So, we're probably all in agreement that jobhunting is not quite as straightforward and delightful as we'd like it to be - and it's for this reason that it gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of Letterbanc, a new service designed to make the whole job search and application process a little quicker and less painful for one of the sectors where it is currently most challenging: academia and research.

Letterbanc is simple. First, it matches your profile information with information about internships, scholarships, and academic funding (it's not a general job site like fish4jobs or Monster, but instead focuses on a sector where available money for posts is rarely advertised on traditional job services). Then, once you've been matched to appropriate opportunities for your preferences, Letterbanc really comes into its own by speeding up the whole application process with its services for requesting and storing the letters of recommendation which are so essential for this type of application.

These letters can then be thoroughly checked (either by you or, if the recommendation letter is confidential, a Letterbanc expert will check it for you) and sent out at a moment's notice. In essence, Letterbanc is a one-stop shop for finding funding opportunities from academic, and other similar or affiliated, organisations, which enables you to store and send out all relevant documents with a few clicks - rather than the traditional process whereby you wait for some random coincidence to discover an opportunity and then scramble around chasing former teachers for a reference each time you need one.

So, if this sounds like it could improve your jobhunting experience, head over to Letterbanc and try it today - it is free to use initially and only becomes a paying service once you are actually storing and sending documents. I would also mention the lovely user interface and clean design - but since we built the thing, that might come across as blowing one's own trumpet, so we'll leave you to be the judge on that one...

Anyway, we'd like to thank all our staff who have worked hard to deliver this project and also our clients, Christopher Omran and  Daniel Zoughbie who is a TED fellow known for his interesting work on using social networks to improve healthcare in challenging environments and a post-doctoral scholar to boot, whose own academic experience has been key in identifying the issues Letterbanc aims to address.

You probably recognise these kind of tweets because they are also common on Facebook as uninteresting status updates proclaiming that the user has just performed some sort of mundane activity, in a mundane and uninteresting way. In essence, there is nothing worth sharing here and, unless you are a super celebrity (with a very devoted following) most other twitter users won't care to receive such tweets. (The other exception is if you are a very talented writer/thinker who can make anything and everything seem interesting - in which case you don't need any advice from me on how to be successful with twitter).

The problem is that new or inexperienced twitter users sometimes don't know what else to tweet - which is why they either look around them, or into the past 5 minutes of their life, in order to find some potential content for a tweet. This is the same as walking around in the street and telling people 'I want some chips' or 'Can't wait for Christmas' - there's nothing wrong with this particularly except for the fact that those statements/utterances, however valid and true, are not likely to interest anyone else (again if you are Madonna or Britney Spears, then that would be an exception to the rule).

So, tip number one is to avoid the mundane statements about doing something mundane. Either the sandwich needs to be interesting - or your thoughts on it do. Both is even better, while neither is a waste of everyone's time.

The next point is to think about why you are communicating on twitter and with whom. If people are likely to follow you for professional reasons, then you might want to focus the majority of your tweets on related matters. If this is not why you joined twitter, then that's fine - but maybe make this clear in your info description (e.g. 'Joe Bloggs, CEO of a major corporation and keen fisherman. Follow me for thoughts about my favourite hobby' or something of the sort).

Finally, remember that if you want to get tweeting, the most interesting results will come from tweets that promote engagement from other users - and that the best way to do this is to offer something interesting or unique. Only users with established public prominence (whether celebrities, politicians, or high-profile companies) can count on getting users simply because of who they are. For the rest of us, here are two very successful twitter users who are good examples of how to either offer a unique concept (@shitmydadsays) or a variety of consistently interesting personal tweets (@stephenfry).

Anyway, as I said in the last post - the best way to get the most out of twitter is to use your intuition and play around with it and see what works for you. Happy tweeting!

1. Ask yourself this question: What do I want to get from my twitter experience? Do you want to use it for purposes of following all the latest news and developments in your professional area? Or maybe to keep up to date with what's happening in relation to your hobbies and interests? Do you want your experience to be one-way (i.e. you only want receive info) or would you like to also participate with your own tweets? If you choose the latter of those last two options, what is the purpose of your participation? For fun and leisure or for professional reasons such as building a social media profile, getting noticed by potential employers, or something else entirely?

