The confusion can be cleared by having an understanding of how Apple displays 3G and 4G signs in the iPhone, as well as what is considered 3G and 4G by Apple and the carriers.

There has been plenty of confusion about what 3G is and what 4G is even before the IOS 5.1 update. This confusion is rampant because there is no fixed definition for 4G or 3G connectivity. In the absence of a standard definition of both kinds of connectivity, what goes for 4G for some goes as 3G for others.

Right now experts are of one mind that there are no true “4G” wireless technologies commercially available. However, until some years back; most tech experts and carrier AT&T  considered technologies such as LTE and WiMax as 4G. Then all the other technologies that were extensions of existing 3G technology (HSPA+) were considered 3G.  (I discussed this in ‘The Myth of 4G” almost 2 years ago)

It was all pretty clear before 2010, then the confusion began, courtesy T-Mobile USA, when it started marketing its HSPA+ as 4G. To explain its strategy, T-Mobile argued that since its HSPA+ network could get nearly the same performance as so-called 4G WiMax and LTE networks, it was justified in calling HSPA+ a 4G connection.

So, AT&T and Verizon made an aberration in 2010. Then it was further complicated by Apple in 2011 October when it launched iPhone 4S. Apple did not market iPhone 4S as a 4G device even though AT&T has marketed other HSPA+ devices as 4G. now Apple’s explanation for this further aberration was that Apple did not want to confuse customers when an LTE version of the iPhone was released. Some also said that Apple decided to call iPhone 4S a 3G device due to pressure from Verizon Wireless, which has a version of the device that operates on its 3G EV-DO network.

So we had iPhone 4S, which might be called a 4G device by the definition of AT&T, but it showed a 3G icon because Apple chose to put it there.

Now the third layer of complication arose when Apple upgraded IOS 5.1. the 3G icon turned into a 4G icon. Did Apple change its definition of 3G/4G again or did mystery operators from the carrier install a chip in the iPhones 4S when the users weren’t looking?

It is more Apple’s doing this time. Apple has just changed its mind how it wants to market its device. Apple now reasons that the upgrade in IOS has made the device work in the blazing speeds of 4G, so it will be called 4G… (but it’s not LTE, so don’t get too excited.) The iPhone 4S will operate at the same speed it did prior to the IOS 5.1 update.

According to unnamed sources at iMore.com, a new “micro dock” may be coming soon, first on the iPhone 5. If you haven’t noticed, Apple is obsessed with making things smaller, better, faster and thinner, and the traditional 30-pin dock connector takes up more space than it needs to inside Apple’s iOS devices. In a world of 4G cellular chips, improved camera components and expanded functionally such as NFC, the dock connector component is an antiquated appendix in the way of progress. What about iTunes syncing? There’s Wi-Fi for that. What about HDMI and video out? There’s always AirPlay. And if you’re following along with me, you’ve probably already realized Bluetooth allows for wireless audio, too. With the advent of iOS 5 and iCloud, the iPhone and associated devices are liberated from the ball-and-chain of desktop iTunes syncing, meaning it very well could be the best time to shrink the dock, or — gasp — eliminate it altogether.

I’m on board. I’ve been on board since jailbreakers offered wireless syncing before Apple did. But is the general public ready to accept such a radical change? Possibly. I’ve heard the figure floated around that more than 50 percent of all iPhones brought to the genius bar had never been synced with a desktop. But even if that figure isn’t accurate, there’s still a large percentage of new users who automatically will be using iCloud, leaving music syncing as the only large-data activity possibly requiring a cable. That issue can be overcome easily with advanced wireless technology inside the iPhone for Gigabit wireless connections, which means removing the dock connector.

The bigger questions: Are the rumors true? Will Apple actually release the iPhone 5 without a dock connector? Perhaps. Although I agree speculation on the evolution of the iPhone is normally spot-on, the iPhone 5 most likely will include the legacy connection as Apple refines iOS experience for a truly no-Mac/PC world. I say, wait for the arrival of iOS 6, and with it shall come the wireless revolution.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the tablet revolution taking place in today’s enterprise. The iPad and Apple’s curated App Store underscore IT’s need to move beyond its deny-by-default history, embrace risk, and evolve its position with respect to the business.

Everything you’ve heard about running IT is wrong. “IT/business alignment” is a frequently used buzzword (FUB) meant to encapsulate effective IT strategy. But for the most part, this FUB, if you’re of the acronym persuasion, is a poor choice of words and an even worse way of running IT. On a fundamental level, the notion of “alignment” separates IT from the rest of the business. And if alignment with the business is the best you can aspire to, you’ll soon be toast in this rapidly evolving IT landscape.

