iPAD UNITES APPLE'S MEDIA AND MOBILE AMBITIONS

While it's still too soon to tell if it can live up to the insane amount of hype that preceded its introduction, the iPad is, more than any other product the company has made, the quintessential Apple device.

From the almost entirely homegrown technology, to the addition of the books counterpart to its iTunes media hub, to taking a risk on the middle category between smartphones and laptops, the iPad completes the picture for Apple in a lot of ways.

Steve Jobs used "revolutionary" to describe his company's newest device Wednesday, and while that's more than a bit over-the-top, the iPad does epitomize Apple's evolution. Before he even introduced the tablet Wednesday, Jobs brought up Apple's three main sources of revenue: the iPod, iPhone, and Mac have made Apple a $50 billion company. By basically discounting the iMac and other desktops (which makes sense, desktops have been headed downhill for a while), he pressed the point about what Apple has become: It's "a mobile device company," he said. "That's what we do."

Though he didn't say it specifically, he meant it as opposed to a computer company--a name they dropped in 2007--and as opposed to just a hardware and software maker. With few exceptions, Apple makes portable media-centric devices, and of those, the iPad is the one that brings all of Apple's businesses together.

MOZILLA RELEASES FIRST MOBILE FIREFOX BROWSER

Mozilla has been steadily creeping toward its goal of releasing the first Firefox browser for mobile phones. On Friday, Firefox 1.0 for Nokia's Maemo--previously code-named Fennec--arrived.

Firefox for the Maemo 5 platform has a few interesting conceits that set it apart from other mobile browsers, like Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Mozilla is banking on the uniqueness of its claim to fame--third-party, customizable browser extensions--to help its browser win mobile market share. Add-ons, after all, helped make Firefox the top browser alternative to Internet Explorer in the desktop space. To punctuate the importance of add-ons for Firefox's mobile browser, Mozilla also pushed out on Friday the general release of its bookmark and history-syncing extension, Weave Sync 1.0, for both desktop and mobile.

Mozilla's accomplishment with a mobile version of Firefox is a mixed one, and not only because Maemo is a platform relatively few people have heard of. Nokia's open-source, Linux-based Maemo operating system supports mobile Firefox on just two devices--the N900 and the N810, an Internet tablet. To make matters more limited, just two days ago Mozilla unveiled a third release candidate with a last-minute decision to pull wholesale support for Adobe's Flash plug-in from the build, citing unhappiness with the overall standard of quality. As an aside, this is apparently a sore spot for Adobe, who became miffed with Apple for excluding Flash in its new iPad device about the same time that Mozilla made its comment about degraded performance when visiting Flash sites.

Yet what kind of mobile browser would Firefox be if users couldn't watch videos or adequately view Web sites that heavily rely on Flash? Not a browser anyone could take seriously.As a workaround, Mozilla has released an add-on called YouTube enabler, that early adopters can install to view YouTube videos. Mozilla is hoping to work out other solutions for those who are wary of optionally installing the Flash plug-in, but still want to see select Flash-based content.

Luckily for Mozilla, a relatively small sliver of the mobile phone-toting population actually has one of the two compatible devices, so there's time to smooth out Firefox before it matures on another mobile platform. Windows Mobile is slated to be next, with Android to follow. You can download Firefox 1.0 for Maemo here, and read more details in Mozilla's blog post.

GOOGLE PROPOSES GEO-SMART INTERNET SPEEDUP

Google and other companies interested in the Internet's addressing system have proposed a technology they hope will get Net users to nearby servers more quickly.

The technology in question is called the Domain Name System, which resolves alphabetical Net addresses such as CNET.com to the numeric addresses actually used to reach the appropriate server. Google's interest in DNS is so strong the company launched its own service in an effort to lower some of the delays that can result when the network equipment most proximate to a Net user doesn't have the numeric address for a particular server immediately on hand.

The move is interesting not just because it has the potential to speed up a very common chore--DNS resolution queries take place many times a day as a person surfs the Web, sends e-mail, and performs other tasks on the Internet. It's also intriguing because it shows Google's desire to gradually re-engineer the Internet, not just provide its own services. The company also is active in developing and promoting a variety of Web standards.

The process of finding the correct numeric address is called DNS resolution, and it can involve a request hopping several steps from server to server trying to find the right answer. The problem is that sometimes by the time the answer is retrieved, it comes from the far side of the planet and gives a geographically inappropriate answer. In general, the farther away a server is, the slower communications with it are.

Think of it as looking up an item's price in Auckland and getting the answer in U.S. dollars instead of New Zealand dollars. Sure, you can do the math to get the local answer, but it's an extra step.

This is where Google and Neustar UltraDNS come in. They proposed a DNS extension Wednesday to try to build some geographic smarts into the system.

Specifically, the proposed extension, called Client IP information in DNS requests, would send along the first three quarters of a user's Internet Protocol (IP) address with the DNS request. The last quarter would be lopped off to preserve some privacy, but the first part should be enough to geographically target the answer in some cases. As designed, it would for example return the address for Google's Dutch server, not Google's California server, to a person in the Netherlands who needs to reach it.

