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Exactly one year ago, on January 27 last year Steve Jobs announced iPad at a press conference held for the device. The planned tablet was rumoured for years before that as people realized it should have been a logical step after success Apple had with iPhone. A year later and numerous gadget of the year awards, I thought it would be fun to discuss our initial expectations compared to actual user experience with the device.

So how is the tablet market these days? First of all, we should admit it: Apple has really transformed the gadget and computer market heavily with iPad – where no one thought a tablet computer would really take off, we now have a market where everyone suddenly seems to want one. And it is no wonder that this market is now heavily dominated by iPad – for example, in third quarter iPad accounted for 90% of all sales of tablet computers...Exactly one year ago, on January 27 last year Steve Jobs announced iPad at a press conference held for the device. The planned tablet was rumoured for years before that as people realized it should have been a logical step after success Apple had with iPhone. A year later and numerous gadget of the year awards, I thought it would be fun to discuss our initial expectations compared to actual user experience with the device.

So how is the tablet market these days? First of all, we should admit it: Apple has really transformed the gadget and computer market heavily with iPad – where no one thought a tablet computer would really take off, we now have a market where everyone suddenly seems to want one. And it is no wonder that this market is now heavily dominated by iPad – for example, in third quarter iPad accounted for 90% of all sales of tablet computers.

It is pretty obvious that this situation will change with time and Android[...]

This will be a very unusual post. I have never used Profy as a platform for anything but technology news or internet-related commentary. But after I learned the story of 8 year old Lisa from a village near Samara in Russia I realized that if this blog can’t be used freely to help this girl at least a tiny bit, no technology in this world is truly worth anything at all. So now I am asking anyone who is willing to listen for help.

Lisa was born with a rare genetic disease - epidermolysis bullosa. This is the disease that makes all skin of a human so fragile that the softest touch will cause pain and blisters...

What you can’t help but admire about Apple – even if you are a loyal Microsoft or Google supporter – is how they turn their fans into loyal consumers who keep buying new gadgets even before those that they currently own get morally outdated or (very unlikely) broken.

Only last year you were enjoying having your iPhone 3GS and thought this was the coolest phone ever but now you keep noticing some strange behaviour about it that makes you think you probably already need to upgrade to iPhone 4...

The year when I graduated from school and joined the university was 1998 – the year of the heaviest financial crisis in post-Soviet Russian history when over a single day the exchange rate of US dollar dropped three-fold and many people around lost virtually all their savings. All in all, the 90s in the history of Russia is a story of unstable financial situation where people kept losing money in this way or another all the time. I can tell you that in this country there’ve been too many absurd financial stories that sometimes don’t even seem to be true enough to believe them – but they actually happened...

When it comes to sales, I know one thing for sure: I am an absolute zero in sales. Fortunately, my work is not related to sales – I’m sure I would have starved if I had to sell something to support myself. I have tried to sell a piece of software once amidst the recent recession as a form to diversify income sources – and failed miserably so instead of diversification I just got a huge number of wasted hours.

And since people tend to admire the qualities that they don’t possess, I definitely admire sales people and their mysterious talents of persuading others into buying something that they sometimes don’t even need...

Google is well known for its passion to various doodles to celebrate tons of global and local events – quite frequently the company changes its logo on the pages of all the local domains or only on specific ones depending on the event of the day. As some of you may know, yesterday Russia had more than a significant reason to celebrate as FIFA made the decision to hold the World Cup in 2018 in Russia – for the first time in Eastern Europe.

Of course Russian football fans and pretty much everyone else are exceptionally pleased with the opportunity and celebrating...

Today I am introducing you SmsCoin, a new monetization tool for all sorts of online publishers and our sponsor for the month. SmsCoin is a company that offers a broad range of SMS-based tools to add an extra monetization source (or at least an additional payment tool) to any online business that allows receiving payments from as many as 87 countries...

A president of a country can definitely be considered an open-minded and tech-aware progressive person when he or she has a Twitter account. After all, it is the most fashionable way to connect to citizens online these days. But what if a president actually has as many as two Twitter accounts? I really don’t know but I have a feeling that the Russian president Medvedev is sometimes overdoing his online activities.

He is extremely active online with a video blog, a Twitter account and his regular communications with Russian people online...

These days it’s really hard to find a person who would not agree that internet has truly turned the world into a global and tightly connected place where everyone can easily talk to everyone without tons of efforts or financial investments. But I have frequently written here on Profy how different things can be about tons of tech aspects when one happens to live in Russia...