Nicole Martinelli - page 20

An app from a Christian Ministry is “designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders” over what it calls “homosexual strugglers.”

The iPad, great for reading while lounging in bed or hanging out on the couch, gets a new hands-free option with this cool stand.

Called Hanfree, the prototype is drumming up support on Kickstarter and hopes to retail in May for $79.

The design, which reminds us of the classic Arco lamp, features a clear case, stainless steel neck and sturdy acrylic base.

An game app created by psychologists says it can help users extinguish their smoking habits.

Called Nicot, the $4.99 app is the result of a study by the Canada Research Chair in Clinical Cyberpsychology and the University of Quebec in Outaouais.

Researchers there say they found that virtually crushing butts in the game boosted quitting success rates by 15%. If the would-be ex-smokers also used pharmacological aids (patches, gum and the like) and attended a  follow-up clinic, those rates were boosted to 50%.

Responding to critics, Smuggle Truck, the game about illegal immigration has added a legal mode.

The game still hasn’t been approved for iTunes yet, but if and when it is in April, you’ll be able to access Legal Immigration mode via the game’s main menu.

How do you play? Well, you don’t. Not really. You get a screen with 20-year countdown.

When asked why two decades, Owlchemy Labs developer Alex Schwartz said:

“Well that’s the greater than 10 years it takes for someone to obtain a green card. Plus the multiple occurrences of ‘lost paperwork’ that are bound to happen during the process.”

“Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration” has released a storm of controversy – and free publicity.

In it, players navigate through what looks like the U.S.-Mexican border. As the truck drives over cliffs, mountains and dead animals, immigrants fall off the truck bed. Scores are calculated by the number of immigrants helped into the U.S. Hundreds of news outlets have written about the game, many weighing in on whether it’s in bad taste or a wry commentary on the current US immigration policies.

From the press release released, it sounds like the game makers are keen to keep up that publicity spin cycle:

“Tilt your truck, catch newborn babies, drive over armadillos, and rocket your way over hills, through caverns, and over quicksand to save the people!”

Having  gone through the frustrating, expensive, time-consuming green card process for a family member, the legal mode option gave me a good laugh.

Via Joystiq

A new  iPad app for Cosmopolitan magazine, expected to debut later this week, drops the pretense that women read it for the articles: it features an interactive sex quiz with men groaning and lots of pics of shirtless guys.

Fashion bible Women’s Wear Daily got their hands on the magazine app featuring hot hunks and steamy sex advice to find that the $2.99 new app, called “The Showcase Edition,” contained only two articles.

Instead, there’s an interactive feature, already a favorite with magazine staffers, called “Decode His Bedroom Sounds,” which promises to help women understand what a “load moaner” really means — and whether she’s got one — by emitting what was described as “unholy sounds.”

It looks like the Apple Japan store has posted a message about the earthquake  — if you can help us translate it (they’ve posted it as an image, so there’s no way to copy and paste it for a robot-translation) we’d be much obliged.

Here’s a translation sent in by Cult of Mac readers @nick_gmit,  @Sugarless_GiRL_ , @Ignignokt:

“To those who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami, we send sympathies from our heart – In this deep …sadness, we are praying for the victims and their families.”

While we’re on topic,  Apple also set up donations through iTunes for the Red Cross to help victims of the earthquake and tsunami, as it did after the earthquake in Haiti.

Apple has waived their usual 30% cut and donations start in increments of $5.

The president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank came under fire after a comment that sounds oddly like the 2.0 version of “Let them eat cake.”

President William Dudley was peppered with questions about food prices from the public during a meet-and-greet session with business leaders in Flushing, Queens. As they asked him about issues of the day, ranging from oil prices to employment forecasts, they began to accuse him of being out of touch.

As he tried to explain how rising commodity prices translate into supermarket sticker shock, the audience asked him when he actually did his own food shopping last.

Yesterday’s update to the iOS 4.3 includes a requirement that buyers must enter their passwords for each purchase in iTunes.

The move comes after parents and legislators squawked that kids were making too many accidental buys in “credit-card bait games” in part because passwords stayed active for a 15-minute grace period.

“We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls with iOS,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post. “With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase.”

What do you think about the new requirement?

And do you think it will stop these games targeting kids?

Want an iPad 2 but don’t have the cash?

Here’s a random round-up of contests we’ve found offering the latest iPad as the prize.

Just about all are no-brainers that ask you to tweet or give your details in exchange for the chance to win, although some have age and geographical restrictions.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) reports an ongoing boom with tablet computers, with Apple’s iPad still kicking competitors to the curb.

They counted about twice as many “media tablets” sold in fourth quarter 2010 as the previous quarter – some 10 million computers.

Apple still has 73% share of the market – down from 93% Q42010 — but analysts expect them to keep that strong hold over competitors.

Apple is building on its strong 2010 first-generation iPad launch with the iPad 2, which will ship this month, before most competitors come to market with first generation media tablets. Although more competing devices will be launched this year, IDC expects Apple to maintain a 70-80% share of the market.

IDC defines media tablets as devices with color displays between 5-and 14-inches which run lightweight operating systems (such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS) and can be based on either x86 or ARM processors. Tablets, for the purposes of this research, are defined as tablet PCs run full PC operating systems and are based on x86 processors.

Just about 90% of all media tablets were shipped to the US, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) in Q42010.

Via IDC

Like a lot of people, I have mixed feelings about Craigslist. It’s like Ikea: in theory, you’d rather patronize mom-and-pop shops or get your stuff elsewhere. But somehow on a rainy Saturday afternoon: there you are.

Craigslist can be a pain to use or search – but if you’re looking for a garage sale, love connection or that elusive floor lamp with a table in it – you end up there.

