News - page 1803

Despite the fact that BYOD is often perceived as a way to reduce technology expenses, nearly three-quarters (73%) of IT managers expect that BYOD will have the opposite effect. The big fear is that BYOD will cause IT spending to spiral out of control.

That’s the news from enterprise technology vendor Damovo UK. The company recently surveyed100 IT directors from organizations with more than 1,000 users about their feelings on BYOD and how it is being implemented in their organization.

One major reason for potentially uncontrolled expenses boils down companies losing bargaining power with carriers as employees begin purchasing their own iPhones or Android handsets. While the cost of the device isn’t likely to be passed on to an employer, monthly costs for voice and data service may be a different story. With unlimited data plans slowly going the way of the dodo, many workers may not want to shoulder data bills associated with their jobs, which may lead to a shared expense model.

If you’ve spent any amount of time with a Mac in the last 15 years or so, you may have noticed the Sosumi sound, one of several system alert sound options. Even though you most likely just passed it over without a thought, there’s a huge backstory behind the formation of that sound, one that starts with the Beatles, surprisingly enough.

Apple firmly positioned the iPad as an education solution during its education even in New York five months ago. Even before that, many schools and districts had begun pilot programs of full on iPad deployments. The iPad provides many opportunities in education as well as some challenges.

One of those challenges is cost. That’s not a surprise, considering the number of iPads required in order to give one to each student in a district. The San Diego school district, for example, recently spending $15 million as part of its massive iPad plan that includes nearly 26,000 devices.

Given the cost of such deployments and the attention that BYOD programs have gotten in both the tech and mainstream media over the past year or so, it was only a matter of time before someone in the education technology sector began to talk up the idea of BYOD in education as a way to cut the costs associated with such deployments.

Google launched their shiny new version of Chrome for iOS today, complete with syncing and many other features Chrome users on the desktop have been longing for. We dug into Chrome for iOS to see what all the hype was about, and upon first glance, it’s definitely an interesting experience. You can check out our full hands on video after the break.

For better or worse, Verizon’s new Share Everything plans are now here. If you sign up for Verizon and wish to have multiple devices on one account, you’ll have to choose from the new Share Everything plans. Current customers do not have to worry about this unless they either want to, or decide to upgrade to a new device at a subsidized cost.

If you live overseas, you can now download Google Chrome for the iPhone and iPad at the link below. It’s on the Danish store only right now, but it’s obviously in the process of rolling out, so keep on refreshing, and watch for our early look and video tour of Chrome shortly after it hits the US App Store.

Update: It’s now available in the U.S. Store! Get downloading!

Source: iTunes

We last looked at ownCloud nearly three months ago. The company offers a unique private cloud solution that can scale from the needs of a small businesses with a handful of users all the way to the requirements of larger enterprise. What makes ownCloud unique is that it’s designed to easily integrate with existing infrastructure and IT processes.

Because ownCloud is based on open web standards, it can be easily implemented on virtually any web server. That means it can function as an on-premise solution that is configured and managed completely by company’s IT team, a hosted implementation where it can be installed onto server space provided by a commercial web hosting company, or it can offered in a more turn-key fashion through one of the ownCloud’s partners.

Gameloft promised a June 28th launch for their Amazing Spider-Man mobile game, and sure enough, it’s now available. If you’d like to get your web slinging on, it’ll cost you $6.99 — a price I was fully expecting from Gameloft. The game is available now on Android and iOS and features:

Less than an hour after it was announced as coming to iOS, Google Drive has already hit the App Store. The app weighs in at just 6.1MB, and is available for free. Here’s the description.

Another big announcement to come out of Day 2 of the Google I/O conference is the announcement that Google Drive — Google’s answer to Dropbox and Microsoft Office, allowing you to store files and edit documents across multiple computers in the cloud — is coming to iOS starting today. We’ll keep you posted.

Cubedge might sound like a mis-pronunciation of “cabbage,” but it is in fact a contraction of the words “cube” and “edge.” Probably. What I know for sure is that it’s a Bluetooth speaker in the familiar mold of the JamBox and the Braven, that it will cost $150 when it ships in September, and that it is guaranteed to get you laid. At least, that what the pictures on the website seem to be promising.

At the annual Google I/O developer conference, Google just announced that their famous Chrome browser is coming to the iPhone and iPad. It will work just like the Mac and PC version, syncing history, open tabs, passwords and more across all your computers using your official Google account.

According to Google, Chrome for iOS will be landing in the App Store later today, for free. And here’s where I finally stop using Mobile Safari, especially if some enterprising jailbreaker can hack in the ability to use it as my iPad’s default browser.

We’ll let you know when it’s live. Above, check out a video of Chrome for iPhone and iPad in action. Looks fantastic.

Remember the bad old days of the iPod? Apple would release a new model with a bunch of new features, and the old model – while capable of running the new software – would be left out in the cold. It was obviously a cynical scheme to make you upgrade your perfectly good music player early, but it worked.

So it is with cameras. Firmware upgrade are almost always limited to small bug fixes. The latest 7D update, though, is huge, and almost gives owners a brand new camera.

Apple’s 2007 launch of Leopard Server was the beginning of a new business strategy for the company. Leopard Server included a number of new features – shared calendaring with iCal Server, Apple’s wiki-based collaborative tools, and streamlined Podcast creation and hosting through Podcast Producer were some of the highlights. The biggest new feature, however, was the introduction of a simplified setup assistant and Server Preferences – a utility designed to look and feel similar to System Preferences that enabled easy management of key server features for smaller organizations with limited technical knowledge or resources.

