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When it comes to the consumerization of IT, there general perception is that IT professionals are very resistant to allowing the use of so-called consumer technology like the iPhone and iPad along with various personal cloud services. While it is true that many IT departments are hesitant about some aspects of this movement, they aren’t as fully resistant to consumer technology in the workplace as media reports would make you believe.

In fact, the results of a recent study looking at the use of personal computing technologies in the enterprise indicate that many IT departments are actively embracing the iPhone and iPad and the entire consumerization trend. The study, being reported by Business Computing World in the UK, included more than 600 senior executives around the world and turned up some surprising results – including how much money goes into managing employee-owned devices.

Steve Jobs called then tweeners: too big to be a phone, too small to be a tablet. Others have coined a better portmanteau to describe them: “phablets.” It’s a wonderful word, isn’t it, somehow evoking both expectoration and flabbiness?

Anyway, we’re going to be seeing a lot of phablets next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (and make sure to stay tuned for our on-site reporting all next week), and my guess is that with most of them, the rationale that manufacturers have employed in making them will be eerily similar to the thought process described in the latest strip of Dilbert.

[Thanks, Mike!]

Zagg’s new Boost speaker, sold under the iFrogz brand, appears to amplify music using nothing but magic. Just place your iPhone (or any other device with a speaker) on top and it will boost the sound. No wires, no Bluetooth, no nothing. The music just issues forth from a pair of 2-watt speakers.

Even when they are crazily off base, we’re fans of Italian conceptual studio CiccareseDesign’s work. At the very least, their mockups and renders of imaginary Apple products give some perspective to the whys and hows of the designs Jony Ive does choose.

Their latest mockup is of the forthcoming iPhone 5. What’s most interesting about the design they chose was that it is directly inspired by the Magic Mouse: not actually the worst idea for an iPhone, which like a mouse will sit in people’s hands all day. Here’s a gallery of the renders.

Apple hasn’t made the Mac App Store the only source for Mac software, but the company is nudging both developers and users in the store’s direction. That’s fine for consumers, but it may create problems for businesses that need to buy software in bulk and distribute it to a large number of Macs.

We all love a good fight around here and we even have a recurring Friday Night Fights where we pit features of iOS vs Android, but this latest video by Samsung is just so asinine that not even us Android fans will defend it. To further promote their Galaxy Note, Samsung has decided to embarrass themselves by “going to the streets” to try and convince people how awesome the S-pen functionality is by challenging an obviously clueless iPhone user to perform the same mundane tasks as a seasoned (trained & scripted) Note user.

Apple updated its hugely popular MacBook Air last year to introduce Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 processors. But the Cupertino company very nearly shipped the ultraportable with an AMD chip instead. An employee for AMD has confirmed that it was very close to striking a deal with Apple, but AMD’s poor production yields meant that Intel was a better option.

Sources for Cult of Mac have discovered yet another security flaw in Apple’s iOS 5 operating system that provides unauthorized access to your iPhone’s camera roll without the need to enter your passcode. It has been tested on the iPhone 4, but could also affect other iOS devices.

Why does a camera look like a camera? Specifically, why do our cameras all resemble a box with a lens on the front? The answer is film. Film cameras needed a dark, light-tight place to store a roll or cartridge of film, and it needed to put a viewfinder close to that lens to avoid parallax problems.

Now, though, with film long consigned to the novelty closet, the only restriction is that the sensor sit behind the lens. And that’s where the D-CAN comes in, with its telescope-shaped body.

We first heard about Apple’s plans to open a retail store within London’s world-famous Harrods department store back in January, but we had little information on the store’s launch date. Sources “inside Harrods” are now reporting that it will open its doors in time for the iPad 3 launch in mid-March.

If you still haven’t gotten over the fact that your iPad doesn’t have Adobe Flash player, than OnLive Desktop Plus may soothe your pain. As you may have guessed, the new app is a premium version of OnLive Desktop, which brought Microsoft Office to the iPad earlier this year.

In addition to Office, the premium version offers Flash Player and a PDF-enabled web browser, but it comes at a price of $4.99 per month.

Remember that super cool iOS theme we showed you a couple of weeks ago, which made an iPhone’s user interface look like it was right out of the 80s? It was just a dream ten days ago, but it’s now real and it’s available to download from Cydia.

Photo of Andrew Lansley looking at apps from Department of Health Flickr feed; used with permission

Doctors in the UK might soon be able to prescribe apps as well as drugs, following a government study that asked the public to nominate their own favorite health-related apps.

Path recently sparked a huge controversy over user privacy violations in popular App Store apps, and the media firestorm that resulted has now promoted The California Attorney General to enforce new standards for informing users about app privacy policies.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and RIM will now be implementing new policies that developers must comply with when publishing apps online. All information that’s collected from the user will be outlined in the app’s privacy policy and made viewable in app stores before downloading.

