Back in 1992, sci-fi futurist and console cowboy cyberpunk William Gibson of Neuromancer fame helped come up with a puzzle that has been puzzling computer cryptographers ever since.

At the 1992 Meeting of the Americas Society, a 3.5-inch disk meant to run on a Mac PowerBook was distributed alongside a limited print noir art book by Dennish Ashbaugh and Kevin Begos, Jr. On the disk was an unknown poem Gibson had penned called “Agrippa (a book of the dead)”. When the disk was plugged into a PowerBook, the text of the poem was displayed exactly once… and then a script on the disk caused the poem to be permanently scrambled so it could never be read again.

Two decades later, one cryptography student is trying to get to the bottom of how it all works.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace called out Apple’s reliance on coal power for fueling its iCloud data centers back in April. Apple responded by saying that all of its data centers will eventually be powered by 100% clean, renewable energy. Greenpeace was happy about Apple’s bold stance on the issue, saying that it was a “great sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal.”

Now Greenpeace is saying that Apple’s plans to make its data centers truly coal-free “are still far from complete.” While Apple’s energy footprint has become significantly cleaner in recent months, the Cupertino-based company has yet to offer a viable plan for fully eliminating its use of coal, according to Greenpeace.

Would you pay $20 to keep your Apple earbuds in your ears where they belong? Me too. Especially if the solution was as tiny, neat and portable as the earbuds themselves. So keep your fingers crossed (or better, stump up some cash) and hope that Zach Herbert and Adam Orshan’s Kickstarter project gets funded.

We’re still a few months away from Apple’s new iPhone unveiling, but that hasn’t stopped a number of Chinese retailers from selling the device in advance. They’re using the mockup pictures that have been circulating for weeks to make a quick buck from the hotly-anticipated handset, with some asking for as much as $8,600 a piece.

Imagine you had a 24-inch iPad which could be propped up to any angle. Imagine further that this iPad can be hooked up to your Mac and used as an external display, and that the color gamut of that display shows 97% of the Adobe RGB space. Now add in a pressure-sensitive pen along with the multi-touch goodness.

This is Wacom’s new 24HD.

Our iPhones and iPads, which enable us to work and be on call virtually anywhere at any time, will lead to more than half of us working while on vacation. That’s the result of a new study that looked at how technology impacts the work/life balance. iOS devices are common players in the bring your own device (BYOD) era. As BYOD programs lead many of us to use our personal iOS devices and other mobile technology for work-related tasks, they also encourage an “always on” attitude from employers and employees alike.

The study, commissioned by enterprise remote access vendor TeamViewer, shows that just over half (52%) of professionals expect to work while on vacation in one capacity or another.

It also comes on the heels of a similar study that we reported last week. That study showed that always-connected devices like the iPhone and iPad lead most of us to work well past the end of the business day. A practice so common, in fact, that many of us will work an extra seven hours outside of normal business hours and outside of the office each week.

A new iPhone case called the Yellow Jacket protects your phone — and your ass! It’s actually a powerful stun gun. Best of all, it adds about 20 hours of battery life to your iPhone!

Thanks to The Red Ferret.

This is interesting: Apple has just applied for a patent showing a way that they could allow the iPod nano to sync and charge through pins positioned in the clip. What’s most interesting about this is that it implies that the iPod nano could ditch the 30-Pin Dock Connector, just like the Shuffle.

Get in your doomsday bunker because Rovio has released a new game. That’s right, Casey’s Contraptions Amazing Alex is now available on both the Google Play Store and App Store. You’ve seen the trailers and now it’s time to see how much weight Rovio’s name carries.

Book fetishists often cite the smell and feel of a book as a reason to keep chopping down trees and wasting fuel to ship the pulp around the world. But what about something that we probably all value, whether we are paper-sniffers or we have entered the modern age – signed books? Specifically, how does one get a digital book signed by the author?

Brett Kelly has the answer.

Hardware news site Kitguru.net has put up an extensive gallery of images which they believe is the iPhone 5 in the wild. We disagree: this is pretty clearly a rough model someone has put together for the purpose of getting the jump on making cases or accessories. But it still shows what the consensus is amongst accessory makers with ties to the Far East about what the next iPhone will look like.

It can be seriously annoying when you want your Mac to sleep but it wants to stay up late, playing video games, eating cheese doodles and generally not doing “lights-out.” Wait, maybe that’s my kids. Anyway, when it’s your Mac that won’t get to sleep, today’s tip should help you get to the bottom of it.

I keep my Mac Mini at my bedroom desk, and it’s always spinning up and waking up when I don’t want it to, so maybe today’s tip is more about me than you, but that’s ok, right?

If you’ve though of an awesome idea for an iOS app, but you haven’t got a clue how to write code and you haven’t got the time to learn, then App Idol may be able to help. The competition is giving you the chance to win $1,000 and see your app idea turned into a reality. But you’ll have to be quick; the deadline for applications is July 24.