That’s where app Lifelike Craig HD comes in.

Wall Street Journal writer Brett Arends bought a $200 Nook Color, jailbroke it in 20 minutes and found himself with a functioning tablet computer.

Arends readily admits his workaround – though it worked perfectly – isn’t the same thing as having an iPad.

He does crunch the numbers and figures the $200 he saves now, if invested, will give him about an extra $1,000 by the time he retires.

Photographer Stefano Pesarelli, an Italian expat who also runs an tour company in Malawi, traversed six African countries documenting daily life with his iPhone.

The project, called Africa through iPhone, takes him and his trusty iPhone 3GS from his adopted home through neighboring countries Kenya, Zambia, Mozambico, Tanzania and Kenya.

Pesarelli’s journey shows scenes from everyday life, snapped with the lens of his iPhone and altered with various apps.

The Federal Aviation Association approved the iPad as a navigation device on some charter flights.

On Februrary 1, the magical device was cleared as a navigation device. The FAA gave thumbs’ up to Cincinnati- based Executive Jet, who said it made 250 flights as part of the certification process.

Late last year, we wrote about a private pilot who was using his iPad with paper charts to guide the plane.

With the slimmer, lighter iPad 2 you may be wondering whether special clothing is still needed to haul it around.

After all, the latest version of the magical device is even more cargo-pants friendly than the previous one.

Mohan’s Custom Tailors is betting that men will prefer a way to carry it in your suit jackets – rather than going all “murse.”

Apple announced the new iPad will come equipped with front and rear-facing cameras as well as FaceTime video chat capability.

That got us thinking about live porn chat service iP4Play, which has been serving up porn via FaceTime since August 2010.

While interactive video sex chats are nothing new, FaceTime brings portability and convenience — or, as the Apple site touts it: “Now your smile goes even further” — and the porn company claims it has tens of thousands users, with a 30% growth surge each month. The service costs $4 a minute for a live chat with a video vixen.

[polldaddy poll=”4647872″]

The iPad 2 is here. It costs the same, but the latest version is thinner, comes in black or white and now rocks FaceTime, rear and front facing webcams plus a gyroscope for your gaming pleasure.

The hotter sibling of the original iPad starts shipping March 11th.

[polldaddy poll=”4641595″]

The Apple universe is all a twitter on the day before the Cupertino company tells media what “2011 will be the year of.”

The folks at bookmaker.com are wagering that we’ll see three versions of the iPad 2 (96%), a front and rear-facing camera  and a  non-smudge screen & gyroscope (96%).

Less likely, they speculate, are a USB port (83%), flat back (61.7%) and a 7-inch version  (160%) . (Yep, that’s over 100%. For once, the fuzzy math isn’t mine, that’s how betting odds work).

Take our poll and let us know what you think. Or what you hope for.

The second hacker charged outing an AT&T security breach that exposed over 120,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data was released on bail yesterday.

Andrew Auernheimer, who left the New Jersey courthouse looking slightly disheveled but with signature beard intact after posting bail without commenting to the press, had been behind bars since mid-January.

He and Daniel Spitler, both in their mid-20s and members of the Goatse Security group, were each charged with a count of fraud and a count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.

They were charged seven months after vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who wrote a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through exploiting a hole on AT&T’s website.

Auernheimer also goes by the alias Weev. The last two entries in his LiveJournal on January 14 featured a portrait from a friend (or fan?) looking haunted on what appears to be a cross and a bit about his interest in Jyotish, or Hindu astrology.

After reviewing his birth chart (“you may face a risk to your life and limbs during your 25th year”) he notes:

“It even knows the year of my peril. Just gotta make it through. Keep on truckin!”

Via AP

Head to a department store and instead of confessing the heartbreak of your breakouts or the consternation about those new wrinkles to an immaculate sales person, you can find that elusive elixir to solve your skin troubles using an iPad.

Clinique is rolling out an iPad “self-guided skin care diagnostic tool” at select counters in the US later this month.

Clinique, a dermatologist-created line owned by Estée Lauder, has always tried to project a “scientific” image, with sales women wearing white lab coats. I seem to remember a 1.0 analog diagnostic tool — a counter device that you could slide parameters for your skin type to suggest products (the result – you always needed more products.

This is the latest instance of companies putting iPads into customer hands – from menus to store playthings – they just might end up replacing a few sales people.

We do a lot of police blotter reading around here. (We’re old-school like that). So we’ve noticed a divide in cases involving iPhones and iPads that go missing and then get found with Apple’s Find my iPhone app.

Within a month of launching the service, police in San Jose used it tracked down a pair of thieves who broke into the house of an Apple employee. Busted. Arrested. Makes sense.

But what if you left your iPad on a train? Or the roof of your car? Or on an airplane? Or in a shopping cart?

No arrests were made in any of these recent cases.

[polldaddy poll=”4610739″]

Apple has updated the MacBook Pro line this morning with the additions of the new 15″ and 17″-inch models.

Speed is the key feature — they come equipped with the first implementation of Thunderbolt high-speed I/O technology as well as the first quad-core processor in a laptop. Prices range from $1,199 to  $2,499.

Are you ready to buy or happy to pass?

Tell us why in the comments.

If you want to know how much (or how little) you’re making compared to your peers, check out this new iPhone app.

Called Salary Checker, offered gratis in iTunes, it harnesses data from international recruiter Robert Walters.

Beloved teen detective Nancy Drew is racing her blue roadster into the digital age with a new interactive iPad game.

Called “Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries: Shadow Ranch,” it’s a game/story hybrid. Aimed at girls age 9-14, the interactive gamebook app lets players decide how the story unfolds as they play games and solve mysteries, both big and small.