THE Hewlett Packard TouchPad is one of the few tablet computers to
rival Apple’s iPad.
If you like the look of it, you’d better buy one fast because HP just canned it for good.
In a move that stunned the rest of the computer industry, HP practically re-invented itself overnight.
The shiny TouchPad was ditched and the webOS operating system that made it work was given the heave-ho.
Challenging the might of Apple, webOS was a genuinely innovative system with great potential, inherited from what used to be Palm back in the 1990s.
The TouchPad had attractive features, including a clever wireless recharging system but it simply couldn’t compete with the iPad. It was slow, glitchy, and lacked support from software developers.
l Perhaps in response to the simpler privacy features on rival service Google+, Facebook has just announced a much improved and simpler set of privacy controls of its own.
It’s now rolling out new controls that let you decide who among all your Facebook friends will see each new thing you post.
You’ll also get control over photos of yourself uploaded and tagged with your name by other people.
They won’t get made public until you’ve had a chance to check the photo and approve them.
TWITTER’S NEW PHOTO GALLERY
A few weeks ago Twitter opened an image-uploading service of its own, allowing people to annotate their tweets with photos. Now it’s unveiled a gallery for those images – a link to it should appear in the sidebar to the right of your Twitter stream. Log in to twitter.com to see it.
The gallery will only show your 100 most recent images and will also pull in any you’ve uploaded via third-party services such as TwitPic and Instagram.
FREE FIREFOX FUN
Everyone’s favourite alternative web browser, Firefox, has just been updated to version 6. The new version has a much smarter, sleeker look and reduces some of the control clutter.
If you’ve got an Android phone you can get Firefox for that too.
iPhone users can download a separate app called Firefox Home which syncs your browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs to an app on the device.
It’s not a full browser, though. If you want an alternative browser for your iPhone, try Opera, which is free on the App Store.
Find out more at www.getfirefox.com