With the release of Apple’s own dedicated Podcasts app today, it’s clear that Apple is finally taking Podcasts seriously. When podcasts were first brought to iTunes in 2005, Apple made a strong push to promote what they felt was the future of broadcasting. Apple’s own Eddy Cue even said at the time: “We really think podcasting is the next generation of radio.”

Unfortunately, as time marched on, podcasts were pushed to the side and left pretty much unattended. iOS has always had minimal support for podcasts, and even iTunes itself offers no real compelling way to manage your subscriptions. What makes today’s announcement big is that it marks a new, renewed effort on Apple’s part to make podcasts a key part of their iTunes ecosystem.

The East Alton school district in southwest Illinois announced earlier this week that it will be launching a one-ton-one iPad deployment for all students in grades three through eight (plus shared iPads for kindergarten through second grade). The announcement is far from unique. Many schools across the U.S. and throughout the world have already launched similar programs – some of them on a much larger scale.

One of the interesting points about East Alton’s decision, however, is that the school district isn’t buying the iPads for its students – a least not initially. Instead, the district has signed a four-year leasing agreement for the iPads. The decision highlights Apple’s often overlooked leasing programs for both business education customers.

OmniPlan for iPad is touted as one of the more comprehensive project management apps available. With such a complex and robust app, it can be helpful to spend a little time with it and learn some of the best ways to use such a system.

First up, let’s look at creating a timeline for your project. In project management circles, such a chart is called a Gantt Chart. It basically places your tasks, goals, and project milestones on a timeline chart, to help project team members know what to do first, second, third, etc. This visual system helps managers know when things are getting behind.

Apple is preparing to build another billion dollar data supercenter like the one powering its iCloud in North Carolina. This time, though, it’ll be built right outside of Reno, Nevada. Let’s hope that doesn’t prove to be the biggest little mistake Apple’s ever made.

Microsoft confirmed yesterday that it plans to purchase Yammer, a four-year old company that specializes in providing enterprise social networks. The move, which has been rumored for months, offers Microsoft a chance to develop business collaborative systems that go well beyond the company’s Sharepoint service.

The move is an interesting one that could be significant in the enterprise space. The success of public social networks has led a number of organizations to attempt to bring the social concept into the workplace. The rate of success has varied with NASA’s Spacebook project being one of the more notable failures (and one lampooned by Stephen Colbert).

Local SF Bay Area startup California Headphones presents two high-performance headphones that combine fetching good looks with a less bottom-heavy audio usually associated with a lot of over-ear headphones aimed at rap/hip-hop listeners. These retro-styled headphones instead emphasize the middle and higher sonic frequencies of guitar and vocal music, the sound milieu of breezy California. And my favorite part is that the headphones come with Duo-Jack smart signal divider, so you and a friend can both listen simultaneously to your iPod.

You know those apps which turn you photos into pencil drawings or watercolors or oil paintings? Let’s face it — almost every single one of them is junk (iPhoto’s paint effect is a rare exception). Which is why Popsicolor is going to blow your socks off.

Never say never: in the past ten years, Apple has entered market after market and revolutionized them. The portable media market. The smartphone market. The tablet market. The connected TV market.

Where will it end? Tim Cook has promised Apple will never release a Toasterfridge, but that’s not to say they might not enter the home appliance market… or at least that’s the conceit of this very funny parody ad by Slacktory.

While redesigning the App Stores apps for iOS 6, Apple left out the podcasts section from the iTunes app. Many have speculated that Apple was building a separate app for podcasts, and it looks like those rumors are true, as Apple just released their new podcast app today for iOS. The free standalone app works on all iOS devices running iOS 5.1 or later and gives users a better hub to discover new audio and video podcasts.

There are several iPad cases which have straps to let you fasten them to the headrests of your car seats so people in the back can watch movies. The trouble is, they’re almost all bulky and ugly, as they try to cram too much into one case.

X-Doria’s Drive-In is also bulky and ugly, but as it’s designed as a permanent addition to your car, who cares?

My favorite deals are the app bundles. A bunch of great apps for a sweet price. Today we have a great mini bundle for you that gives you eye candy (10,000 HD wallpapers!), security (lock down apps on your Mac—great for shared machines!), cleaning (uninstall apps so they are really all gone), entertainment (convert videos to watch on the go), and some back talk (voice narration software) for one low price.

The Mac Stack Bundle give you a nice, inexpensive pack of useful tools for $20. Simple, easy, and done.

We all know that despite only selling two different models of the iPhone and iPad each year, Apple owns the lion’s share of profits in the smartphone industry, even when compared to manufacturers who released dozens of different smartphones and tablets every  year.

