It’s been shown that tots take to iPads like ducks to water. One school district in Maine will hand them out to 5-year-olds in the hopes of boosting reading skills.
An iPad pilot program in Auburn, Maine will put them in the hands of kids in certain classrooms in May and all six elementary schools in the district next fall.
Officials hope to improve literacy rates from 62 percent to 90 percent in two years with the iPad scheme. The school committee recently approved spending of about $200,000 for 285 iPads for both students and teachers.
Here’s a shocker: Apple is playing its cards close to the vest about a product launch. That’s the opinion of one analyst who tells investors Friday he is “suspicious” of all the talk the Cupertino, Calif. company may delay the iPhone 5 until later this year.
“We are increasingly becoming suspicious around continued reports of a delayed iPhone 5 launch into September/October versus the typical June/July time frame,” writes Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities. Why the suspicion?
ChuChu Rocket! is packed with over 500 puzzles and frantic 4 player multiplayer action, and the Sega Dreamcast classic, which has proven to be a massive iOS hit in the App Store, has gone completely free for one day only.
10 years ago, a cute group of ChuChu’s invaded the hearts and minds of gamers as they looked for an escape plane away from the evil KapuKapus into their cozy rocket ships. now, you get to re-live the glory days of frantic puzzle fun on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad!
ChuChu Rocket! features four different difficulty levels to maximise its replay value; in addition to a free-for-all and team battle multiplayer mode with support for up to 4 players. Battle it out over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi across 25 intense multiplayer levels.
As one of the most popular puzzle games in the App Store, ChuChu Rocket! is a surefire way to cure your weekend boredom. Grab it now while it’s free!
Motorola’s Xoom is fast becoming a retailing slug. The slowness to catch-on with consumers (the Xoom sold only a fifth as many units during its first week compared to Apple) may not be totally the fault of the Android-based tablet, but partly retailers. A Friday report suggests big box tech giants and others are lumping the Xoom into the me-too iPad alternative category.
Best Buy, for instance, tells consumers they offer tablets, showing an iPad, then a Xoom under the generic “Tablet” label. At some Verizon Wireless stores, the iPad and iPad 2 are highlighted, with Samsung the obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the $599 Xoom is beside the $199 Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Now that the Verizon iPad is here, the once mythical device has turned out to be just as much of a slab of aluminum and glass as every other iPad out there… and just as prone to its own small but annoying problems.
The latest? A growing nunber of Verizon iPad 2 owners are reporting issues with the CDMA 3G modem… namely, that after turning 3G off, Verizon iPad owners need to reboot their tablets to get a connection again.
This overarticulated mech claw? It’s an iPhone stand, meant to grip your fragile handset with T-800-style menace. And it costs only slightly less than the original T-800 hand, locked somewhere in a vault deep within the belly of Cyberdyne Systems.
Called the Rokform Rokstand, the stand is machined from aluminum with an anodized finish and features six angles of adjustment boasting “precision high speed bearing and cam adjustment.”
Of course, a 50 cent business card holder will prop up your iPhone equally well, so these are just marketing phrases to distract you from the price of $169. Of course, now that you’ve heard that price, with your eyes just dangling from your sockets like that and the taste of vomit in your mouth… how much more distracted could you be?
The Rokstand comes in pink and chocolate brown too, if that makes things better.
Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, tend to be deviously complex, and Valve Software‘s latest is now exception: they are sending out a series of elaborate glyphs embedded in images to multiple gaming sites.
The point of ARGs is to crowdsource their solving, joining in with a bunch of other fanatics to make a story out of the cryptic, and Valve is a master at this, so if you have any taste for these events, you may want to head over to the Wiki and get cracking on the clues.
The most likely explanation so far is that this ARG is to promote Valve’s much-anticipated physics and teleportation-based FPS, Portal 2, which is due out on Tuesday, April 19th and is the first Valve game to launch simultaneously on the PC and Mac.
The image above is about 8/9ths of the image puzzle that has been solved so far, and looks much like one of GlaDOS’s personality cores rom the original Portal.
Apple has a vested interested in getting as many iPad 2s into customer hands as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s not only about mere volume of unit sales. It’s also about trying to slacken the crazy demand that the iPad 2 has generated before customers actively start resenting Apple for it and, in their impatience, are literally driven out of their minds (a state diagnosable by purchasing a Xoom).
So imagine how absolutely ticked off Apple must have been when they heard that Best Buy has been refusing to sell all of its stock of iPad 2s to customers, because they’ve already reached their sales quotas for that day. Actually, no need to imagine, because according to a Best Buy employee speaking to Crunchgear, the answer is “very.”
Earlier this week, popular iOS game developer PopCap – the team behind Bejeweled 2, Plants vs. Zombies and Chuzzle – announced that they were launching a sister studio called ‘4th & Battery‘. They also revealed that its first game, Unpleasant Horse, was going to hit the App Store imminently, but it seems Apple may have spoiled their party by rejecting the game due to its “mature content.”