As I pointed out (ahem) more than a year ago (Hey Corporate IT, Get Out Of The Stoneage) today’s IT needs to make a double leap to get to the future. Mere alignment isn’t going to do the job.

To succeed going forward, IT must become a successful steward, rather than owner, of technology. It must encourage innovation at every level, right down to the end-user. It must support “single-actor practices” rather than simply enacting global policies. And to do so, you’re going to need IT/business integration, not alignment. Becoming an integral part of the enterprise, and not just a service provider to it, is essential, because nothing IT does from now on stands on its own. Everything — people, processes, tools, and technology — will be wired together to reinforce each other in service of the business mission.

Risk management is the philosophy that has become ITs ball and chain. There is one place where “alignment” is the right topic, right answer, and right vocabulary, and that’s the choice of priorities.

The most basic fact of business is that there are only three bottom-line priorities: revenue, cost, and risk. No matter what anyone at your company does, in the end it must tie back to making revenue grow, keeping costs under control, or managing risks more effectively.

The way it generally shakes out is this: Small companies, startups, Apple, and — sad to say — a small minority of other large companies rank revenue first, with cost coming in second and risk a distant last. Most large enterprises, having fallen into the play-it-safe trap, rank cost first, with cost coming in a close second and, in third place, cost. They’ve given up on their ability to influence revenue, and as they can’t measure whether their risk management efforts have any impact, they tend not to think of risk as a bottom-line value at all.

It’s safe to say that, with the exception of industries in which lives are at stake (health care, nuclear power, offshore drilling), most businesses rank either revenue or cost as their top priority. Risk management just has to be good enough. After all, few actually face the threat of a long vacation in a government-run facility should events go awry.

For IT, the priorities are different, with the most common ranking being Risk, Cost, and What Was That You Said?

In other words, when it comes to bottom-line priorities, IT is misaligned. This isn’t to say that risk doesn’t matter. It’s to say that IT needs to recognize that risk management isn’t the top corporate priority and stop acting as if achieving perfect prevention supersedes all other matters.

For example: In front of nearly every employee is more computing power than existed in the world at the end of WWII. Here’s what most IT security professionals consider best practice to be: Use it to access a server in the data center that emulates the computing power sitting in front of the user.

Why is that? Because it’s less risky because we can control what happens in the data center. If an end-user identifies an application that can help streamline operations (cost reduction) or take care of customers better so they’ll buy more from the company (revenue enhancement)? The operative phrase is “deny by default.” It means, as if it weren’t blindingly obvious, that allowing end-users to install anything that runs on the powerful computing device that sits in front of them is just too risky because of all the bad things that can happen.

It’s a persuasive argument, because after all, if you stop all bad things from happening, don’t you get what’s left? The good things, that is?

It’s an argument that holds up to at least 3 seconds of close scrutiny, after which it falls completely apart. Because it rests on a faulty assumption: That good things can happen without taking risks to make them happen. And they can’t.

Which brings us to the iPad, and even more, Apple’s App Store. Instead of talking about whether end-users should be allowed to install whatever they think will be useful on their PCs, let’s talk about whether they should be able to install whatever they think will be useful on their iPads. With the exception of a small handful of technologically sophisticated wise guys, we’re now talking about employees finding useful-sounding applications in the App Store and clicking on them so they automagically install.

The reason for deny-by-default is that some PC applications are dangerous. Without intending to, employees might accidentally install what looks like a perfectly innocuous piece of software but in reality is serious malware.

Say what you want about the opaque decision process for what can and can’t be sold in the App Store. The bottom line is that Apple actually screens each application before it can be sold through the store. That being the case, does deny-by-default still make sense?

Not at all. Yes, Apple’s determination to limit its customers to what it sells in its App Store is a level of paternalistic control many of us find dislikable. From an IT risk management perspective, though, it’s more than good enough to stand deny-by-default on its head: Compared to the average cost of an app (10 bucks) and the risk that it’s actually something nefarious (negligible), the opportunity represented by employees taking the initiative to find innovative ways to improve how things get done is, in the aggregate, immense.

When deny-by-default is the policy, the response to any request that leads to someone outside of IT using technology to innovate is, “Here’s why you can’t.” In the new IT, the response has to be, “Here’s how you can.”

