iPad - page 274

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.

Wunderlist HD – (Free) iPad – Productivity

Wunderlist is a beautifully elegant task manager that’s been around for a short while on the iPhone, and now it’s available in all its HD glory on the iPad. Use it to boost your productivity by managing your tasks and to-do lists, while effortlessly syncing them between your Mac and your iOS devices to ensure you’re always on top. Its impressive list of features includes task sharing, push notifications, email reminders, notes, customizable backgrounds, and lots more.

With all its features and its near-perfect user interface, Wunderlist gives many paid task management applications a good run for their money.

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It’s official: The iPad 2 launch will be March 2.

Apple is issuing press invites to a special media event on March 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, according to Loopinsight.com.

“Come see what 2011 will be all about,” says the invite. Looks like Apple is pretty confident about the iPad 2.

The event starts at 10:00 am. It’s the same venue Apple traditionally uses to introduce products.

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.

Given Apple’s history fulfilling a yearly iOS device refresh cycle, we’ve been taking the iPad 2’s debut in late March or early April as read, but if a recent analyst report is to be believed, Cupertino might very well miss that day… delaying the iPad 2 into June.

According to a report by Yuanta analysts Vincent and Alison Chen, the iPad 2 may be delayed until June because of “production bottlenecks” at manufacturer Hon Hai Precision.

“Our checks suggest new issues are being encountered with the new production and it is taking time to resolve them,” said Chen in the report. “As a number of Android 3.0 tablets are being launched in April and May, the delay in iPad 2 shipments may give the Android camp a brief window of opportunity.”

Oscar Backstage Pass – ($0.99) Universal – Entertainment

To help you make this year’s Oscars the most enjoyable, the official Oscar Backstage Pass application for iOS gives you access to live streams from exclusive cameras places throughout the red carpet, the Kodak Theatre, and the Governors Ball, so that you can go beyond the TV broadcast and experience more live action as it happens. Watch the 83rd Academy Awards with this ingenious interactive application on your iPhone or iPad and get access to more stars, more glamour, and more of everything you love about the Oscars.

Its brilliantly designed user interface makes it easy to navigate between each live camera and shows you exactly where each camera is placed at the awards – this marvellous idea ensures you won’t miss a single moment of Hollywood’s biggest event.

Watch the Oscars live this Sunday, February 27th, at 8et/5pt on ABC.

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Wireless carriers in the United Kingdom are drastically lowering their subsidized prices on the original iPad, strongly suggesting that they are clearing inventory in anticipation of the imminent launch of the iPad 2.

AT&T is now offering information about their 4G HSPA+ coverage in the U.S. The cities and areas that have completed the backhaul upgrades to support this are:

●Bay Area, CA
●Greater Los Angeles, CA
●Northern, CA
●Chicago, IL
●Boston, MA
●Baltimore, MD
●Charlotte, NC
●Buffalo, NY
●Providence, RI
●Houston, TX
●Dallas, TX
●Puerto Rico

If your area has HSPA+, but not the backhaul upgrade then you will not be able to experience the new 4G network speeds. However, AT&T’s network completely supports HSPA+ and they will eventually have the backhaul upgraded everywhere else.

You can check out AT&T’s coverage map that includes 4G coverage by visiting www.att.com/network and clicking on the coverage tab. Hovering your mouse over the map will reveal the 4G HSPA+ cities and locations listed above.

Have you noticed the difference? Tell us about it by leaving a comment.

[via iClarified]

This week’s must-have iOS games includes the incredible sequel to Gameloft’s hugely successful sci-fi FPS, N.O.V.A. This follow up title boasts new enemies with improved AI, a larger range of weapons and powers, and 10-on-10 online multiplayer – you won’t want to miss it!

Starfront: Collision is the second of Gameloft’s latest hits to make our list this week. Once again the company has looked at an incredibly popular game and created an iOS alternative that doesn’t disappoint. It’s a model they’ve been following for while with their App Store releases, and one that certainly seems to be working well for them. For fans of Blizzard’s Starcraft series and other real-time strategies, I highly recommend Starfront: Collision.

Since I first read it was coming, Back to the Future: Episode 1 for iPad was a game I couldn’t wait to see hit the App Store, and thanks to its striking voiceovers and delightful story line, the wait for this game didn’t disappoint. It’s sure to warm the hearts of fans of the movie and firmly earns its place in our favorite games.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have, including Mahjongg Dimensions and Sky Combat, after the break!

Back to the Future: Ep 1 HD – ($6.99) iPad – Games

The first in a series of five highly-anticipated Back to the Future games for the iPad has finally hit the App Store with a brand new escapade for Marty and Doc. This touch-based puzzle adventure features striking voiceovers and a delightful story line that is sure to warm the hearts of fans of the movie. I adore how Telltale Games’ efforts have delivered a mesmerising experience that remains true to the original trilogy, with innovative touch controls and impressive visuals that make Back to the Future: Episode 1 a fantastic iPad game.