4th & Battery declared their displeasure at Apple’s decision on Twitter, but their tweets disappeared shortly afterwards. Fortunately, Joystiq managed to grab a screenshot of the tweets, one of which read: “WTF? Apple rejected Unpleasant Horse cuz of “mature content?” We thought horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment!”
We’ve written about how iPads are used in schools and pilot training, but it’s fascinating to see how they are changing the plays on the basketball court.
From playbooks to bus schedules, a number of NBA teams are making sure players don’t miss a beat by using iPads, according to a detailed piece in slamonline.
“We use it for everything. We put our whole playbook and rulebook on it,” said Washington Wizards assistant coach Ryan Saunders, whose father, head coach Flip Saunders, unofficially made the team the first known NBA franchise to use iPads for team operations. “Our whole calender is mapped out. Guys can know when buses are leaving, when planes are leaving.”
A new application called iKeyGuard is the first key logger for the iPhone, and is now available to jailbroken devices through Cydia. The application runs discretely in the background and keeps a record of every single key pressed on the device.
iKeyGuard is $9.99 and is simple to install; just download the package from Cydia and it will start working as soon as it’s installed. The application’s main menu is accessed through Safari in order to be discrete, and this is where you can access your archive of key logs. You can also have them emailed to you at different intervals.
Its developer advertises iKeyGuard as a way of ensuring your employees are keeping your data safe, but we’re sure its main use will be to spy on kids and spouses.
If you want to be a little creepy, you can access the package from the BigBoss repo, which is installed with Cydia as default. Let us know what you think in the comments.
When’s the iPhone 5 arriving? How is the iPad selling? What about the iPod? These are all immaterial questions, one Wall Street expert argues Thursday. Forget about the products and keep your eye on the platform. “Products last maybe a year, ‘platforms’ last decades,” he tells investors.
“We believe the single biggest change in Apple over the past few years is that it has moved from being something of a ‘hit product’ movie studio dependent on each new release back to being a better-than-ever ‘platform’ company, where its iOS plus hardware plus apps ecosystem … are what truly matters and drive longevity,” writes Caris & Co. analyst Robert Cihra.
Italians use the same word – filibustiere – for long-winded attempts to slow down legislative sessions, now they are using the iPad to combat boredom at work.
These pics were snapped during what was apparently an endless session about shortening trials.
Android-based smartphones will become the most popular option by the end of 2011, with the Google-powered handsets accounting for 49 percent of the world market by 2012. That’s the word from one research firm, which also announced Thursday Apple’s iOS platform will remain No. 2 because the Cupertino, Calif. firm prefers margin over market share.
Although Android devices will push the average smartphone price to $300 or less, “Apple will be interested in maintaining margins rather than pursuing market share by changing its pricing strategy,” Gartner said. Apple’s iOS will peak in 2011 with growth in the U.S. and Western Europe. Sales to emerging markets will be limited, the researcher predicts.
Bing has just been released for the iPad. It sure as heck looks gorgeous. Loading it up, you don’t just get Bing search or their usual flourish of a gorgeous wallpaper, but Bing’s app will also give you a quick look at the local weather, news, movies, trends, finances and more.
Bing’s done a pretty good job differentiating itself for the better from Google in the last year, and we’ve even heard the occasional rumble that Apple would choose to get into bed with Microsoft and make Bing the default search engine instead of Google. That’s unlikely for a number of reasons, especially since Apple doesn’t view Google as much of a threat as Amazon right now, but it does mean that Bing’s worthy of your attention, at the very least.
Like a raven attracted to bright, shiny objects it’s hard to miss a headline like “The underground iPhone: Million-dollar jailbreaking industry thrives on legal loophole.”
The million dollar part sort of sticks in your craw.
Here’s the supporting evidence:
Early jailbreakers were inspired by rockstar-like fame, stardom, and the urge to test limits of creative ambition. Money followed in time and soon some of the jailbreaking vanguard started following money. Now iPhone jailbreaking is a multi-million dollar semi-underground business and there are legal loopholes that facilitate the growth of jailbreaking. (Emphasis ours.)
When we talk about 3D when it comes to displays, the third dimension we’re talking about is a z-axis popping out at you, a la the Nintendo 3DS. But when we talk about the possibility of a 3D iPad, or a 3D iPhone, or any other 3D touchscreen device, why are we talking about Apple adding a superfluous visual dimension when we can be talking about adding a very real tactile dimension to the same device?
In other words, when you poke an icon on iOS, what’s more important: for it to float off the screen, or for it to feel like you pressed something physical, and not ephemeral. That’s just the problem that Peratech is working on, and with its QTC (Quantum Tunneling Composite) Clear, it’s come up with an invention that any Apple fan can excited about: a force-sensitive touchscreen that allows users to apply the third-dimension of pressure.
What does that mean? Think of painters being able to apply pressure to the strokes of their virtual brushes, or on-screen game controls that were truly analogue.
Best of all, Peratech’s tech can be used not only to replace resistive touchscreens (think: stylys-based) but also to supplement capacitive ones, like the iPad’s. And since the touchscreen is only between 6-8 microns thick and the panels draws almost no current, it ‘s a good fit for iOS’s line-up.
