iphone blog

March 15, 2010

Five features the iPad needs for business

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 9:10 pm

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Biz Feed blog at PCWorld.com.

Only a few weeks left until the Apple iPad—the Wi-Fi version at least—will actually ship and be available in stores. Reports suggest that Apple sold more than 120,000 iPads when pre-orders began last Friday, and it seems safe to assume that the early adopters are not looking to revolutionize business computing.

Apple seems content to let the iPad stand on its own merits as a unique device, but that hasn’t stopped competitors, media, and the rest of the world from drawing comparisons. The iPad is being compared to both e-readers and netbooks, as well as tablet PC’s based on standard operating systems like Windows 7.

The iPad is a distinctive device, carving out its own niche. The smartphone-like instant-on, combined with a fast processor, multitouch screen rivaling notebooks in size, and the vast library of 150,000-plus apps make the iPad a unique, if not ideal, business tool.

Here are five features the iPad is lacking which would make it a much better-rounded device for business use:

1. Expandable storage

The iPad comes in three flavors: 16Gb, 32Gb, and 64Gb. If your storage needs grow beyond the limitations of the device you choose, you will have to sell it on eBay and buy a new one. If your data needs exceed 64Gb, you are just out of luck. Almost all smartphones— aside from the iPhone—have expandable memory via a mini or micro SD memory card slot. The iPad is not a smartphone, but Apple should have included an SD memory card slot on the iPad to allow for expanded memory if needed.

2. USB ports

Notebooks and netbooks offer tremendous flexibility via the USB ports. There are USB thumb drives, external USB hard drives, USB webcams, USB headsets, etc. A USB port—along with the right software and drivers—would greatly extend the functionality of the iPad, and enable business professionals to use it for a variety of purposes that it can’t support without them.

3. Video camera

A front-facing camera is perhaps one of the most-speculated features of the iPad. Following the launch, developers and media analysts noted that the iPad Steve Jobs used to demonstrate with at the launch event seemed to have a spot for a camera, and the SDK from Apple contained camera references.

Alas, as we come down to the wire it appears that there will, in fact, be no camera in the iPad—at least in the first-generation iPad. Hopefully, the iPad 2.0 will have it though, because the ability to conduct video conferencing from the iPad is arguably be one of its best potential business functions.

4. Multitasking

The iPhone OS, which the iPad uses as well, does not allow for true multitasking—at least not yet. The OS is technically capable of multitasking, but Apple has limited or restricted which apps are able to access that functionality. The need for true multitasking on the iPhone is debatable—there are alternate solutions that can be just as effective without the issues introduced by multitasking.

However, a display the size of the iPads allows for multiple windows to be open and displayed simultaneously—implying an obligation on the part of Apple to allow multitasking. Fortunately, this is a matter of software and is a feature that can be added with a simple update of the iPhone OS.

5. Alternate browsers

Apple has its own browser—Safari—which the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch all use by default. Unfortunately, Safari is not the most functional, or popular browser in the world. Dragging in fourth place with less than 5 percent of the browser market, Safari is simply not the browser of choice for most business professionals. Many businesses rely on Web-based tools and applications that are built for Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, and may not display or render properly in Safari. Allowing alternative browser choices is also an iPad tweak which can be accomplished via software, so it’s something we might see before the next-generation iPad hardware is developed.

The iPad is a device built for media consumption by the general public. It is designed to be a mobile infotainment platform, and it is primarily a consumer gadget. That said, there are plenty of business uses for it, and a growing library of apps aimed specifically at integrating the iPad (and iPhone) with the enterprise.

Let’s be clear, though, to try and stop the extremist hyperbole from both sides. I am not declaring the iPad the greatest thing that ever happened to business computing. I am simply suggesting that it has business uses, and that with a few additional features it could have greater business functionality.

Maybe in iPad 2.0?

[Tony Bradley is co-author of Unified Communications for Dummies. You can follow him on his Facebook page, or contact him by e-mail.]

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Five features the iPad needs for business

A trend? Intel releases $125 ‘affordable’ SSD

Filed under: Ripdev — Tags: , , , , , , , , — @ 6:01 pm

Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visit Computerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center.

