Would it be:

Nokia N8 - touch screen phone with HD video which combines fully integrated social networking, a 12 MP camera, WebTV, Ovi Maps, and a whole lots of other features

or maybe

Apple TV which lets you rent new films and buy TV programmes, watch YouTube videos and enjoy photos, music and more straight from your HDTV?

Or maybe you want something we don’t have in our list.

Take one minute to answer in our poll and next week you’ll find out what is the most wanted gadget!

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For a couple of years now, a concerted PR effort has presented hosted infrastructure and applications in the cloud as the way forward. If you believe the most gung-ho predictions, your entire IT department will be replaced by outsourced services in the cloud, and IT staff will become brokers pulling these services together for internal use.
Meanwhile, however, some say the cloud is not secure enough, and others point to the fact that many software vendors still can’t price their software right for it (yes, we mean Oracle).

We know, we know. There’s many different clouds, including public and private, infrastructure, platform and application. There’s Linux in the cloud, and Windows in the cloud. It’s difficult to define it.
Forget those details for our latest quick-and-dirty survey. Take a broad definition, and please tell us whether you are using the cloud - andif so, is it experimental, strategic… or actually, the preferred option for all your services.

The open source versus proprietary software debate has raged on for some time, and the fight is always passionate. There are those that still cling to the ancient Windows XP operating system, loathe to believe that anything could touch it for reliability. And then, there’s an equally committed user base, which argues that open source is the route to true innovation.

However, as the global economic crisis progresses, and businesses continue to look for ways to cut costs, many IT managers are taking a closer look at Linux-based offerings.

Open source vendors have long touted the lower cost of ownership of their products, and it may be that companies are beginning to bite. We love open source!

Read the full story here and see the results of the last poll!

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However BT denies its prototype device is a rival to the Apple iPad, which has achieved impressive sales since it went on sale in the US last month.

Evolution Of The Home Phone

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT Retail, unveiled the prototype device during BT’s investor and strategy day on Thursday.

eWEEK Europe UK understands that the touchscreen device is essentially a smartphone for the home, similar in size to a digital photo frame. The prototype is being developed by BT Labs, and there is no brand name, pricing details, or even pictures of the device.

“BT does have an exciting new home device on its way,” a BT spokesman told eWEEK Europe UK. “We expect to make further announcements later in the year and cannot say anything else at this time.”

It is understood that the device will offer visual voicemail, conferencing and email, as well as browsing functionality, so that people can access applications such as checking the weather, news and online shopping.

BT states this is not a device to take outside the house, but it is more an evolution of the phone within the home. It will be used mostly in the kitchen in the morning while having breakfast, when a user doesn’t feel like booting up his or her PC or laptop.

The lack of outside portability suggests that the device would be Wi-Fi only with no 3G capability.

Mini PC And Telephone Combined

“It is like a mini-PC with the telephone of the future,” said chief executive Ian Livingston after the meeting. “Someone also made a reference to it being a bit like the iPad but it is not. It is a different size and shape apart from anything else, but it is meant to stay in the home.”

“Clearly people want to use their phone in a different way,” he added. “We have seen that with smartphones outside the home. So we have been developing a concept around how you get that sort of capability into an in-home environment. Obviously you can make phone calls through it, but it also has a touch screen.”

There is a video interview with Patterson discussing the device, on the Daily Telegraph website.

The device will be larger than the 3.5 inch display found on the iPhone, but smaller than the 9.7 inch screen on the iPad. It is understood that calls can be made or received via a Bluetooth headset, or via an integrated speaker.

BT had earlier announced plans to ramp-up its roll-out of super-fast broadband around the UK. The British carrier previously committed to spending £1.5 billion to roll out fibre to around 40 percent of UK homes by 2012. Instead, now it will invest around £2.5 billion in rolling out fibre to around two thirds of UK homes by 2015.

In a blog post this week, Google green business operations manager Rick Needham said that the investment in the 169.5 megwatt wind farms in North Dakota is part of a wider policy to invest and support renewable energy. “Through this $38.8 million (£25.5m) investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too,” said Needham.

The wind farms use the latest turbine technology which allows the blades to change their angle of pitch to increase efficiency, according to Needham. “The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine,” he said. “The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production.”

According to Google, it is planning to make similar investments in renewable tech in the future. “We look forward to finding more opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects that use the latest technologies to push the envelope for delivering low cost clean energy,” said Needham. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

Figures from the American Wind Energy Association put North Dakota at the top of places to site wind farms in the US with approx 1,210 billions of kWh per year. “North Dakota alone is theoretically capable (if there were enough transmission capacity) of producing enough wind-generated power to meet more than fourth of U.S. electricity demand,” the AWEA states.

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