Kevin Lee, a senior at George Mason University, Virginia, has turned iPhone jailbreaking into a full-time job, hacking customers devices to earn an impressive $50,000 a year. Lee uses Craigslist to advertise his services, which include unlocking, jailbreaking, and customizing devices to a user’s preference.
Lee told The Washington Post that he started off with a mere 5 to 10 customers a week – most of whom were friends. Now he pulls in between 30 and 40 – performing relatively simple hacks that many people don’t like to attempt themselves. A recent customer from the Mongolian embassy wanted his device unlocked so that he could use it in Mongolia when he moves.
Lee’s interview with The Washington Post is rather short, and he has since declined to provide further comment, removing his advert and contact details from Craigslist.
Apple has been rumored to be working on smart bezels for its iOS device series for a long time. The idea is to make all of that empty black space actually do something by imbuing the bezel with all of the touch sensitivity of the display itself. The problem, of course, is how to convey to a user that they’ve just interacted with something in the bezel, as well as avoid accidental triggers.
An exciting new patent shows us exactly what Apple has in mind: bezel’s imbued not just with touch functionality but with an underlying electroluminescent display that would allow the bezel itself to light up with words and icons when needed.
Photo by Pedro J Pacheco - http://flic.kr/p/4BnrSv
Apple reportedly is putting the final touches on a deal that would open a retail location near the Kremlin in Moscow. The 16,000-square-foot site would be in a historic Red Square hotel alongside an international restaurant and gallery.
Although no contract has been signed, two executives from the Cupertino, Calif. company visited Moscow in March to review the two-story space in Hotel Moskva and a decision is expected soon, according to a news site which tracks Apple’s retail moves. If a deal is inked, the location would be the first Apple Store in any of the former Soviet Union republics.
According to a source for Boy Genius Report, Apple is working on the next release of iOS and planning to release the firmware to the public during the next two weeks. iOS 4.3.2 will include a few enhancements, address security issues, and fix several bugs that have effected some users.
Unfortunately the details handed over to BGR are a little limited, so we’re unable to report what enhancements or bug fixes will be made in the next iOS release. Although, issues with Wi-Fi that effects users with certain routers, and a problem with the taking photographs on the iPad 2, have been picked up in iOS 4.3.1.
BGR sources seem to have been consistent with their information in recent months, revealing on March 21st that iOS 4.2.1 would launch within two weeks – 4 days before it went live.
As always, we’ll let you know when iOS 4.3.2 is available to download.
A one month delay to the launch of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook may have been down to Apple’s high demand for touch panels for its iPad 2. The 7-inch PlayBook is set to launch on April 19th at $499, but shipments were postponed for about a month because RIM couldn’t get its hands on enough touch panels.
Citing sources from touch screen manufacturers, a DigiTimesreport says the PlayBook setback was “due to a delay in software testing as well as shortage of touch panels because Apple already booked up most of the available capacity.”
Thanks to Apple’s abundance of cash reserves, the Cupertino company can pre-pay for components and get guaranteed priority from manufacturers. This means that RIM’s PlayBook – a tablet which aims to rival the iPad – won’t launch now until at least a month after the iPad 2 began shipping. It was originally scheduled for release during the first quarter of this year.
Kick to Pick is a unique new application for the iPhone that is designed to enable an unborn baby to pick its own name. Yes – you did read that correctly!
The $0.99 app lets you choose a gender-specific list of thousands of names for boys and girls. You then lie down, place the device on your bump (airplane mode recommended) and press the button to activate the countdown. Kick to Pick will begin cycling through the list of potential names until it detects that all important kick from your baby. Once your baby has chosen its name, you can have the final say and decide whether or not to accept the suggestion.
Kick to Pick, although a novelty, is a testament to what iOS applications can do with a little imagination – just as you thought everything your iPhone could achieve with apps had already covered!
Despite the short supply of iPad 2s, training materials for Toys ‘R’ Us staff have revealed that the children’s toy giant could be the next store to offer the device. Pictures sent into ModMyI show one of the questions featured in the employee training programme, and a product sheet for the device – both of which contain a Toys ‘R’ Us logo.
The badly-worded question was obtained during an employee training session and reads: “The iPad 2 features a what size LED screen?” Together with the branded product sheet, these photographs would suggest that a Toys ‘R’ Us launch of the device could be imminent.
Retro gamers can now enjoy 100 classic Atari titles on their iOS devices thanks to the launch of Atari’s Greatest Hits. The application is a free download that comes bundled with Pong, and through in-app purchases users can download additional game packs at $0.99 each, or the entire collection of 100 games for $14.99.
The collection of classic hits includes 18 Atari arcade games and 92 Atari 2600 games. But the fun doesn’t stop there; the app also boasts head-to-head multiplayer over Bluetooth and original cabinet and box art.
Check out the entire list of games available – and those that support Bluetooth multiplayer – after the break.
