Quick test: see if you can guess what the following product does, just by decoding its cryptic name. Ready?

Belkin NetCam Wi-Fi with Night Vision

Apple is going to sell a holy-crap-ton of iPad minis at Apple Stores everywhere tomorrow, except in New York City. After getting ravaged by hurricane Sandy, NYC is still trying to recover from the damage the storm has inflicted on them, and many people won’t be able to make it to the Apple Store for the launch.

The damage from hurricane Sandy will probably mean that the iPad mini launch at the 5th Avenue Apple Store will be much more subdued than past launches. 

So you didn’t pre-order your iPad mini, huh? It’s ok. Even though online orders aren’t shipping for 2 – 3 weeks now you can still get an iPad mini tomorrow if you gear up and go brave the launch line

Yes, it’s a huge time investment, and no one really wants to sit outside an Apple Store for a couple of hours before the break of dawn, but we’re here to help you make the most of your iPad mini launch line waiting experience. In fact, this could even be a lot of fun. Just follow this guide and you’ll be in and out of the store and cradling your iPad mini in no time.

Along with this week’s surprising news that Scott Forstall is leaving Apple, Tim Cook also announced that Bob Mansfield is planning to stay with Apple for two more years. Just last June, Mansfield had decided that he was going to retire, but now he’s quickly decided he’s not ready to leave just yet, and will stay on to run a new Technologies unit.

Why the sudden change of heart? According to a new report, Mansfield and Scott Forstall haven’t gotten along too well, and when news surfaced that Forstall was on the way out, Mansfield decided Apple would be a lovely place to work at again.

The iPhone 5 is the best camera Apple has ever made (OK, maybe the second-best), so why not dress it like one of the best film cameras ever made?

That’s just what PetaPixel’s Leica skin will do, turning your long, thin iPhone into a long, thin fake rangefinder.

This is odd: when you receive your iPad mini, a stated software requirement listed on the box is that you will have a PC with iTunes 11 installed.

The only problem? While iTunes 11 was originally slated for an October release, it’s now been pushed back to November.

It’s not a big deal: if you plug in an iPad mini into the latest version of iTunes, it works just fine, albeit without an iPad mini icon. To me, that implies that we’ll probably see a small update to iTunes drop later today.

Source: iGen

Path, the popular “personal network” exclusive to smartphones and tablets, has today made its debut on the iPad. With a new interface designed to take full advantage of the iPad’s larger display, Path for iPad “allows for larger moments” and lets you see more of your family and friends on one screen.

South Korea has asked Apple to remove the Japanese names of the Dokdo islets from its new Maps app in iOS 6. Both Asian countries claim ownership of Dokdo, which has long caused tensions between the two. In iOS 5, when Maps was powered by Google Maps, only the Korean name for the islets was used, and that’s how Korean officials want it to stay.

It’s November, and you all know what that means: No, not the growing of wispy, creepy mustaches. November is National Novel-Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for (almost) short.

NaNoWriMo is the annual attempt by many tens of thousands of people to finally get that novel out of their head and into the cloud storage option of their choice. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight on the 30th November, and you can get there by fair means or foul. The rules? It has to be a novel, it has to be 50,000 words (or more) long, and it has to be written in November.

The tools you will need most to write your NaNoWriMo novel are inspiration and a lot of perseverance. Luckily, apps can help you with both. Here’s the definitive guide to NaNoWriMo apps on the Mac and iOS. If you can’t drag that novel kicking and screaming into the world with the help of these apps, you can’t do it at all.

One of iOS’s most limiting aspects is its icon-driven interface. iOS’s default interface, the homescreen, it simply a grid of equally sized icons, and while these icons are pretty, they all look pretty much the same. Worse, they are dumb: they can’t do anything cleverer than pin a badge to themselves to convey information.

Compare that to the way Android or Windows Phone handles the homescreen. In Android, you can pin intelligent widgets along with apps to the homescreen; in Windows Phone, the tiles operate not just as app icons, but as smart widgets that can convey to the user changes that are happening within the app, even when it’s not as open.

iOS users have been clammoring for Apple to figure out a way to make the iOS homescreen smarter for quite a long time, and this concept video describes one possible interpretation, which mixes up the iOS homescreen with Android’s widgets and Windows Phone’s Live Tiles.

A court of appeal has reprimanded the “non-compliant” statement Apple published on its website regarding the case against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in the United Kingdom. Apple now has 48 hours to correct the statement, which must then be displayed on the homepage of its website until December 14.

Apple has had a basic screensaver in OS X from way back, but it’s now possible to add a custom message to it, to leave valuable information for someone who might see it. It used to be called Computer Name, as it defaults to the name of your computer that’s set in your Sharing preferences. These days in Mountain Lion, it’s called Message.

iFixit is currently in the processing of tearing down the new iPad mini — a full day before the tiny tablet goes on sale in Apple retail stores the world over. Having already torn down the iPhone 5 and the new iPod touch, iFixit hasn’t too many surprises with the iPad mini; it’s just as difficult to get into as its siblings, and not at all easy to repair.

