These days we’ve all got too many passwords to remember. The likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft want to ease your burden by letting you use their accounts to access all of your other services. A growing number of sites and services let you login with your Facebook details, for example, turning your Facebook account into your online identity card.

Facebook recently upped the stakes by striking a deal with Telstra to let pre-paid mobile customers access their account directly from Facebook. Telstra pre-paid customers can track their account balance, top up their credit and view usage history. Considering how much of a hassle it can be to deal with telcos, organising your phone bill via your Facebook account sounds pretty useful.

The Telstra deal is part of Facebook’s move beyond a simple “service” to become a “platform” on which other applications and services run. Game developers were quick to get onboard but Facebook wants to expand much further. Its aim is to develop a microcosm of the internet within Facebook’s walls, so in theory you never need to stray beyond Facebook’s grasp. Naturally this doesn’t sit well with the likes of Google and Microsoft who also have their own vast ecosystems and want to “own the customer”. Remember, if a service is free you’re often the product.

Of course Facebook and the others giants of the web aren’t introducing extra features such as phone bill management to make your life easier. They’re doing it to make sure that they’re so tightly entwined in your life that you can’t walk away. Facebook wants you to be too reliant on your account to abandon it. In return it gets to track what you do in every corner of your life.

Facebook and the others aren’t evil, they’re simply trading your privacy and personal information in return for convenience. It’s a reasonable trade to make if you comprehend what you’re trading and take the time to understand the various privacy settings. But Facebook does seem to benefit from the fact that many people don’t comprehend this transaction and think they’re getting everything for “free”.

Long before Facebook was on the scene, Microsoft dreamed of acting as our digital passports. Microsoft’s Hailstorm system was later renamed Microsoft Passport Network, .NET My Services and .NET Passport. You probably know it as a Hotmail account.

When Passport was integrated into Windows XP way back in 2001, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie said the public would fully accept Microsoft as a trusted repository for all their personal information within five to 10 years. Clearly he was wrong about that one.

Of course Microsoft’s Passport efforts failed because most people trusted Microsoft about as far as they could kick their computer. Yet the concept of trust has changed considerably in the last decade. Today people trust the likes of Facebook and Google with a surprising amount of personal information. But it remains to be seen whether they’ll become our one password to rule them all.

But what’s a Memristor, anyway?

Even if you’re not an electrical engineer, you’re probably familiar with the basic terminology of circuits — things like resistors, capacitors and so on. A memristor is a circuit type that was mathematically postulated back in 1971, with just one small problem; nobody quite knew how to build it. It’s a resistor with the ability to store memory based on a charge placed across it. The storage is more or less permanent; unlike the memory in the RAM that runs your current computer, a memristor can store information even when the power is cut. It’s even more granular than that, because a memristor works by having various levels of charge applied to or taken away from it. Standard memory is binary — ones and zeroes — and can only think in those kinds of “on” or “off” terms. A memristor should be feasibly able to store information in an essentially analogue way, because it’s not just a one or a zero; it’s a level of charge.

Why does that matter? Well, for a start, according to Apostolopolous, that means that a device using memristors for storage could be a lot more power efficient, simply because there’s no need to convert the ones and zeroes of standard memory back into more complex forms if they’re already stored that way.

Equally, the permanent storage capabilities of memristors could lead to computers with instantaneous ability to power up. It’s even postulated — although not yet demonstrated — that you could build arrays of memristors to form synapses similar to the human brain. We’re probably a fair few years away from a memristor-based brain, but Apostolopolous reckons that it should be feasible to use memristors as memory storage in products in the next couple of years.

Akamai (it’s Hawaiian for “intelligent” or “wise”) is a company that provides content delivery services for online companies, providing load balanced mirrors of content worldwide. You’ve almost certainly downloaded something via an Akamai mirror at some point, but the service is designed to be transparent, so you figure you’re getting a movie, software patch or new application from the company you’ve purchased it from. Rather than host their own servers worldwide, they pay Akamai — and so you get your files from a closer (and faster) server. Speed is therefore something Akamai’s quite keen on.

