There are rumors that Apple’s iPad launch has already run into some rough patches that are uncharacteristic for the company, but how much substance is actually behind them? One frequently mentioned challenge is having a sufficiently impressive array of available content that’s compatible with the device. The company reportedly has reduced the number of top-level categories in its iBookstore from 35 to perhaps as few as 20. That could mean that Apple is consolidating some categories to avoid displaying any that would appear understocked with iPad offerings.

Sony demonstrated its Move motion controller for the PlayStation 3 console at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, following up on its first demo at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles last June. Together with the Move, Sony will release the Move sub-controller, a one-handed controller that’s similar to the Nintendo Wii “nunchuck” and is an optional accessory for some games. Sony said the Move and its sub-controller will be launched worldwide this fall. It says 35 game publishers and developers have signed up to support the Move.

When Apple enabled in-app purchases for iPhone applications, it seemed as though the days of “free” and “paid” versions of any given app were coming to an end. Soon, I thought, everything in the store would start out free as a teaser and then charge for an upgrade. That hasn’t exactly panned out universally, but Vlingo’s new voice application does charge in the way I thought all apps would charge by now. You can download it for free, but getting to the premium features costs $10. Vlingo is a speech-to-text app that can use that text in any of six general ways.

The first rule of Apple’s App Club is: You do not talk about App Club. Any developer who writes an app for the App Store is forbidden from making any public statements about the iPhone Developer Program Licensing Agreement. Second rule of App Club is: Said developers also can’t sell their apps to other app stores, even if that app is eventually rejected by Apple. Third rule of App Club: You can’t reverse engineer anything having to do with the App Store software development kit or the iPhone OS.

Valve one of the largest distributors of online games, has announced that it will make its Steam online gaming service and proprietary gaming engine, Source, available on the Mac. The service, Steamworks for the Mac, comes equipped with Steam Play, a feature that allows play on either a PC or Mac at no additional charge. It also supports Steamworks APIs. The inclusion of WebKit into Steam and of OpenGL into Source gives the company a lot of flexibility, according to John Cook, director of Steam Development.

Gaming companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ask a lot of their customers. Every few years, they are encouraged by the companies to spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade to a fancy new console. But as far as I can recall, only Sony has ever asked its fans to not play those consoles. It happened Monday, thanks to a bug that kept those with older PlayStation 3s from accessing the PlayStation Network. An item on a company blog described the glitch as a problem with the console’s internal clock, which apparently thought it was a leap year.

Sony says a glitch that caused a global gaming lockdown for PlayStation 3 owners is due to a bug in the clock functionality of older PS3s. The lockdown affects owners of older PS3s as well as those who try to play newer games, which use trophies, such as “Heavy Rain” and “Final Fantasy XIII.” It also prevents users from connecting to Sony’s PlayStation Network. At press time, Sony was still working on the problem. The glitch struck Sunday when users powered on their PS3s, whether or not the devices were connected to the Internet.

This isn’t to ask whether it will be successful. Apple is a master at setting goals and then exceeding them, and a lot of folks are clearly excited about the iPad — but the first generation iPhone was kind of a mistake that got corrected in later versions. As I look at similar products that seem better thought through, I’m increasingly thinking that Steve Jobs’ initial concerns with this offering were well founded and that, at least initially, the iPad will have trouble reaching its potential.

Microsoft did its best Woody Harrelson impression this week and set out to bag some zombies. The zombies we’re talking about here are PCs infected with malware. The bad guys spread the malware around and then remotely control victims’ computers as part of a botnet that can do stuff like send out spam email or carry out DDoS attacks. In the real world, of course, you have to aim for the head to kill zombies, and that’s basically the new strategy Microsoft used. In order to take down Waledac, which was one really bad botnet, it was granted a temporary restraining order.

Anyone whose home has been under attack from zombies knows all too well how incredibly annoying the problem can get — way worse than termites or even a wasp nest. Luckily, strategic landscaping in the front yard can be an effective defense, at least in the cartoony world “Plants vs. Zombies” inhabits. PopCap’s game for PCs and Macs has been scaled down into an iPhone/iPod touch version, which loosely follows the tower defense game genre while adding in some new features to keep things interesting.

The Federal Trade Commission is getting proactive in trying to reduce the risk of data breaches due to peer-to-peer programs, notifying nearly 100 organizations of data breaches it traced back to file-sharing. The FTC did not identify the organizations, but said they ranged in size from small businesses to publicly held corporations with tens of thousands of employees. It warned all of the organizations that it was their responsibility to secure their data against theft, noting that in some cases, it was the agency’s responsibility to enforce laws mandating data security.

Clearly, exponentially growing technologies are set to change social communications, bringing up a number of touchy privacy and control questions. This year’s TED conference showcased a wide variety of gadgets and ideas, one of the most interesting being Microsoft’s new “augmented reality” mapping technology. Demonstrating the ability not only to see photo representations of streets but also to go inside a building, see three-dimensional graphics all around, Microsoft’s Bing maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas wowed the crowd.

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