Nicole Martinelli - page 24

Incase just launched this iPhone 4 battery case called the Snap which it says can extend the juice on your mobile device by 40%.

It’s got a built-in 900 mAh battery, features hardshell construction with a soft-touch coating, a female 30-pin connector for charging and syncing, an LED power indicator and control button, an included 30-pin to USB cable and open access to all ports and controls.

For sure, the Snap gives a little less of that piggy-back-bulk than competitor Mophie Juice Pack Air – and costs about $30 less at $60 than the Juice Pack.

$60 for a charger case isn’t exactly lunch money, but probably worth the back up if you face long commutes or watch a lot of battery-sucking video on your iPhone 4.

Via Incase

Much to the annoyance of parents who have to pay the credit card bills, in-app iPhone and iPad buys are popular with kids.

A typical scenario: your tot is playing with a game like “The Smurfs’ Village.” It’s free to download will keep the kid busy building a village where they can play with the famous blue cartoon characters.

The problem? To complete the Smurf village, your kid might want to add an extra, say, a wheelbarrow of Smurfberries.

That in-app purchase comes with a price tag of $59.99. Other extras are slightly cheaper – a bucket of Smurfberries costs $4.99, two bushels go for $11.99.

Forget drug mules: Chinese officials recently busted a ring of housewives acting as iPad mules.

Customs officials in Shenzhen caught 14 women, described as fashionably-dressed housewives, trying to carry 88 iPads and 340 mobile phones across the border from Hong Kong. The goods were worth an estimated 950,000 yuan, or about $143,000.

The methods sound similar to drug runners: one of them strapped 65 mobile phones around her waist and another 20 stuffed into a handbag, according to newspaper Guangzhou Daily.

Why the smuggle trouble? Even though the iPad is made in China, only the wi-fi version is available currently on the mainland.

Instead of trying to ban iPods and cell phones, one school district is telling kids to bring their own tech to school.

In the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, officials tired of trying to regulate the use of iDevices. Now at the Pulaski School District, for example, kids are encouraged to bring their cell phones, iPods and computers to class.

“Teachers can post questions, and kids can respond using their phones or their own computers,” said Amy Uelmen, instructional technology coordinator for the Pulaski district. “In the old days, we would take students to a computer lab; now you can bring it all into the classroom.”

If you have your hands on Apple’s latest must-have gadget the iPad, you’ve probably wondered how to keep other people’s hands off it.

Sure, you can password protect the screen. But that’s not going to do much if someone decides to pick up the handy tablet and run with it.

Enter the iPad lock. Well, it’s actually a $40 case with room for a standard computer lock (sold separately.) The hard clear plastic case has a prominent slot on the side, then you attach a lock which you need to secure to a table or other stationary too-big-to-walk-off-with item.

A teenage girl reportedly listening to her iPod survived getting clipped by a freight train in Ohio.

According to police reports, 16-year-old Isatu Kanu was late to school on Friday morning, making her way from home to Olentangy Orange High School at about 10:30 am. She had the hood of her coat up and headphones in, they say.

Police report that train engineers saw the teen and sounded the horn to warn her of the train’s approach. They say she did not appear to react.

Apple continues to gobble up worldwide market share thanks to the popularity of the iPad, but limited content offerings in local languages are a speed bump.

Apple snared a 12.4% share of global mobile PC shipments in Q3’10 – taking the third spot worldwide behind HP and Acer, according to DisplaySearch’s Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report

Still, early adopters in places like Japan are not snapping up the tablet, in part due to the lack of content in Japanese.

Beatle mania continues on iTunes: after the Fab Four launched on Apple’s store, selling some two million downloads in the first week, a course about them on iTunes U is also soaring in popularity.

Liberal Studies class “The Beatles: Popular Music and Society” from the University of Illinois Springfield has been available on iTunes in podcast form since 2005, but just this week it came in as the second most popular course on iTunes U. (Number one? Oxford’s “Critical Reasoning for Beginners.”)

Half a million people have downloaded the 39 podcasts – a crash course in 1960s music for people not born when John Lennon was killed in 1980? — and another two million have previewed it.

A high school basketball coach used an iPhone app called PhoneAid to perform CPR on a 17-year-old who collapsed on the court.