You don't of course have to choose only one of these options - and indeed there are far more potential uses for twitter than the few mentioned above. However, one problem that users consistently find with twitter (as we shall also see in the next post) is that their experience is sometimes rather flat and doesn't quite fit with the rave reviews that some other experienced users are espousing. One common reason for this is that users haven't considered any of the above questions at all.

2. Avoid excessive noise. Some people/organisations/companies tweet endlessly and these users can quickly clog up your display so that they drown out the full range of follows that you have chosen. For users like this it is especially important to decide whether or not it is worth the bother, since many other tweets will simply get lost by the quick turnover of these very active accounts (news organisations especially function in this way, so if you follow the news using other apps/websites - maybe don't do so on twitter as well unless you're specifically focused on this one area).

3. Avoid duplication. This point is connected to the above and is again aimed to improve the quality of experience on twitter. For example, if you import all your Facebook friends into twitter and follow them all, you will inevitably end up with a lot of crossover between status updates and tweets (many people post the same thing for both). Again, not all users do this but, if you are an active Facebook user, you might want to seriously consider whether it's worth using twitter to connect with the exact same people - and in the exact same way - as you do on Facebook. This is something to be especially careful with when you're prompted to import contacts from other services (Hotmail, MSN, Gmail, Yahoo) upon joining twitter.

4. If you want to get involved by writing your own tweets - and especially if you are doing so from a professional position - then you'll need to consider the way you present yourself on the network. Choose a profile photo and a short description that makes sense to the people you'd like to communicate with. You might also want to limit the number of tweets unrelated to professional matters, otherwise people who follow you for work-related reasons might decide it's not worth the bother (maybe make a separate work account if you are highly active user on this front). Also, remember to add a disclaimer in your description that the views of your twitter account do not reflect your employer's views - it can help save a whole lot of hassle.

5. Remember that most other twitter users are also other people (they far outnumber organisations and companies on the network). The service is therefore at its best when you build connections with people that you otherwise couldn't reach so easily and build a communicative network that you don't have on Facebook or LinkedIn. Twitter is a bit like other social networks, but it also has many unique features which are most evident if you try to use it a bit differently than you would those other services.

Anyway, you might already have figured out that the best way to really get into twitter is just to start using it for yourself. The longer you play around with it, the more logical and intuitive it will seem and you'll probably be better positioned to work out exactly why you're there and how to make the most of it. Next time, I'll discuss the problem of 'I just ate a sandwich' type tweets, why, and how, to avoid them.

For those who are unaware of Misha Glenny's work, he has built up an increasingly distinguished career reporting on the region of Eastern Europe, first as Balkan correspondent for the BBC and then more recently as an independent author (covering extensively the fall of Yugoslavia), freelance speaker and journalist.

His experience of Eastern Europe undergoing post-Socialist transformations in the 1990's enabled him to closely observe some of the key fallout from those rapid and unpredictable socio-political changes, especially the rise of organised crime networks in Russia and former USSR states. This research formed the basis of his 2009 book, McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime, which looked at less well-known and under-studied global crime networks covering everything from Nigerian 419 fraud, the Japanese Yakuza, Eastern European smuggling and global money laundering operations (see his TED talk on this here).

Glenny has now followed this up with Darkmarket, a book-length study of one of the most modern, fast-growing - and, consequently, little understood - forms of organised crime: cybercrime. He spent two years (between 2009 and 2011) conducting a wealth of interviews with key players in a number of high-profile busts related to credit card and bank fraud, centred in particular on three notorious websites Shadowcrew, CarderPlanet, and Darkmarket. Everyone from cyber security experts, police officers (from as far afield as Istanbul, Pittsburgh, and Scunthorpe), fraud victims and, most crucially of all, hackers and carders themselves are included in the research.

All of those interviews have been carefully adapted and compiled into a mazy and fascinating book, that will inform you of all those things you didn't understand about the web - like why spam exists (who sends it, how, and why) to what those ads that invite you to 'earn $$$ while working from home' really mean (in short: using your online bank account to assist in money laundering for credit card fraud). Likewise, the absolute headache that the internet presents to legislators, the judiciary, and many police forces (who are often equally caught out and outmanoeuvred by the fast moving nature of cybercrime) comes through very clearly as one of the key areas of our legal system that requires reform and clarification for such purposes.

