Can’t believe I forgot to post this earlier, but I wrote an article for the Japan Times last week about Sharp’s Galapagos tablet, a pad device aimed straight at the Japanese market. Sharp claims otherwise, but “Galapagos” has become a term to define the uniqueness and weakness of the Japanese mobile phone market, which created some of the most advanced and esoteric phones on the market, in a sealed environment where innovation was allowed to flourish but never interact with the outside world.

With the onset of the iPhone, that market is crumbling. I personally see many, many iPhones everywhere in Tokyo, and that has to strike fear into the heart of every Japanese cell provider (other than Softbank, presumably making a killing by offering the iPhone exclusively in Japan.)

So I don’t hold out much hope for this Sharp tablet. They may know something I don’t, but I can’t see a device like this competing in any way with the iPad.

Back in 1960, a state of the art computer cost millions of dollars, weighed thousands of pounds, and was slower (by an order of magnitude) than an average chip in today’s cellphones. Physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku (whose BBC series “Visions of the Future” is awesome, btw) breaks down where computing is going in the next ten years. Computers will be ubiquitous, mostly invisible, and profoundly shaping and transforming our civilization. Sounds good to me.

Despite the perennial cries of “people don’t want to read books on their phones,” that’s precisely what’s happening according to an article in the New York Times. Everyone has their smartphone with them at all times, making it easy to read on the go and tote a library of titles in your pocket. I’ve read at least 3 or 4 books on my iPhone, and plan to keep doing so until Apple comes out with something better, like their mythical tablet device.

In my capacity as a tech reporter for Techvibes.com, sometimes I get to check out some neat new tech, like these Sony E-Readers (the Reader Touch and Reader Pocket, in point of fact.) They don’t have a wifi or 3g connection, but they can read any format and can “borrow” e-books from the library.

According to an article in the Independent, maybe. Recent losses posted by economic powerhouses like Sony and Panasonic bring the point home. And Apple is upending practically all of the rules with products like the iPhone (which isn’t popular in Japan, but changed the landscape everywhere else.), and many of Japan’s neighbours are catching up with better and cheaper hardware.

RED, the creators of the RED ONE camera that’s revolutionized digital filmmaking, recently announced two new cameras, the RED Scarlet and Epic. Essentially these two cameras operate as a modular “brain”, with an almost infinite choice of attachments that extend the camera from a fixed-lens shooter to a IMAX level behemoth capable of shooting 28k pictures.

The only problem with this panacea is that the original Scarlet, announced last year and them shelved, was a planned “3k for 3k” wonder camera that would have taken the prosumer and DV Rebel world by storm. Instead, low end users would have to shell out something on the order of $7,000 or more to build a suitable camera for their needs. That figure simply isn’t in the budget of many indie filmmakers.

Even more mysteriously, RED has announced that even more info will be released on December 3rd. It remains to be seen if lofi auteurs will be elated or disappointed in a few days time.

Funny, and damn, this looks pretty good for a web video.

Yep, the other side of the coin has dropped and I’ve got another article up about Flash on the iPhone up at Mac | Life, this time accentuating the positives of Adobe’s graphical powerhouse on Apple’s iconic mobile device.

This one is about the Canadian reaction to the Rogers data rates for the iPhone. And next month, I’ll hopefully have an honest-to-goodness-in-the-paper-magazine article in Mac | Life.

Yes, pigs are currently cruising through a very, very cold Hades, because Apple is finally releasing the iPhone in Canada, and not only that, it’s the new, improved, 3G iPhone. Due July 11th at Apple Stores, Rogers and Fido outlets, and presumably online. Of course, the potential fly in the ointment of all this mobile love is the big question of what precisely Rogers will charge for an iPhone-centric data plan. I’d like to think the larger opportunity of a game-changing product like the iPhone would jar Rogers to their senses and force them into an unlimited plan for $50 or less…but I’m not holding my breath.

Apple also rolled out Mobile Me, a revamp of the moribund .Mac service which prove to be quite useful (because .Mac certainly wasn’t), and the much awaited App Store, which promises to bring much the same creativity and device-extending goodness as the….uh, jailbreak community has for the last year.

Will I get a new 3G iPhone? it all depends on what Rogers does in terms of a data plan. There’s no point in having always-on connectivity if within a month I’m broke. But if they come to their senses and offer a reasonable rate, I’m most likely in.