The rest of the word is pretty much in awe with Spotify (well, there are some who are completely oblivious to what it is). For most of the folks in the UK, it is a godsend –as long as you are on the consumer end that is.

According to many music lovers, Spotify provides the best online music service, for good reason. First off, the big clincher –price. Spotify is cheap, for only £10 each month, a subscriber is able to download or stream music indefinitely, and there is plenty of music to choose from. Spotify has tied up with many music producers and publishers to boast a library of songs and tracks that easily matches that of Last FM or similar music sites.

Even iTunes has plenty to be wary about –the new Spotify features are among the most user friendly yet full featured music organization systems available. Tracks can be tagged, labeled and grouped in order to set favorites and personalized playlists. There is even a new ‘starred’ label which is similar to the labeling system used by Gmail.

Spotify even allows users to link up their accounts to the accounts of their friends bring a sense of social networking into the mix. Users can share and exchange playlists in order to recommend music tracks to their friends and contacts – a great way to expand your listening experience if you ever find yourself looking for something new to listen to.

Overall Spotify is a great service for consumers. For artists however, there is a different story to be told. There are plenty of reports that artists with songs in Spotify receive little to no earnings –with Spotify’s current business model, many expect that service will not be able to expand fully unless this issue is resolved.

Read more about the new services and features that are available on Spotify at Pocket Lint.

The launch of the Apple iPad will be happening in the last week of May with pre-orders for the touch screen tablet being made available as early as May 10. Aside from Vodafone UK, mobile operators Orange Mobile and O2 UK have confirmed that they too will be having the device offered to clients.

Apple had originally planned the iPad to be launched late this April (the device has been released successfully in the US last April 3). However, international release has been delayed due to product availability. According to Apple, they are still trying to keep up with the US demand for the product and as such, would not be able to do a proper launch of the touch screen tablet this month.

Despite the disappointing news, many Apple fans all over the world are still awaiting the launch of the tablet. Those who are in a rush have already ordered and shipped iPads from the US. However, the Apple app store will only allow users with accounts linked to US addresses and purchases can only be done with US credit cards.

The Apple iPad is a touch screen tablet with a 9.7 inch display screen. The resolution is 1024 x 768 in landscape view. The device also comes with an accelerometer which allows the device to be titled to portrait mode as well. Many early buyers of the device have encountered various problems regarding USB charging, app compatibility and connecting to WiFi routers that use dual band technology.

Despite the initial setbacks, many believe that the tablet is an effective device for web browsing and reading eBooks. Many praise Apple’s design aesthetic with the user interface and overall appeal of the gadget.

Read more about the Apple iPad’s delayed launch and how many fans are reacting to the news at the Times Online UK.

The future of mobile handsets is with cloud computing. The fact of the matter is that at the rate that internet connectivity and processors are evolving, it would reach a point where it would make more sense to simply upload all the data online for cloud processing since the connections will be fast enough to transfer huge chunks of data online.

This is going to be the big ticket item for augmented reality technology. AR has been drifting left and right with desktop computers, laptops and mobile phones. While computers provide plenty of processing power and storage space, the devices lack portability -and considering the nature of AR, this will hamper users from experiencing many of the new applications of augmented reality technology. Mobile phones on the other hand, can only process so much data at a time since there will always be hardware limitations.

Going back to where we are now, cloud computing is still not a good option since even the best WiFi and 3G connections speeds are too slow for the needed  results. For now, AR is being used in conjunction with GPS technology in order to help users with location based AR services as well as better visual search functions (as geophysical locations are also taken into consideration).

Google has announced that they will be opening up the Goggles platform –a very well made augmented reality platform on the Android and we can expect to see some inventive uses of the technology. It is predicted that AR apps would make for perfect tutorials, allowing for the device to be used in order to analyze problems and provide solutions (such as pointing the camera at a flat tire and getting arrows telling you which bolt goes where).

Get to know more about the Google Goggles going open source at Tech Radar.

If you are using the very first edition of the Apple iPhone, then you might have already caught wind of the news that Apple will stop supporting the old handset after this latest update. The word comes straight from Steve Jobs as he muttered a simple “sorry, no” to a question regarding if Apple would be continuing its support for the older smart phone.