As well as meticulous research, the other thing that Glenny does exceptionally well is build human relationships with those involved - including many now-jailed hackers. This, combined with his snappy and effective writing, enables us to see both the online identities of renowned cybercriminals - and their 'real-world' human personalities and characters. Understanding the hacker as a human being (and not only as online or criminal entity) is essential - according to Glenny - if we are to truly get to grips with an issue that could be increasingly central to matters of national and global economic and military security, as well as personal privacy.

It is this aspect of Glenny's book that really elevates it to being more than an account of a few illicit web forums and the police cases surrounding them and instead a fully fledged and perceptive new contribution to thinking about cybercrime - what it is and how and why it exists. As the book makes clear, this type of crime, while often mirroring traditional organised crime networks in many ways, does have one unique element to it - the complete and utter reliance on people with an extreme level of computing ability and intelligence. Unlike most crime, it requires individuals who are at the pinnacle of human ability in a certain field (programming, maths, etc) and is totally reliant on these relatively rare creatures. Getting to the core of who the hacker is, and why he hacks is therefore the central question for those interested in understanding or reducing cybercrime (this is also the core message of his second TED talk).

Anyway, Darkmarket reads like a police/espionage thriller with all the classic elements: double agents, backstabbing, undercover cops, glamorous playboy lifestyles and so on. As befits a book about the web, the chapters are very short (almost like blog posts) and multiple narratives unfold simultaneously, overlapping, and intersecting - sometimes in the virtual world, sometimes the physical. Likewise, as we would expect with a tale of the web, the multiple identities belonging to many of the main characters also often overlap, proliferate (or are appropriated by others) - which can sometimes be confusing as a reader, but only because that is a consequence of the increasing ubiquity of the online world - identity sometimes gets very complicated and as a result we need to update our concepts somewhat for the 21st century.

In short, Darkmarket will make your head spin - both with excitement at learning and discovering something which is a tangential aspect of everyone's (virtual) reality and with confusion at the sheer complications that this creates for law enforcement and legislators. As I said earlier, Glenny's book is that very rare thing: a study of an important and complex, but potentially dry, subject - that is executed with such skill that it is never anything but thrilling, engaging and informative.

(N.B. Q1 2012, perhaps confusingly, refers to sales and revenue for the 14-week period ending December 31st 2011. The naming refers to when the results are published, i.e. early 2012 - and not the period of economic activity itself - although fiscal years do vary from country to country so this might not hold true for all the examples below - I've indicated where there's a difference).

1. Apple

The obvious starting place since their results have been the most discussed of the lot. In short: scarily good figures, record-breaking in fact. $46.33 billion in revenue ($13.06 billion of which was profit). Share prices have soared yet again and, by way of contextualisation, there's a good point over at Techcrunch: only 3 companies have ever achieved figures like this before and they were all oil companies. (Unsurprisingly, US mobile network provider and iPhone carrier AT&T also posted a decent quarter with revenues up 3.6% to $1.1 billion).

2. Google

Basically share price falling (from super high to slightly less super high, but remains higher than Apple's) mainly due to the fact that Google missed some targets despite posting more mega profits. Main worry is about the increasing move to mobile and whether Google can fully translate its profit making aspects (search and Youtube) to this arena, despite the fact that Android tablet market share is up to 39% and will probably soon surpass Apple's iOS (which runs on the iPad). 2012 will probably be an interesting year in this respect.

3. Nokia

Mixed bag for the company trying to revive their mobile standing through collaboration with Microsoft with Windows Phone models such as the Lumia devices. Note, Nokia is Finnish so their fiscal year is different - these results are for their Q4 (which is the same period as Apple's Q1). Nokia massively improved on the previous quarter, Q3 2011, but not enough to avoid a significant drop compared with the same quarter in 2010. The Lumia devices are selling well, but apparently this seems to be at the expense of Symbian phones (Nokia's previous mobile OS). The company registered an operating loss of $1.3 billion. The reports also revealed that Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to adopt Windows Phone - a figure which had previously been kept secret.

4. Nintendo

Very poor results for Nintendo's Q3 (again, same time period but different name as Nintendo use the Japanese fiscal year from April to April). Sales are down 31.2% on the equivalent period the year before but there was a big announcement promising a turn-up of fortunes - the follow up to the Wii, the Wii U, will probably be on sale towards the end of 2012.

