Apple iPad delay, super ID cards mooted and BT's superfast broadband plans
Stories of the month - March 2010
As the clock counted down to the April launch of Apple's iPad, the eagerly awaited device made numerous headlines on silicon.com last month.
It emerged in March that would-be iPad buyers in the UK will have to wait a little longer than first thought to get their hands on the tablet, after Apple revealed the device wouldn't appear on this side of the pond until late April.
With no UK pricing announced yet, the possible price tag of the iPad in Blighty was also up for debate. A survey of readers of silicon.com and sister publication CNET UK found the greatest proportion of respondents would be prepared to shell out between £300 and £399 to get their hands on an iPad.
Further iPad debate came in the form of a column from silicon.com's Apple guru Seb Janacek, which said the success of the tablet is likely to depend on people realising the value of its simplicity and inclusivity - something which fuelled the success of the Nintendo Wii.
The hype surrounding Apple's iPad continued to dominate the tech news in March
(Photo credit: James Martin/CNET)
By doing away with functionality such as a camera, Flash support or multitasking, Janacek argued that the iPad will allow people to access content they care about without "unnecessary clutter" getting in the way.
But there was plenty going on in March besides the hoopla surrounding the iPad - the future of UK broadband for a start.
Last month also saw BT announce a third wave of exchanges where fibre-based superfast broadband will be deployed in the next phase of its £1.5bn next-gen broadband plan to bring fibre to 10 million homes by 2012.
Another major UK technology project in the news last month was the national ID card programme, with the government saying it's considering a new generation of ID cards to be introduced in 2012.
The new cards could include the EMV technology standard that underpins chip and PIN transactions for UK credit and debit cards or a digital encryption and signature capability, potentially allowing ID cards to be used to authorise online transactions or verify the user's identity on the internet.
The security theme continued in March as Peter Cochrane discussed how business security measures can be compromised by a lack of employee-savvy.
From the amount of confidential information he was able to gather about a business and its security measures from a group's conversation on a train journey, he felt compelled to tell them about the risks they were running by discussing such matters so freely.
silicon.com editor Steve Ranger also wrote about the benefits of being able to choose what tech we use at work, arguing that if business users want an iPhone and netbook at work, giving them the hardware they want could make them more effective in their job.
silicon.com also took a look at the technology trends sales and marketing professionals should be looking at with social networking unsurprisingly featuring heavily.
There was also news of economic recovery in Bangalore where technology and outsourcing companies are having to deal with a surge in job-hopping employees.
And finally last month, silicon.com took an in-depth look at Oracle in the aftermath of its $7.4bn acquisition of Sun, examining its strategy and the impact it could have on your organisation's technology plans.