Australia’s telecommunications network is an interesting creature, but in worldwide terms we’re doing fairly well. The average connection speed for the last quarter of 2011 was 4918kbps, but before going on, it’s well worth mentioning that there’s two aspects to your internet experience; the speed at which you can access data (typically called the download speed), and the speed at which you can send it out — no great shock there that this is your upload speed. Download speed will affect how fast a YouTube video loads, how quickly your general files come down and (to a certain extent) how fast web pages load. Upload speeds are nearly always lower on most connections, and they’ll affect how quickly you can do things like send out email or upload files to online servers or backup utilities.

Akamai’s all about you downloading content, so it’s only the former that it concerns itself with. At that lower end — slower than 256kbps connections — Akamai reported only 1.6 per cent of Australian connections.

There’s still room for improvement, however; typically it’s South Korea with its small area of coverage but high broadband penetration that comes out on “top” in these kinds of reports, and there, the average figure is 17,517kbps. That’s a fine speed any way you choose to measure it.

It’s important to keep an offsite backup copy of your most important files – safely stored far away from your computer in case disaster strikes. Online backup services offer a handy way to do this, but you need to weigh up your options and choose carefully before you commit yourself.

There are two main types of online storage devices. One is designed primarily with file backups in mind. The other is designed with file storage and sync in mind. They sound the same, but it’s important to appreciate the difference when choosing the right service for you. You might even find a combination of services is best, each handling different kinds of files.

Storage and sync services such as Google Drive and Dropbox create a new folder on your computer. Anything you drop into that folder is automatically copied to a secure folder on the internet. It’s also copied to a matching folder on any of your other computers which are running the software. This means you can jump between different computers, perhaps your desktop and notebook, and always have the latest versions of your documents at your fingertips.

The drawback of Google Drive and Dropbox is that you can’t just point them at your existing folders, such as your My Documents folder. You have to move everything you want synced into the new sync folder.

If you just want to backup your files and don’t care as much about syncing, you might be better off with a service designed primarily for backup. You’ll find plenty around including GeekVault, Mozy, Carbonite and Jungle Disk. One of the handy things about these options is you can tell the desktop software to backup your folders as they are, rather than having to move all your files around. They also offer a lot more flexibility in terms of what they backup, how often they backup and how fast they backup.

If you can’t throttle your backup software, you might find that it chokes your internet connection. Some backup services let you create multiple backup lists and schedule them separately to spread the load. For example you might back up the documents you’re currently working on once an hour during workdays, but only backup your photo library once a week in the evening. You might also throttle these backup jobs to different upload speeds depending on the time of day you want them to run.

Like we said, you might find that a combination of services works best. For example, Mozy might be a good option for backing up your photo library but Dropbox might be best for backing up current documents and syncing them with your other computers during the day. Take care when pointing more than one backup service at the same folder, as they can get stuck in a loop.

It’s worth checking the fine print to see which features the different services offer. For example Jungle Disk offers the best of both worlds and lets you run both backup and sync jobs side by side. You’ll also find that some backup services are restricted to one computer, while others can backup several to the one account.

It takes a long time to run your first backup to an online service, and you need to be careful if your ISP counts uploads towards your monthly limit. Considering this you don’t want to change services often. Do your research and perhaps run a few tests before you commit all your important files to an online backup service.

There are two kinds of hard drives — dead ones and those which are going to die. As such, if you don’t keep backup copies of your important files you could lose them all in a heartbeat. Fire, flood, theft, virus attack, hardware failure, power spike, natural disaster and plain old human error are just a few of the threats to your precious data. You’re at even greater risk if your important files are stored on a notebook, smartphone or tablet which is exposed to the rough and tumble of life on the road.

While you might be able to recover from the loss of some files, others are simply irreplaceable. For example, in the years to come there’ll be plenty of people with no baby photos after their parents lost everything in a high-tech disaster.

The simplest backup system is to copy your files to a USB stick or maybe a USB hard drive. If you’re trying to protect a few computers around the house you might upgrade to a Network Attached Storage drive. But these may not save you from fire or flood. Any disaster which claims your computer will most likely also claim the backup devices sitting in your desk drawer. For full protection you need to keep “offsite” copies of your files, safely stored far away from the originals.

This is where Google Drive comes into play, the latest online backup service which is built into every Google Gmail account. Google Drive offers 5GB of free storage, with the option to pay for more if you need it. You can upload your files via a web browser, but Google also offers free software which runs in the background on your computer and automatically uploads new or changed files. This kind of “set and forget” backup solution tends to offer the best protection for your data.