5. Netflix

Interesting analysis of Netflix, who recently launched in the UK, over at Techcrunch. Though revenues are at an impressive $847 million for the last quarter, the profit margins of the new streaming service (which is the fast-growing side of Netflix) operates with pretty measly profit margins when compared to the much more lucrative DVD side (which is now shrinking in subscribers).

6. AirBnB

OK, so while they're not a publicly traded company (and don't release detailed financial reports yet), AirBnB did also release some very interesting data. After registering 4 million overnights in the past year, the company will be opening 6 new international offices (Barcelona, Milan, Copenhagen, Moscow and Paris) and looks set to really break the mainstream in 2012.

There we go, a smattering of highlights from the last fiscal quarter (whatever you want to call it).

The frequency with which scandal erupts around a misjudged tweet or an offhand comment, caught on someone's iPhone and uploaded to Youtube, suggests that social media practically entraps people into such costly blunders with its pretty user interfaces and seemingly inconsequential virtual nature - and then the real world mess catches up with you. Last week for example, an English footballer was sacked by his club after posting a homophobic tweet in response to a TV show he was watching. I picked that example at random from my memory, but there were at least three or four others just from last week here in the UK (Ed Miliband, Diane Abbott, Tom Harris, Wojciech Szczesny etc).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we know better than ever what people are thinking - perhaps even to a detrimental degree - wherein thoughtless comments which people might not otherwise say in the company of others, get instantly shared with thousands. I'm not, however, here to debate the philosophical implications of all this. Instead, I'd just like to give a quick example where this insight into public figures' real thoughts can be quite illuminating.

Rupert Murdoch has recently joined twitter and has been using the service to share his views on SOPA (which he supports fully) and piracy (which he doesn't). His recent comments have now been excellently 'storified' by journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis, who breaks down Murdoch's rants against Google and Barack Obama (in the wake of today's setbacks for SOPA) and illustrates the fundamental problem facing Murdoch in the internet age: he doesn't understand the web.

Ok, so this is hardly news (there was the small matter of Murdoch's News Corp. running Myspace, then the world's most successful social network, into the ground) but nonetheless, since usually his personal views reach us in a highly mediated form via his spokespeople, his media outlets and his press officers, we've never really had as direct evidence of Murdoch's web views as we have now.

The point is that, while we should be wary of reading too much into 140 character tweets, what is clear is that Murdoch personally does not display a huge degree of enthusiasm for the innovation that publishing industries are being forced into by the web and would prefer to merely port existing (but increasingly outdated models) over to the web - and protect them with prohibitive legislature.

Look at those tweets and ask yourself - would you invest in the man who wrote them if he came to you asking for funds for his web start-up business? Does he seem like someone who is gonna do something clever or new online?

The answer probably would be no. Murdoch doesn't need your money anyway (he has plenty of it already in all likelihood), but what his recent tweets illustrate, for me at least, is that he is involved with the web purely out of necessity and hasn't developed a massively sophisticated view of how the internet works. If I wanted some creative ideas and fresh views on the online publishing landscape for example, I probably wouldn't call him.

Who, for example, are the Concerned Women of America - and why do they support SOPA so much? What about the mysterious Centre for Individual Freedom? Americans for Tax Reform? Let Freedom Ring?

Well, in case you hadn't guessed from the names of these organisations, they're all US right-wing pressure groups and their presence on the SOPA list of supporters worries me. It worries me because I'm deeply suspicious of why they would invest such extensive lobbying energy supporting SOPA if all they cared about was internet piracy. Movie studios and record labels have obviously vested financial interests in the internet piracy debate and thus it is obvious why they might spend time and (lots of) money supporting anything which might even possibly curb piracy, at least in the US.

Why on earth do these right-wing pressure groups care so much about SOPA? This is the question that worries me in relation to the anti-democratic threat of SOPA (covered in my previous post). In short, I don't have any answers as to why these groups have chosen to get involved with SOPA, but I will provide a list of those signatories that I consider most alarming, and why:

