Today London-based Amsys announced a new one day course for IT professionals charged with managing and securing iOS devices in their organizations. The course, iPhone / iPad: Security in the Enterprise, was designed by Amsys itself and not by Apple.

Amsys is an Apple Authorized Training Center, meaning that it’s staffed by Apple certified trainers who use Apple’s official training curriculum to teach the company’s range of classes for IT professionals.

With all the training resources that Apple provides to its certified trainers and training centers, you might be wondering why Amsys created this class on its own. The answer is simple – Apple hasn’t provided substantive training options for managing and securing iOS devices. The dearth of official options is leading Amsys and other Apple training facilities scrambling to create their own content to fill the gap.

Cult of Mac’s own Charlie Sorrel explained the magic behind this slick feature built into iPhoto for iOS, but he didn’t spend much time on how to actually make it happen. I figured it might be high time to do just that, in today’s tip.

Ask what the next revolutionary feature for the iPhone will be, and NFC is a common answer. NFC — or near-field communications — is an ultra low-power chip that allows two devices to communicate small strings of information within a couple feet of each other.

Why’s it so revolutionary? The most commonly cited “magic” that NFC would bring to the iPhone would be the ability to use your device to pay for goods and services, just like a credit card.

In other words, instead of pulling out your wallet to buy groceries, get onto the subway or pick up a MacBook at the local Apple Store, you’d just tap your iPhone against a point-of-sale terminal near the register instead. The NFC chips in both would communicate and you’d be on your way, no signature or PIN code required.

Pretty neat, huh? NFC would theoretically allow Apple to take a cut of real world sales made of even non-Apple products. They’d become a mobile payment company. That seems like such a no-brainer that everyone from Bloomberg to The New York Times.

The only problem? Never going to happen, because Apple has already deployed its mobile payment solution, and it’s hidden inside every iPhone 4S that has already been sold.

Just announced this week are two new Alpha-series interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) and two new lenses from Sony, the digital SLR SLTα37 and NEX-F3 compact camera, and their accompanying stand-alone zooms SAL18135 and SEL18200LE, respectively.

We picked up a story this morning saying that Apple was censoring the word “jailbreak” in the iTunes Store. While the news just started making the rounds this morning, Apple has actually been censoring “jailbreak” with asterisks for many months. We noticed the activity first when a recent episode of the CultCast called “The Jailbreak Breakdown” showed up as “The J*******k  Breakdown.”

It looks like Apple pays attention to the blogosphere, because the word “jailbreak” is already starting to be uncensored in the iTunes Store.

There’s probably only one thing you should be doing while you are using your iPhone, and that’s sitting down, or standing politely off to one side of the sidewalk. Anything else is likely a danger to both you and to passersby. The folks behind the Tuidle iPhone case though, think otherwise.

The Tuidle (pronounced “twiddle”) is billed as a case that will let you “multitask with one hand.” The schoolboy in me thinks that that sounds pretty dirty, but in fact it looks very handy indeed.

I’ve tried a lot of “anyone can make music” apps in the past, and they’ve not always lived up to the hype. That’s why, at first, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for three-dollar music app Sound Wand – but I should have been more optimistic. Like a real instrument, you need to spend some time learning how it works.

American television has been infested with ridiculous singing shows – American Idol, The Voice, X Factor, Sing Off, and now Duets. It’s become too much. Why won’t everyone just enjoy watching Walter White run his meth empire instead? I dunno, but the newest singing show, Duets, is looking to set themselves apart from other shows by ripping off Apple’s classic ‘1984’ commercial in order to get people to plop down and listen to Kelly Clarkson screech for two hours. Sounds like a great marketing plan.

Oh, and they got Jennifer Nettles to join the show too. I guess Toni Basil wasn’t available.

Thanks: Jacob

If you own an iPad and like to get out of bed on time, then you probably own a copy of Due, the super-simple alarm and timer app for iOS. It’s probably the easiest and best designed alarm app around, and now it is available on the Mac.

The problem with using OS X Messages, Twitter, Facebook, and other communication clients is that they operate in separate locations. I got like five different ones open on my desktop right now and it’s a confusing mess of switching windows and tabs and errant messages.

To make life easier one clever hacker figured out how to add a Twitter Timeline to OS X’s Messages app so that you can read your entire Twitter stream, in realtime, from the Messages app. It’s awesome, and I want it now!

As OS X continues to become more of a consumer-oriented platform and less of a power user-friendly environment, Apple is reportedly set to begin enforcing new guidelines in the Mac App Store that will ban apps that use “hotkey” functionality.

Apps like Alfred are able to give the user a universal system hotkey that can be used to access the app anywhere in OS X. Starting on June 1st, Apple will be prohibiting these kinds of system-wide features from making their way into the Mac App Store.

Sometimes just a few words can make humongous impact – something that DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach proved spectacularly Wednesday afternoon when a statement he made caused Apple’s market value to drop 2.2% – an acceleration of a much milder downward  trend that Apple’s stock has been on since its record high in early April. Gundlach comments added to that trend, causing Apple stock to plummet so much that it is down $96 billion since April 9th.

