Always ahead of the curve, even 20 years ago Apple envisioned computers as a source of personal entertainment—a mobile device that could capture images, play music, and serve as a platform for viewing catalogs and magazines. In a recent Fast Company article, Smart Design co-founder Tom Dair takes a look back to 1989 when Apple challenged his company and a couple others to develop concepts for a tablet device.

With only 30 days to complete the project, the Smart Design team got busy imagining various uses for the tablet. The prototype included features such as a high-quality lens for directly capturing and working with images, a guitar chord touch screen that allowed users to strum along with music played on built-in speakers, as well as a bevy of solutions for carrying and protecting the rectangular aluminum machine.

Possibilities for the tablet seemed limitless—Smart even imagined taking it to the moon. Now working on how publications will be viewed on the new iPad, the renowned design studio continues to experiment with the future of technology.

And, they're off! With less than a week to go before the scheduled iPad launch, Apple has already started shipping out the first models of the highly-anticipated tablet.

The formal launch of the iPad is still April 3rd, another five days off, but users who pre-ordered their iPads have begun receiving tracking numbers for their shipments on Apple's order status pages. Just because your iPad is already on its way doesn't mean that you'll end up with it in advance of launch day, as UPS will likely sit on the packages until their specified delivery date.

If you're holding out for a retail purchase, you'll have more options than simply Apple stores to consider on Saturday, as Best Buy will also be stocking the tablets. An internal Best Buy memo notifies staff of the product launch, which will only be available in certain Best Buy locations at first. It looks like the store is planning to increase its stocks over the next week, with a great nationwide push for iPad sales starting the second week of April. Between Best Buy and Apple stores, you should be able to find the iPad for sale somewhere nearby.

The Enterprise Irregulars blog is sponsored by .   Work.  Online.  

The Enterprise Irregulars blog is sponsored by .   Work.  Online.  

The Enterprise Irregulars blog is sponsored by .   Work.  Online.  

Apple iPad pre-orders are now open, accepting reservations for the tablet's April 3 launch date.

Anticipating the demand and trying to avoid some of the hoarding that can cause new products like this to show up for a quick flip on eBay, Apple is limiting pre-orders to two per person. The prices match those we've heard before, and Apple promises free shipping (even with the tablets set to release on a Saturday).

The pre-order also gives us a look at some of the official iPad accessories, including a $70 keyboard dock and a $30 keyboard-less option. For $30 you can order a VGA adapter to connect your iPad to an external monitor, which is a bit of a shame because an HDMI-out adapter would be much more useful for many users.

If you're still looking to pick up an iPad but haven't placed your pre-order yet, head on over to the Apple Store site and snag one before they're gone.

The Enterprise Irregulars blog is sponsored by .   Work.  Online.  

While some of you may have picked up a laptop with a solid-state drive, or even outfitted your PC with one in order to experiment with faster boot times, the flash-based storage devices haven't quite gotten the momentum needed to replace the traditional hard disk drive as the PC storage solution of choice. One factor that could hinder their adoption even more, according to industry sources, is the tremendous need for flash chips from Apple to outfit its soon-to-hit-stores iPad.

One key marker that flash chips are getting scarcer is that, following a glut of chips and associated low prices, those costs are on their way back up again. This is in spite of increased production rates by flash manufacturers.

Apple is already one of the biggest consumers of flash chips, eating up close to a third of the world's production of NAND-type flashes. Being that large a buyer, the company is likely able to get special treatment from suppliers, letting the iPad get first dibs on remaining flash supplies. Everyone else will end up paying more as stocks are depleted.

There's good news in sight, though, as new manufacturing techniques should mean that by next year we'll see some of the most affordable flash chips yet and, by association, larger and better solid-state drives. The SSD revolution will just have to sit this year out.

You've seen the product announcement videos, you've read the pundits arguing left and right over whether or not the iPad will be the next big thing or an oversized toy; now it's time to decide if you want to check it out yourself. Apple's set the tablet's release date and is going to be opening the books for pre-orders next week.