Next up: evaluation of the proposal. "We plan to continue working with all interested parties on implementing this solution and are looking forward to a healthy discussion on the dnsext mailing list," said Google Public DNS team members Wilmer van der Gaast and Carlo Contavalli in a blog post about the proposal.

HP TO LAUNCH MUSIC SERVICE IN EUROPE

HELSINKI – Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest maker of PCs, will launch a digital music service across key European markets on Monday, hoping to benefit from consumers' rising appetite for new types of music download services.

The MusicStation service will be preloaded on 16 of HP's personal computer models in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Austria.

The service has been developed and is managed by British digital music firm Omnifone. HP runs a similar service in United States with RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Such new subscription services helped to lift sales of digital music 12 percent last year to $4.2 billion, industry trade body IFPI said last week.

"As the world's biggest PC vendor, HP has huge opportunity to create a viable competitor to iTunes due to its scale," said Rob Lewis, chief executive of Omnifone.

Apple's iTunes -- with a pay-per-download business model -- is the leading digital music distributor.

FACEBOOK PROFILE "KILLS JOB PROSPECTS"

London: Your profile on Facebook may become a cause of worry when looking for a job, as employers are increasingly checking on networking sites to know more about the people they intend to recruit, a new study claims.

The survey has found that one in 10 were refused job for boasting about drinking and drugs online. Similarly, 13 per cent were vetoed for making racist comments and nine per cent were overlooked for placing racy photos.

Big Brother employers reported the most common mistake that job seekers made was putting information of their qualification on line. A total of 38 per cent of job seekers were rejected for boosting up their qualifications on their resume and then getting caught on Facebook.

"More employers are now using social networking sites to uncover any digital dirt," the Telegraph quoted Career Builder president, Farhan Yasin, as saying. He added: "Job seekers are urged to be mindful of the information they post online. They are indirectly communicating with potential employers.

"Social networking is a great way to make connections with potential job opportunities in 2010 and to promote your brand across the internet. "Make sure you are using this resource to your advantage by conveying a professional image and underscoring your qualifications.

"Clean up digital dirt before you begin your job search. Remove any photos content, and links that can work against your in an employers'' eyes.

"Consider creating your own professional group on sites like Facebook to establish relationships with business leaders, recruiters and potential referrals."

He advised: "Keep your gripes offline. Keep the content focuses on the positive, whether that relates to professional or personal information. Make sure you highlight specific accomplishments inside and outside work," he said.

"Don''t forget others can see your friends, so be selective about who you accept as friends. Monitor comments made by others and consider using the block comments feature or set your profile to private so only designated friends can view it."

WINDOWS 7 SENDS MICROSOFT TO RECORD REVENUE

Seattle: The successful launch of new operating system Windows 7 propelled Microsoft to record revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, the software giant reported Thursday.

Microsoft reported net income of $6.7 billion, a 60 percent increase on the year prior, while revenue rose 18 percent to $19 billion.

"This is a record quarter for Windows units," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, said in a news release. "We are thrilled by the consumer reception to Windows 7 and by business enthusiasm to adopt Windows 7."

The company said it sold more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses in the second quarter, making the operating system Microsoft's fastest-selling in history. That helped the company's Windows and Windows Live division rack up $6.9 billion in revenue, an increase of about a third over the period a year earlier.

But Microsoft's entertainment division, which includes its Xbox business, saw revenue fall from $3.3 billion to $2.9 billion, while its Business Division's revenue also tapered from $4.88 billion to $4.74 billion.

FACEBOOK IN TROUBLE AGAIN OVER PRIVACY ISSUES

Toronto: Facebook, which agreed last August to implement new privacy safeguards ordered by Canada's privacy commission, is again under investigation over its handling of users' data.

The world's biggest social networking site, which claims to have 350 million users worldwide, was hauled up before Canada's Privacy Commission by Canadian law students in 2008 for violating the country's privacy laws.

Indicting the networking site last August, the privacy commission had ordered Facebook to comply with its recommendations within a month.

Facebook had agreed to implement these recommendations to protect users' privacy worldwide.

But a fresh complaint against Facebook alleges that a tool implemented by it in December makes users' information even more readily available than before. In fact, its new default settings are a step backward, says the new complaint.

"The complaint focuses on a tool introduced by Facebook in mid-December 2009, which required users to review their privacy settings. The complainant alleges that the new default settings would have made his information more readily available than the settings he had previously put in place,'' the Canadian privacy commission said in a statement Thursday.

"The individual's complaint mirrors some of the concerns that our office has heard and expressed to Facebook in recent months,'' Elizabeth Denham, assistant privacy commissioner who conducted the last investigation, said.

"Some Facebook users are disappointed by certain changes being made to the site - changes that were supposed to strengthen their privacy and the protection of their personal information,'' she said.

Under broad recommendations enforced on it in August 2009, Facebook had agreed not to share personal information with third-party developers - roughly 950,000 in 180 countries - creating its applications such as games and quizzes.

Facebook was to complete implementation of these recommendations within a year. Reacting to the new complaint, Facebook spokeswoman Alex Brown maintained that "the transition process begun more than a month ago was transparent, consistent with user expectations and within the law.''