Having webcams into children's rooms that can be remotely activated is so many levels of wrong. As the prosecution puts it the deprivation of privacy was "intentional, extreme and outrageous".

Boing Boing point out a) that if you have a laptop in your bedroom you could easily leave it on when dressing/undressing or talking about private things to members of your family or your friends on the phone. b) Schools are always going on to children about the dangers of the internet and worry about pedophiles and chatrooms. Hypocrisy?
Flagrant abuse of children's right to privacy? looks like it..

Robbins v Lower Merion School District as pdf here and Boing Boing story

LED streetlights are a eco-techie's dream - they use less energy, need to be replaced less often and produce more light than old ones.

Thing is that the "produce more light" bit is proving to be a bit of a problem for people on streets blessed with these devices. Admiral Anika on FriendFeed lives in LA where the local government has installed the LED streetlights. This is what her street looks like at night-time:

Looks like a movie set doesn't it? And as you can imagine that it takes more than standard curtains to keep that warm yellow glow out.

The advantages of LED lights are still strong. The manufacturers BridgeLux gave an interview on Building43
"Twenty percent of the world's electricity is used for lighting, LEDs would drop that by 75 percent if we replaced [traditional light bulbs]," said Bill Watkins, CEO of BridgeLux.

Pretty amazing. Following comments on FriendFeed, it does appear that LED lights give off a cooler colour - more blue than the older orangey sodium lights, and that this can make them seem brighter because the human eye perceives different colours differently. "The new LED lights are much cooler (more blue) and are probably have a wider spectrum. So even if the old and new lights gave off the same number of lumins, they might not appear the same brightness. Human vision sensitivity is not flat across the entire spectrum." Jeff P. Henderson informs us.

Other issues that come up with super bright lighting seem to include darker patches, making it hard to see comparatively darker areas that were previously lit by more diffuse light.

A few more reasons why FourSquare will be this year's Twitter: it's just signed a couple of deals with some serious media brandnames.

Discussing the potential of the site yesterday, we mentioned the location-based social game's partnership with Bravo TV (visit places seen on Bravo TV programmes and collect special Brando badges).

Now looks like the start-up has signed deals with some other big names in media: Zagat - a restaurant review service; Warner Bros - the film producers; and HBO - the TV channel. In the UK it has also done deal with Debenhams and Domino's Pizza. If you want a free pizza then you need to get down to Domino's as it is offering a free pizza every week for 'mayor' of its branches. As for Debenhams well its Oxford Street store is offering free coffee to anyone checking in on a Friday. If you are lucky enough to become the 'mayor' of Debenhams you can have free coffee at any time.

On a similar format to the deal with Bravo, Foursquare's partnership with Zagat means that Zagat has a FourSquare page (here) with a list of tips culled from their extensive knowledge of a city's restaurants. You can add Zagat's restaurant tips to your to-do list and win a foodie badge, if you check in enough at the right places.

Warner Bros are doing some publicity with Foursquare over an upcoming film called Valentine's Day that encourages you to visit certain romantic spots in various American cities.

Finally the HBO deal - again a US-specific affair, based around the show "How To Make It In America". It's not official yet, but Mashable say the Foursquare package will encourage 'squarers to ape the lives of the thrusting glamourous youngsters in the show by getting badges for Nightlife, Cocktails and suchlike from visiting appropriately trendy places in America.

Well. FourSquare has officially got the badge for collaborating with big media brands this week. Well done them.

[via Mashable]
Related: Five reasons Foursquare will be this year's Twitter and FourSquare iPhone app hits London - but what is it good for?
Related stories:

In an exciting move, Samsung Electro-Mechanics have just purchased a technology called Quantum Tunnelling Composite or QTC that brings third dimension to touch screens. Samsung claims that QTC will allow devices like phones to accept 3D input - by being pressure sensitive.

Press hard on the scroll button and the page moves faster, softer, and it goes more slowly. In games you can move faster if you press harder, ease the pressure and you slow down. It's a technology that makes touch screen use more intuitive and has lots of potential.