In the case of tablets, there’s no reason the future can’t be right now.

The iPhone 4S went on sale this morning at Apple, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and select third-party retailers this morning. The Web was abuzz with tales of long lines everywhere. But what has become almost customary for AT&T subscribers trying to activate their shiny new devices, the oldest iPhone carrier partner appears to be having trouble handing the rush of new phone signing onto their network.

Two hours after receiving our iPhone 4S, we still cannot activate it on the AT&T network, and reports suggest we are not alone. Attempts to authorize the phone on AT&T both directly from the device and when connected via iTunes on a PC have produced the same error message:

“Your activation is still pending. You will receive an email notification once your activation is complete. We’re sorry. There was a problem connecting to the server. Please try again later.”

The system seems to recognize the user log-in information and retrieves the correct number for the phone. But once the customer agrees to the terms of service attempts to finalize the activation time out.

Users on CultofMac report similar issues on the AT&T network, although it is unclear whether customer on Sprint or Verizon are experiencing similar problems. At least one Sprint customer reported to the site a successful activation on that network.

Reporting over 1 million iPhones pre-ordered in the first 24 hours last week, Apple’s successor to the iPhone 4 is proving to be an unexpectedly hot commodity –  it is not surprising that the AT&T infrastructure is creaking under the strain. The much maligned carrier has been the weak link in first day iPhone activations pretty much from the launch of the Apple device in 1998.

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It’s coming, straight at you at a thousand miles an hour and nobody on Facebook can hide from it. If you’re one of the Facebook users who we’re ‘upset’ with last week’s round of Facebook system updates you haven’t seen anything yet.

It is without a doubt the most shattering change ever made to the social network and I expect it to cause a bit of an insurrection. I’m not talking about the new real-time “Ticker” at the top right of your profile or about the “Top Stories” that now appear at the top of the news feed — those are inconsequential compared to what’s next.

In the weeks ahead Facebook will be switching profile pages to a new format called “Timeline”. I’ll admit, as a technologist I prefer to work and play with things before they become available to (or are foisted upon) the general public, so I made the switch last week and instantly regretted it, this is the most sweeping change I’ve ever seen anyone, not just Facebook make to an existing platform. I HATED it.

After a couple of days however I’ve come to realize this is the best thing Facebook has ever done and it’s brilliant simplicity was lost on me at first. Your profile will go from having one central column to two, with boxes of text, photos, videos and maps of places you’ve checked-in at or posted mobile photos from. Instead however of just displaying your most recent activities, your profile will become more of a scrapbook for your life, all the way back to your birth if you want it to. Facebook can become in essence, a record of your existence: All your memories, your high points, your low points and everything in between. This is what Facebook was always meant to be, the true digitization of your life.

When you first see it you’ll wonder why the status update box is so small and where all your most recent updates went and why do you need to post a large “Cover photo” to your page (which is a nice touch by the way) and then, after you get over the complaining and start to work with it you’ll quite simply get lost in its elegance and easily waste a few hours tidying up your Timeline, choosing to feature your happiest memories, hide the insignificant ones, and then pausing for a bit when you come across something nostalgic. All this of course is based on everything you’ve posted to your profile over the years, so the longer and more active you’ve been on Facebook the better your timeline will be, and perhaps you wonder as I did is how Facebook knows what it knows about me, because it really appears know a lot.

Like our own memories, the Timeline seems to understand that some moments have resonance that stand the test of time. It’s a marvel of computer programming: An algorithm that comes eerily close to emulating human memory; perhaps the first algorithm to spark such a deep emotional response.

Yes you will hate the new Facebook profile when it launches in the coming weeks. Then, you’ll realize that Facebook has unleashed something remarkable; A meaningful social network. And like any other groundbreaking technology — you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.

The news is something of a coup for Sprint, the nation’s third largest wireless service provider. If true, it could provide a stay of execution for a company that would otherwise be facing Verizon and AT&T/T-Mobile without a Cupertino trump card. Sprint’s stock has already jumped due to the news, although at last glance it seems to be returning to per-announcement levels.

Like Verizon, the backbone of Sprint’s network runs on the CDMA standard. Rather than manufacture a different iPhone for each carrier, the possibility of Sprint selling the iPhone 5 lends a bit of credence to news of the device’s dual-network nature.

Sources also report that instead of the hoped-for September release window, the iPhone 5 may instead see the light of day later in October.