On the heels of OCZ Technology Group’s release of its first sub-$100 solid-state drive (SSD), Intel said Monday that it is shipping a $125 SSD called the X25-V Value SATA SSD.

Affordable is the word Intel wants associated with this drive, but the price per gigabyte is the same as that of its higher-capacity consumer SSDs. The new drive simply offers less storage space and lower performance for a lower price. But industry analysts said the trend of offering lower-capacity SSDs for around $100 may spur adoption of nonvolatile memory in what has been a somewhat flat market over the past year.

“I think consumers will consider this product. Equipment manufacturers definitely will,” said Michael Yang, a flash memory analyst at iSuppli Corp.

The X25-V is a 2.5-inch, 40GB SSD that is being marketed by Intel as an “entry-level” drive for use in netbooks and as a secondary drive in dual-drive desktop computers, where it would serve as a “boot drive” to offer users faster boot times and faster access to key applications.

Last week, OCZ Technology released its own “affordable” SSD, the Onyx SATA II drive.

The Onyx is a 32GB SSD that, like other consumer-grade flash drives, is based on multilevel cell (MLC) NAND and offers 125MBps sequential read and 70MBps sequential write speeds.

With SSDs, capacity affects performance. The greater the capacity, the better the performance. That’s because SSDs are built with multiple parallel I/O channels from the drive’s controller chip to the NAND flash chips that store data. Generally, the greater the number of NAND flash chips, the greater the number of parallel channels or bandwidth to access the data on those flash chips.

SSDs with capacities of 64GB or more are typically built on eight-channel architectures, according to Yang. Micron’s RealSSD C300 drive, which has a capacity of 256GB, has the largest number of channels for a consumer-class drive, with 16.

Prior to the X25-V, Intel sold two SSD lines, the X25-E for data center server applications and the X18-M and X25-M for consumer products. Both the X18-M and X25-M SSD models are marketed for laptop and netbook computers. They come in 1.8- and 2.5-inch form factors, respectively.

The X25-M drive has a 10-channel architecture and comes in 80GB and 160GB capacities and has sequential read/write data transfer rates of up to 250MBps and 100MBps, respectively. An 80GB X25-M SSD can be had for around $230 at online sites like Macbuy.com.

Intel’s new X25-V is built on a five-channel architecture and has ten 4GB NAND flash chips. It has sequential read/write speeds of 170MBps and 35MBps With 4KB random reads, the drive can produce up to 25,000 I/O operations per second for reads and 2500 I/O per second for writes.

Intel said the drive has a 1.2 million-hour mean time before failure (MTBF) rate, but most industry experts do not consider MTBF to be a reliable method of measuring drive longevity, preferring write/erase cycles instead. Most multilevel cell NAND flash memory products have a maximum of 10,000 write/erase cycles.

The X25-V has native command queuing as well as trim support to increase performance.

When it comes to price per gigabyte, hard disk drives are still far cheaper than SSDs. According to Yang, SSDs cost from $2.50 to $3 per gigabyte, while hard disk drives cost around 10 cents per gigabyte. “For less than $100, you get a hard disk drive with a terabyte of capacity,” Yang said.

According to Gregory Wong, a flash memory analyst at Forward Insights, pricing for nonvolatile memory, such as the NAND flash used in SSDs, has remained flat or increased slightly over the past year, and adoption has likewise been relatively flat. The brightest growth for SSD is in portable devices, such as MP3 players and smartphones.

“I think what Intel and OCZ are shooting at is a price point for the consumer,” Wong said. “And it’s whatever capacity you can get for $100. In my discussions with Intel, they’re seeing good uptake of their 40GB SSD, but it’s not going to replace a hard drive in a notebook.”

SSDs are far superior to hard disk drives when it comes to performance, power use and ruggedness. Unlike hard disk drives, SSDs have no moving parts, so there’s less of a chance that they’ll break due to impact, which makes them particularly good for use in mobile devices.

Hard disk drives have read/write heads on actuator arms that, like the arm of a record player, must move across a disk platter to access data. That takes time. SSDs can access data at the same speed no matter where it’s stored in the flash memory, which makes them particularly good for retrieving random data.