For those that weren’t following Apple’s stock price on Wednesday, just after 3 p.m. Apple’s stock price dropped sharply by 2.2% to just over $540. That’s about when Gundlach took the stage at a meeting of hedge fund managers in New York and said that he was shorting Apple because he didn’t see the company being able to sustain the massive consumer excitement generated by the new iPad and other hit products.

If you’re confused by iPhoto for iOS, then you’re not alone. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the cluttered and complex interface. There is light at the end of this long and painful tunnel, though, in the form of a very powerful photo cataloging and editing app. And a new book, called Hello iPhoto for iPad & iPhone, will help you get there.

If you were a sports fan growing up, chances are you stopped by your local fair or amusement park to have your photo superimposed onto the cover of Sports Illustrated. Our desire to join the ranks of sports celebrities hasn’t changed much over the years, but the technology used for sports photo novelties has. For the first time ever in the NFL, the New York Giants invite fans to try on their Super Bowl ring using augmented reality.

Do you have a hard time keeping your Mac windows where you want them? Sick of manually adjusting the ever-changing Tetris puzzle of your OS X desktop? Think the green + button at the top left of every Mac window is beyond useless at intelligently resizing an app?

You’re not alone. You want to download Windownaut, a new app that supercharges that green + button to allow you to quickly and easily snap your windows to any location you want on your Mac’s display.

This week, the Enterprise Device Alliance announced its newest member – London-based Trams. The Enterprise Device Alliance (a.k.a. EDA) is a non-profit group that provides resources to companies and organizations looking to integrate Apple technologies into predominantly Windows-based environments.

Trams is an IT solutions vendor and consulting company that provides services to customers in the UK, Ireland, and Northern Europe.

The company is the fourth new member to join the EDA since the beginning of this year (and the second technology integrator to join this year). The company will help the EDA expand the resources available to UK and European IT departments integrating Macs, iPhones, and iPads into their organizations – starting with a luncheon for IT professionals, to be conducted on June 19 at the Soho Hotel.

Samsung has reportedly launched its next generation of 20-nanometer mobile memory chips early in a bid to repair the damage caused by a throwaway rumor from DigiTimes that claimed Apple was gearing up to shun Samsung’s DRAM chips in favor of those from Elpida Memory.

Samsung’s share price plummeted by 6% shortly after the rumor began to circulate, costing the Korean company around $10 billion in market value.

What does it take to be a vintage Mac collector?

A love of all things Apple and an encyclopedic knowledge of the many successful, unsuccessful and downright notorious products Cupertino has released over the years are a given. But the job can be more perilous than you’d imagine.

Just ask Adam Goolevitch. Known as “wozniac” on eBay, Adam is one of the premier vintage Mac collectors around. In just he last couple of months, some of Googlevitch’s rarest finds — including a 128k Mac with a 5.25” Twiggy floppy disk drive and a Macintosh SE with a clear outer case — have hit the web and sparked a flurry of interest.

But collecting these Macs isn’t always easy. From almost losing a finger to a PowerMac G4 Cube to mistakenly being investigated by the police under the suspicion of dealing drugs instead of Macs, Googlevitch has some wild stories to tell that prove that being a vintage Mac collector isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart.

Cult of Mac sat down with Adam to hear some of his adventures and also get the scoop on the rarest machines in his collection.

I can imagine that the reaction you get from mentioning the word “jailbreak” within the Apple camp in Cupertino is almost identical to that you get when mentioning the word “bomb” on an airplane. In fact, Apple hates the word so much that it considers it an expletive, and it’s now filtering it from the iTunes Store.

With all the new security warnings about Macs needing virus protection, I thought it a good time to note an antivirus app I’ve used for a few years, now. Let’s start this tip off with a bit of a disclaimer, though. Please don’t sue me (or Cult Of Mac) if you use this free app and get a virus on your Mac, okay? Today’s tip is just that: a quick tip to make you aware of a free antivirus app that runs on your Mac and costs nothing. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Titles like Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, and Jetpack Joyride have proven that popular smartphone games are big business for developers. But why are we so addicted to gaming on our mobile devices? Well, according to a new survey from MocoSpace, a third of us do it just to kill time and cure boredom, while 10% of us do it to meet new people.

Just as we expected, Apple has successfully claimed ownership of the iPhone5.com domain name after filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) earlier this month to have the domain transferred from its existing owner.

According to WIPO’s website, the case has now been terminated.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom have agreed to resolve a battle over Time Warner’s iOS app that allows users to stream Viacom content within their homes over a wireless network. Both companies released a joint statement this week confirming that Viacom content would be returning to the free TWC TV app.

Sony has announced a pair of new cameras today. One is the A37, an “SLT” (like an SLR, but without the flipping mirror) and the other is the NEX F3, a new mirrorless model.

We have our full review ready and coming to your screens in a few hours (11:30 PST), but for a quick look at the details, read on.

After a brief beta, Steam has made the ability to remotely manage your library of games as well as initiate a download via the web or mobile app a reality for all. Steam users who download the latest client for their PC or Mac will be able to log into the Steam web site or mobile app to access and manage their downloading pre-loads, new releases, or latest purchases.