Ever wonder who exactly Samsung hired to test out the Galaxy Note before shipping it out to retailers across the globe? It was no easy task finding a quality assurance team that measured up to the pure magnitude of the Galaxy Note, but after interviewing nearly a dozen teams, Samsung went with lead QA Engineer Peter the elephant and his expert team of mixed mammals.

Mike Daisey. Most of you are probably sick of hearing about his scandal with This American Life regarding the lies he told the media and his audiences about Apple’s manufacturing environment overseas. But there’s one more part to the story. Daisey has revealed what he plans to do with his show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, moving forward.

He’s vowed that he will continue performing in the face of his critics. There will also be some changes made to reflect the inaccurate information that were recently uncovered.

Some new jailbreak tweaks have surfaced in Cydia that allow you to open and send all kinds of files between iOS devices with iMessage. Apple’s messaging protocol can be used to send much more than simple SMS and MMS messages; you can send everything from a song to a PDF.

Attacher will let you send and receive all kinds of files with iMessage, and it includes a couple features that make it a compelling offering. A pair of jailbreak tweaks called SendAny and ReceiveAny also accomplish the same goal with a different approach. Which tweak option is best? Let’s take a closer look.

Last week, Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies discovered that when he charged his new iPad, it continued to draw current long after iOS reported its lithium-ion polymer battery as being 100% charged.

Doing some experiments, Dr. Soneira discovered that if allowed to charge until the point where the 10W charger stopped drawing full current from the mains, his iPad could last 11.6 hours on a single charge, compared to just 10.4 hours if he unplugged it the second it reached 100%.

Why does the new iPad do this? Dr. Soneira believes that it’s a bug in the way the new iPad reports its battery charge. Apple has since spoken out and called it a “great feature” in iOS. But what the heck is really going on?

The truth is more complicated. Apple’s being disingenuous calling this a “feature” of iOS. In fact, technically it harms your new iPad’s battery. That said, it’s certainly not a bug, as Dr. Soneira emphatically suggests. Rather, this is the way all gadget batteries charge. To understand why this is, and how you can maximize your device’s battery life and longevity, you first need to understand a little bit about how batteries charge.

One of the neatest things about running Photoshop on a the iPad is that it is both portable, and it has has cameras. That might not sound like much, but it lets you do a lot more than just take pictures. Photoshop Touch lets you shoot into the current project right from either camera, and you can use this to add some pretty amazing analog effects to your image.

Today we’ll take a look at two cool tricks, one using each camera. One needs a flashlight, and one needs a textured surface or a piece of paper. Go get your tools and follow along.

The enterprise app store is becoming a reality in many companies. Initially envisioned as a way to make internal apps available to employees, the concept has quickly grown to include public apps available in Apple’s iOS App Store. This allows businesses to offer employees a curated list of apps that relate to specific fields or job functions.

A curated list of public apps is a great idea and it can save employees both time and effort in selecting apps that can help them work more efficiently and effectively. The challenging part, however, is choosing which of the hundreds of thousands of iOS apps to include in your company’s app store.

There is a theory that apps are the new hit singles. You can’t make money from releasing a song any more, so you might as well try and make money from something people are still willing to pay for, like apps.

And you might not even need to charge them for the app, either. You can give the app away for free, and pad it out with extras that cost money. It’s bound to pull in a few paying customers, right? Right?

Let’s face it, the only reason I don’t get lost four times a day, even in the town I live in, is because my iPhone has Maps on it. No other navigation app I’ve tried hits that sweet spot of simplicity and helpfulness. I even use Maps for finding local business phone numbers. It’s that useful.

The inclusion of public transportation routes has been equally useful, I’m sure, for folks who live in more urban areas with good bus and rail systems. If you’re one of those lucky folks, here’s a tip just for you.

Do you like the pull-to-refresh feature found in many popular iOS apps? Well, you might want to prepare to see it go the way of the dodo, as Twitter is now trying to patent it.

Described simply, the Apogee Jam ($99) is a just little gadget that lets you plug your guitar into your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. But in this pairing of instrument and iDevice, the Jam unlocks a wonderful world of musical possibility that is nothing short of magical.

Yesterday, we covered a report that asked whether or not most people really want the option to bring their own technology into the office. That report showed that despite the media hype and the broad interest that CIOs and IT leaders are showing in BYOD programs, it may only be one out of every five employees that’s clamoring for the right to bring their personal iPad or iPhone into the office.