For example, one of the fastest hard disk drives on the market today is the 10,000 rpm, 300GB, Western Digital VelociRaptor. In a Computerworld test, that drive had a 105MBps average sequential read rate and a 100MBps sequential write rate. The VelociRaptor uses 6.08 watts of power when reading or writing and 4.03 watts when idle.

In comparison, the X25-V uses just 1.5 watts when active and 0.75 watts when idle. However, as Wong points out, a hard drive only accounts for about 10 percent of a netbook or desktop’s power consumption, so it will not greatly affect battery life or the user’s electric bill.

A 300GB VelociRaptor drive sells for at least $199 at online retail sites like Pricegrabber.com. So for about half that price, you can get nearly twice the read performance with Intel’s X25-V, and that translates into faster boot-up and application response times.

Intel claims that the X25-V is almost four times faster than a 7200 rpm hard disk drive. “SSDs can replace or co-exist with traditional hard disk drives,” Intel states in its marketing material. “Users keep their existing HDD as a means of higher-capacity data storage. This capability is commonly referred to as a boot drive, since the SSD accelerates boot or start-up time.”

According to Stephen Yang, product manager for solid-state drives at online retailer Newegg.com, the Intel solid-state drive is its top-selling SSD.

“This new value entry from Intel means more customers will have the chance to experience the benefits of SSDs, not just in notebooks or high-end PCs, but in mainstream desktops as a boot drive. This is the right price point to help convert more users to SSD computing,” Yang said.

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A trend? Intel releases $125 ‘affordable’ SSD

FCC Wants You To Test And Share Your Mobile Data Speeds – How Did You Fare?

Filed under: AppAdvice — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 3:51 pm

In a reversal of roles, Apple has approved something for the FCC, an iPhone app.  The FCC’s new app allows you to test the quality of your mobile data download and upload speeds in order to “create awareness about the importance of broadband quality in accessing content and services over the Internet.”  Of course that’s not the only reason they have provided the app, the FCC also intends to collect the data to analyze the quality and coverage of mobile broadband connections across the United States as part of their efforts to identify areas with poor or nonexistent access to broadband.

FCC Mobile Broadband Test was actually developed by Ookla, the developers of the popular Speedtest.net iPhone app and other network diagnostic software, which basically means that app has been re-branded and given the ability to share information with the FCC.  For those of you concerned about your privacy, the information being shared consists of your IP address, location, and performance information from the test.

So now that we got all of that out of the way, give the app a try in order to help the FCC help improve data access across the US, and then once you have your results, feel free to share them with the rest of us. Include whatever information you would like, such as what type of connection you have (3G/Edge), download speeds, upload speeds, location, time of day, etc.

I have taken the liberty of going first and my results are in the image above.  How did you fair?

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FCC Wants You To Test And Share Your Mobile Data Speeds – How Did You Fare?

Google’s Open Web vs Apple’s vendor lock-in

Filed under: zdnet — Tags: , , , , , , , — @ 10:10 am

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 3:10 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Web, Apple Inc., TVs, Tv & Home Theater, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Christopher Dawson

Jason Perlow has a theory. Some people might say that it’s a little far-fetched, a little conspiratorial. However, I’ve worked with Jason long enough to know that very often his theories end up being realized. This particular theory has the makings of an epic battle between Apple and Google (along with potentially a host of other vendors and the open source community).

Essentially, Jason makes a case suggesting that Apple is looking to extend the closed vertical ecosystem that it has already brought to music into all of the media we consume. As we move away from a PC-centric world to an Internet-centric world, the idea of a “screen” (whether smartphones, terminals, kiosks, PCs, televisions, or MIDs) that connects us to the Web and all of the data and applications we host there makes a lot of sense. And if, as Jason suggests, the iPad is Apple’s first real volley into the “screen” market then we should expect future generations of Apple’s screen to be

a synthesis between iPhone OS and Mac OS where the entire means of production, the systems architecture and the software/content delivery mechanism to the device is entirely Apple-controlled.

The idea of the screen is completely consistent with Google’s vision of computing in the relatively near future. When top Google execs proclaimed that the desktop would be dead by 2013, they were met with an entire spectrum of reactions, from the usual disbelief in yet another death-of-the-pc theory to applause. As Gizmodo explained,

Everything that Google is doing and planning is centered on the mobile, the cloud, and ubiquitous connectivity.


