It’s the oldest trick in the book when it comes to scamming: Play on people’s greed.

Take a look at a current one involving free iPads for beta testing :

The difficulty lies in telling whether a freebie giveaway is a scam sometimes. Some are scams, and some are supposedly real contests giving out free iPads, like the one here at freeipadgear.

When in doubt, it’s probably wise to reconsider: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

The internet is abuzz with Apple’s lawsuit today in the US, claiming that HTC has infringed about 20 of their patents. Gizmodo has an excellent breaking story of this, and they quote responses from both the Apple and HTC camps.

If successful, Apple’s action will get HTC’s phones banned — both Androids and Windows Mobiles — from being sold in the US, and be awarded “treble damages” and “interest at the maximum rate allowable by law”. Going by the list of patents Apple is whacking HTC for, it sure sounds like a hit job. It’s a big middle finger to the mobile phone industry not to mess with Apple, which had already tussled with Nokia in lawsuits late last year.

Not going to rehash the newspoints that you can find covered better elsewhere, but just some quick comments of my own.

Apple did shake up the mobile phone industry when it debuted with the iPhone in 2007, which birthed the touch phone genre. I can’t even remember when was the last recent phone I reviewed that was not a touch phone, so for this we have Apple to thank.

But of course the rest of the mobile manufacturers fought back, and this led to a flourishing touch phone market. End result: More choice for consumers, and Asian brands like HTC and Samsung are doing well in the touch phone space.

So of course Apple nips it in the bud by throwing roadblocks at the competition, namely number two (Nokia) and three (HTC). And with Android gaining fast ascendance, whack the phone manufacturer, i.e. HTC, which has rolled out the most Android phones thus far. Doh!

What these lawsuits will do: Not very much, I predict. Even if Apple gets its way, the US is not the only phone market in the world. In Asia alone, mobiles are huge, and we have two of the world’s most populous nations — India and China — in our patch.

NETS, the Singapore electronic payment vendor, just launched their iNETS mobile service, in which you can pay your bills via your mobile phone in Singapore.

The story was covered by quite a few of the main papers in Singapore, like the Straits Times, Today, and My Paper, as this story broke yesterday.

What struck me when I read the story in the Straits Times is that the iNETS mobile payment platform supports “all mobile phones save the iPhone and the Android platform”.

When I read this, I almost fell out of my chair thinking: Errr, aren’t these some of the more popular platforms? And Android phones will definitely be set to grow in the market this year, with the Google Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Spica, and Motorola Dext already out since February with more to come.

I was just gushing down a bowl of extremely salty French Onion soup at TGIF near the Marriot Grand Hotel in Moscow where I am staying when I saw Jobs flashing the iPad in some Russian news channel. That was enough for me to spend the next 90 minutes watching Job’s keynote.

Two things struck me from the iPads launch today:

1. Apple is really going into a closed lock-down system.

   The iPad will be utilising Apple’s new 1GHz processor (Apple now totally owns the hardware and the OS).

   It also launched iWorks (competitor to MS Office) for US$9.99 for each of the spreadsheet, presentation and word processor software (called numbers, keynote and something else I cant remember) It also launched iBooks – an e-book reader and store.  With App Store and iTunes Music Store,  now Apple also owns the software and services platform.

   Apple struck a deal with AT&T for adding 3G at US$29.99 per month for unlimited access. So like the iPhone, you are stuck again with a specific telco. And my guess is the two will work together to lock-in consumers and share the money.

   It looks like the Apple way is increasingly becoming a closed, lock-down system. I dont like lock-down systems and it sure makes Microsoft (who only controlled the OS and the apps and tried with the browser) look like an angel in comparison.

2. Is the iPad simply a glorified smartphone?

   Yes, it did look cool watching Jobs spin the thing round, but what exactly is the Apple 1GHz processor? Early rumours are swirling that it is simply one of the many 1GHz ARM processors (ARM licences its processor tech to people like Nvidia and Qualcomm to make smartphone processors) around. The same architecture that powers the Google Nexus One smartphone. But can it be powerful enough to support a mini-laptop? In case you are still wondering why the iPad does not support the ability to run multiple apps at the same time, perhaps this is the answer!

Getting one of the new Media PCs to consolidate all your media needs sound like a great idea. But if you have a MacBook Pro (MBP) – even an early rev A version like mine, all you need is Plex and you already have a Media PC ready to go.

First, props to Techgoondu friend Chris who gave me a heads up to Plex. Plex is a media center software based on XBMC Media Center. I have yet to try XBMC but it apparently is Mac, Linux, Windows and XBox compatible, unlike Plex which will only work with Intel Macs running Leopard – but there should be quite a few of you Techgoondu readers out there who are running that, at least according to our logs.

So after the usual download and install routine, I hooked everything up and voila, there was I, using my Apple Remote to navigate through my media files and playing them back on the LCD TV.

You’ve probably seen those Apple ads that proclaim that there are no/few viruses for Macs.

Well, it doesn’t matter that virus writers don’t bother with Macs because they only take up less than 5 per cent of the world’s personal computer market.

But guess what, now that Apple’s iPhone is hyped up to be the best thing that happened, security holes are appearing. According to a report in Computerworld, there are vulnerabilities in the software that can lead to users being “phished”.

So, you can’t wait for SingTel to bring the hyped-to-the-heavens 3G iPhone? Well, since the red camp missed the July 11 launch, you can get one from places where the gizmo is sold.

One place would be Hong Kong, where my bro Paddy says they cost a whopping S$1,700 to S$,2000 in retail shops. No SIM lock, no need to “jailbreak” or hack it to run here. Just insert your SIM in there.

But for that price? I can buy a nice iPod Touch and another full-featured PDA-phone and have spare cash. Not quite US$199 as Steve Jobs – and his raging mad fans – claim eh?

On the face of it – a rather “thin” face of it – Creative seems to have finally come up with a solid MP3 player with its Zen X-Fi.

This little gizmo is slim at just 12.8mm (a few credit cards thick) and should fit into the pocket well. Yet it has most of what the pricier – and longer – Apple iPod Touch has and more.

Wi-Fi? Check. Video playback (including DivX and WMV)? Check. SD card slot for additional expansion? Check.

Wait, there’s also built-in FM and a microphone, so it should come in handy for recording meetings and, for us reporters, for recording what interviewees say (and later deny!).

Best of all, the price is right. Creative’s online store is selling the 32GB version for S$399 – that’s less than the S$848 what Apple asks for its 32GB iPod Touch.

With such capacities, there’s finally enough capacity for the whopping 20+GB of music that is quickly expanding on my PC, thanks mainly to my encoding stuff in WAV instead of MP3 these days.

I’ve always said MP3 players, unlike computers, are lifestyle products and Apple’s done a better job with them than a “PC” company like Creative. But would you pay twice as much for a player with less stuff just to look cool?

I know I didn’t buy a Sony Walkman or Discman just because it’s Sony in the past – I bought an Aiwa or Panasonic that played (mostly) just as well. Now, after two iPods, maybe it’s time for me to consider Creative seriously.