Eric Cooper Sr. downloaded the $1.99 app just the night before, as kind of a refresher course. When Xavier Jones keeled over in the middle of the court, Cooper and the assistant coach rushed to his side.

Jones’ heart had stopped beating. Cooper used the iPhone app, which gives real-time instructions on how to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to jump start his heart.

A private pilot is using an iPad to help stay on course, in addition to the standard navigation system.

Jeff Curl has loaded up his iPad with worldwide charts and says it helps him make better decisions in the air.

“I can see the route structure and see what kind of rate I want to file, I can also pull up my radar and see I don’t want to go straight, I’ve got a huge line of thunderstorms,” he said.

Bryan Shlager bought an iPad from Best Buy in Dorchester, Massachusetts that he suspects is a fake – and says also claims the store knows there are at least five or six other fakes sold from the same store.

Neither he nor his college freshman son, for whom it was a gift, could get the iPad to turn on.

Shlager took it back to a Best Buy near his son’s Florida campus – where he says Geek Squad employees told him it wouldn’t work because it was a fake.

Search engine ask.com may have its days numbered, but in 2010 people who used it to ask burning questions about tech had questions about Apple.

Three of the top five questions were about Apple products:

What is the best online game for iPod Touch?

What is the best iPhone app?

Is Apple coming out with the iPhone 5?

The answers?

According to the search engine, the best online game is old school arcade favorite Bomber Online and the best iPhone app is either game Trace, photography app Infinicam – described as a Hipstamatic killer — or iFart Mobile. On the release of the iPhone 5, the search engine isn’t much help: the first answer is July 2010.

Though it doesn’t have a rep for being the favored search engine of geeks, the Ask.com community ask and answer section named nerd-com “The Big Bang Theory” as this year’s best new TV show.

Via Yahoo

To help spread the word about God, a Christian group is now appealing to Steve Jobs.

Apple pulled an app called the Manhattan Declaration from the iTunes store last week after outcry and over  7,000 signatures on an online poll that the content was an anti-gay and hate-mongering.

The Manhattan Declaration is an over 4,000-word statement of beliefs signed by over 400,000 people described as “a call to Christian conscience” crafted in 2009. The app version, which includes a four-question poll on same sex marriage and abortion, launched in mid-October.

Steve Jobs publicly vowed to make the iTunes app market porn free, telling customers if they want smut they should get an Android. Whether you want sexy stuff on your smartphone or not, there’s undeniably an appetite for adult material.

That’s why developers keep submitting salacious apps to the iTunes store – playing peek-a-boo with the public as they are approved and then shut down. Big names like Playboy and Hooters iTunes offerings are, kind of a tease – lots of skin, but no nudity and “games,” like a squeaky-clean screen washing app. Android is another story.

While there is no adult material in its official app store, almost exactly a year ago a company called www.mikandi.com launched a porn app market for the Android platform, billing it as the world’s first mobile adult shop. (See our post about what Android users get a looky-loo at when they use it).

Google adopted a hands-off policy towards this parallel porn shop – and following its pattern of keeping mum about it, a Google spokesperson declined to comment for this post. It’s also worth noting that Android’s open approach allows users to use and install third party apps without jailbreaking phones.

Cult of Mac talked in exclusive with MiKandi (it’s pronounced “my candy”) CEO Jen McEwan about what’s hot in the store and where the market is headed.

To prove seeing is believing, we downloaded MiKandi, the adult app market for Android about to celebrate a year in business, and took a little tour of the apps offered there.

Mikandi (pronounced “my candy”) was a quick download on the Nexus One phone we used. To install, users must agree to allow the app to have access to the phone store and location (info they need to combat the Android’s ongoing fragmentation problem) then a lengthy end-user agreement that begins with the caveat that users must be over age 18.

In a few seconds – the waiting message reminds us it’s “loading goodies” — and the store opens. (If you’re concerned about prying eyes, you can also register for a secure account online or through the app store itself).

iTunes offers a ton of free podcasts in its educational section geared towards making you a little smarter. Or at least sound that way. The best part: most of them are short, weekly series so you can cram in some good water cooler ideas or conference coffee break chat material when you have time.

Here are some of our favorites – educate us with your picks in the comments.