To be honest Google Drive is a little late on the scene and faces stiff competition from the likes of SkyDrive, DropBox, Jungle Disk, Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan, SugarSync and others. Google Drive may particularly appeal to Mac users who are about to lose access to iDisk and are frustrated by the limitations of Apple’s new iCloud service.

If you don’t have offsite backups of your important data it’s worth experimenting with these different backup services. Start small, run a few tests and read the fine print before you commit yourself, as your first full backup will take a long time so you don’t want to change providers regularly. Keep an eye on your monthly data usage if your ISP counts uploads towards your monthly limit (be especially careful when using mobile broadband).

While the cloud is a handy place to keep your backups, it’s not foolproof either. For truly irreplaceable files such as family photos you might also want to keep offline backups burned to DVD, perhaps at home and/or safely stored at someone else’s house or your desk drawer at work.

Think of a backup system as an insurance policy for your data. You can never be too careful when it comes to things which can’t be replaced.

For the moment, every carrier that wants to run at 4G service is limited by the spectrum that’s available to them. Telstra (and now Optus) opted to deploy LTE (Long Term Evolution) services over spectrum in the 1800Mhz waveband, because it was available to them. This has led to certain issues, the most pertinent of which has been that virtually nobody else on the planet was using 1800Mhz for the provision of 4G LTE services! That having been said, it’s not as though there’s wide agreement on 4G anyway; there’s a variety of different spectrum setups that are sold worldwide as “4G”, up to and including the 850MHZ 3G services sold in Australia by Telstra (as Next-G) and Vodafone. Ultimately there’s no clear definition of what 4G “is”, beyond being a marketing term, although a few high-speed LTE services may end up being “officially” recognised as 4G, but not just yet.

The issue with 1800Mhz — aside from the fact that it’s not quite as solid for things like building penetration as lower frequencies — is that there aren’t many chipsets that support it. Apple’s “iPad 4G+WiFi” hit a snag with the ACCC recently, as the commission wasn’t impressed with Apple’s use of the 4G term for a tablet that can’t connect at 1800Mhz — and thus couldn’t connect to any Australian 4G network. That one’s still playing itself out in the courts, although Apple has said it’ll offer refunds to anyone who bought a new iPad on the basis of 4G connectivity.

That iPad will connect to 4G LTE services operating on the 700Mhz band, but that frequency is currently being used across Australia for analogue television signals. They’re scheduled to be switched off gradually across the country, freeing up the frequency, which should be auctioned off some time this year; at best we’ll see 700Mhz services (depending on who buys the licences) sometime in late 2013 — at an optimistic estimate.

Which brings us back to the issue of what 4G actually is. For now, it should define a network with faster data speeds than existing third generation (3G) networks, but that could come from a couple of different technologies. Voice as yet isn’t part of the 4G package, but a 4G phone still acts as a phone; it just uses older technology to deliver your voice and text messages.

Optus’ implementation is the same 1800Mhz LTE as Telstra’s, but as mentioned above it’s both here and not quite here yet. When Optus first announced it was working towards a 4G network, it said it would launch 4G in the Newcastle NSW region in April, and then across capital cities mid-year. It’s just squeaked in the first part with a 4G Newcastle network, but not as a full commercial product; instead selected users will be given free 4G devices to test the network out with. Presumably you had to already be an Optus customer; there certainly wasn’t a signup process.

What then of the third network, Vodafone? It had initially said that it would launch a 4G network by the end of 2011, but that certainly didn’t happen. Its most recent communications have centered around it improving its existing network, especially with the rollout of 850Mhz services; 4G is still on the radar but with no stated public timeline.

So should you buy 4G? Telstra’s implementation is still the (theoretically)  most widespread, and it was no coincidence that in the week Optus announced its soft launch, Telstra announced it was expanding its Newcastle coverage. All 4G devices launched to date do drop down to 3G where 4G isn’t available, so in one sense there’s relatively little risk. Likewise, though, I’ve seen some wildly varying 4G speeds, even within coverage zones. If you’re in need of a new phone or wireless dongle 4G isn’t too much of a risk, but it’s probably not worth upgrading yet if your existing kit is still humming along nicely.

