Anyone reading this blog has already spend the last 24 hours immersed in a universe of news and analysis on Apple's new cancer-curing, famine-ending giant iPhone that can't make phone calls tablet computer. I have nothing to add and agree with everyone.

But in case you missed them, here are two YouTube videos that are worth watching (Warning: second video contains the occasional swear word. It also contains Adolf Hitler).

Out beyond ideas right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.
- Rumi, Persian poet

Out beyond tablets and touchscreens, there is a wonderful place. Please, take me there.
- Tom, guy

The technology thinker, blogger, videographer and polymath of the digital age, Robert Scoble, made a video of a demo of the funkiest new technology I have seen in a while. Sure, it doesn't cure cancer or restore hope to Haitians like Apple's upcoming product. But not every gadget is plucked directly from a mystical pool of divine water by the Lady of the Lake, so don't get your hopes up. In the meantime, to tide you over until Nerd Christmas begins in about 7 hours, this is pretty cool.

A new competition framework for the telecom market will be launched by the TRA today. Beep Beep's David George-Cosh is there for the release, and you can expect stories later today.

We should all have high hopes for what comes out of todays launch, and there are a couple of interesting things about this whole situation that are worth mentioning.  

Abu Dhabi's push to become a real player in the microchip industry, led by the government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company (Atic), has has taken it to Seoul. Today, Atic formed a partnership with the Korean Semiconductor Industry Association. And there was much rejoicing.

It is hard not to admire the story of South Korea's incredible rise from abject poverty one one of the world's most prosperous and advanced economies. Aside from semiconductors, which they make better than pretty much anyone, those plucky Koreans export a ton of amazingly complex things, from enormous buildings to nuclear power plants.

There's no doubt that Abu Dhabi's push into advanced industries like semiconductors, aerospace and renewable energy is inspired by small Asian nations like Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, whose citizens now live the good life (perhaps not quite the Abu Dhabi good life) despite almost no real natural resources. And it is good to see partnerships like this, which explicitly recognise that inspiration.

Read on for the full announcement:

We've been living in the future now for at least a decade, and while the iPhone is a pretty amazing Star Trek communicator, crucial technological leaps promised to us by our popular culture - amazing holograms, the jet pack and hoverboard, decent voice recognition, virtual reality - have pretty much singularly failed to deliver.

And yes, while life is great, I still feel a pang of bitterness when stuck in traffic, cursing the lack of a flying car. I still resent the fact that trees are chopped down with chainsaws, when light sabers would clearly do a better, more energy efficient job. And don't even get me started on what the lack of an everlasting gobstopper does to me sense of self worth.

Luckily, Abu Dhabi has gone out and developed a driverless electric pod that will whisk you from place to place, guided by the wisdom of the cloud rather than the madness of man.

UDPATED: See below

For all the possibilities that a service like Twitter offers to an enterprising journalist, advertiser or PR type, most "professional" usage here in the UAE has been ham-fisted at best, spammy at worst.

That is slowly changing, and tonight in Dubai is an event that is probably the sharpest and slickest use of Twitter by PR people that we have seen so far.

Spot On PR, who are clearly trying to make a name for themselves as the socially cluey PR agency for the UAE, are behind the OKI AWE exhibition tonight at JamJar gallery.

Here's five reasons why this event shows some proper Twitter clueyness:

The wonderfully-named Nigerian newspaper The Punch (not related to the British publisher of witty cartoons and wartime propaganda) has reported that Etisalat, along with a bunch of other telcos, has entered the race to privatise Nitel, the troubled Nigerian state telecom company.

It has been a difficult privatisation process for Nitel, which was sold to private investors back in 2006. That sale was cancelled by the government after it said the buyers didn't do enough to improve the network. In August 2009, the government set itself a 60-day period to finish the privatisation, that one clearly whooshed by like a Douglas Adams deadline.

Nitel is a fairly marginal business in itself, but this story is part of something bigger: Africa has way too many telecom networks, and consolidation is the name of the game going forward. The continent's mobile market has boomed in the last decade, leading to plenty of operators with deep pockets, looking for an acquisition. But few have pockets as deep as Etisalat.

The management consultancy Booz & Company have put out a short summary of what they think will be the big trends of the telecom sector in 2010. The trends are not surprising: talk of emerging markets, apps and services being more important than basic voice calls, demand for ubiquitous internet, etc.

So while there is nothing revolutionary here, it's  worth a quick read if you want to feel briefed on the major talking points for the industry going forward. You never know when the conversation at a trendy dinner party will shift to the topic of operational efficiencies - now that the era of mass greenfield growth is over, how should telcos maintain bottom line growth? When that beautiful person to your right at a trendy restaurant asks the question, you need to have an anwer.

Read on, your membership of the in crowd and polite society may depend on it...

The Khaleej Times have a piece today saying that a new licensing system to allow internet-based phone calls is just around the corner, according to a statement from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.

Internet calling has been banned and/or regulated out of existence in the UAE since 2006, because the TRA consider it to be a competitor to traditional telecom networks, and therefore requiring a UAE telecom license to be legal. How do you get one of those licenses? Well, the TRA is working on a new licensing system. And it has been since 2006.

Here is a short collection of quotes from TRA management on the introduction of internet calling services in the UAE:

Things that made it worth waking up this morning:

- Apple's long-rumoured tablet computer, a device destined to save humanity from imminent collapse, will be launched at the end of January and available in stores in March, according to this Wall Street Journal report. It will come with a 10-11 inch screen, which makes it closer to a small laptop than a giant iPhone, the story says, citing people briefed on the matter. A $1000 price point is floated, which also puts it pretty much in the laptop space - but cheaper than the Dh12,000 steel apple, seen to the left, on sale at Dubai's Burlesque Boutique. Oh, and Engadget have a great review of the new Google Nexus One phone.

- Also in the WSJ, an interesting interview with Sameer Nath, the head of Citigroup's mergers and acquitions business in India. He says the country's telecom sector is ripe for serious consolidation, with dozens of national and regional operators. Etisalat, trying to grow a network from scratch and sitting on billions of dollars of cash and a sovereign-quality credit rating, should be a major player in consolidation there in the coming years.

- Booz & Co have put out a new report on the future of tech-empowered marketing campaigns. "Consider a situation where, during a business trip, with a dead battery, a phone charger left at home and a big client calling in two hours, you visit your mobile operator's nearest retail outlet to buy a new charger. Expecting to finish this quickly, you emerge 20 minutes later with a complete travel kit, including a spare charger, a battery, and a three-month trial subscription to the mobile company's basic e-mail and Internet service package." Nightmare? Utopian future of our dreams? We report, you decide, click here to download a brief of the report.

(Photo by Amy Leang / The National)