It gets even crazier, though. Look at this wonderful chart by market research firm VisionMobile, comparing shipping volumes, revenues and profits of the mobile industry from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012. In just a year, Apple has pretty much doubled not just the number of smartphones it ships, but the revenue and profit it makes off of them…. even while companies that were, a year ago, struggling to compete have pretty much gone belly up.

Insane. Can anything stop the iPhone and iPad?

Source: Vision Mobile
Via: Infoworld

This video of Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire demonstrating his company’s new dual-screen AirPlay technology is doing the rounds this morning, and it’s certainly an impressive demo, in which Allaire is able to use his iPad to do one thing while playing video in the background on his Apple TV at the same time. Is this what using a true Apple HDTV will be like?

If you want to buy a new zoom lens for your FujiFilm XPro-1 camera, then tough: Fujifilm says that you’ll have to wait until next year. The company has released a roadmap for its XF-series lenses and the variable focal-length lenses are almost all due in 2013.

It’s not all bad, though. Lovers of fast, fixed glass have some treats in store.

We’ve seen a number of images of Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs in recent weeks as the Two and a Half Men star films the upcoming indie biopic jOBS. But these, which show Kutcher portraying Apple’s co-founder and former CEO under the influence of LSD, are possibly the most colorful so far.

How’s this for an almost spectacularly misguided idea. It’s the HighLine, and it’s a kind of springy phone cord which locks into the dock connector of your iPhone or iPad. Sure, it’ll keep the phone safe if you drop it, but it will also cause you to swear the moment the cable gets caught up and rips itself out of the delicate 30-pin dock connector port.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAC1_VcP-AU

This is the R* Case, and it might just be my new favorite iPad skin, based only on this video. And not just because the case itself, with two old 80s-skateboard-style rails on the back, looks very useful. It’s also because the video itself is an engaging mix of hard work and high-cheese.

San Diego’s Unified Schools District has spent $15 million on almost 26,000 iPads that will be distributed across 340 classrooms this fall in what is reportedly one of the largest educational iPad purchases to date. The devices will be used by fifth- and eighth-grade students, in addition to some in high schools.

BYOD and ever-increasing mobility are business trends that are forcing many organizations to take a fresh look at security. The idea of employees connecting from home, coffee shops, and even planes has led to an overall increasing awareness of the need to secure remote connections. At the same time, business data residing on the iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices of those employees is causing the IT industry to take a fresh look at mobile device security.

That is, of course, a good thing. With the focus on mobile security, however, many IT organizations are letting the security and overall design of their core networks to become outdated – and exposing their companies to incredible risks in the process.

TaskPaper for Mac OS X from Hog Bay Software has been reduced to just $1.99 today as part of the Two Dollar Tuesday software promotion. That’s a whopping 93% off its original price tag of $29.99.

Want to quickly check the weather on your iPhone? Want to have your eyes soothed by wonderful, minimal design at the same time as you’re informed of the temperature outside? Then you need WTHR, an iPhone app which could have been designed by Dieter Rams himself.

Following the Flashback malware scare this spring, Apple is stepping up its focus on security and malware protection in Mountain Lion. The release notes for the latest Mountain Lion developer preview include references to a “new Mountain Lion Security Updates system” that checks for security updates on a daily basis, uses a more secure connection when communicating with Apple’s update servers, and can install required updates automatically when a Mac is restarted.

Based on the release notes for the system, Apple is making the security update process automatic and has designed it to  runs as a system process rather than a user task. Presumably that means it will function without a user logged in or while non-admin users are logged in. All in all, that’s similar to Microsoft’s Windows update feature and a good thing for users.

That doesn’t mean that this setup will be great fit for businesses, schools, and other organizations with large Mac populations.

Apple has increased the security of its fourth OS X Mountain Lion developer preview by introducing a number of new security features that will presumably become part of the software’s public release next month. 

It’s taken a good three months, but Words With Friends HD has finally gained support for the new iPad. The version 5.0 update, which just hit the App Store this morning — now comes with high-resolution artwork optimized for the Retina display, and support for landscape orientation.

When Lion debuted, the Save As… function had been removed from the File menu, and an interloper – Duplicate – was put in its place. The problem is that if you use Duplicate, you end up with two documents, one with “copy” appended to its name. In addition, Duplicate has no keyboard shortcut. This has made a lot of us sad.

While we’ve reported that Save As… functionality is coming back in OS X Mountain Lion, that doesn’t help those of us using plain-old Lion right now. However, with a little work around, we can get the same functionality until Mountain Lion comes out.