Good news for Adele: Colombia Records has announced that the singer/songwriter has become the first artist to go double platinum on the iTunes Store. She recently sold a staggering 730,000 copies of her album within a week after winning 6 Grammys Awards The album has been purchased on iTunes 2 million times in under a year.

As the first artist to achieve such a digital milestone, Adele can confidently say that her album includes 16 million singles sold in the United States alone.

I’m excited to announce Cult of Mac’s shiny new audio podcast, The CultCast — made with absolutely 0% child labor!

Why should you listen to The CultCast, you ask? Simply put, it’s the best 30 minute conversation about Apple you’re going to hear all week. Join Leander Kahney, Buster Heine, and me, Erfon Elijah, as we banter about all the most popular Apple news, rumors, and products. Hear the stories behind the stories of our favorite Cult of Mac pieces, and get caught up on all the best things from the world of Apple in a fun, 30 minute chunk each week.

Our maiden CultCast episode will be released Thursday night, but you can subscribe right now on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode. We’ll have a new CultCast for you every Thursday evening!

Users of Google’s Flight Search will now be able to receive the same great desktop features on their mobile devices. Flight Search is now available for both Android and iOS users who search for a flight via their mobile browser. Just search for a flight departing from the US and watch as Google provides you with a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices. Benefits of Google’s Flight Search include:

Amidst concerns about trademark battles in China, an unprecedented factory audit of Foxconn, and the question of potential stock dividends, Apple is scheduled to meet with AAPL shareholders tomorrow at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. All investors are encouraged to attend.

Securing business data on employee-owned devices like the iPhone and iPad is one of the biggest challenges for IT departments when it comes to operating bring your own device (BYOD) programs. The mobile device management (MDM) approach taken by most companies is an excellent starting point because it aims to make devices themselves more secure. Unfortunately, it also tends to impose limits on what workers can do with an iPhone or iPad that they bought and paid for out of their own pockets.

Another approach to the challenge is to carve out a specific niche of secure storage on each employee-owned devices. Good Technology has always offered this mechanism for securing business emails and related technologies like shared contacts and calendars. This week, Good took that concept and made it available to iOS developers in a product called Good Dynamics.

With a plethora of options available for any taste, it’s a better time to be a digital music fan than ever before. iTunes Match. Spotify. Rdio. Soundcloud. Grooveshark. There’s a streaming music service for every taste, a place for every song in the cloud no matter how obscure.

With all of these competing services floating around, though, finding music in your library isn’t as easy as it once was, though… mostly because you probably don’t have a central music library. Some of your favorite albums are on iTunes, while others might only be available on Spotify, or knocking around as demos on Soundcloud.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an iTunes-like media manager to consolidate all of your music? An app you could use to just find that song on all of your services, no matter where it’s stored: just type it in and hit play?

There is. It’s called Tomahawk. And it’s awesome.

GEVEY has announced the Ultra S unlock for the GSM iPhone 4S. Unlike an unlocked iPhone you have to buy at full price from your carrier, GEVEY’s $55 solution turns your iPhone 4S into a plug-and-play device for any GSM network around the world.

Jailbreakers have been able to unlock their iPhones with a software tool called UltraSn0w, but an unlock for the iPhone 4S has yet to be provided until now. The GEVEY Ultra S does not require a jailbreak, and it’s definitely the easiest way to get your iPhone unlocked for cheap.

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Ever wonder how the sensor in your camera or iPhone works? Specifically, how does ISO, or sensor sensitivity, work? If so, go grab the beverage of your choice, get comfortable and spend ten minutes in the fine company of Dylan A Bennet, as he explains it all.

Like many Apple fans, I love the idea of the an iPod nano watch. I adore the fact that an idle comment from Steve Jobs about how the new nano is so small it can be worn as a watch got turned into a cottage industry of Kickstarters fashioning a multitude of hip new watchbands.

The only thing is I don’t want to wear the damn thing. I’m not a wristwatch kind of guy: I’m the sort of person who prefers pulling something out of his pocket, like my iPhone. So I wonder why it took someone so long to think of this incredible idea. Instead of a wristwatch, why not turn the iPod nano into a pocket watch?

Nike has extended its Nike+ range with two new shoes that cover basketball and training. Aptly named Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training, they’re the first shows to take the Nike+ technology beyond its traditional focus on running.

Mobile devices are now so common in the workplace that we’ve reached a tipping point where providing mobile options for many desktop apps has become a requirement for businesses. That’s the findings of a new survey from Symantec on mobile device use in business.

The survey, initially reported by InfoWorld, identified that not only are the numbers of mobile devices increasing, but also that the tasks they perform are increasing. A dramatic number of companies are now seeing core business tasks being completed on mobile devices. That’s driving the need for companies to develop comprehensive mobile apps for access to corporate information systems.