Set 6 months after the events in the third movie, this storyline sees Marty take off in the DeLorean to save Doc once again. If you’re a fan of this movie and a lover of adventure games, this title is a sure-fire way to cure your weekend boredom – I’m certain you won’t be able to put it down.

The other four episodes in this series are scheduled for release on a monthly basis, so look out for episode two in mid March.

Inception: App Edition – (Free + $11.99 in-app purchase) Universal – Entertainment

Inception: App Edition is one of the first of Warner Bros.’ App Store releases that not only delivers the full Inception movie, but also offers a stack of movie extras all within an app. You can download the movie on to your device to play at anytime, even when you’re offline, or, if you’re keen to save space, you can stream the movie over Wi-Fi or 3G. The app features five exclusive tracks, bonus features that take you behind the scenes, an array of movie film posters, and multiple languages.

For film fans and movie buffs, Inception: App Edition is the ultimate way to experience this breathtaking film on your iOS device, and it features hours worth of additional content you wouldn’t normally have access to if you’d have purchased the film through the iTunes Store.

The Dark Knight is also available as an ‘App Edition’ from Warner Bros.

Apple announced its new plan for content publishers this week, and already it’s making money for the publishing industry by enabling wild, eyeball-grabbing headlines guaranteed to bring in the readers.

“Apple Just F****d Over Online Music Subs”

“Steve Jobs to Pubs: Our Way or Highway”

“Apple Launches Subscription System, Gouges Publishers in the Process”

“Apple Subscription Plans Anger Content Providers”

Digital-publishing-technology provider NewspaperDirect called Apple’s new policy ” unjustifiable,” “inexcusable,” “self-serving” and “ridiculous.”

The International Newsmedia Marketing Association felt “betrayed.”

OK, OK. We get the idea.

Movie critic Roger Ebert summarized another view in some quarters by tweeting: “Steve Jobs contributes his bit to the destruction of print media.”

That’s a compliment, not a criticism, by the way.

Meanwhile, just a day after Apple unleashed its new plan, Google unveiled one of its own, called Google One Pass. USA Today says the Google plan “undercuts Apple.”

So let’s collect ourselves and think this through. Is Apple’s plan really a major slap in the face to the publishing industry? Will it help kill print? And is Google’s One Pass a preferable alternative?

Readlines – ($0.99) Universal – News

Readlines makes great use of your iOS device while it’s sat in its dock on your desk, and turns an otherwise boring blank screen in to a big, bold stream of random headlines from your Google Reader RSS feeds. In the same way that the recent Trickle application displays tweets from your Twitter feed, Readlines cycles through your unread stories and displays a constant stream of headlines. Clicking on a headline that interests you will take you straight to Safari where you can read the whole article.

If you use your Google Reader account like I do, you’ll get hundreds of news stories every day that you’ll have to sift through to get to the good stuff that you want to know about. With Readlines you can simply get on with your work while your headlines are streamed to your desk, and it makes picking out only those that interest you incredibly simple.

Mahjongg Dimensions – ($0.99) Universal – Games

Just like classic Mahjong, the main aim of this game is to use your creativity, speed, and memory by matching and removing all of the tiles before the times runs out, but Mahjongg Dimensions offers a whole new way to play. Rather than a set of 2D tiles, Mahjongg Dimensions is a rotatable 3D cube that requires you to explore each side in order to find your matches. The faster you match, the more points you’ll earn, and the points multipliers and bonus rewards ensure there’s plenty of excitement and intensity to keep you hooked.

For puzzle lovers, today’s must-have game is certainly worth its dollar price tag! I think it’s a great new way to play the classic game of Mahjong and offers a highly addictive challenge to those who are looking for something a little bit different.

The next time you buy a couch, a car or a caffelatte, you can tell management what you think of the service with a stroke of your iPhone.

The Tello app lets you give a quick thumbs up or thumbs down and add comments on the fly as well as share your service woes or whoahs via Twitter and Facebook.

It runs on the iPhone, iPad and there’s a mobile version, too. Tello’s interface is clean, simple and has a database of 14 million businesses and if it can’t find your bodega, you can easily add it.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working on a “major revamp” of MobileMe, including a “locker” that will stream movies and TV shows to iPhones and iPads.

We’ve learned that Apple is going far beyond this. The company is looking to add a ton of ambitious cloud computing features to MobileMe — possibly in anticipation of a streaming-only iPhone.

Among the many services Apple is working on are:

• A live video-streaming service like Ustream
• A location-based check-in system like Gowalla or Foursquare
• A geo-tagging system codenamed “Tokens” that tags real-world locations, like Facebook Places on steroids.

According to our source, who asked to remain anonymous, Apple is working on a lot of streaming data services and location-aware technologies. It’s not clear when or how these features will be rolled out, but they appear to complement our report that Apple is working on a streaming-only iPhone.

