Ian Betteridge offers a savvy take on modern computer purchase:

If there’s one thing that the huge demand for netbooks a few years ago proved, it’s that people buy because they can see how a computer can do something for them, not on megahertz.

In the case of netbooks, the “something” was being a machine they could carry everywhere, and do simple stuff on. In the case of Macs, it’s having access to easy to use, powerful software like iPhoto, iMovie, and so on – in a package that’s good looking, well designed, robust, and so on.

This continues through to tablets. There’s a lovely comment I recall reading from a teenager who said they wanted an iPad rather than a netbook, because you could “do more” with the iPad. Geeks would spit out their coffee at such a remark, reel off a tech-specs list, burble on about installing any app, ever (preferably on Linux) and get all huffy about someone buying a tablet, especially one from Apple and its walled garden.

The reality is most people really don’t give a crap about bullet-points. They just want to do things. With the iPad, they see all these adverts that show people making music, finger-painting, creating office documents, playing games, with hugely intuitive interfaces, on a device that’s sleek and shiny. Apple doesn’t need to bang on about the amount of RAM the iPad has, or the A4 chip’s speed—it’s all about what you can do, creatively, productively, or as a consumer. Until the competition figures that out, they’ll have a tough time catching Apple in the tablet space, and also a tricky time stopping Apple from nibbling away at marketshare for laptops and even desktop PCs.

Ryan Carson:

Google has used their insanely smart engineers to create an image compression algorithm that’s just as good as JPEG but 39.8% smaller. It’s called WebP and it’s pronounced “weppy”. You can create WebP images in Acorn, Pixelmator, ImageMagick, Leptonica and XnConvert. If you use Photoshop, you can also install the WebP plugin.

The problem is it’s currently only supported by Chrome and Opera, but if all of us in the web community make enough noise, we might succeed in getting it to be adopted by all major browsers.

Ryan’s a smart guy, but I’m curious as to why he’s fighting so hard for WebP, because, bar some slightly superior compression to JPEG—although the quality of said compression is often very subjective—it offers no real benefits and lots of drawbacks.

Jeff Muizelaar:

WebP also comes across as half-baked. Currently, it only supports a subset of the features that JPEG has. It lacks support for any color representation other than 4:2:0 YCrCb. JPEG supports 4:4:4 as well as other color representations like CMYK. WebP also seems to lack support for EXIF data and ICC color profiles, both of which have be come quite important for photography. Further, it has yet to include any features missing from JPEG like alpha channel support. These features can still be added, but the longer they remain unspecified, the more difficult it will be to adopt.

Where does that leave us? WebP gives a subset of JPEG’s functionality with more modern compression techniques and no additional IP risk to those already shipping WebM. I’m really not sure it’s worth adding a new image format for that.

I agree. I’d love to know why people think we should care about WebP. I was very happy when PNG was broadly supported, due to the clear benefits in web design, such as alpha channels. But slightly better compression in a format that actually offers less flexibility? That’s an odd thing to fight for.

There are signs things might change, with Google making promises at IO for new features, but even then WebP still feels like a solution looking for a problem that would be better solved with PNG adding another compression stream.

Richard Hillgrove, in The Guardian, writing Twitter cannot be allowed to operate outside the law:

The central point here is whether Twitter and Facebook, as publishers of content, should be as accountable as traditional media. The problem is one of scale. Traditional media controls its content by employing finite numbers of staff, freelance journalists and news agencies. In contrast, Facebook have an army of “citizen journalists” numbering 500 million and Twitter 175 million and don’t employ any of them.

Clearly, they are going to have to introduce a delay mechanism so that content can be checked before it goes up. There will have to be a completely different structure, which will be difficult when the whole thing about Twitter is its spontaneity.

Oh dear.

To be fair, Hillgrove’s Guardian profile describes him as “a business and political public relations consultant”, but this is precisely why anyone creating laws and regulations or even talking about doing so needs to bloody well research, rather than shouting their mouth off. Hillgrove’s comment might have a certain right-on set of Brits and others going “Yes! Twitter must do this”, but Hillgrove clearly has no comprehension whatsoever of the sheer amount of content social networks and other major websites generate. It’s not remotely feasible for any of it to be checked—YouTube gets more then two days’ worth of video uploaded every minute. How the hell can that be checked?

Hillgrove also bleats about accountability (arguing the likes of Twitter should be treated like traditional media) and reeling in social networks unless we “decide to become an anarchistic society”. Much better, clearly, that we become a society that stops the equalising nature of the web and curtails free speech, because otherwise rich people get caught short. And, yes, I realise Twitter and Facebook have an appalling herd mentality at times, but often the herd uses its powers for good—something that is diminishingly so for traditional media.

Hat-tip: Fraser Speirs.

Poor Adele. I’m CRYING MY EYES OUT right now, having read The Guardian’s piece on the poor singer. Adele, the multi-million selling artist, has had to… sorry, I’m finding it hard to bring myself to type this… she’s had to pay tax. Yes, I know. Actual tax.

I’m mortified to have to pay 50%! [While] I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire.

I’ve been thinking about what we can all do to help. It must be really hard as a 23-year-old, plucked from obscurity and having number-one albums all over the world, to have to pay tax. Maybe we can all have a whip-round and help her.

Let’s of course ignore the fact no-one in the UK pays 50%, because the 50% band only affects income over ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING THOUSAND POUNDS. (You pay less on earnings under that amount.) Also, let’s ignore her tax bill being less than her net income for working on one album, meaning she’s made more from that than many indie bands will make during their ENTIRE FUCKING CAREERS.

Good grief, Adele, way to endear yourself to your audience. I bet most people and certainly most musicians would be jumping for joy if they could get a four-million quid tax bill for a year or so’s work, because it’d mean they’d received income to keep of more than four million pounds, you spoiled brat.

Nicely spotted by Charles Arthur at The Guardian. Dell’s new XPS-15 marketing has caught the eye of a lot of websites, which have parroted Dell’s claim, without bothering to investigate it. That claim:

Finally, the power you crave in the thinnest 15″ PC on the planet*.

Charles Arthur:

Wow, the thinnest? But wait, what’s the asterisk?

Small print time: “Based on Dell internal analysis as at February 2011. Based on a thickness comparison (front and rear measurements) of other 15″ laptop PCs manufactured by HP, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, MSI. No comparison made with Apple or other manufacturers not listed.”

Classy stuff, Dell. Still, as we all know, Michael Dell is the best CEO on the planet*

* Based on ignoring quite a few other CEOs who, quite clearly, are better than Dell, but, hey, is that really important anyway? Can’t we all just get along, even if companies are lying through their teeth in making misleading advertising claims that are objective and can therefore be checked against actual facts, rather than sensibly making more subjective statements? Actually, no, because Dell is a pillock.