It might be hard for you and me to really paint using an iPad, but professionals can do amazing things with an $8 application and one finger:

Here are three examples of terrible decisions made in the early years of PCs.

Selling Too Soon

When Apple started up in 1976, it was founded by three people: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne. Wayne owned 10% of the company, and that would be worth tens of millions of dollars in the late 70’s, and billions of dollars today.

But Wayne did not think Apple would succeed. Just ten days after Apple started up, Wayne sold his 10% of Apple. Inc.–for $800.

Looking for Money in the Wrong Place

Apple became a huge hit in the late 70’s; it was the #1 computer company at the time. This did not sit well with IBM, a company which was considered the giant of computer makers. IBM wanted to create a PC that would take the market away from Apple–and they succeeded. For years, the computers that dominated the market were called “IBM PCs.” However, IBM made a huge mistake–which is why today, nobody says “IBM PCs” any more. Instead, we call them “Windows PCs.”

You see, in 1980, when IBM was getting ready to introduce their PC, they did not have an OS. So they went to this small businessman named Bill Gates, and asked him if he could make one for them. “No problem,” Gates said, “but I don’t want to sell it–I want to license it.” In other words, Gates did not want to make some software and sell it to IBM; instead, he wanted to keep ownership of the OS, and IBM would have the rights to use it in their computers.

The huge mistake: IBM thought that the real money was in the hardware, and that software was not important. So they said “OK.”

What’s funny is that Bill Gates didn’t even have an OS! So he went to Seattle and bought an OS called “QDOS” (”Quick and Dirty OS”) from Seattle Computer Products. He paid $50,000. Then Gates put a new name on it: MS-DOS (”MicroSoft Disk OS”), and the rest is history. IBM made some money, but in the end, other companies made similar computers for cheaper and IBM lost out (eventually, IBM sold their PC brand to the Chinese company Lenovo). But Microsoft became the most successful and richest company in the world.

Not Knowing a Great Thing

At about the same time, Xerox was developing a new computer which used this wild new OS called a “GUI,” and used a “mouse.” They even made a computer with it, but it didn’t sell well. The executives at Xerox thought it was a failure. However, Steve Jobs at Apple was interested, and offered Xerox $1 million in Apple stock in exchange for seeing the engineering behind the GUI computer, and the right to make a GUI of their own. Xerox said, “OK.” Five years later, Apple introduced the Macintosh.

Xerox still does not have a presence in the PC market today.

A girl from South Korea with classical music training became famous on the Internet after posting videos on YouTube of her playing music and singing using 3 or 4 iPhones as her music playing system. Speaking Korean, Japanese, and English, Kim Yeo-hee intros how she plays the tunes on the phones, and then comes out swinging–with quite a singing voice. She has released videos singing Beyonce and Lady Gaga songs.

After becoming a viral hit, Ms. Kim was approached by music labels in China, England, and South Korea. She signed a contract with a Korean label and is releasing her first album later this month.

Not everybody can use computers (or smartphones) and the Internet to become a success, but it’s certainly one new way to get recognized.

Gizmodo posted a graphic showing the progression from Terabyte to Yottabyte. A Yottabyte of storage at today’s prices would cost roughly $100,000,000,000,000. Not surprising, because a Yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 times more than a Terabyte.

If you have a cell phone using the Windows Mobile OS, be careful–some games for that cell phone have hidden malware which can cost you a lot of money.

The software identified so far–”3D Anti-Terrorist” and “PDA Poker Art”–is available from web sites that have legitimate software, so you may trust the site because you downloaded other games that were OK.

The bad software can be expensive: it secretly makes international telephone calls from your cell phone to for-pay services, causing the charges to appear in your phone bill. It is like a software version of wangiri.

This is a good example of why the iPhone OS is “closed.” Apple does not allow users to load software from any site except Apple’s, and before the software can appear, Apple must check it and approve it for sale. This way, it can catch malware before it reaches users. Android and Windows Mobile are more “open,” but that openness also carries dangers, such as this one.

A Tokyo performer uses an iPad to do some magic. Enjoy.

Apparently a true story: a week ago, a man found himself in an embarrassing position. He was in the men’s room on the 3rd floor of Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara, and discovered that there was no toilet paper. So, naturally, like any good Akihabara fan… he twittered for help! After two tweets, somebody brought him some toilet paper!

The magic of social networking! Just tweet and hope that one of your followers is nearby to help out.

Interesting report out of Canada today: Canadian college students are failing at some classes because their grammar, spelling, and writing styles all too often reflect Twitter or text-messaging styles. LOL!

Here’s a video showing how you might be able to keep all of your textbooks in a single, small tablet device. Notice that the program allows for highlighting text, typing notes, bookmarking pages, searching the text, viewing video lectures, and more. The video is OK, although the animated hand is terrible…

Note how they keep saying “the very near future.” Also, the style of the software is Apple–they use iPhone keyboards and Mac programs. Apple is set to announce a new tablet computer in one week. It probably won’t look like what they showed, but the textbook program will be available. However, don’t get excited just yet–buying English textbooks may require an American account, which requires a credit card with a U.S. billing address.

If you need photos for web sites or blogs, can’t take the photos yourself, and you do not want to pay for them, you can get free photos from “stock photography” sites. Many of them are listed here.