Is there no one with any creativity in the tech industry anymore? It’s bad enough that Microsoft and the entire tech press has taken to calling tablet computers “Slates” now, based on an unlikely Apple rumor. Now, word on the street is that netbooks that run on mobile OSes like Android are being dubbed “Smartbooks.” Get it? It’s a netbook that runs on a smartphone OS.  Cute. Ars Technica wrote up a piece about many of the “smartbooks” being showcased at CES this week. The complaint is that…

Ars Technica is quoting Microsoft’s Robbie Bach today, suggesting that Google’s move to make its own branded phone while still distributing Android to partners is a mistake. I couldn’t agree more. And who would know this better than Microsoft, the company that screwed its Plays for Sure partners with the Zune and suffered greatly for it? As I’ve said many times, Google is following a strategy that clearly failed for Microsoft. And now even Microsoft is agreeing with me. In other news, [snow is predicted in…

Android might be getting all the press lately, even from me, but it turns out that Palm, who most of us have just about written off, has been up to a lot of interesting stuff lately. Take today’s announcements at CES: Two phones (Pre Plus and Pixi Plus) coming to Verizon. Pre and Pixi also to be available on AT&T very soon Verizon phones are capable of being used as MiFi-style WiFi stations. So you can tether a number of computers to your Pre or Pixi at…

If you didn’t know that Microsoft was finished as a consumer company before last night, watching Steve Ballmer’s Keynote at CES would convince you. Not that this pitiful display of ineptitude was anything new. Microsoft has been “faking it” for years now at CES, responding to whatever Apple announced at Macworld a week earlier with a concept of some future product that never really ships. (Remember the Surface? Know anyone who’s bought one?) The big difference this year, of course, is that Macworld didn’t come in…

Classic quote from Ars Technica yesterday about the Google’s new phone initiative: “If a particular Google-branded phone is not on a particular carrier, then that’s only because that phone doesn’t have the proper radio to support its network.” You have to want Google to change the world sooooo bad to stretch reality far enough to believe that setting up a web site to sell unlocked phones is going to make a difference in the US mobile phone space.Here’s a news flash for the unenlightened: You…