João Paulo Pacheco

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Those predictions for next year, and others, are being presented on Thursday by the technology research firm IDC.

IDC’s entry in the year-end forecasting sweepstakes doesn’t lack for detail. There will be 300,000 iPhone applications by the end of next year, nearly triple the current number, according to IDC. There will be 50,000 to 75,000 Google Android applications, up from about 10,000. Interested in digital electric meters, the home devices crucial for energy-saving smart electric grids? Twenty million will be deployed in United States households in 2010, and more than 60 million worldwide, IDC says. Spurred by federal stimulus dollars, 77 million Americans, or 25 percent of the population, will have electronic health records, compared with about 14 percent now, the firm predicts.

Often, it is the thinking behind the data points that is most illuminating. I discussed the predictions on Wednesday with Frank Gens, IDC’s chief analyst.

Take all those applications iPhones and Android phones, for example. Mr. Gens notes that there are roughly 10,000 Windows PC applications listed on Microsoft’s Windows 7 compatibility Web site.

“The market follows the applications,” Mr. Gens said. “That’s a message for the software industry, particularly for the PC industry.”

The competition to supply the tools and digital workbench — a “platform,” in techspeak — for cloud computing will intensify, Mr. Gens says. The early cloud platforms come from Salesforce.com’s Force.com, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s App Engine. In 2010, I.B.M. and Cisco Systems will enter the field with their cloud platforms, IDC predicts.

“This is going to be the strategic battleground of the next 20 years in computing,” Mr. Gens says.

The long-rumored Apple touchscreen tablet computer, or iPad, will arrive in 2010, IDC predicts. It will be more of an oversized iPod Touch, with an 8-inch or 10-inch screen, than a downsized Macintosh. With its larger screen, IDC says, the Apple tablet will be ideal for watching movies, surfing the Web, playing online games, and reading books, magazines and newspapers. It will be general-purpose, unlike Amazon.com’s single-purpose Kindle reader. The Apple offering, Mr. Gens says, “could deliver a real kick in Kindle’s butt.”

Netbook PCs, IDC predicts, will move beyond stripped-down Web-surfing, e-mail and note-taking machines, costing $200 to $400. More powerful models, Mr. Gens says, may cost $700 or more, though will still be extremely light and small.

IDC also sees I.B.M. getting back into the computer network business by acquiring Juniper. Networking, Mr. Gens says, is increasingly part of the package of capabilities the largest technology companies must offer corporate clients. He points to Hewlett-Packard’s recent purchase of 3Com and Cisco’s partnership with EMC as evidence of the trend.

“If you are going to be in the hardware systems business,” Mr. Gens says, “you need network competence.”

After weeks of anticipation, www.dtrn.co.uk and the Sci Fi Guys is proud to announce the first ever Sci FI Guys Twitter Live Show This Wednesday 9th December 8pm live on www.dtrn.co.uk.

This show in conjunction with the social networking phenomenon, Twitter, will allow listeners for the first time to directly interact with the show and in doing so provide the show with all of it content.

“All people have to do to take part is have a Twitter account and then follow our feed and then on the night post on it their questions to us and also any topics they wish us to discuss and we will reply,” comments DTRN General manager and Sci Fi Guy presenter/creator Stuart Claw. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for our listeners old and new to be directly involved in the show and who knows we may even ask them a question or two!”.

This show also marks the first time that an episode of the hit podcast has aired without a celebrity interview as part of it however according to Stuart their maybe be one or two treats in store for listeners to make up for it.

The show starts live at its usual time of 8pm on Wednesday 9th December free from www.dtrn.co.uk and all those who wish to take part have to do is register an account for free at www.twitter.com and then subscribe to the Sci Fi Guys feed (which is also free) at www.twitter.com/thescifiguys. Then starting from 7:30pm listeners can start to post questions*, topics and opinions that they wish to be discussed on the show ready for the shows start time of 8pm GMT.

DTRN Press Office
*Please note that whilst personal questions are invited that these are up to the shows host discretion as to whether or not they are answered.

Source: http://www.dtrn.co.uk/smf via eztv.it

Sources confirm to us exclusively that TNT is not renewing the Mark-Paul Gosselaar legal drama Raising the Bar for a third season. A rep for the network says, "Everyone at TNT had a great experience working on Raising the Bar with Steven Bochco and the rest of the show's terrific cast and crew. We're proud of the series and appreciate the efforts of all of the creative people who were involved. Unfortunately, ratings for Raising the Bar's second season did not reach the levels required for TNT to renew the series."

TNT has not yet scheduled the three remaining unaired episodes of the series about a group of New York City public defenders and city district attorneys who studied law together and now face off in the courtroom.

Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made its debut in summer last year, but China as another big Asian market for Apple seems to react differently. The iPhone officially launched in China today, offered by China Unicom, one the country’s three big cell phone carriers. But our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing.

Here are some pictures from the Beijing Apple Store (taken Friday afternoon Chinese time, just before sales began):

And these pictures show China Unicom seems to have over-prepared their “sales points”, too:

These rather disappointing, initial reactions don’t mean China rejects the iPhone at all, however. Estimates put the number of iPhones sold in China before the official launch today (through imports from Hong Kong and Taiwan, for example) between two and five million units so far. China as a whole has 710 million total cellular subscribers, the most in the world.

Source: MobileCrunch