“A ton of ideas were hatched on what they could do, and from what I heard, a lot of their ideas were shelved for a later date in order to focus on a few of them,” said our source.

Even as a munchkin bolting around on my grandparent’s farm, weeds licking at my calves, my life had its own soundtrack. That the sound came from the single anemic speaker of a heavy, D-cell burdened cassette-radio that loved to lunch on my Queen’s Greatest Hits tape didn’t matter — there was music in the grass, floating through the dust, on my shoes. It was awesome.

Flash forward to our MP3-laden, music-streaming days of wonder where, unexpectedly, Philips’ powerful, Bluetooth-equipped Fidelio DS8550 triggered that same feeling in me — which is pretty impressive, considering my expectations have evolved far, far beyond tinny speakers and misbehaving machinery. In fact, Philips has stuffed so much sound and so many clever features into the DS8550, it’s become my go-to gadget in a way that maybe no other sound accessory has before.

A more efficient, less costly government sounds like a pretty good idea no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.

Whether devices like iPads – small, portable devices that allow lawmakers to read lengthy documents without printing them out – are a good way to do that has been open to debate.

Cult of Mac talked to a city council member in Ridgecrest, California who has been bringing his own device to work to speed things up.

Here’s the next would-be iPad competitor: the HTC Flyer was just unveiled today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The Flyer boasts a 7 inch 1024×600 pressure-sensitive screen, 1.5GHx processor, 32GB storage built-in (plus an SD card slot), WiFi, Bluetooth, cell network connectivity, and front- and rear-facing cameras. Oh, and it supports Flash.

The OS is Android with HTC Sense, a collection of HTC-specific add-ons designed to make using the device a little easier.

What I find interesting is the push HTC is making into portable gaming. Apple’s already taking a slice of the mobile gaming pie away from Sony and Nintendo, thanks to the iPod touch. Now HTC wants some of that pie too, and it’s promoting the Flyer as “a lightweight tablet that takes gaming to the next level”.

What do you think? Like the look of it? You should be able to get your hands on one later this year. By which time, of course, you might also be able to buy an iPad 2…

The Clamcase an iPad case that promised to turn your iPad into a laptop earlier this year has finally arrived and it pretty much does what it says it will do. The company, Clamcase LLC, is finally shipping the device after a delay. It looked pretty awesome when I first heard about it, but I was a bit skeptical. So I asked the company to send me more information about it and they came through this week with a product sample.

I originally wrote a news post about this device in late December 2010 and then recently I noticed that several readers commented that they had not received their Clamcases yet even though they had been billed for them. I contacted the company and my advice to those readers is to contact Clamcase LLC to get a refund or to replace a missing shipment. The product is very real and the best case of this type I’ve seen so far.

The Clamcase gives a great first impression, but I’ll spend some time with it before you get to see my through review about it later this week.

In the meantime go ahead and feast your eyes on the Clamcase un-boxing pictures after the break.

The use of gadgets has traditionally been discouraged during debates in the British House of Commons, but that could change with a new experiment underway with iPads in the U.K. parliament, according to a Sunday report in The Guardian.

While the wait for iOS 4.3 and in-app recurring subscriptions continues, free access to The Daily has been extended beyond the original two-week trial period until February 28th, sparking rumors that suggest Apple’s next iOS update could also drop on the same date.

The extension to free access was picked up by German Mac blog Macerkopf, after the expiry date of their subscription changed within the “Account Information” in The Daily application. Because the application’s billing method relies on the recurring subscriptions feature iOS 4.3, customers cannot be charged for access to the service until the update is available.

Of course, Feb 28th may be nowhere near the release date of 4.3, and The Daily could be just extending its free trial to a random date in the hope that the update is available by then.

There have been rumors that the public debut of iOS 4.3 would be at 10 AM EST today, however, a quick glance at your clock right now will show that predication was an inaccurate one.

[via 9to5 Mac]

Kicking off our list of must-have iOS games this week is NBA Jam, the latest App Store hit from EA Sports, featuring all the over-the-top, high-flying, 2-on-2 arcade basketball action, just as you remember it. Relive that ’90s nostalgia with the hottest new arcade sports game for the iPhone, with the voice of Tim Kitzrow, the original NBA Jam play-by-play announcer.

Also in our favorites this week is Karoshi, an incredibly popular PC game which has now made its way to the iPhone, and also into the news headlines this week thanks to its dark storyline. Unlike the majority of games in which your sole purpose is to survive, in this one you take control of an overworked Japanese businessman whose mission is to end it all. As horrific and offensive as it sounds, it’s nowhere near as bad as you think, and it’s actually a lot of light-hearted fun.

Hungry Shark – Part 3 is the third of our choices this week, as well as the third in this series of top-selling aquatic eat ’em-ups. Chomp your way to the top of the food chain as you trawl the depths of the ocean in search of food to satisfy your voracious appetite in the most exciting Hungry Shark yet.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves, including Carnivores: Ice Age and Chicken Coup, after the break!