In any case, the original iPhone has been on the lifeline long enough and people still using the device should let it retire peacefully. It has been over two years and smart phones from other manufacturers would have already met their respective ends at a much earlier time (a testament to the longevity of the iPhone series).

Many users feel that the decision to finally let go of the first generation iPhone is a good move by Apple, whom they feel has been generous enough to stand by the device for so long when other companies would not have.

This also means that it is time for iPhone users to start preparing for the big migration to the 4G handset. The iPhone 3G version will not be getting much support later on and with many of the new OS’ features hinging on the additional hardware by the 4G device, it would be best for users to starting synching their files for the move.

The iPhone 4G launch date has yet to be officially stated but many believe that the device will be launching sometime later this year. With the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform also coming out, it is likely that Apple will be holding its own major launch event in order to keep the market interest on the Apple product line.

Read more about the original first generation iPhone no longer being supported at Stuff TV.

If there is one thing that has not changed, it is the basic concepts of marketing: “know your market, know how to get them to buy what you have”.

Thus, there is a never ending need for surveys and studies to determine market trends and social preferences. In a recent study that was held by Orange Mobile, they have found out that there is a significant difference in the purchasing and phone usage habits of men and women on the internet.

The biggest result of the study is that men are the largest market for video content downloads. This means that we can expect to see more videos being made available on the iPlayer, MSN Player and more that are catered to the preferences of men. This also means that men’s products are more likely to need advertisements that place them alongside video content or are part of the streaming data. This is also why content such as sports videos are such big hits, because the larger percentage of video content buyers are men.

Women on the other hand spend more time online communicating with friends and contacts. Whether just by sending messages or sending images, women find it a more productive use of their time. This means that preference based text ads that appear in email clients and other services will more likely be tuned to female users than men.

In terms of games, both men and women are avid players and download game content for their smart phones. Men are seen to be more likely to download games that require real time focus and immediate round conclusions or stages. Women on the other hand prefer games that require less activity such as the Sims or Monopoly.

Read more about the differences of men and women’s preferences at Softpedia.

It may be a simple feature that so many people take for granted, but for Apple device users, multitasking is a rare gift from the engineers at Cupertino. The feature was recently announced as a definite new feature for the iPhone 4.0 OS and it will allow up to a total of 4 programs running at the same time.

Still, there is one simple thought that occurs to many people, if iPhone users have learned to live without the feature for such a long time, why is it such a big deal now? There are plenty of technical bonuses to being able to run more than one app at the same time. For one thing, it opens up new possibilities for multi-app features. A location based service can link up to a game application which will allow users to invite nearby users to join their game.

There are also more simple uses such as being able to switch in an out of various app calculators when doing complex computations or being able to run an app while checking online for usage instructions.

The real story here however is not exactly the inclusion of multitasking, but what it means for the Apple community. For years, Apple has done without support for the feature in the iPod Touch and the iPhone, so why now?

This is a landmark event that shows that Apple is finally beginning to adapt some changes in order to meet the needs of the users more. While we certainly are not going to see Flash support anytime soon, at least we can be sure that Apple is starting to care.

Aside from multitasking, the new OS update also brings a total of almost a hundred new features.

Read more about the iPhone multitasking and see the video of the feature in action at Know Your Mobile.

The Apple iPhone is getting an update to its operating system and Steve Jobs just presented all the new details.

Multitasking, background wallpapers, icon folders, a game center, a unified inbox and other new features will be coming our way with the latest iPhone operating system version 4.0. It is impressive and something to look forward to, until we get to the part about iAds.

iAds is Apple’s new scheme to bring integrated advertisements into the iPhone. Originally, the annoying presence of ads can only be encountered within the web pages you visit and inside certain applications, iAds could potentially bring ads to everywhere on your mobile phone.

The odd thing about this is that Apple seems like it expects users to be happy about the new development. While companies would certainly appreciate the value of such a revolutionary new method of advertising, this is hardly anything that an average user would really want in the first place.

Another major concern is how ads will be sent to our phones. If Apple will be piggybacking 3G connections in order to pre-load ad content, that would be a serious problem for people who are trying to conserve bandwidth. Also, the ad selection would mean that the device would be monitoring a user’s preferences and activities in order to get relevant ad content. Now that is just plain creepy.