In my conversation last week with Google’s Chris Vander Mey, the same message was clear. No matter what anyone else is doing, Google will leverage the Open Web and the powerful platform they have developed in the cloud to deliver useful applications and great experiences across platforms (meaning whatever screen you use, you’ll be able to access your data and applications).

This really gets to the core of epic battle I mentioned before. Where Apple is looking to create a completely closed vertical platform for content. Google is looking to have their cloud services work anywhere, regardless of vendor, OS, hardware, etc. Whether integrating search and online media into Dish Network’s satellite TV or continuing to develop and implement HTML 5, Google is marching toward a level of ubiquity that Apple may be hard-pressed to match with a closed ecosystem.

After all, while the iPod and iPhone are certainly music and communications juggernauts with which to be reckoned, the iPad starts getting a little rich for a lot of media consumers. So will Apple’s embedded system TVs (assuming Jason has their plans correctly, and I really believe that he does). And, just as Apple capriciously wipes out Apps from their Apps Store, so too could they control the content on these devices in ways that Google (so far) has chosen not to.

Who will win the battle? I think it will be a couple of years in the making. However, there is a reason that Eric Schmidt left Apple’s board of directors last year. There is a reason that Google is pushing into countless new markets and bringing products into widespread beta as quickly as possible. Google and Apple both know: he who controls the screen controls the Web (and all of the money that entails). I have to say that I’m rooting for Google’s open approach that welcomes a wide array of hardware and software. Vendor lock-in isn’t good for consumers, content providers, or developers. Apple’s HTC lawsuit was the first shot across the bow. What’s next? And when will Google take the gloves off?

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Google’s Open Web vs Apple’s vendor lock-in

SpotRank Is Skyhook’s Intelligent Location Firehose. SimpleGeo Is The First To Wield.

Filed under: techcrunch — Tags: , , , , , , , — @ 2:26 am

In terms of location data, few get more than Skyhook Wireless. The positioning technology is in use in tens of millions of devices around the globe, including, notably, on every iPhone. And now the company has a simple way for third-parties to tap into that data in a useful way.

SpotRank gives developers access to hundreds of million of anonymous location entry points put into the Skyhook system. In fact, there are some 500 million points (100 meter “spots”) at the service’s launch. With this massive amount of data, developers can do things such as predict what locations will be hot on which nights, or predict traffic patterns. They have so much data because it’s not based around things like check-ins, which are hot right now on the consumer side of location, but rather everytime a device needs location for anything.

The first partner signing up to use SpotRank is SimpleGeo. It seems like a perfect partnership. SimpleGeo provides back-end location services for many startups, so the more data, the better. And Skyhook’s data goes back several years, a nice addition for the young SimpleGeo.

One thing SimpleGeo co-founder Matt Galligan is particularly excited about is that the SpotRank data is all time-coded. This will allow users of its service to do trending data. And SimpleGeo is working on making the data realtime.

Other partners interested in signing up for SpotRank include the hot location startup Gowalla, and ShopKick, the soon-to-launch retail location check-in service (makers of the CauseWorld app that we’ve covered a few times).

At some point tomorrow, the SpotRank data should be live on Skyhook’s site showing some SXSW data — which will no doubt be huge with the Location War going on.

[photo: flickr/flattop341]

Information provided by CrunchBase


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SpotRank Is Skyhook’s Intelligent Location Firehose. SimpleGeo Is The First To Wield.

March 13, 2010

Review: Motorola Devour smartphone

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:00 pm

Android smartphone has nice features

At first glance, the Devour (Motorola’s second Android phone on Verizon) looks a lot like the Droid (). But after spending some time with the Devour, I realized that it couldn’t be more different from its older sibling. There’s a lot to like about the Devour, especially its social networking features, intuitive user interface, and sturdy design, but it also has some shortcomings.

My initial impressions of the Devour’s design and look weren’t exactly positive. The Devour is a bit clunky, and its aluminum body is retro in a somewhat unappealing way. The 3.1-inch display seemed way too small for its 4.4-inch-long body and is much smaller than the Droid’s 3.7-inch display. In fact, the Devour is slightly bigger than the Droid, but weighs a tad less at 5.9 ounces (the Droid weighs 6 ounces).

