The latest US budget has been announced by President Obama and the news has been shocking for Nasa.

The new budget abandons plans for a manned moon landing, cancels the Areas One rocket program but crucially commits Nasa to buying in its orbital flights from commercial companies.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have been leading the way in orbital technology and so the announcement was good news here in California.

For example, the Blue Origin rocket programme started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to get $3.7m in the budget, despite it being aimed at sub-orbital flights only.

The SpaceX programme is also getting money, despite some fairly high profile failures. If the latest rocket works with the additional funding then the company could be poised to reap billions in government revenues.

By moving away from manned exploration to computer controlled investigations the budget will also be a boost to electronics companies in the Bay Area. We're already hearing about a host of new ideas, including remote greenhouses in space, new satellite drives and remote control exploration.

At a discussion of technologists last week it was noted that the only significant benefit from the Apollo launch was much better computing power and design. Maybe this budget will do the same for other areas. Silicon Valley is certainly hoping so.

This afternoon San Francisco has been playing host to the folks from the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), who have come to our fair city to protest about, well pretty much anything that takes their fancy.

For those lucky enough not to have encountered the WBC it's a small group of religious extremists who are under the impression that the entire world (apart from them) is doomed to hell because they aren't Protestants who hate homosexuals.

To spread this message they protest outside funerals of dead soldiers and celebrities (the group will be protesting Salinger's funeral) and anywhere else they think they can get a deadline.

The group has been barred from entering the UK and other countries and has been covered repeatedly on TV, both in documentaries and being mocked.

One of the targets of WBC's ire today was Twitter, and the group had a protest outside the company's headquarters on Folsom street.

"We're not protesting Twitter as a platform; that's like picketing television!," tweeted a WBC member. "We're picketing the people who run @Twitter, who don't use their position & voice to warn a generation of rebels of the consequences of their rebellion. Same goes for those at Foursquare & Gowalla."

Now San Franciscans are a tolerant bunch, and haven't taken this lying down. Quick as a flash counter protests have been following the group around.

As you can see from the photos the signs aren't exactly serious, and have a technical bent. My personal favourite? 'God's never going to give you up.'

While the eyes of the consumer world were on Apple's shiny new tablet the enterprise world has been looking to Oracle to outline its plans for the merger with Sun.

Now that the final regulations have been overcome a lot of people, including most of Sun, have been waiting for the axe to fall. As it turns out those fears may be unfounded, for the moment at least.

While Oracle sought to reassure on the hardware and software fronts it is the human angle that has caused the most stir in the industry.

Oracle is one of the most business minded firms in Silicon Valley. Staff are suited and booted and work hard with a strong ethos on the bottom line. The same could not be said for Sun.

Sun is more of an archetypal Silicon Valley firm. Staff dress how they like, work on what interests them and the company is famed for its beer bust parties. How then will the two mix?

Well, based on today's announcements they won't at first. Oracle has had a while to plan this and the system it seems to be following is to let the parts of Sun that work well entirely separate, like MySQL and OpenOffice.

I suspect on the hardware side things will remain relatively unchanged. The server line will be cut and there will be some job losses but Oracle isn't a hardware company and is aware of that, and will tread carefully.

That said, we'll keep you updated on rumblings from Sun staff. Get in touch if you have a gripe.

Well, this week in Silicon Valley it's all going to be about Apple.

After months of  speculation Apple is almost certain to announce a major new product, expected to be a tablet computer. But no-one knows how to milk publicity like Apple and so the release is not the only news this week.

Today Apple released its fourth quarter results, which were stonkingly good. It broke all previous records to show that the recession is for other companies. iPhone and Mac desktop and laptop sales were very strong and it's clear Apple is now making a play to increase its stake in the business market for both platforms.

But enough of the fuddy-duddy financials. What about the tablet?

Everyone is going wild about the prospect of an Apple tablet, unless you've been on the Moon  - as one analyst put it today at the results press call.

The word is it'll be an iPhone on steroids. A ten inch OLED screen, 3G and 802.11n Wi-Fi and some form of handwriting recognition without a stylus.

If Apple doesn't announce a Tablet/netbook on Wednesday it'll be a PR disaster but will cause some glee. Chatting about the launch to an analyst we both agreed that the look on people's faces if Jobs came on stage and announced an upgrade to Apple TV would be priceless.

We also discussed the implications of the move, in light of the Newton.

"Well that's the project Jobs canceled when he arrived back,"was the comment.

"I blame Star Trek, the New Generation to be precise."

The Newton was heavily oversold in the 1990s and roundly mocked by both the Simpsons and popular American cartoonist Doonesbury for poor handwriting recognition. If the new device fails on that score the device may have a rocky road ahead.
 

Reports are coming in of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) cracking down on small vendors at the CES 2010 show.

With budgets tight some small vendors have opted for displaying their wares in hotel rooms rather than paying higher rates in the exhibition halls. However the CEA has caught wind of this due to its close links with the hotel chains and is now either having these companies removed or asking for compensation.

If the reports are true they represent a departure from the norm for conferences. People go to conferences to do business, but need it all be done under the aegis of the conference organisers?

Every year AMD famously hires out a few rooms near the Intel Developer Forum to capitalise on the draw it has in the tech community. Other companies do things on a smaller scale; it's part of the rough and tumble of public relations.

For many years CES, and its predecessor COMDEX, has been seen as a weathercock for the health of the electronics industry.

