The Enough Project released a report today that ranks the top technology companies on how well each one is doing in wiping out the use of “conflict minerals” like tantalum, tin, and tungsten in their products. Apple, HP, Intel, Motorola are at the top of the list, while Nintendo is at the bottom, along with HTC, Sharp, Nikon, and Canon.

The minerals in question, mined in areas of armed conflict and human rights abuses, are used in many technology products around the globe, and The Enough Project – a non-profit arm of the Center for American Progress – tracks these in its effort to combat crimes against humanity.

The iPhone 5 and iPad mini sections of the rumor mill have been churning nonstop as of late, but there hasn’t been any rumors surrounding the future of the Apple TV for quite some time.

Today a report sheds more light on the future of the Apple TV by noting that Apple is in talks with major cable providers to stream live television to a set-top box.

At the end of a long trial day, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, who’s been the presiding justice over the course of both pre-trial and actual trial, urged that Apple and Samsung speak together to try and resolve their differences out of court before the jury comes back to deliberate on the evidence that has been presented by both sides this week and last.

“It’s time for peace,” Koh said, adding, “I see risks here for both sides.”

Patent analyst Stephen Gray is the next and final witness of the day from Samsung. He’s expected to talk about the limitations of the Apple patent at issue, as well as the same prior art touch screen applications that Van Dam talked about a few minutes ago.

San Jose, CA — The Samsung vs. Apple trial continues in the afternoon with testimony from Dr. Andries van Dam, a pioneer in computing graphics and a long-time professor at Brown University. He is here in the Federal courthouse to invalidate the ‘381 Apple patent of “snap-back” touch screen functionality by identifying “prior art” design of gadgets before the iPhone and iPad innovations.

Gizmodo has posted a photo today of what they claim to be the screen for the alleged iPad Mini we’ve been hearing so much about. Apparently, the screen is exactly 7.85 inches diagonally, which lines up with current expectations of the device.

Interestingly enough, the screen doesn’t have a standard 4:3 aspect ratio like the current iPad, although if recent rumors are to be believed, this very well might just be the case.

Round 3 of the Android Humble Bundle has landed and we couldn’t be happier. Not only do you get to pay-what-you-want, but you also get to support charity and the great devs who have donated their games. All game included in the Humble Bundle are multi-platform, DRM-free, and independently developed games. There are currently four games listed along with a fifth “bonus” game for those who pay more than the average (which is $6.03 at the time of this post).

Apple’s Volume Purchase Program (VPP) is the company’s half-hearted attempt to deliver some form of enterprise licensing program for the iOS App Store. The program does make it marginally easier for businesses to bulk purchase and deploy apps to iPhones and iPads than telling employees to buy apps and then reimbursing them, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. As we reported earlier this summer, many businesses and school still feel Apple doesn’t meet their app purchase and deployment needs.

Mobile app management (MAM) vendor App 47 summed up some of the key issues and how it can help companies deal with them as part of the company’s summer lecture series on app management.

Coming soon to an iPhone, iPad or Mac near you? H.265 video, which will deliver video quality in half the file size of the old H.264 standard, and open the door for the Retina-quality video formats of the next ten years.

Known as High Efficiency Video Coding and MPEG-H Part 2, the new compression standard uses just half the bit rate for the same visual quality as H.264. Likewise, you can double the resolution of a video in the same file size. It supports resolutions of up to 7680 x 4320, making it future-proof through the new 4K and 8K HDTV resolutions.

MPEG has now officially released the draft, with H.265 expected to start hitting apps, devices and graphics chips starting 2013. iPad 4 featuring H.265 support, anyone?

Source: Ericsson
Via: iDB

Samsung continues its defense in the San Jose patent trial today against Apple, with more witnesses declaring Apple is the original copycat in the touch-screen mobile business.

We dig back in as one of the Samsung’s top executives, Industrial Designer Jin-Soo Kim, testifies about his role in the product development business.

Despite their bad rap, sharks really aren’t that mean. They just like to smile a lot. And it looks scary. I mean, sure if you prance around in the ocean looking like a sumptuous seal, or taunt a shark, or punch him, yeah, he might eat you. But that’s rare. Like, really rare.

To celebrate the brutish magnificence of the king of the ocean, we found the 13 best shark wallpapers. Take a look. Download them. And let your iPad or Mac bathe in the glory of nature’s most spectacular beast.

It’s starting to look like Verizon will hit its 400 market goal well before the end of the year. With plans to unleash yet another wave of 4G LTE rollouts, Verizon will hit the 371 mark by tomorrow. While some markets are already seeing 4G LTE, tomorrow’s scheduled rollout aims to add 34 new markets and expand LTE in another 38 markets. At the very least, this news reminds me why I’m still on Verizon.

The Mummy from Loop Attachment — the creators of the wonderful Loop wristband for the iPod nano — is a premium silicone case or the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that aims to provide all-around protection for your device while preserving its identity.

It leaves the Apple logo and the iPhone name on the back of your handset exposed, while providing plenty of protection to shield it from dings and drops.

The Mummy’s key features include an incredibly lightweight design, impact resistance protection for all sides of your iPhone, and easy access to all your buttons, switches, and ports. Its design even allows you to slip a credit card or two in the back of the case before you rush out.

The Mummy is available in a range of pretty colors — ten in total — and costs just $25. But is it worth your hard-earned cash?

It’s back to school time, of course, and that means textbooks for a large portion of students in higher ed, at least. And textbooks cost a lot. Like, a LOT.