• American Bankers' Association - Powerful lobby group for the financial services industry, representing many of the largest US banks. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of how the 2008 financial crisis came about should be deeply suspicious of any effort by finance lobbyists to influence US legislature...
• Americans for Tax Reform - Pressure group who demand economic de-regulation and flat, low, tax rates (so that basically a millionaire pays the same rate as janitor). In other words, people who share the same ideological position as the ABA above, advocating the interests of the financial services industry at the expense of regulation and transparency.
• Centre for Individual Freedom - This organisation claims to be non-partisan, which seems slightly incongruous with the incessant negative coverage of Democratic President Barack Obama, which is obviously anything but neutral or balanced (click over to get a flavour for yourself - my favourite is where they quote an anonymous tweet about Obama's 'corrupt style of governing' - a great way to circumvent the legal obligation to substantiate your stories).
• Concerned Women of America - Another openly right-wing organisation with various shocking statements to its name. My favourite is their defence of Pastor Scott Lively as a man who 'speaks the truth'. Lively is the co-author of a book which claims that Nazism's extremist excesses were actually caused by homosexuals.
• Let Freedom Ring - Another right wing pressure group which advances the level of ignorance on various issues (especially economic ones - in which 'Growth' and Government 'Spending' are shown to be diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive, and George Bush is hailed as an economically successful president, despite presiding over the reckless build-up to, and financial crisis of 2008. Incidentally, Barack Obama, is blamed for the crisis by virtue because he presides over the fall-out).

Anyway, I'll leave it there - I could have gone into more detail with almost all of the organisations above, but there's little need since a quick glance over at their websites will quickly reveal to you their ideological positions. I'll finish on a simple question - why do these right-wing groups, who between them combine traditional American religious conservatism (anti-abortion, anti-gay etc) with extreme economic neo-liberalism (you know, the exact reason why we've had yet another economic crisis - leaving millions of people without homes, jobs, or savings), want to support SOPA so much? Is it because they have suddenly become crusaders for copyright and intellectual property, and decided to expend time and energy fighting to protect it? Or could there be other ways in which SOPA might be desirable for them?

Foodsplore helps users to discover great new restaurants and cafes by combining location based services with social networking. You can see where your friends are eating and what they thought of the food, service, ambience and everything else thanks to Foodsplore's community feedback features. And, with the aid of our new iPhone app (Android and Blackberry versions coming soon), finding a great snack or meal while out and about has never been easier.

Simply fire up the app, see what's available in your area and what your friends (and other users) have to say about it. Or, if instead you're just keen to discover something new to tingle your tastebuds, Foodsplore also helps you find places you'll love in advance - so no more finding out the hard way that a place isn't for you (paying through the nose for a meal you didn't enjoy, having a nice occasion ruined by below-par service, or whatever else).

As well as location based searching, you can also find new eating-out options by food type, deals, or glance at the social calendar feature which shows you where your friends are planning to try in the next month. As well as tips, users can share their experiences with photos and location-based check-ins, all of which are aggregated in a 'Splat' score - which gives you information as to how detailed and successful someone's recommendations are. In short, whether you're a foodie looking to explore new experiences or simply need somewhere decent for lunch in an unfamiliar town, Foodsplore is for you.

The Foodsplore team will head to SXSW Interactive for the 5-day conference in March 2012, along with 33 other hand-picked UK digital start-ups as part of the UK Trade and Investment mission. Here at Etondigital we're very excited for Zainab and Foodsplore and will have more coverage of the conference when it comes around in eight weeks. In the meantime, head over to Foodsplore.com, or check out the iPhone app in the Apple app store, to find out more right now. Sign up with an email address, or simply log in with facebook, and get exploring!

The problem with the bills, as most opponents see it, generally hinges on two points:

• that draconian web censorship powers are dangerous and should not be granted lightly, since they could be abused to harm democratic opposition and activity
• that the bill will inhibit creativity and freedom online (an obvious economic disaster for a country where tech is a major industry)

On the first point of censorship, the issue is that the bill would allow US authorities to shut down a website instantly and indiscriminately, without adequate judicial process. Websites can be shut down even now, but the 'problem' is that this takes too long due to the awkward matter of respecting legal procedures. The proposed measure would essentially give the US government the same powers enjoyed by those authoritarian regimes in China, Iran, and Burma - who all make use of the powers precisely in order to control information flow so as to prevent democratic opposition and free speech.

What is interesting here is that, even though this is potentially against the US constitution (first amendment on free speech), this aspect hasn't really filtered through to the American public to the extent that they oppose the bill enough to kill it - which is usually what happens when a bill is seen to interfere with the constitution - whether it actually does or not. (Try tightening gun ownership laws for example...) Nobody is denying that piracy contravenes or undermines many essential laws - but the issue here is whether or not SOPA, in attempting to tackle the problem, might create another - arguably more worrying - one.