But does it really bring us closer together? Research commissioned by Optus recently suggested that despite the massive numbers of people using social networks — not to mention the plethora of networks one could belong to — we still don’t feel as though we’re communicating with those that we’re “close” to as much as we’d like.

The research focused on Facebook, where (according to the Optus statistics) the average Australian has 165 “friends”. Of those average 165, only  33 of them are said to be “close” friends, but 45 per cent of those surveyed felt that social networks make them feel less close to their family and friends.

It’s worth bearing in mind here that you can spin statistics any way you like; it’s not immediately apparent from the released research what the other 55 per cent thought of social networks in terms of closeness, for example. Still, I can see a few reasons why, despite social networks offering another way to communicate, it might make some feel a little isolated.

The most obvious one is the issue of privacy. Not just from the network that you’re on — although Facebook can be difficult in terms of setting and keeping your privacy intact — but the privacy of what you say, and who you’re saying it to. If you’re the extroverted type, that may not be a problem, but those who are a little more shy would probably find the archival nature of a social network like Facebook a little offputting. You can delete individual posts or comments, but what’s typed there is still published for some time — and if it’s not on your account, you may not be able to delete it at all.

There’s also the question of matching the right social networks to the right use. Some networks are particularly focused; LinkedIn, for example has a strong professional focus, where Facebook or Google+ are a lot more freewheeling. Twitter’s arguably more free than anything else, save for the restriction on the number of characters within a post; that may lead to brevity, but it can also make it hard to make a complex point or hold a truly meaningful discussion. It’s certainly possible for social networking chat to be drowned out by the general noise — I’ve got a few “friends” on my own Facebook list, for example, who are inordinately fond of posting many pictures in sequence, which can drown out the communications with others.

Ultimately, I think social networks are just tools for a purpose; if you’re feeling as though they make you less social, is that a fault of the tool or the user?

While the iPad is a sleek tablet, thankfully Google’s Android operating system gives gadget makers the freedom to make tablets of all shapes and sizes. Samsung is leading the charge with the impressive Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G.

This Samsung tablet is smaller, thinner and lighter than the latest iPad — making it very comfortable to hold. To be fair the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen is almost an inch diagonally wider than the Galaxy Tab 8.9, but you don’t feel the difference in day-to-day use. The 8.9-inch screen gives the Android interface plenty of room to move, with the dual-core 1.5 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM keeping things snappy.

The screen certainly doesn’t feel cramped like the 7-inch Android tablets or 5-inch phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note. Meanwhile the 8.9-inch Samsung feels much less cumbersome than Motorola’s 10.1-inch Xoom II.

Fire up the 8.9-inch Samsung and you’re greeted by a bright, crisp 1280×800 PLS LCD display. It’s sharper than the iPad 2 but admittedly still falls far short of the iPad 3′s new retina display. The use of LCD offers wide viewing angles, good contrast and bright whites help deal with outdoor glare. The trade-off is that colours aren’t quite as vivid as the AMOLED displays found on many Android gadgets.

The Samsung can hold its head high alongside the iPad thanks to its compatibility with Telstra’s new super-fast LTE mobile broadband network. The new iPad also has 4G written on the box, but unfortunately it’s not compatible with Telstra’s 1800 MHz LTE network. While the Samsung can squeeze more than 40 Mbps out of LTE in Australia’s major cities, the new iPad must be content with up to 20 Mbps via DC-HSDPA.

This is a considerable speed difference but to be fair Samsung owners are unlikely to notice a significant performance boost between 20 and 40 Mbps whilst doing day to day tasks (unless they’re using a notebook tethered to the tablet’s LTE access via Wi-Fi). Once Samsung owners roam beyond the inner suburbs they’ll drop back onto DC-HSDPA anyway. LTE is handy, but it alone shouldn’t seal the deal.

The Samsung also offers 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, but what’s disappointing is that there’s no Wi-Fi-only 8.9-inch Samsung available in Australia. So you’re forced to pay for mobile broadband compatibility whether you need it or not.