After some hands-on use though, the Devour began to win me over. Yes, this thing is a brick, but it feels quite solid in the hand and has some unique design elements. For example, rather than a back battery plate, the Devour’s battery and microSD slot can be accessed by removing the rubber siding on the phone’s left spine. To remove the battery, you just tip the phone, and it slides out. The Devour also has black rubber panels on the top and bottom, keeping the phone from feeling slippery.

I found the layout of the Devour’s touch controls a bit awkward, however. There’s a sizeable gap between the bottom of the display and the touch controls. Then, for whatever reason, Motorola placed the touch controls in two rows: The Menu, Home, and Back keys are on the right side of the top row, with a thumbpad/optical mouse below them on the left. Overall, it makes for a lot of unused space, which is unfortunate when you have only 3.1 inches of screen real estate to work with. On the bright side, the touch keys are quite responsive, and the optical mouse is a good alternative to the touchscreen.

I do applaud Motorola’s keyboard design for the Devour; it is far better than the Droid’s. While the Droid’s keyboard is spacious enough, I found it shallow and a bit uncomfortable to use. The Devour’s recessed keyboard is easier to steady, making typing more comfortable. The keys are also large, and nicely raised and spaced out. The sliding mechanism is crisp and springy, yet solid.

While I felt a bit shortchanged by the size of Devour’s capacitive display, I was impressed with its responsiveness and brightness. At 320-by-480-pixels, its resolution isn’t as good as the Droid’s (which is an 854-by-480-pixel stunner), but colors appeared vivid, and I was pleased with its responsiveness.

MotoBlur for social networking

Perhaps the biggest difference between the Droid and the Devour is in the software. The Droid runs Android 2.0 with Android’s vanilla user interface out of the box. The Devour, on the other hand, runs Motorola’s social networking interface for Android called MotoBlur. This is Motorola’s second MotoBlur device, following the Motorola Cliq () on T-Mobile. Motorola has two more MotoBlur devices coming to the United States later this year, the Cliq XT (the carrier will be T-Mobile) and the Blackflip (carrier not yet announced). The Devour (along with other MotoBlur devices) runs Android 1.6, but Motorola says it plans on eventually upgrading the phones to version 2.1. In my review of the Motorola Cliq I covered MotoBlur extensively, so here I’ll only briefly touch on some of MotoBlur’s most important features.

When you start up the Devour for the first time, you have to register for a MotoBlur account. This establishes a registration record of your phone on the MotoBlur servers so you can receive updated information without interruption. You then choose which social network accounts (such as such as Facebook, Last.fm, MySpace, and Twitter) you want to associate on your Devour.

MotoBlur also collects and organizes all of the contacts from your various social networks. If you’re friends with the same people on multiple networks, MotoBlur condenses all of their information into a single listing to avoid duplicating data on your phone. You can then see each of your contacts’ current information—birthday, status update, current profile picture, e-mail address, phone number, and the like. You can view your communication history with a particular contact as well as viewing that person’s activity on different social networks.

Aesthetically, I find MotoBlur a bit overwhelming: Text, talk bubbles, and images fly out at you in every direction. And the text and icons lack the pop of iPhone OS or even Palm’s WebOS. Fortunately, you have five homescreens to fill with the widgets and applications of your choice, which helps reduce the clutter. In addition to the standard Android widgets (Music, Clock, Calendar, and Search, to name a few), you’ll see four MotoBlur widgets: Messages, Status, Happenings, and Weather.

My favorite element of MotoBlur is its ability to track your lost or stolen phone via GPS and remotely wipe it. And since all of your data is stored in the cloud, you won’t have to reload everything into your new (MotoBlur) phone.

In addition to the MotoBlur features, you also have access to all of the useful Google applications like Gmail, Google Maps with Navigation, YouTube, Google Search, and so on. You can also set up and sync your Yahoo account with the device and get full Outlook sync support as well.

Good multimedia features; lackluster camera

The Devour has the standard Android music player with support for playlist building, as well as shuffle and repeat modes. Transferring music on to the Devour is a snap with the included USB cable. Audio sounded clean through the provided earbuds, but even better through my higher-quality set. Music piped through the external speakers was a bit weak, however. Video playback was smooth, especially through the included Verizon V Cast video application.