Parallels 7, arguably the best desktop virtualization tool for Mac, has been updated to take advantage of the new MacBook Pro’s high-resolution Retina display. Its cousin, Parallels Mobile for iOS, has also received the same treatment, and now supports the Retina display in the new iPad.

NASA has unveiled a new app for iOS today, which aims to teach you all about the spacecraft that is uses to explore our solar system. Called Spacecraft 3D, the app uses augmented reality to present each machine right in front of you, so that you can get up close and personal to see how they move, and learn how they work. It’s completely free, and it works on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Anyone taken a look at the price of a professional photo editing software package, lately? Yeah, we dare you.

Redditor jayfehr noticed that Apple design award winner Pixelmator is currently on the Mac App Store for a quarter of it’s regular ($60) price, coming in at a nice $14.99 for this fairly beautiful looking Mac OS X image editing and paint program.

Startup Aereo has been allowed to continue sending live TV programs to iPhones and other mobile devices in the New York City Area. Many networks had sued Aereo for copyright infringement, claiming that the company was illegally copying and then re-broadcasting their content.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan refused to grant the preliminary injunction brought today by the networks – including ABC, NBC, and CBS – to shut down Aereo while the original suit itself was heard by the courts.

Update: Hey, look at that! Tiny Wings HD just showed up in our iTunes App Store.

Tiny Wings 2.0 is available now in the app store, as a free update to the original sleeper hit by developer Andreas Illiger.

After a cute little music box teaser trailer was posted earlier this week, igniting the joy of fans and the media alike, it seems as if the wait is (almost) over.

No sir, that’s not an Apple store you’re looking at, that there is a bona fide Samsung store. What looks like an episode of Punk’d, is actually Samsung’s first Canadian retail store in Metro Vancouver. This 140-square-metre store is located in Burnaby’s Metropolis at Metrotown and offers a plethora of Samsung’s latest mobile devices, as well as demo stations to see how they function and interact with other Samsung products such as TVs.

Mountain Lion Server is the final chapter in Apple’s march from the enterprise data center – a march that started five years ago when Apple introduced a simplified management interface for small business as part of Leopard Server. The first sure sign that Apple had decided to tailor its server platform only for smaller organizations came with the cancellation of the Xserve.

To experienced OS X Server administrators, Lion Server looked like a patched together product that still had much of its former enterprise capabilities but with advanced administration tools that had been gutted like a fish. All of which pointed to Apple moving forward with its narrower focus and a simplified management app call simply Server.

Research firm Gartner just released its numbers for PC shipments during the second quarter of 2012, and Apple was the only company in the top 5 vendors to see an actual increase in PC shipments. Every other PC manufacturer suffered a significant decline, totaling a 5.7% drop in overall U.S. PC shipments.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, tablet and iPad sales are increasing exponentially. A recent report even estimated that tablet shipments will surpass the PC in the next 4-5 years.

According to the New York Times, Tim Cook has been the talk of the town in Idaho, making an appearance at the Allen & Co. Media Conference held annually in Sun Valley. Some have even called him “Mr Popular,” since Apple so rarely attends events such as these.

Cook has also lined up meetings with many executives, and is looking to make deals, apparently.

Microsoft has had a lot to say about Apple over the past couple days. The Redmond-based company is holding its annual Worldwide Partner Conference this week, and some recent comments from Microsoft COO Kevin Turner and CEO Steve Ballmer address the company’s stance on Apple as a competitor.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and the late Steve Jobs have spoken out multiple times on how the iPad and iPhone have pioneered the “post-PC era.” Instead of needing a traditional desktop computer, consumers are turning to tablets and smartphones for their everyday habits. Today, Microsoft’s Turner called Apple out on its post-PC label, saying “We actually believe Windows 8 is the new era for the PC plus.” Yesterday, Steve Ballmer said, “we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple.”

If you’ve ever gamed on your Mac or iPad, you’re probably a big fan of the Tomorrow Corporation and their indescribably weird physics puzzler, World of Goo. They’re now teasing a new game, called Little Inferno, and while there’s no gameplay to go by, it looks even weirder, taking place in a world suffering from a mysterious ice age in which children must burn their old toys and mementos and breathe in the fumes in order to stay warm and fight off encroaching death.

Yup. Absolutely bonkers. There’s no release date yet, but you can pre-order the alpha for $14.99, which will get you access to the game early on the PC or Mac. The iOS version will probably come out a few months after release if World of Goo is anything to go by.

Source: Little Inferno

One of the things that can frustrate mobile users when using an iPhone or iPad for work is needing to repeatedly enter passcodes other user account credentials like a user name and password. Often because of a mobile device’s size and virtual keyboard, this process can seem more onerous than it does while using a Mac or PC in the office.

A growing number of apps and mobile management tools are becoming available that make it relatively easy to safely store business data in an encrypted and secure container on an iPhone or iPad. Realizing that security requires verifying a user’s identity when accessing specific apps or content after the device has been unlocked. Advantages to this include significant increases in mobile data security and the ability to wipe just the business data off of a device if it is lost or stolen.

The downside is the need for mobile users to repeatedly enter credentials – a downside that one mobile developer is helping iOS users sidestep