On the more tech side of things, since the bill proposes allowing interference with the web's DNS (Domain Name System) - which converts url addresses into machine-readable code - engineers fear that this risk of blanket censorship could stifle innovation massively. This would happen because the DNS would be used to remove an entire domain from search engines results (like wordpress.com for example) even if there was only a few actual posts or blogs which contravened piracy law. The implications for social media would be massive...

The bottom line is that by raising the stakes to such an absolute level, web companies and start-ups would have to expend huge energy in making sure SOPA rules were not breached, since the economic consequences would be huge for them in such a case. Imagine for example I start a group on Facebook for sharing copyrighted material of some sort (illegal NFL highlights or whatever). Facebook would eventually close my group - but maybe not before I'd shared the video clips with a few other users. Now, if 'content producers' are unhappy with Facebook's efficacy in dealing with this would they appeal to SOPA to get facebook.com removed from the DNS? What would the US economy's net gain/loss be from such an episode?

All that is even before we get to the question of whether or not SOPA would actually tackle piracy effectively? Couldn't offending websites just re-register and move to a different domain within hours of being taken down? Also, wouldn't this merely tackle a superficial aspect of piracy rather than going to the core of the problem? If technologies and the web change over the next couple of years, isn't it highly likely that piracy will look different and so need a whole new raft of laws again? Banning Napster didn't solve the problem, neither did getting rid of The Pirate Bay - so perhaps it's a bit naive to think that yet another ban will do the trick?

So, things are clearly far from straightforward. As an excellent Guardian piece on this issue has pointed out, new technology should really be creatively embraced by content industries since in the past they have always found ways to profit from such developments (cassette, VHS, DVD, etc) albeit the change was one they were partially forced into. After all, a limited ban will hardly change the fact that the economics of certain industries have changed irrevocably over recent decades.

Film industries were all too happy for innovation to be encouraged when it brought them better technology to make money (improved recording equipment, computers with special effects etc) but have decided that 'bad' technology that compromises their older business models should be in some way banned rather than responded to with new and innovative revenue models. iTunes and Spotify are just two examples of viable and extremely lucrative ventures for getting users to pay for music in a digital age, and I doubt that they will be the last ones we ever see.

Luckily, opposition to SOPA is building and there are various ways you can register your opposition. For non-US residents, the question is whether  or not this matters elsewhere. In my opinion, it's not hard to see that such an act would be a disaster for other countries as well, both in the scenario where they would then also be forced to adopt a similar law and where they aren't. In the former case, we end up with the law because domestic content industries demand it in order to protect themselves against the now even more powerful US studios/labels, while in the latter situation, our industry is undermined financially because US studios represent a sounder investment (with film production for example), thus weakening non US studios access to funds for example.

I won't pretend to have a solution to a problem which has persisted for almost as long as the internet has. I will however venture that since the entire problem only exists because technology has changed the economic behaviour of a certain good ('content') the solution will need to be a little more creative and innovative than simply stomping around trying to ban anything that looks like an internet pirate might have touched it. Especially, when such bans might also have serious implications for the valuable tech sector as a whole and perhaps even democratic rights to free speech.

There's already been a few notable interviews and keynotes worth mentioning; from Steve Ballmer's curious interview (summary: slow and steady wins the race, i.e. Microsoft is doing just fine) to Samsung's jam-packed forthcoming product line which will probably be a hard act to follow for the other tech players. Sony's press conference is live at the moment however, so we'll soon know what they have in store also.

Anyway, I'm sure there'll be plenty of interesting talking points cropping up over the next few days so I won't try to guess too much in advance right now - though if I were pushed to make one prediction it would be that we'll see fewer tablets this year as some manufacturers have decided to cut their losses on this front and simply accept that their half-hearted iPad rip-offs were no good in the first place. This doesn't mean that we won't see any tablets, just that I expect we'll only see ones with at least a semblance of a USP, rather than identikit iPad clones on every companies' display stand. (I'd also venture that the main interest with regard to new tablets will be in the form of lower-end devices with sub $100 price tags).

For the majority of us who are not able to go to CES in person, there's plenty of decent coverage online to keep you in the loop. Here's some highlights so far over at Guardian tech, while the other usual players (Engadget and Techcrunch especially) are all as reliable as ever in covering the event.