Unfortunately, I can’t give the same praise for the Devour’s 3-megapixel camera. I’m not sure why Motorola went with only 3 megapixels, as both the Cliq and the Droid have 5-megapixel cameras, and such 5-megapixel cameras also seem to be the norm for higher-end smartphones these days. Overall, I was disappointed with the way my snapshots turned out. Colors appeared washed out, while details looked fuzzy. The Devour’s camera doesn’t have many editing features, either. You can geotag as well as apply a color effect to your photos, but I wish it had more capabilities, especially when the camera quality is merely adequate.

Solid network performance

Call quality over Verizon’s 3G network was excellent. My contacts sounded loud and clear with no distortion or background static or hiss. Callers on the other end of the line noted that my voice sounded natural, and they couldn’t hear very much background noise. I experienced no dropped calls or dead zones during my use, either.

Surfing the Web on the Android browser was a pleasurable experience as well. Pages loaded quickly over Verizon’s 3G EvDO connection. I had no issues browsing media-rich pages, either. Of course, the Devour doesn’t support full Flash (though Flash Player 10 will be available for Android later this year), so you can only view Flash Lite content.

The Devour isn’t a bad phone by any means, but it is hard to see where it fits into the Android universe. On the one hand, the full QWERTY keyboard and MotoBlur’s social networking features make it appealing for teens. But, in my opinion, its industrial look seems to be targeted more at older audiences, and it isn’t that much cheaper than the Droid (which is $200 with a two-year contract). Until the Devour gets upgraded to Android 2.1 (and perhaps gets a price drop), I’d recommend the Droid over the Devour.

[Ginny Mies is an assistant editor for PCWorld.]

 

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Review: Motorola Devour smartphone

March 12, 2010

iPad: 50,000 sales in 2 hours, Apple TV bumped, mysterious app icon

Filed under: appleinsider — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 7:00 pm

By Slash Lane

Published: 02:00 PM EST

The introduction of the iPad Friday morning sold an estimated 50,000 units in two hours, and also bumped Apple’s “hobby,” the Apple TV, from the front page of its online store. Also, a mysterious icon included in iPad promotional pictures gains attention, and Apple has expanded its site to explain features of the coming hardware in greater detail.

iPad sales estimated at 25,000 per hour

After it went on sale at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Friday, the iPad is estimated to have sold 51,000 in its first two hours. As discovered by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, users at the Investor Village AAPL Sanity Board took their order numbers and attempted to crack the code to figure out total sales.

Victor Castroll, analyst with Valcent Financial Group and member of the AAPL Sanity Board, has been monitoring the spreadsheet and came up with the calculation of 51,000 units in the first two hours.

iPad preorder bumps Apple TV from front page of online store

In accepting preorders for the iPad on Friday, Apple made some minor adjustments to the front page of its online store. As a result, the Apple TV product and its accompanying picture were bumped and are no longer featured atop the store’s main page.

The Apple TV used to be featured prominently alongside the company’s line iPods, the iPhone and Macs. Now users must scroll down and find it in the left column under the “For iPod” heading.

Last month, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said his company still views the Apple TV as a “hobby,” and noted that sales of the product simply don’t compare to the consumer markets for smartphones, computers and MP3 players. Cook said he doesn’t believe the Apple TV will remain dormant, but it may take time for the potential market for the device to grow.

“Because our gut says something is there, we’re continuing to invest in this,” Cook said. “But today, it’s still just a hobby.”

Last October, Apple released the 3.0 software update for Apple TV, featuring a redesigned main menu that made navigating content simpler and faster. It also added support for the new iTunes LP and iTunes Extras formats.

Apple Store

Mysterious app icon gains attention

Apple updated its Web site with new pictures of the iPad Friday, and one screenshot in particular garnered attention from readers due to its inclusion of a mysterious icon. Included on the home screen Web page, the picture shows an icon on the far right of the device in landscape mode, and the application is not shown in any other screenshots.