The folks at TextbookLand aim to change that fact with their new iPhone app, TextbookMe. With it, you can search, scan a barcode, or browse your way to less expensive textbooks as you wander the quad looking for cute people to connect with at the party later in the evening. Or, so we hear.

In a move that makes the Square/Starbucks partnership announced last week look like small potatoes, a group of national and international retailers announced plans to develop their own mobile payment network complete with mobile apps and digital wallet functionality. The move seems almost certain to shake up the nascent mobile payments market where a wide range of companies and organizations have been trying to figure out the secret sauce that will turn mobile payments into a mainstream retail system for the past couple of years.

The Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, as the new company is known, plans to deliver a solution that offers convenience in both making purchases and in receiving customizable offers from retailers. Development of a mobile app and payment network are underway, but MCX has yet to announce any details about either the app or its network.

Ever heard of MirrorLink? A bunch of really big names in the car and tech world — Honda, GM, Toyota, Panasonic and pretty much all the big Android handset makers (that’s right, no Apple) — got together, called themselves the Car Connectivity Consortium and created a standardized communication format so that smartphones could easily communicate with car audio head units and the like. The format is called MirrorLink, and today Sony has unleashed no less than five MirrorLink-equipped units head units out onto U.S. roads, two of which are equipped with MirrorLink.

After two weeks of Apple laying down their evidence that Samsung has violated their patents and completely ripped-off the iPhone and iPad, Samsung is now going on the defensive in the Apple vs Samsung trial. So far, Samsung’s biggest strategic defense has been to flip the trial around and claim that Apple has infringed on their standard essential patents.

To help their case, Samsung has listed two expert witnesses to justify their claims that Apple should pay up to 2.5% in royalties. One of the experts – David J. Teece, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, was recently used by Motorola in their case against Microsoft related to H.264 patents.

An interesting crop circle was reported at Cheesefoot Head, near Winchester in Hampshire, southern England, last week. An infinite loop, the formation has no beginning nor end. It has been likened to the Tibetan Buddha, symbolizing peace and motion simultaneously. It also reminds us of the command key symbol, an emblem of Mac keyboards over the last thirty years.

If the iPad mini is really coming later this year, then why haven’t we seen a bunch of leaked parts for it? Daring Fireball’s John Gruber speculated that it was because the iPhone 5 was further along in production than the iPad mini, but now the guys at nowherelese.fr have come forward with a pretty convincing argument that this dock connector component is for the iPad mini: it’s way too big to be for the iPhone 5. Even Kyle Wiens of iFixIt says it appears to be a legitimate Apple part.

Curiously, though, it appears to have 10 pins, not the 9 pins seen on iPhone 5 dock connectors. However, we’re judging that from the inside of the dock connector cable, not from the actual plug. What does it mean?

Source: Nowherelese.fr

FileWave launched a new free app called Lightning this week. The new app makes quick and easy work of deploying Mountain Lion (and Lion) to multiple Macs, particularly recent Macs with Thunderbolt. It can be used to roll out existing master images that a business or school has already created as well as a base OS X install that can be customized with a range of files and applications.

Judge Lucy Koh has once again made a plea of Apple and Samsung to make peace in their patent dispute before a verdict is handed down. Not doing so, the federal judge warns, could be a danger to both Apple and Samsung.

Let’s say you want to program, oh, everything. Websites, responsive-design websites, iOS games, and iOS apps. Then let’s through in, just for kicks and giggles, Ruby and PS6. Cool?

This is hours and hours of classes. If you take classes the “traditional” way in a classroom, getting through all this will take a while. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for in-person classes (I teach them myself), but I’m also a big fan of self-paced, online courses that let you learn at your pace and on your own terms/time.

This is why I like these bundle deals for courses. Like the Programming Bootcamp we kick off today.

When your dad’s a radiologist you probably get to see all kinds of neat crap get x-rayed, because hey, why not take an x-ray of those apples and carrots before you put them in a blend? Maybe the radiation will make you into a super mutant. You’re the boss of the magical x-ray machine and can do whatever you want.

That’s kind of what happened to one Redditor. They ordered a new MacBook Air, but when it arrived their dad didn’t tell him it arrived. Instead he took it to his lab, x-rayed it, and gave his son the x-ray to tell him that his new Mac was finally here. Ain’t that sweet?

Source: Reddit

Dude, what is Apple going to call this newer, thinner, smaller iPad they’re about to launch? iPad Junior? iBook? iPad Mini? iPad Air? iPad 3? I have no idea anymore. Last night I went to bed completely confident that Apple was going to probably call it something simple like “iPad Mini,” but then I woke up to some new renders of the smaller iPad and talk about how Apple might call it the iPad Air.

Now I’m second guessing the whole iPad Mini thing, and leaning towards iPad Air. I really want Apple to call it an iBook, just because I want to read iBooks on my iBook, but that’s probably not going to happen. Are there some better possible names for a smaller iPad? What do you think Apple should call the “iPad Mini.” I need to know!

Click here to tell us what Apple should call the smaller iPad in the Cult of Mac Forums

Image: iMore

Korean carriers SK Telecom and KT have revealed that they are currently in talks with Apple over supporting the next iPhone on their 800 MHz and 1800 MHz LTE networks. Although it seems inevitable that the handset will indeed boast LTE connectivity, as we know from the new iPad, different carriers use different frequency bands all around the world, and so not every LTE network will be supported.

If you’re in Korea, however, it seems there may be support for you… though it may not be available from launch.