Aside from the issue about the iAds feature, the OS announcement also revealed some key fact that people are not too happy about. In regards to the 4.0 SDK agreement, it turns out that Apple will be banning the use of Adobe Flash content completely –even for the creation of apps. This would render Flash to iPhone compilers unusable and discourage some developers as well.

Read more about the iPhone OS update’s ads service at the Guardian UK.

According to Facebook, they will now be sharing the personal information of users in specific “pre-approved web sites”. The announcement has met the ire and criticism of many users, for good reason.

Facebook is ultimately a social networking website. Nobody signs on to Facebook in order to create a comprehensive web browsing experience. People simply log in so that they can connect with friends and family, share links, videos, images and the occasional poke. But nobody really wants Facebook to tell its partner site who they are, when they were born and who their friends are.

Simply put, such data is meant to be private, and if Facebook is not going to protect that privacy, then users might as well start turning every single piece of info they have into public. Despite Facebook’s assurance that the policy would only apply to specific websites, it does not make things any better. In fact, it is a complete betrayal of the trust that users have put into the site.

Even if the end user agreement page on Facebook does declare that the social networking site does have the right to use its data in the way that it is proposing that it would do, it is still unethical and something that Facebook would need to think over lest they feel like MySpace should make a comeback.

The saddest part about this is that the change might happen without many users understanding what is going on. Even worse, many users are still unfamiliar with the internet and are not yet aware of how “dangerous” having their account details logged into external sites can be. For now, many protesters are still trying hard to make other Facebook users of the major change.

Find out more about the change in the privacy policy of Facebook at Bernama.

For iPad owners who are using WiFi routers that use dual band technology, it is likely that the touch screen tablet has been working erratically, unable to connect or maintain a good stable connection to the network.

According to Apple, this problem is caused by the device’s lack of compatibility with dual band routers. Routers that use both 2.4GHz and 5.4GHz bands will have problems with the touch screen device one way or the other and according to the folks at Apple the best way to solve the issue is by changing the router settings.

It is a bit of a hassle when you have other devices that rely on your current settings -but if you are planning to get the iPad when it comes out in the UK and the rest of the world this coming April 24, then it is best that you know this little factoid beforehand.

Despite the fact that the solution is not a real fix (as opposed to patch to the iPad’s system settings which would help it connect to dual band networks –or maybe it is a hardware issue), this does show that Apple has been keeping a close eye on the public reaction towards their new device.

Aside from issues with the WiFi settings, owners of the tablet have also reported problems concerning the USB charging settings for the iPad as well as compatibility issues with iPhone apps. Some iPad units are having problems charging when the device is turned on, requiring users to switch off the device to charge.  As for the app issue, it appears that some apps for the iPhone will crash when it is loaded on the iPad.

Find out more about the WiFi issue with the iPad and see the step by step solutions for fixing the problem at Pocket Lint.

Mark your calendar UK Apple fans, the touch screen tablet may have been already released in the United States and we are sure that you are all eager to know when this ‘game-changing’ new device will be hitting store shelves locally.

According to reports, Apple will be bringing over their new tablet by the 24th of April and while the launch date may be several weeks later than the US launch, both the 3G and non-3G versions of the device will be available and hopefully, they would have been able to sort out that whole deal with the WiFi connectivity.

For those who missed out on the newest scoop about the iPad, it turns out that the new device is prone to having WiFi problems. Fortunately, the error seems to only happen in a few units. Though it has not yet been determined as to whether the problem is caused by software or hardware errors. Many point out that the fact that the problem does not persist on all devices makes it more like an issue with the hardware itself.

In any case, the sales performance of the iPad has been very impressive. On the first day alone, the number has hit a nice big 300,000 units, the figure has since reached up to 700,000 units. As to whether the device will meet the same success when it launches in the UK later on remains to be seen.

The Apple iPad comes with plenty of features such as web browsing, maps, image viewing, media playback, apps, eBook reading and it will even serve as a mini workstation with the iWork function. The device’s dual battery setup will deliver a good 10 hours of usage –some users have reported that their devices can last for longer periods.

Read more about the upcoming UK launch of the iPad at Slashgear.