Though the text is too small to read clearly, the icon appears to show the logo for the publication National Geographic. It’s likely that the icon is for a digital version of the magazine, to be sold through Apple’s iBookstore.

National Geographic

Apple expands on iPad features

As preorders began Friday, Apple also fleshed out the official iPad section of its Web site, adding greater detail on the iBooks application, 3G data subscriptions with AT&T, and more.

As before, all of the built-in applications on the iPad have their own page describing their function. Apple also has special dedicated pages for the iBooks application, which must be downloaded from the App Store, as well as the $9.99 Keynote, Pages and Numbers software.

A page devoted to 3G access on the iPad describes how users can start and cancel a no-contract data plan with AT&T direct from the device at any time. As was revealed at the product’s unveiling, the data plans run $15 per month for 250MB of data, or $30 per month for unlimited access.

iPad 3G

Apple also updated its total number of applications available on the App Store to 150,000. When the iPad was first announced, the company advertised that more than 140,000 applications would be available for the device at launch.

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iPad: 50,000 sales in 2 hours, Apple TV bumped, mysterious app icon

New iPad Details Emerge as Pre-Ordering Commences

Filed under: theappleblog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — @ 4:19 pm

People may be able to buy their iPads today, but they won’t actually get their hands on the much-anticipated devices until early next month, and later if they opted for 3G connectivity. But Apple isn’t without a heart, so the company revealed some new specific details about the tablet on the iPad micro-site, according to MacWorld.

Included in the informational appetizer are details regarding the 3G data plans available for the device, the iBooks application and how it will work, a small hardware change that should make a pretty big difference, and a couple other eyebrow-raising late-game additions.

Data Control

The iPad benefits from having to deal with only two available data options at launch in the U.S. Because it knows exactly how much data you should have, it can provide much more useful usage information. You get access to an iPad Cellular Data Plan window on the 3G-enabled devices, from which you can modify, sign up for, or even cancel your AT&T data plan.

The iPad will let you know when you’ve got only 20 percent and 10 percent remaining of your 250MB if that’s what you’re working with, and when you’re completely out. From there, you can top off by adding more data, or even upgrade to the full unlimited plan at $30 a month. Sure beats sitting on hold waiting for an AT&T representative. There’s also evidence that you’ll be able to manage an international data plan from the screen in the future, but Apple hasn’t revealed any details regarding this yet.

iBooks

The actual iBooks app won’t be installed by default on shipping iPads, probably owing to the fact that it might not be available at all on international versions of the device, at least if the lack of a mention of the app on the iPad pages in other countries indicates anything. Instead, you’ll be able to download it from the App Store.

Good news for public domain fans: any free ePub format books you download from elsewhere can be synced to the iPad via iTunes and read on your device. And Kindle fans will appreciate the ability to highlight and look-up any word in any book, either on Wikipedia, the dictionary, or via web search, just by touching and holding.

Screen Orientation Lock

I absolutely hate using the iPhone while lying in bed for a lot of things because many times, a screen lock is a software feature and isn’t necessarily available for all applications. That means that it’ll constantly switch to landscape mode, despite that not being at all what I want it to do.

The iPad solves that problem via a hardware switch above the volume controls on the side of the device that locks the screen’s orientation into whatever mode it’s in currently.

Accessibility

More accessibility options have been added, including the ability to switch audio to mono and route it through just one headphone for users who may only have hearing in one ear. iBooks are also apparently covered by VoiceOver, so that users can have them read to them by Apple’s emotionless robot drones.

AVI Support

Perhaps the biggest little detail added in the iPad’s specifications is support for AVI videos, using the MotionJPEG format. Resolution for the files supported is 1280

Update: In Time For SXSW, Twitter Officially Turns On Geolocation

Filed under: techcrunch — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — @ 3:37 pm

A few days ago, we spotted Twitter’s initial roll out of a geolocation feature on its Website. It appeared that Twitter was testing the feature because it quickly turned it off. Last night, the feature went back on, and Twitter co-founder and CEO Biz Stone officially announced it.

While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, this is the first time Twitter has enabled geolocation on its site. To start Tweeting with your location attached, you need to enable the feature in your Twitter Account Settings. Once you’ve opted-in, you will be able to add your location information to all your Tweets or choose to add them to individual Tweets as you compose them. You can choose to share your exact location (your coordinates) or your neighborhood or town.

