When I write columns I often find I can’t quite articulate what I’m trying to say, but I think I got pretty close with this one for .net.

For most of us, there’s a difference between the person we really are and the person we play on the internet. I don’t mean in a mild-mannered janitor/ Hong Kong Phooey way (or in a mild-mannered janitor/Dennis Nilsen way either). I mean that unless you’re ridiculously honest, American, or 14, then you practise a certain amount of self-censorship. What people see is still you, but it’s a toned-down, smartened up, edited highlights version of you.

Sometimes that censorship is a temporary thing, so you’re posting hilarious things online when in the real world you want to hurl yourself off a bridge, or hurl somebody else off a bridge. Sometimes it’s a self-preservation thing, where you know that telling the truth about your boss will change nothing other than your employment status. And sometimes it’s because the whole point of your online identity is that it lets you leave behind the bits you don’t like.

I think that last one is why I loathe the popular social networks so much… slowly but surely they’re filling up with the very people I, and perhaps you, went online to get away from in the first place.

Have you been following the launch of Google’s Chrome OS? I’m finding the whole thing a bit underwhelming:

Most questions to which the answer could be “Chrome notebook” can also be answered “iPad” or “Android tablet”.

What boots faster than a traditional PC (the answer to that one also includes “MacBook Air” and “Anything with solid state storage”)? What runs web apps from an App Store? What sleeps and wakes instantly? What’s very secure and very unlikely to get viruses? What’s really portable? What has great battery life? What can access the enterprise systems from a secure yet friendly interface? Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

What I don’t get is, why limit your options? If the kit costs roughly the same as any other notebook, which I assume it will, why go for a Chrome-only system when you can get a Windows or Linux system and run the Chrome browser on it?

Reviews of the various so-called iPad killers have been disappointing. I think I know why.

manufacturers appear to be looking at the wrong things. They’re like musicians who think buying a Gibson Les Paul will turn them into Jimmy Page, or that being a big gobby pain in the arse makes them Bono.

What makes the iPad special isn’t the hardware. It’s the software.

My esteemed colleague Craig Grannell agrees with me and adds something I really wish I’d thought of:

It’s telling that most of the top-selling apps on Android are admin tools, whereas on iOS they’re games, entertainment apps and productivity tools.

A few things I’ve written are online: first up, I’m doing Techradar’s weird tech section and I’ve got scary fembots, splattered bats and USB sticks as art.

If we were asked to describe the last seven days in one word, we’d say “week” – but if we weren’t allowed that word, we’d say “roboty”, “batty”, “flashy” or “printy”.

And here’s a wee piece about the government’s exciting new plans for “Silicon marshes” in London’s East End and some Google-friendly changes to our intellectual property laws.

Is it just me, or is there something horribly unethical about all of this? Having Google and Facebook throw Shoreditch a few crumbs while avoiding hundreds of millions, even billions of pounds in tax is a bit like someone stealing your dinner and then offering you a half-chewed chip.

Me at Techradar: there are still areas where netbooks are better than iPads.

… [Adobe] Flash. Sure, there are reasons to loathe it, but in my house my wife matters more than Steve Jobs, and many of my wife’s favourite sites use Flash. Until they see the light and switch to something else, the iPad isn’t a fully functional web browser.

It’s not just Flash, either. Some things simply don’t work, either because of overzealous browser sniffers that don’t recognise Mobile Safari (“Your browser is old or strange! You can’t come in!”) or because of a lack of testing. For example, I’ve found many sites that use RBS Secure card authentication don’t work on the iPad because the box that asks for your password doesn’t display at all.

Want to know the key differences between Apple’s iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and BlackBerry’s PlayBook? You do? Well, looky here then.

You won’t be able to buy a PlayBook until well into 2011, and by then Apple should have iPad 2 ready to roll. The second generation iPad may well address some of the apparent weaknesses in this company; we’d certainly expect more memory, a faster processor and a camera or two to appear in Apple’s 2011 tablet. And of course, Apple isn’t the only firm making tablets. The next few months are going to be very interesting indeed.

And I don’t mean a few copies of Microsoft Office. Symbian is looking increasingly isolated, so perhaps Nokia needs to kill it.

[hardware bossing the software guys about] wouldn’t be such an issue if specs were all that mattered, but in smartphones the reverse is true. In hardware terms the iPhone was and is rubbish compared to its much better specced – and priced – rivals, but superb software saw it fly off Apple’s shelves.

Windows Mobile 6.1 didn’t fall out of favour because the handsets weren’t good enough, but because the software wasn’t. And people aren’t excited about Windows Phone because the handsets promised hitherto unimaginable kinds of hardware heaven.

We know that Nokia can make awesome hardware, but can it make awesome software too?