Fast forward nearly five years to today and you can see the focus that Apple introduced in Leopard Server has become the core of Mountain Lion Server. You can also see that many features that used to be OS X Server staples are gone (or at least are being handed their hats and coats). What remains is a very inexpensive but still relatively powerful server OS with a focus on easy setup and management as well as collaboration.

Way back before Apple unveiled the original iPad, your only choice for getting an Apple tablet was to buy a ModBook: converted MacBooks with built-in Wacom digitizers that operated like the tablet PCs of old.

Of course, once the iPad debuted, a lot of the market for the ModBook dried up, but now they’re back with the ModBook Pro, which takes the 13-inch MacBook Pro and turns it into an OS X-running tablet.

Announced in early May, Amazing Alex is Rovio’s first venture away from Angry Birds since the title became a huge hit on iOS many moons ago. Based on the company’s previous success in the mobile gaming space, we’re all itching to see how its next release turns out, but the new teaser trailer Rovio released today gives us very little to go on.

In addition to the 20-second clip, however, the Finnish firm has also announced some more details about the physics-based puzzler.

Ahh, Polaroid – how far you have fallen. Once a true icon, an essential tool for photographers and a medium for many artists, as well as being the only way to take dirty photos without getting arrested at the processing lab.

Now you are stuck licensing your name and Logo to any cowboy who wants to stick a crappy ZINK (zero-ink) printer inside a box with a cellphone camera.

If you’re a New York Times subscriber, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now enjoy full access your favorite content via Flipboard, one of the best news readers available on iOS. Even those who don’t subscribe still get a little treat: free access to the publication’s “Top News” section.

Blogsy, the iPad blogging app, has been updated to version 4. In addition to working with a few new blogging services (Squarespace, Joomla and MetaWeblog), it adds a slew of new features. I have used Bloggsy in the past but found it had too many glitches and weird UI behaviors for me to actually work with it, so I had one question: Could I write this post in it without tearing my hair out?

Remember when someone in the Apple camp let their censoring powers go to their head back in May, and they began censoring the word “jailbreak” across music, movies, apps, and podcasts? It didn’t take the Cupertino company too long to backtrack, and it removed the censor almost entirely just hours later.

I say almost before for podcasts, the word was still considered an expletive — until this morning, when Apple removed the censor completely. Finally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7d-AGMMcsQ&feature=player_embedded

It’s hard not to love Louis C.K. Behind his pale ginger flab and profanity-laced stand-up comedy is a guy with a heart of gold: a comic who knows how to temper his masturbation jokes with compassionate commentary on the family and American values. He’s an amazing guy. But he doesn’t have an iPhone.

On a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Louis C.K. explained why, saying that he got rid of his iPhone because he was too immersed in it. “It’s like having a pencil you can $@%!,” Louis C.K. told Kimmel, going on to jokingly express his concerns about geo-location and the Cloud, which he ultimately sees giving us all wafer thin devices that, apparently, will allow you to smear Tom Cruise all over your face.

Hilarious, but Louis C.K. always is. This is a comic at the top of his game. If you haven’t already, buy some tickets to see him on his next tour: he’s cutting out all the middlemen and selling them directly to fans, effectively doing his best to cut out the scalpers and the extortionists like Ticketmaster. This is a guy who deserves your money.

Source: FunkySpaceMonkey

Various reports indicate that Apple is working on a major overhaul of iTunes that it plans to launch later this year. Those reports indicate that the update will be focused on consumer-oriented features like improved app/content discovery, music and media sharing, and greater iCloud integration. There’s also the possibility that Apple might split out some iTunes features into separate apps much like the company has done in iOS – the most recent example being the Podcasts app that it launched earlier this week.

Splitting iTunes into discrete parts is an attractive prospect, particularly for businesses and IT professionals. iTunes has become a bloated hodgepodge of functionality over the years. As a result, IT departments typically face a conundrum about whether to support or even allow employees with iOS devices to use iTunes on workplace computers.

Tech journalists make bad calls all the time, but few tech writers have made such a blisteringly bad call as seasoned columnist John C. Dvorak, who famously predicted back in 2007 that “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… [because it is just] going to be another phone in a crowded market.”

D’oh. $150 billion in revenue later, the iPhone is the biggest success Apple has ever had, and revolutionized pretty much every single aspect of the smartphone and even telecom business. That’s quite the missed prediction, even by tech journalist standards.

So what does Dvorak have to say to explain himself? Was it just a brain fart, or what? Five years later, Dvorak has explained why he said the iPhone would be a dud, and his excuse is fascinating: he claims he got it wrong because of a conspiracy against tech journalists like him who were too honest about Apple for their own good.

Apple is said to be preparing an iTunes overhaul that will deliver the largest change the online music store has seen since its debut back in 2003. Set to be unveiled by the end of this year, the refresh will reportedly bring better iCloud integration and file-storage for users with multiple iOS devices, as well as new features for sharing music with friends.

SSDs are great! They make your computer run as if they were filled with greased lightning. That spinning beach ball stops spinning quite so much, and those apps struggling to load quit doing so much bouncing. Your computer gains instant-on functionality, better battery life, and ridiculously quick boot times. Win-win!

There’s only one problems: SSDs (like those found in the Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPhone or iPad) don’t have the same high capacity as physical spinning drives. That’s a problem if you’re the kind of user who carries around a terrabyte of media with him at all times. Luckily, it looks like SSDs limitations when it comes to capacity sizes is about to change.