1. Stuff You Should Know

These quirky podcasts run about half an hour each, and explain often topical questions like how rehab works or how to go about house swapping. One of the informative podcasts from the folks at How Stuff Works, this is probably our favorite, though Stuff from the B-Side and Stuff Mom Never Told You are also excellent.

If you’re looking for something to make those long holiday drives a little more interesting, the DriveGain iPhone App promises to cut your gas bill by about 15% through teaching you to drive more efficiently.

The app gives penny-pinching commuters and cost-conscious city drivers visual and audio feedback on what changes they can make to their driving style to help them save fuel. Developed in the UK and first launched for cars with manual transmissions only, the latest version works on automatics too.

DriveGain costs $6.99 on iTunes. The company also offers a scaled-down gratis version called CarEconomy.

Cult of Mac talked with DriveGain CEO Simon East on the challenges of testing it with his own ride — and why the app is not like having a nagging backseat driver.

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With thousands of courses and resources available for free on iTunes U from some of the top universities around the world, we argued, only semi-facetiously,  that it’s better than brick-and-mortar college.

Have you ever downloaded an iTunes U course?

Let us know why or why not — and what you got out of that lecture on Drinking Games in Ancient Greece — in the comments.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpXdk-dkQ_E

Filmmaker Greg Richters had enough with blue screens of death and viruses. So he made this aggro ode to Microsoft which ends in flames.

“I used PCs all the time but I got fed up with its bugs and constant crashing and so I switched to Mac three years ago,” he tells Cult of Mac.

The video shows a frazzled Microsoft user fighting his virus-ridden PC, until it explodes in its face — something that does actually happen with PCs.

(And a few Apple devices, too, we note. But not as many? And what’s with all the burning and blowing up of innocent computers lately?)

Anyway, the message? “Just say no to Microsoft, get a Mac,” Richters tells us.

Via Films United

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The Fab Four are finally on iTunes. Is this the moment that you have been waiting for — or have you already ripped all your Beatle’s CDs and couldn’t care less?

Let us know in the comments.

Since the iPad launched, scams luring gullible folks in with mirage of free ones have proliferated almost as fast as the device itself.

Now that desire for Apple’s magical tablet is at its peak — only world peace is slightly more desirable — watch out for the iPad bait-and-switches.

McAfee Labs investigated the top 12 Scams of Christmas — sing along with us now — and the first to put dancing plums over the eyes of eager consumers are iPad scams.

It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.

Launched in 2007, Apple’s iTunes U is a powerhouse of knowledge. Currently more than 800 international universities maintain active sites and the digital library houses some 350,000 free lectures, videos, films and other resources available for download on the iTunes store.

Here are five reasons iTunes U is better than actually going to college. (And we’re only joking a little.)

Visual designer Charis Tsevis creates high-impact images by piecing together digital minutia into stunning mosaics.

Tsevis, based in Athens, Greece has worked for Toyota, IKEA, Bradesco Bank, Saatchi and Saatchi, BBH and media like Time, Fortune, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Times and Forbes, to name a few.

But you probably know his work from the intricate portraits he created of Steve Jobs from Apple-related images, which frequently grace the covers of international magazines.  (He starts with a Mac-only software called Studio Artist by Synthetik before heading to Photoshop.)

These odes to Apple can sometimes take a week or so of 16-hour days to put together — it’s the kind of work only a Cupertino fan could love.

Cult of Mac talked to Tsevis about how he got started, getting the portraits into T-shirt form and his favorite piece of Apple technology.

A project named after our hulking primate cousins may be the first ever to create an album using an iPad.

Damon Albarn of Gorillaz is hard at work on the follow up to “Plastic Beach” using Apple’s magical computer tablet.

“I’ve made it on an iPad – I hope I’ll be making the first record on an iPad,” Albarn told NME. “I fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I’ve made a completely different kind of record.”

He hopes it’ll be ready before Christmas 2010. If so, it may be the first professional album made on  an iPad. No mentions of what software he’s using — details to come.

Via NME

Apple’s social network Ping is kind of a lonely kid. The iTunes-based network launched in September has only attracted 2,000 artists.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a big man on the social media campus.   Some 95 million taunts, shout-outs, heads’ up, musings pass through it  every day — and a lot of that noise is about music.

So Twitter has now “friended” Ping in the hopes that it can become more popular.