Made by a Yorkshire based company called Peratech, Samsung Electro-Mechanics will build the new technology into mobile touchscreens to create pressure-sensitive phones. Because they sell phone components to a wide range of manufacturers, we could see this across a whole generation of new phones. Apparently it is already being built into a "Tier One" phone right now. We're not sure what yet, but we'll let you know.

Current resistive touchscreen devices such as the Blackberry have a simple on/off operation: allowing current to flow when a dome-shaped button under the screen is depressed.

Peratech have replaced the button with force-sensitive material called QTC - this makes the screen into one pressure sensitive switch: the more pressure is applied to the switch, the more current flows. Clever hey?

In the new phones a layer of this material will be embedded under the screen - I guess you can think of it as a kind of sponge that forces more current through the more it is compressed.

Not all touchscreens are resistive - ie have this button underneath them; some are capactive - the iPhone for example. You don't need to press the screen in on the iPhone, you just have to lay your finger on it. It works on an tiny electric current being passed through your skin, which is why you can't use your iPhone when you have gloves on.

Samsung Electro Mechanics think the new technology will be a game-changer:
"The pressure sensitivity of the QTC switches changes the game when it comes to human machine interface design enabling truly 3D user interfaces to be created in small, low power devices" said Dr. Ho-Chul Joung, Principal Manager at Samsung EM.

"This three-dimensionality cannot be matched with existing resistive and capacitive technologies and means that the next generation of mobile phones will have many new and exciting features because of it."

See more about QTC at peratech.com

Anyone hoping to make an internet start-up work should go for the mobile platform first, then do a standard website after, said technocrat and founder of the Geek Squad, Robert Stephens in an interesting interview with sustainablejournalism.org. Mobile is where it's at according to Stephens.

"If I were to advise a company on what to build going forward: don't build a website" he said. "Build a mobile app or interface first, and then build for the larger screens."

Geek Squad is a successful company founded in 94, that fix computers in person, or through 24hr phone and online services: but if he were starting up these days, Stephens said he'd do it differently: "I tell people now if I started the Geek Squad today I wouldn't start a computer repair company. I'd really develop a mobile development company." Stephens reckoned his advice was good for start-ups of any flavour, journalists for example.

The launch of the iPad had given the mobile computer market a huge boost and shown that that format size is not just about making phone calls.

"I don't know how much longer they'll be called phones but that's really the central device. Because most of us are moving and mobile, on the go. So our mobile device will be the one we interact with the most."

And the fact that its only got 3 inches of screen space can actually be a good thing...
"The last thing is that the constraint of the mobile screen is actually really liberating in that when you only have a small set of real estate to design your interface for, you can only put so many buttons. Just think of the Google start page, versus the AOL, the Yahoo startpage. Much cleaner."

Read the full interview on sustainablejournalism.org

The Pope is taking God to the blogosphere, by ordering priests and cardinals in the Catholic church to blog and social network in order to bear witness to God in what he described as the world of digital communications.

In the Pope's message today he said: "priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel" through means such as "images, videos, animated features, blogs [and] websites."

The move is specifically aimed at reaching youth, also globally scattered congregations. The Pope even suggests that priests should be trained in social networks and digital communication as part of taking Holy Orders: "[Priests] will best achieve this aim if they learn, from the time of their formation, how to use these technologies in a competent and appropriate way, shaped by sound theological insights and reflecting a strong priestly spirituality grounded in constant dialogue with the Lord."

So they may be taught the golden rules of Twitter and the art of the ReTweet as well as the 10 commandments and sermon-crafting.

But they don't need to get too good at it - "Yet priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart.." the Pope added.

I can only say I'm looking forward to this. As ReadWriteWeb point out, it does mark an about-turn in the Pope's attitude to the internet and the mass media which he has previously denounced as a poisonous influence that numbed morality and sensitivity. "'It recounts, repeats and amplifies evil," he said, "making us accustomed to horrendous acts, desensitizing us and, in some ways, poisoning us." That was the message the Pope had for the world last year on the 43rd World Communication Day, a day when the he traditionally reaches out to his flock and speaks about spreading the message.

Get ready for a new type of tweet, one witnessing (twitnessing?) to the gospel.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Amazon is planning to bring apps onto its Kindle e-reader. The retail site and Kindle-makers have just opened an app-making developer kit for its device, and apps should be arriving on the e-reader sometime later this year.