Currently, the feature only works with Firefox 3.5 and Chrome for Windows. If you decide you want to send a Tweet without your location, you can simply click the “x” next to your location to disable it. Interestingly, if you Tweet with your geolocation on Twitter, the location doesn’t seem to show up in TweetDeck, Seesmic or presumably other third-party clients. And It doesn’t work from Twitter’s mobile site, at least not on the iPhone, where it would make more sense.

As we wrote in our earlier coverage, the timing of this move by Twitter is purposeful. With the SXSW conference in Austin starting today, the location wars are heating up. Earlier in the week, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, Foursquare, Gowalla and a host of other location-based apps are rolling out additional functionality. As we previously noted, many of these apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Information provided by CrunchBase


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Update: In Time For SXSW, Twitter Officially Turns On Geolocation

Apple dishes new iPad details on 3G, iBooks, more

Filed under: macworld — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — @ 3:12 pm

The availability of pre-orders isn’t the only new development in iPad-land. Apple also updated its site with a plethora of new details about its latest and greatest device, from information on the 3G networking capabilities to a more in-depth description of the iBooks application. Let’s take a look at what caught our attention.

In introducing the iPad, Apple said that it had struck a groundbreaking new deal with AT&T, allowing iPad users to get 3G access on their devices without having to sign up for a contract. Users would have two choices: a $15 per month plan that limited their data consumption to 250MB and a $30 per month plan for unlimited data. Plans could be signed up for or canceled at will, but questions continued to abound.

On Friday, Apple answered some of those questions on its Website, with a page on the iPad’s 3G support. Those users who choose to sign up for the metered 250MB plan will be provided with information on the iPad’s screen to let them know when they approach the data limit: specifically, when they have 20 percent, 10 percent, or no data remaining—just like the iPhone’s low battery warnings. When the alerts pop up you have the option of adding more data or waiting until later.

Signing up or canceling your data plan can all be done via the iPad’s Cellular Data Plan window (pictured). You can even change to the unlimited data plan from the 250MB plan, or add another 250MB of data if you want. You’ll also be able to view how much data you’ve currently used and how many days are left in your plan. A screenshot on Apple’s site also alludes to an “International Plan,” though Apple hasn’t provided any details on it.

Reading is fundamental

The iBooks application won’t be shipped on the iPad—rather, it will be a free download from the App Store. While many of the details of the app were already known, Apple does drop a few new tidbits on its iBooks page, such as the fact that free ePub titles available from elsewhere can be synced to iBooks via iTunes, allowing you to read them on your iPad. Apple also says iBooks will remember where you left off when you finish reading, allowing you to pick up from there next time you launch it. And touching and holding any word lets users look it up in the built-in dictionary, on Wikipedia, or search for it in the book or on the Web.

In addition, the iPad’s VoiceOver screen-reading technology allows you to have any page read aloud to you. A similar feature on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader touched off a feud between the online retailer and the Authors Guild, resulting in an agreement where publishers get to decide on a title-by-title basis whether that feature is available.

Lock it down

One fact that might have escaped the notice of even eagle-eyed iPad watchers is the physical screen rotation lock. Anybody who’s used the iPhone or iPod touch for any length of time knows that it’s hard to read while lying down, as the accelerometer frequently flips from portrait to landscape. Thankfully, Apple’s combatted that problem in the iPad by adding a screen rotation lock switch on the right-hand side of the iPad, right above the volume controls.

In one ear…

On its page about Accessibility, Apple adds that you can now route both left- and right-channels of audio to just one headphone, for those who might have a hearing issue in one ear.

Always in motion

Squirreled away on the iPad’s Specs page is a new addition as well: the iPad now supports AVI videos in MotionJPEG format, with data rates of up to 35Mbps, resolutions of up to 1280 by 720 pixels, and PCM stereo audio. iTunes has never supported any AVI files in the past, and the huge data rate goes way beyond what even the Apple TV can handle.

What’s new with you?

Notice anything that our detail-combing iPad team missed? Chime in below to let us know what’s got your attention.

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Apple dishes new iPad details on 3G, iBooks, more

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