In fact, HP's (NYSE: HPQ) 1.2 billion play for Palm is shaping up to be more about tablets than smartphones. The smartphone business, which is quickly becoming super saturated with the likes notebook makers such as Dell, Lenovo and Acer, is one both HP and Palm are separately struggling in. But as Technology Business Research points out, the tablet computing space hasn't been well defined by any single manufacturer or operating system. Could Palm's WebOS combined with HP's extensive PC manufacturing expertise give it the leading position?

The scuttlebutt this week has to do with whether HP will drop tablet plans to incorporate Windows 7 and go with the WebOS. IMS Research principal analyst Anna Hunt expects HP to employ WebOS in favor of Windows 7 OS, citing the high cost and potential strain on the processor.

Moreover, Palm's webOS, despite gaining little traction in the smartphone market, is liked by developers as it offers many similarities to Linux. The platform just didn't have the volume to woo developers en mass. "If HP can create a compelling tablet offering that people are willing to buy, the barriers to entry for developers might be fairly minimal," wrote IMS Research analyst Chris Schreck. Moreover, HP has a commanding presence in the enterprise market, which should be attractive to developers.

Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst with J Gold Associates, points out that since tablets are mainly front ends to the Internet, there is a big play for HP to deploy many cloud-based services from which it can generate revenue. I can only imagine the cloud-based services HP can dream up for the enterprise

Think enterprise people. This was first and foremost an enterprise move by HP. Consumers are fun and it's fun to write about and think about pretty things for them... but the big money is in the enterprise. The value add is for the enterprise.

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders... for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology... how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more... much more.

If you were planning on popping a lot of location-based ads into your upcoming killer iPhone app, you might want take a peek at the latest update from Apple for developers. A rather stern note on the site reads: “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.” Is Apple doing this to prevent abuse from advertisers, so that users won’t end up with advertisements from stores all around them? There isn’t any real explanation as to why this isn’t allowed, but it’s certainly worth taking note if you’re building an app with the intention of putting advertisements in. After all, you wouldn’t want to spend your precious time building an app only to find out that it will be rejected by Apple, right?

Interesting little tid bit. Somewhere else folks have been wondering out loud if this has anything to do with Apple's purchase of Quattro or some other secret juicy soon to be released nugget? Unfortunately I don't recall where or who was doing this wondering...

It certainly can't be about diluting the App Store right? It is already flooded with loads of sub-quality apps... so what is this about?

Or I may be wrong. Perhaps they are just trying to clean up and tighten control to prevent users from being spammed with ads...

Regardless of the underlying reason why Apple is doing this it is for the good of the industry. It does make one feel protected and looked after doesn't it?

There's quite a collection of good and colorful blogs that track iPhones, Android devices, BlackBerries and other smartphones and no shortage of overlapping coverage among them (How many different "scoops" on the Android-powered Motorola Devour phone did I come across today?). Some are written by professional reporters, others by unapologetic geeks and others by thinly-veiled marketers. Here's a spin through 50 of these mobile phone blogs.

Reference list.

The new tools allow Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators to manage enterprise smartphones directly from the Google Apps control panel, without having to deploy additional third-party mobile device management software offered by vendors like Sybase iAnywhere and Good Technology (formerly Visto).

IT administrators can lock down and remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile devices and establish more complex password administration protocols. Google Apps Premier business customers pay $50 per user per year, while educational institutions receive the service free.

Google Apps supports almost every device on the market today, including RIM BlackBerry with the introduction last year of its Connector for Blackberry Enterprise Servers. However, interestingly, Google has yet to produce enhanced security and mobile management support for RIM BlackBerry or even its own Android phones like the Droid and its recently unveiled Nexus One.

When it comes to entering the enterprise, Google’s moves, so far, appear deliberate and calculated. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Google plans on launching an online business software store packed with third-party applications that seamlessly integrate with Google Apps, which may replace today’s Google Solutions Marketplace. Google would not confirm the plans, saying only, “We're constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

The company also remains mum on when it will commit fully to an enterprise Android strategy. A Google spokesperson told Channel Insider, “To date, Android-powered phones have been targeted toward consumers. Future versions of Android will introduce more functionality for IT managers to deploy enterprise devices, which will be of particular interest to our Google Apps customers.”

Google’s silence is not stopping some business-to-business software developers and VARs from supporting Android, however. DataViz, the creator of Documents to Go and RoadSync, is experiencing substantial success in the Android Market, telling Channel Insider that it is close to reaching 500,000 downloads of its introductory version in the Android Marketplace. The company’s software also comes preloaded on RIM BlackBerrys, and supports Symbian-powered phones and iPhone.  DataViz also offers an enterprise version of its software, complete with volume licensing. The company has a variety of resellers like CDW and Insight.

Good Technology, a provider of enterprise mobile security and device management software as well as mobile e-mail and collaboration software, recently announced its support for Android. Good faces an uphill battle as its offerings are slowly being challenged with the release of the ActiveSync protocol and bundled versions of mobile device management and security offerings by Microsoft and Google.

Enterprise mobile application and platform provider Antenna Software supports Android as well, and sees the growing pervasiveness of Android in the enterprise as key to its business.

“Overall, we believe very much that device diversity is a wonderful thing—people love choice, and the fact that Google is creating choice is great for the market. We see a good amount of interest and pull for Android from our customers,” says Jim Somers, Antenna’s chief marketing and strategy officer.

The mobile OS wars continue to provide sport and plenty of blood-letting for those interested, and the fun is only beginning. Apple and Microsoft are facing a massive threat with the increased adoption of Android and Google Apps. Apple CEO Steve Jobs thinks he knows what Google wants, telling employees recently, “Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone.” Jobs continued, using an expletive to describe Google’s “Don’t Be Evil mantra,” which the search giant quietly dropped last spring.

Time will tell, but if Google’s early 2010 moves are any indication, the mobile enterprise is set clearly in the company’s sights.

Google is not going to ignore enterprise mobility. It is too big an opportunity to pass by.

As a Google Apps user I welcome any and all improvements to the Google Solutions Marketplace which is not very user friendly or intuitive. In fact it is the main reason I haven't really extended my Google Apps beyond the basic stuff.

What’s CoPilot?

It’s a high quality mobile application that effectively transforms your phone into a GPS navigation device. It ain’t cheap, but it’s a lot cheaper than a dedicated GPS device.

What’s the news?

CoPilot announced that the Android version of the application was compatible with the new Nexus One. To which my response was “well, yes, it’s an Android.”

But two pieces of info have since come to light which have softened my cough.

First, only yesterday did Google actually release the Software Development Kit that allows developers to check whether or not their apps can run on the Nexus One. So making sure that CoPilot actually runs on the phone would have involved an awful lot of experimentation and leg work.

Second was info I got from CoPilot itself. They said a considerable amount of work goes into making sure software is compatible not only with new Android handsets, but also the updated Android OS. The example given was the previous version of CoPilot Live for Android. It was fully compatible with the Motorola Droid in the US. But there was a slight change in the Android ROM for the European equivalent (the Motorola Milestone) that caused CoPilot to crash. Updates and changes had to be made so that the app could work on the new device. And that was for two device that were supposed to be the same and run on the same OS. The Nexus One is both a different phone, and a new OS.

After a few unrelated stories on the topic my gut is now telling me to do a story on this... the fragmentation of the Android platform and the difficulties this represents for the penetration of the platform into the enterprise. Now time is my only enemy...