Kindle apps, I'm gonna call them Kapps would we imagine do a range of things based around the Kindle's core function of books and reading.

A Kindle is of course a little flat portable 3-G internet-connected computer (could we call it a tablet?) and Amazon have realised they can add value and functionality to it if they let apps on.

Key Kindle features are a 7-day battery life and the electronic display that looks like real paper. There's already a marketplace for writers to upload work and readers to download and pay for it, so business-wise, the model is already there.

One kindle-app currently in development is from Handmark who are building an active Zagat guide featuring their trusted ratings, reviews, and other guides to restaurants around the world. Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles.

Perhaps a Facebook app would be fun so you could share thoughts and recommendations with friends, creating online book clubs. Sort of. Other fun stuff would include marginalia apps, letting you write little comments in the margins that others could choose to read and share if they wanted.

With the market for e-readers looking a little shaky, in the face of the Apple Tablet launch on 27th Jan, I guess it makes sense that Kindle-makers get a bit inventive.

[via VentureBeat]

Phone-makers Samsung have launched into making phone software as well as handsets and released a new platform for apps that will run on their phones. It's called Bada and it's a rival to Apple's app store.

Samsung say: "Samsung bada (meaning Ocean in Korean) is a driving force in accomplishing Samsung's vision of a 'smartphone for everyone'." Like the app store it will be feature-rich for customers and it's a mobile ecosystem for developers.

Their partners include micro-blogging service Twitter, the movies and games rental outlet Blockbuster, Video and iconic games developers CAPCOM, EA Mobile, and Gameloft.

Samsung described Bada's key features:

1. User-interactive

The platform is tuned to Samsung's signature TouchWiz User Interface, and Samsung's bada platform provides an easy, simple, and intuitive UI without compromising efficiency.

Samsung bada provides flash control, web control, motion sensing,fine-tuned vibration control, and face detection. Also, it supports sensor-based, context-aware applications. By using various sensors such as accelerometers, tilt, weather, proximity, and activity sensors, application developers can easily implement context-aware interactive applications.

2. Service-oriented

Samsung bada differentiates its position by supporting various service-centric features such as social networking, device synchronisation, content management, location-based services, and commerce services - all supported by back-end bada servers. These ground-breaking developer-friendly features support developers to implement various services without additional effort.

3. Open and configurable

Samsung bada enables developers to take full advantage of mobile device capabilities to create compelling applications with ease. Applications can use device functions to make phone calls, send messages, or access the contact list. Also, various service applications can share information such as personal profiles, social relations, schedules, or contents with a simple user confirmation in order to provide services with greater personal relevance and cooperative service extension. The flexibility of the bada platform makes it applicable to a wider range of devices than any other mobile operating system.

Developer Platform here: http://developer.bada.com/

E-retailers hope to bring some emotional spark to the experience of shopping on line according to a trend-piece on ReadWriteWeb. The next big thing in web retail? Social Shopping.

Hoping to replicate online the experience of trawling around TopShop with your two best friends, Social Shopping brings the power of emotion to online stores.

Recommendations based on user data have been around for years and been successful on sites like Amazon and eBay but social shopping takes this model one step futher. The basis of social shopping is not just that you see what greeneyedboy394 from Kansas bought but that you see what your friend, recommended, reviewed or bought. And you pay more attention to your friends than you do to people you don't know. Or to the results of alogorithms for example.

It's friend-filtered social search. RWW describes the phenomenon:

"Of course, the last 10 years' worth of people's purchasing histories and written reviews on Amazon may help you narrow your choice - if you can filter out the noise. But those reviewers are entirely anonymous to you, even though they may use a real name and have a rating history with the site.

"[...] collective intelligence can't provide the necessary emotional "spark" in quite the way that a personal recommendation can. Patricia Mejia, a commenter on Richard's e-commerce trends post, explained why she wants this in shopping: "I want to be inspired, intrigued and entertained when I shop online."

Okay. And where you don't get that emotion from a search engine, you might get it from a friend's comment.