“There’s always been a cold war with skirmishes on varying fronts since Facebook came on the scene so big,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “They increasingly see themselves as rivals with Google for advertising dollars. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. The competition? It’ll probably go even farther. We’ll see more hard-nosed competition coming.”

Facebook admitted this week to hiring a well-known PR firm to plant anti-Google stories in the media.

Both Facebook and the PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, admitted Thursday to trying to get journalists and bloggers to write negative articles about Google’s privacy practices. While Facebook denied that it was pushing a “smear campaign,” industry analysts said the surreptitious back-stabbing is a clear indication of how heated it’s become between the two Internet behemoths.

“Facebook is recognizing that Google is its biggest threat,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “Google is clearly gearing up for a run at social networking…. If anybody could put Facebook out of business at this point, it would be Google.

“A head-to-head competition between the two companies would probably end up with Google winning and Facebook gone,” he said.

The competition, and apparently ill will, between Facebook and Google has grown in recent months.

Last fall, Microsoft tightened its ties with Facebook, with the two companies working to make Internet search more social. It was a move that represented the biggest threat to Google’s search standing yet.

After that partnership was announced, Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner, told Computerworld that there was a growing strategic conflict between Facebook and Google.

“There is a battle for the future of the Web, and it is not about search engines, but about the social Web,” said Valdes at the time. “The competition is between the new and the old — between Facebook as the early leader in the social Web, and Google as the dominant player in the content Web. Everyone else, such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Twitter, will play a secondary role, and will start lining up on one side or the other.”

Given that level of rivalry, Enderle said he’s not surprised that Facebook would use a PR company to target such a big foe.

“They realized they needed to do battle,” he added. “They just misused their weapon…. Either stop doing this kind of thing or do it well.”

Both Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with IDC, and Olds said one problem here is that Facebook executives are simply too immature and too inexperienced in business to handle this level of competition. It’ll take a lot of business savvy to take down that kind of rival. And Facebook’s misstep raises questions about whether co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and associates have that kind of savvy.

“To me, Facebook is too immature to be in the position it’s in,” said Reynolds. “It’s growing too fast. It’s in a spot where it’s vulnerable to make stupid mistakes like this. In the past, it’s made stupid mistakes exposing people’s information and creating security leaks. This is less an issue of technology and more about management bringing mature judgment to growing a responsible business.”

And Facebook’s own privacy mistakes add another level to this whole issue.

What Facebook got caught doing was trying to seed stories in the media about Google’s privacy practices. This comes from a social networking company that has had more than its share of privacy and security blunders.

“For one thing, this seems to be to deflect attention from the terrible track record Facebook has in protecting user information,” said Reynolds. “This is classic the pot going down shouting that the kettle is black.”

Both Reynolds and Olds noted that if Facebook wants to take its competitor down a few pegs, it needs to be careful about what flaws it’s calling out.

“Facebook needs to realize they’re not a teeny tiny company,” said Olds. “They’re too big a company to be able to get away with this kind of thing. They could have made these same points through regular communications without this skullduggery and they wouldn’t have ended up in this spot. “

This year’s CES will feature some 2,500 companies, launching 20,000 new products, and displaying them across 1.6 million square feet of space at the Las Vegas Convention Center, an increase of more than 10% compared to last year’s show.

So, what will basically everyone in the consumer electronics world, except Apple, which doesn’t feel the need to grace CES with its presence – be selling?  For starters, tablets.

Already there have been announcements from companies like Acer, Motorola, Toshiba and others that they will unveil their hopeful iPad contenders at the show. It would be nice to see some something from Microsoft and especially from HP, which paid $1.2 billion for Palm and still has nothing to show for it.

Powering some of these new tablets will be a next generation system-on-a-chip (SOC) from Nvidia, that features dual processing cores in a power-sipping package. Better video, more multi-tasking, and longer battery life are the upshot. Will these mostly, Android-flavored machines finally give Apple some iPad competition? If the new, tablet-tuned, “Honeycomb” Android OS from Google works well, they could. What has held most everyone’s tablet efforts up is an operating system that can scale up to a tablet, and compete with Apple’s IOS.

I’m hearing rumors that the same dual-core Nvidia chip technology, called Tegra 2, is also going to power a new high-end phone from LG. Other chip news will come from Intel, which will be showing off the graphics and video chops of its latest “Sandy Bridge” chip. Expect this blazing-fast processor to appear in all sorts of interesting places you wouldn’t normally expect a computer chip to go, as well as more announcements of connected devices powered by Intel’s Atom line of chips.