To Amazon’s displeasure, the teardown has also confirmed the presence of stereo — not mono — speakers, a Samsung display, and more.

You can now help Superstorm Sandy survivors by making a donation to the American Red Cross via iTunes and the App Store on your Mac or iOS device. Apple is accepting donations of $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, and $200 — and 100% of your contribution goes straight to the Red Cross.

It turns out that the iPad Mini is the first Apple mobile device to ship with stereo speakers. Although Apple’s product page only mentions a “built-in speaker,” the two grilles on the new iPad’s bottom edge do in fact contain separate stereo speakers.

Apple submitted its annual 10-K report with the SEC today, which summarizes the company’s growth over the last year. Reading the report shows an amazing amount of growth for the Cupertino-based company across all areas of its business: retail, research and development, and square footage it owns.

Weather On is a weather forecasting app for iOS that is remarkable for one thing: its very obvious nods to Microsoft’s mobile operating system.

Open it up, and you’ll see a selection of square and rectangular tiles that look and behave just like the tiles you’ve seen on the latest smartphones running Windows Phone.

Now that fiscal 2012 is over, Apple has filed its year-end 10k document to the SEC that contains a trove of financial data. Also contained in the filing is an item that contains information about Scott Forstall’s new role.

Forstall was removed as Senior Vice President of Mobile Software on Monday but will be stay at till 2013 in a special role under Tim Cook too keep him from jumping ship to a competitor. Forstall’s new official title is “Special Advisor to the Chief Executive Officer.”

Here’s the exact info from Apple’s 10-k filing:

Apple’s legal battles have been quietly continuing in the U.S. even after their landmark $1 Billion win over Samsung a few months ago. Apple is currently trying to fight patent claims lobbied against it by Motorola Mobility which is now owned by Google.

With five days to go before their contract trial starts in Wisconsin, Apple formally declared to the court that it will be willing to pay a licensing fee to Motorola Mobility as long as the license is $1 or less per iPhone sold.

Unshielded, shoddily built and as close to dangerous junk as you can get without actually being dangerous. Today, this description happens to apply to these knock-off Lightning adapters from China, but it could equally describe any cheap no-name Chinese electronic accessories.

Born on Kickstarter, the MobileMount is a nifty little tool that allows you to mount almost any smartphone or tablet to a flat surface. Its design is simple; it consists of two suction cups that are held together by a ball and socket joint, so you can angle the stand in almost any direction while it’s mounted.

Both suction cups utilize a ‘turn-to-lock’ mechanism in an effort to ensure it’s super secure, and that your device never becomes unstuck. And because they’re just simple suction cups, you don’t need to remove cases or chargers from your device before you use them with the MobileMount — provided the case you’re using has a flat surface, of course.

This also means you can use one mount for your iPhone, your iPad, your iPod, and more — you don’t need to carry separate, dedicated accessories for each device. The MobileMount comes in black or white, and costs $39.99. But is it really worth it?

With the official launch of the iPad mini fast approaching this Friday, Amazon put an anti-iPad mini ad on their homepage praising the specs of the Kindle Fire HD against those found in the iPad mini.

The Kindle Fire HD is undoubtedly cheaper, and a good buy, but the move seemed a bit uncharacteristic of Amazon, who usually doesn’t engage in product comparisons. Amazon has since pulled the ad and it’s nowhere to be found on their website.

There are so many great iOS games out there, for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, that it’s hard to choose which to play.

For Halloween, however, the playing field is narrowed a bit. Lots of games are going on sale, and quite a few have Halloween-flavored updates for this most scary of nights.

Organ Trail: The Director’s Cut, though, has both.

Game Your Video ($0.99 on the App Store till Nov 4th) by Global Delight Technologies is a clever and fun video editing and effects app for iPhone. Add screams, slowmotion, even uncanny backwards motion. It’s as easy as mashing the buttons on a virtual game controller.

Simply import your home videos on your device and they are ready to edit and spice up with a range of in-app visual and sound effects — on the go. Game Your Video is just perfect for making scary and fun home movies for the Halloween season… and you could win a $50 iTunes Gift Card.

Unaware of Scott Forstall’s recent exit from Apple, Siri will tell you that information on Forstall can be found on Apple.com, even though Apple already moved him from the Executive Profiles page.

Somebody’s got to break it to Siri that her buddy Scott is gone, and who better than Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and Phil Schiller. In their latest comic, Joy of Tech imagines what that awkward conversation with Siri would look like, head over there to see how she takes the news.

Source: Joy of Tech