Where's the future of social shopping? Not on Amazon: but on newbie sites like ThisNext and Kaboodle which are social networks built around product reviews and e-commerce sites.
Interesting. I think these are going to have to take off as Facebook or Twitter plug-ins first before they really hit the gold because people aren't always enthusiastic about signing up to yet another social network. Small Swedish network RunToShop seems to have got this balance right, by being part of a distributed social network that retail sites can draw in content from, and crucially integrating with Facebook.

Related: Viva Swag: Get an Avatar with your online shopping

As if taking off your belt and having to empty out the contents of your handbag every time you go through airport security weren't enough, Manchester airport has just introduced scanners that reveal your naked body to the security staff.

As the Guardian puts it: "It will reveal a clear outline of passengers genitalia, as well as any false limbs, breast enlargements or body piercings."

Yes.

The past year has seen an outbreak and panic about the dreaded Swine Flu.

If you're like us and you haven't yet had the pesky pig illness then you might be a little bit concerned about how it will spread over the winter.

Google's also cottoned onto this and its now expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including much of Europe. It's also made the site available in 37 languages.

The site works by tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, and using these to estimate the level of flu, in near real-time.

While some traditional flu surveillance systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google claims that its Flu Trends provides an "additional surveillance tool that may help public health officials and the public make more informed decisions about preparing for the flu season."

It also says it's seen a good correspondence between its estimates and official flu activity data.

However, it's not just swine flu, this little tool covers every flu like illness going so it's definitely worth a quick peek.

Last week saw Apple dominate the news, so we thought we'd have a fresh new week of weird and wonderful technology goodness. Here's the best bits from the blogosphere.

-CrunchGear get their hands on a vid of the latest Archos to hit the block, and we're drooling already...

Coolest Gadgets share with us a funky cordless pivoting vacuum cleaner from Black and Decker. It's almost enough to make me want to do housework..almost.

A giant rat robot. I guess everyone needs a hobby. The Raw Feed is quite excited about this though, and it's called Psikharpax .

Chip Chick review Microsoft Office Live, and decide Cloud Computing is the way forward.

-Bonnie Ruberg of Heroine Sheikh is getting married! Yes, I know there is no geek context as she's going for the white dress and boyfriend in tux-not Darth Vader costume, but we're soo excited for her!

More news here.

How do you sell a computer to women? Give them a pinikified website with a female friendly name and they'll be like, totally all over it. Umm yeah. That seemed to be the genius behind the marketing campaign from Dell, who were looking to get women interested in the Dell netbooks.

Feedback on the site hasn't been as positive as Dell would have hoped (think angry jeering from women who know what a netbook is), and they just re-branded their site AGAIN with slightly less pink graphics (see old version below).

Whilst I might debate the lure of looking at mastectomy images, I think I'd be hard pressed to describe them as 'sexual and abusive', but that's just what Facebook did. They removed all images of Sharon Adams operation, and told her it was inappropriate and offensive.

Way back in January we were uber excited about the news of a new addition to the Sony walkman family, the brand spanking X Series walkman. It was debuted at CES,
and we learnt all about how it combined useful wireless capabilities with a gorgeous looking 3 inch OLED screen. That dream has just become a reality as the X series is available to purchase from today.

But how does this lovely looking MP3 player match up to the likes of the iPod Touch, arguably its biggest competitor? Will the OLED screen be enough to position this player at the top of the tree, or will it be fisticuffs at dawn? Read on to find out....

Are there any developers left NOT featuring or planning a downloadable app store? And is the continual creation of more and more apps really helping anybody? Sure, if you're an iPhone or Android user you'll welcome the large variety of (often free) applications that let you do everything from check you train times to play the latest flash game. But whilst this format may work on some of the latest smart phone handsets on offer, does Vodafone really have anything to bring to the table?

How do you feel when adverts come on TV? Frustrated? Excited? Unhappy when they finish? If you agreed with the last two adjectives then you'll be thrilled to hear that SKY are now going to provide you with more adverts than ever on their channels, and if you fell into the former category than you'll be beating yourself about the head with a wet fish right now.

But don't fret yourself too much, the added advertising doesn't force itself on you, rather you can opt in for all the added excitement, such as behind the scenes footage of how certain adverts were made and extras such as interviews with stars. To access this content you simply press the green button on your remote. This will take you to extended footage of the advert, and possibly some exclusive content.