In the 1990s the show was a huge extravaganza, with laser shows and huge areas of floor space devoted to the latest gadgets and gizmos. The sharp declines that followed the dot-com boom were reflected in more subdued events, with less razzmatazz and more stress on economy rather than spectacle.

If this year's show is anything to go by then the industry is not out of the woods yet. Organisers are being cagey on registrations but it looks like attendance rates will just match, or even be below last year's turnout.

Visitors to Las Vegas have traditionally been overwhelmed by advertisements for the show and its participants. Taxis were emblazoned with advertising for the show or from companies like Toshiba or Microsoft. This year there has been nothing like as much on display.

Companies are also being much more cautious. The themes of the show may be built around 3D displays, electronic book readers and tablets and new internet platforms, but everyone is talking about economics.

For example, display manufacturers are stressing the low power output and long life of their systems. There's less talk about being environmentally friendly and more of making products last a long time with little upkeep.

Even the organisers have been scaling back. Facilities like the press room have been slashed to the bone and the halls of the Venetian are crammed with anxious hacks trying to find power and a wireless connection.

The main show opens tomorrow so we'll be able to update you on visitor numbers and stall sizes then. A lot of people will be crossing their fingers for a good turnout; the industry needs it.

In a rather unusual step, web behemoth Google has decided to share with us an internal letter sent round to all staff last week detailing the company line on 'open' - what it stands for, what they should be working towards and so on.

Firstly, senior vice president of product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, differentiates between open technology and open information. The first, he says, is about open source and open standards and the latter refers to when Google holds information about an individual in order to provide them with a useful service, "we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information".

Now no one would argue that Google has done a lot in the former category, with Android, the Chrome web browser and operating system, Google Gears and many other projects, but, ahem, the second area becomes a bit more problematic for Sneak.

 "Google is not the Hotel California -- you can check out any time you like and you CAN, in fact, leave!", says Rosenberg. Well, yes, technically, but if you've invested several years worth of emails in Gmail would you really want you?

Sneak is still not altogether sure information disclosure and Google sit that well together, especially when its chief executive comes out and says "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

So, nice try Google, but it'll take a bit more than a massively long blog posting on 'openness' to convince us this is really at the heart of what you do.

More odd news from AT&T with its plan to solve its reputation for dropped calls and low data rates - make it too expensive for people to use.

After all these years listening to network operators whinge about how little people are using mobile data services today's news that AT&T wants to price users off its network has come as something of a surprise.

Speaking at an event in New York head of consumer services Ralph de la Vega said that the company was investigating ways to get people using the most data to "reduce or modify their usage."

He continued that some sort of data pricing was inevitable, compared to today's free service for smartphone users.

"We need to educate the customer ... We've got to get them to understand what represents a megabyte of data," de la Vega said, according to Associated Press.

"We're improving all our systems to let consumers get real-time information on their data usage."

He said that three per cent of AT&T's customers consumed 40 per cent of the bandwidth. AT&T's network has been suffering connection problems, particularly in San Francisco and New York he said.

The biggest bandwidth hogs are streaming video and audio sites, with internet radio a major culprit.

It's a similar argument we saw from ISPs a few years ago. Go unlimited until the market is big enough and then start charging more and more for the data. Then it was the file sharers who were the reason for charging. If mobile piracy ever takes off expect to get hit in the pocket.

Normally we have to wait until CES for the smartphone market to heat back up again, but it appears as if some yuletide legal wranglings could add a bit of drama to the holiday season.

Just as Verizon's legal department was getting over their hangovers from the victory in the AT&T Map battle, a new round of legal woes could be bearing down on the company: the FCC recently said that it would begin an investigation into the way the company treats its outgoing customers.

At the heart of the matter is Verizon's practice of charging early termination fees to customers who wish to cancel their service with the company while still under contract. Recently, Verizon has doubled the fee for smartphone customers from $175 to $350. The fee is meant to help the company recoup some of the costs of subsidizing a phone which the company would otherwise pick up over

Now, the FTC wants the company to come forward and explain why. The commission has set a Dec 18 deadline for Verizon to address the issue and explain why it has decided to double cost suddenly.

This is where Verizon's and Motorola's aggressive campaign against Apple and AT&T could come back to haunt them a bit. As anyone who has watched the ads can tell, the iPhone is the primary target, meaning that Verizon seeks to make a huge dent in the consumer smartphone space.

As such, opponents of the company could possibly make the case that doubling the fee is an effort to keep consumers locked in should they buy the droid and then decide that the handset was not worth the hype.

Could be an interesting holiday season in the smartphone world.

AT&T is becoming something of a laughing stock over its legal battles with Verizon but plenty of its customers aren't amused.

AT&T recently went to court with Verizon because the competitor started an advertising campaign pointing out what many iPhone users already know - the network has very limited 3G coverage.

Unfortunately for AT&T the map Verizon shows is correct and it can prove it. It was left to AT&T to slink away with its tail between its legs.

Now the company has more woes. It has just been ranked dead last in customer satisfaction poll carried out by the influential by Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports polled 50,000 readers in 26 cities and they gave AT&T the lowest customer satisfaction ranking in 19 of these cities, especially for voice service and customer support. By contrast Verizon topped the poll.

The report highlights what has been a tough year for AT&T. With exclusive rights to the iPhone you'd think the company would be in a strong position but success has come at a price.

The surge in iPhone users has meant a lot more mobile data being used. While this is a good thing it's been clear for some time that AT&T didn't have the infrastructure to handle that much data.

The company is investing in improving this by putting up new cell towers but it still has a long way to go, and surveys like this don't make its task any easier.