AMD, is coming to CES with its “Fusion” line of chips. Fusion is going after the lower-end of computing. What that means is for about $400 you are going to be able get a netbook/smartbook/notebook, I never know which term is in vogue now.  I’ll see if they are worth a look, and whether the netbook category is really as doomed by the arrival of tablets as I think it is.

Expect the television world to be dominated by two things: various permutations of LED back-lighting, and connections to the Web – via WiFi, built-in Ethernet and a slew of external devices ranging from Blu-ray players to purpose-built boxes. At this point the hold-up to so-called “smart TV” hasn’t been the hardware, it’s the software. It had better be much improved, or we are due for the same connected TV drubbing this year that the Google TV received. Yes, there will be more 3D TV being trumpeted, but honestly, without enough movies and TV to back it up yet, who cares? (and the need for the ‘glasses’ is the worst!)

However not everything is about tablets, chips and light-emitting diodes. How about a pair of ear-buds that actually stays in your ears? That is what headphone maker Skullcandy is promising to debut with its “Fix” line. If they can make that happpen without your ears being torn off then I can wait until next year for the Smart-TV revolution.

While some good sites go bad from time to time, typically infected with subverted iFrames and bad advertisements, IE8 was blocking sites that didn’t have any ads — Visa.com, for one, as well as MoneyTreeInc.com and SalesAspects.com. It also looks like many (if not all) sites that use Telerik’s RadMenu under Microsoft’s ASP.Net were blocked.

It’s still too early to tell, but as best I can discern, all of the sites I can find that triggered IE8′s alarms were running Windows Server and IIS.

I haven’t seen any reports of problems with the Internet Explorer 9 version of SmartScreen. Since IE7 doesn’t have SmartScreen, the bug appears to be isolated to IE8.

Microsoft has yet to post any official explanation, although it appears as if the problem has been fixed.

We’ve all encountered bad antivirus signature file updates; update your antivirus signatures and all of a sudden old, trusted programs get flagged as harboring viruses or other nasties. Infamously, back in April, a bad update to McAfee’s signature file marked the Windows program svchost.exe as “infected” on some machines and quarantined it. When XP users tried to reboot their systems, they were locked out because svchost wasn’t available. Thousands of good PCs turned up with blue screens.

Bad anti virus updates can break machines, but they tend to happen in small doses. A few thousand PCs get sent to never-never land, the antivirus manufacturer gets stuck with lawsuits, clever people figure out ways to get around the damage, and life in the PC world goes on.

But what happens when, as in this case, millions of people get locked out of perfectly legitimate websites? It all goes by in real time. Users have no idea why their trusted website sprung a leak — but they’ll run, and they won’t come back anytime soon. Web admins pull their hair out, thinking they’ve done something wrong, trying to mollify customers, and keeping the boss from breathing fire. Heaven only knows how much money the shunned websites lost because of a stupid mistake at Microsoft.

We’ve all agonized over the problems with cloud computing. Add this to the list.

I wonder if Microsoft will ever divulge the full details, particularly if — as appears to be the case — the bogus false positives blocked people from getting at Microsoft own servers?

The news shouldn’t come as a surprise to Windows shops, though it could be a jarring dose of reality for organizations that have been postponing the inevitable transition from XP, be it to Windows Vista (it could happen), Windows 7, or something else entirely. Notably, Microsoft has improved the Windows XP Mode in Windows 7, which enables the platform to run XP-centric software.

“Per Microsoft guidelines regarding Windows XP, system vendors like Dell will no longer be able to ship systems with XP Professional and XP Home after October 22, 2010,” wrote a Dell spokesperson in the company’s corporate blog. “This means that we will stop offering XP as an option for customers starting this month in preparation for next month’s deadline.”

Also important: If you get your order in for an XP machine by the deadline, Dell will offer driver support only through December 2012. Microsoft ceased support for Windows XP SP2 last June (SP3 has been around for two-plus years) and plans to terminate Windows XP support on April 8, 2014.

New installations of Windows XP won’t disappear entirely come Oct. 22, though. Dell notes that organizations that aren’t ready to move to Windows 7  will be able to install Windows on machines on-site or take advantage of the company’s CFI (Custom Factory Integration) service, applicable to select Dell machines.

Additionally, users will have until 2014 (not 2020) to purchase Windows 7 and then downgrade to Windows XP.