Next Friday, March 12, you'll be able to either go online or hoof it to one of Apple's retail locations and put in your pre-order for the iPad. Considering the rumors about limited production numbers and potential stock shortages, if you're leaning towards picking one up, and you'd like to get your hands on it before summer, you'd be smart to get a pre-order in, and early at that.

The standard-connectivity version of the iPad, with WiFi only, will finally go on sale in just under a month, on April 3. Those of you with pre-orders will be able to just stroll over to your local Apple store to pick yours up, while the rest of us try our luck waiting in line to score one of the models. Apple hasn't pegged down an exact date for when you can expect to get one of more expensive iPads with the built-in 3G modem, but it will be sometime later in April. Even without a release date, you'll still be able to place a pre-order, come next week.

So with this in mind, I’ve pulled together a few links which may help shed some light if you’re mulling these kinds of questions over too.

There’s the FT Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference which was on yesterday and today. Although I’m not there, and despite the distinct lack of women speakers (i.e. only one across two days – Jeez, is this really 2010?! Come on FT.com – you can do better), nevertheless I’m following some of the tweets from it and there are some gems in there. Have a look for the hashtag #FTMedia10 and follow FTDigitalMedia on Twitter. I’m sure there’ll be some news and blog coverage coming out of this conference too, so watch this space.

A *must read* article is this one Understanding the participatory news consumer – a comprehensive breakdown of the latest Pew Internet research showing what the US digital news consumer is up to on their mobile phone. I’m not going to repeat what the article covers, but it shows that mobile internet users access the internet more often than their fixed line counterparts:

“On-the-go news consumers:  Who are they?

The typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, age 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full-time.  Given their younger profile, it is not surprising that 40% of this group are parents of young children (compared with 30% of the general adult population), and 32% have never been married.  One in three (32%) live in households with incomes of $75,000 or more. As a subset of the broader mobile internet population, on-the-go news consumers reflect many of their characteristics (see table below).

Not surprisingly, on-the-go news consumers maximize their cell phone use.  They are 67% more likely than other cell phone users to text message, more than twice as likely to take pictures with their phones, and four times as likely to use their phones to instant message.  They are also especially heavy internet users—80% of this on-the-go group are online on a given day, compared with just 67% of other internet users—and they engage in activities such as blogging (20% v. 11%), using social networking sites (73% v. 48%), and using status update sites like Twitter (29% v. 14%) at significantly higher rates than other internet users.”

And this topic or where mobile meets media was also on our minds in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress where the UKTI hosted a Mobile Monday London panel session discussing this very topic. Paul Skeldon from Telemedia 360 took some video of it, the highlights of which you can see here. It's in four parts with Russell Buckley, VP of Global Alliances at Admob chairing, and Chris Boden from Lonely Planet, Lucie McLean from the BBC, Steve Ives, CEO at Taptu and yours truly on the panel.

Is Traditional Media Dead?

Is Advertising Dead?

Are Applications Dead?

Will the iPad Save Us?

Paul also covered the panel session in this month’s Telemedia 360’s PDF newsletter which is worth a read if media and mobile is your game. [You can download a free copy from their website.] I am widely quoted in the article but to get the full context, it’s probably best to view the videos *and* read the article too to get the whole picture.

If anyone else out there has interesting links to share around the topic of where media meets mobile, then please do share in the comments below, or email me and I’ll add them to the article.

Although there's still no evidence that the iPad, as it will ship to Apple stores, will include a front-facing camera, more clues continue to surface that suggest the feature either used to be a part of the iPad hardware, or will become one in a future revision.

We already saw how an indentation in the iPad's frame perfectly fits the MacBook camera component. Now evidence of software support for the camera is available in addition to this hardware clue. Analysis of the latest iPad development kit shows a few variables tied to the missing camera. Software built with the SDK is able to ask the iPad its running on if the hardware supports a flash, zoom controls, and most revealing yet, if the device "hasFrontCamera".

This evidence might suggest that the camera will see its return at some point. After all, it might have been too late to change the hole in the frame, but why leave software support for the camera if Apple doesn't intend it ever to be used?