Another disappointment is that the Samsung comes with Android 3.2 “Honeycomb” pre-installed rather than the new Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”. To be fair an ICS update is on the way and the wait is only likely to bother Android die-hards. What’s perhaps more frustrating is the Samsung lacks micro-HDMI, micro-USB and micro-SD slots. As with the iPad, you can get various adaptors for Samsung’s proprietary 30-pin connector. The lack of a micro-SD slot means you’re stuck with the Samsung’s 16 or 32 GB of onboard storage.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G retails for $720 (16 GB) or $840 (32 GB), or is available on plans from Telstra from $49 per month. For more details visit samsung.com/au

Subscription music services put massive music libraries at your fingertips for only a few dollars per month. Now you can listen to the latest acts as well as trawl through your favourite artists’ back catalogues. You can even discover new artists based on your music tastes.

If you buy more than half a dozen CDs each year then a subscription music service could make a lot of sense. Services such as Rhapsody have been popular in the US for several years but they only started to take off in Australia last year. Hardware makers such as Samsung, Sony, Nokia, Blackberry and Microsoft’s Zune have all offered Australian subscription music services to run on their various gadgets. Apple has also launched iTunes Match but it’s not actually an all-you-can-eat subscription service. Instead it only lets you stream music you already own.

While hardware makers have been quick off the mark locally, we’ve also seen the rise of device-agnostic subscription music services such as Rdio and Songl. The highly respected Spotify is also expected to launch in Australia soon, which will shake things up. These services let you listen via computers, tablets, smartphones and multi-room audio systems such as Sonos.

What’s really interesting about these subscription services is not just that they grant access to millions of tracks, but that they make it so easy to play them. You can search for your favourite artist, choose an album or song and start listening in under 10 seconds. The sound quality is usually as good as if you’d rip it from CD yourself. That’s a very tempting proposition for people who tend to steal music by waiting for it to download from file-sharing services.

The growth of legitimate online music services proves that there is a market out there. Many people are prepared to pay for content if you don’t make them jump through too many hoops and treat them like a criminal when they’re trying to do the right thing.

Apple’s iTunes store is a great example of how people respond to a good service at a reasonable price. All of the movies and music on the iTunes store are available for free on file-sharing services if you go looking for them. Yet Apple has sold more than 10 billion songs. Apple’s success is not because people don’t know about the illegitimate alternatives. Its success is due to the fact that Apple makes paying for content easier than stealing it.

There will always be some people who steal content, regardless of how easy it is to do the right thing. And there will always be some people who “buy” content, regardless of how easy it is to “rent” it using subscription services. But as the NBN makes high-speed internet access ubiquitous, more and more people will embrace online subscription services — letting them enjoy what they want, where and when they want it.

For now subscription music services are more likely to complement people’s music libraries rather than replace them. But the day will come when owning content, whether you bought it or stole it, will seem like more trouble than it’s worth for most people.

What made headlines was the purchase price, with Facebook agreeing to purchase Instagram for the rather healthy (if you’re the owner of Instagram) price of one billion dollars. Instagram’s got an estimated 30 million users; that means that Facebook presumably values each user at around 33 bucks a piece. That’s quite high for a service that the users could always opt to stop using straight away. With the news of Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, many threatened to do just that.

One billion dollars for a company that allows people to share photos from mobile devices seems like a lot of money, and it did raise the question in many circles as to whether Facebook had overpaid for Instagram, as well as raising the spectre of the 1999 dotcom “bust”. Back in ‘99, many companies that labeled themselves as “Internet” companies — whether they were selling paperclips or petfood — were massive overvalued, leading to an inevitable bust when the real bottom line of those markets was realised.

Was one billion dollars — a mix of cash and Facebook shares — a lot to pay? It certainly was, but it perhaps wasn’t a matter of overpaying. Facebook wasn’t just buying Instagram in order to get access to its photo sharing users; it was also doing so in order to buy out a competitor. Again, that’s business, and possibly smart business (although only time will tell on that score).

The internet market has matured significantly since 1999, but Facebook’s buyout of Instagram is about more than just a CEO seeing some nice photos and opening up his wallet; it’s also a strategic move around mobile web applications.

One interesting business parallel popped up at the same time as Facebook was buying Instagram, as Microsoft purchased a number of patents from AOL — including most of the patents that revolved around the now-defunct Netscape Navigator browser. Back in 1999, Microsoft was being investigated by the US Department of Justice over anti-trust allegations relating to its own browser and the position of Netscape relative to them; in 2012, Microsoft (in essence) owns Netscape.