If that’s the case, why are so many users hesitant or even hostile to the BYOD model?

If you’ve been looking to build a pristine — and profitable — WordPress site, we’ve got a great deal for you here at Cult of Mac that is set expire in just a few short hours. Today’s the last day to pick up The WordPress Express Course from Cult of Mac Deals so that you can acquire all the skills you need to build a killer WordPress site right away. And it’s available for only $79 while this offer stands.

That’s right…for only $79 this video course will end up saving you thousands of dollars. So if you don’t have that must-have website up and running yet, there’s no time like the present to get that going!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXCwfb1jXHo&feature=player_detailpage

These iPhone-powered doggies are ridiculously cute. The little fellas use iPhones for their faces and brains, and can shuffle around the table (or neighborhood, we guess), barking, blinking and even sneezing. It’s a little like a virtual pet, only real.

Zynga — the publisher of some of your favorites games on iOS and Facebook — is a pretty scummy company, well known for ripping off other companies’ games wholesale and then having their own employees vote it up in the rankings. Sleazy!

So when they purchased OMGPOP, the company behind the wildly addictive and stupendously successful iOS and Android game Draw Something, eyebrows arched all over the blogosphere. Surely it was only a matter of time before Draw Something transformed from a good-natured game of remote Pictionary into something that makes babies’ brains into slurpees. How long until evil struck OMGPOP? Less than a week!

The costs of not complying with HIPAA (the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which includes self-reporting of data breaches, can be steep. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee recently finalized a settlement with the Department of Health and Human Services for $1.5 million for a recent breach (on top of a $17 million price tag for the investigation and remediation actions). HHS seems to be making a a show of high profile enforcement as a way to encourage better compliance among smaller organizations, including hospitals and individual medical practices.

This raises the question of whether or not using the iPad in healthcare increases the risk of privacy violations. If so, will a show of force on the part of HHS dampen the enthusiasm for the iPad in healthcare?

With millions of dollars pledged to all kinds of projects every week, it’s no wonder that Kickstarter has become one of the most popular funding sources for getting a new product off the ground. The process is simple: Start a project, spread the word, then — if your idea is a good one — watch the pledges roll in.

If you’re a budding entrepreneur with a great idea for a Mac or iOS accessory, or even an app or game, then Kickstarter could be the fastest and most effective route to success. Not only is it a great source of funding, but it also helps you establish just how popular your product will be.

Here at Cult of Mac we’ve stumbled across a handful of really outstanding devices that wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for Kickstarter. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. While creating your project may be pretty straightforward, ensuring it succeeds is hard work.

To help you out, we’ve spoken to a couple of companies who recently used Kickstarter to launch their latest products, and they’ve given us some feedback and a few tips on how to ensure your Kickstarter project is a success.

The Cupertino Chamber of Commerce posthumously awarded Apple co-founder Steve Jobs with the President’s Award at a banquet held over the weekend. Apple spokesman Michael Foulkes, who was there to accept the award, was choked up after the council showed a short tribute clip that combined photos of Steve with a video of his last presentation to the council.

J.K. Rowling’s enormously successful Harry Potter series is about an incompetent orphan who lucks his way through a series of magical adventures despite being essentially inept. Tens of millions of people — myself included! — have enjoyed them over the course of the last decade, but only in dead tree form. Bizarrely, Harry Potter has never officially come to e-books up until now.

Of course, no longer. As one last magical trick, Harry Potter has made the jump to a number of e-book stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and Sony. The only company left out? Apple’s iBookstore.

The new iPad’s pixel-dense screen might be enough to stop a bullet already, but if you want to make sure of the job, you might consider the Radical iPad bag from Finnish company Normincies. The Radical consists of three parts: the Cordura nylon bag, an aluminum shield and a detachable carrying handle. And it might be the perfect bag for carrying your iPad through a dodgy part of town.

Foxconn, the company that assembles almost all of Apple’s devices —- plus plenty more for the likes of Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, and Sony —- has confirmed today that it has secured a 46.5% stake in Sharp’s giant LCD plant in Sakai, Japan. The deal is expected to help Sharp improve its performance, and could make low-energy IGZO displays a possibility for future iPads

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Watching movies on the new iPad is pretty great. Getting those movies onto the iPad isn’t quite so great, especially if you live in a country that doesn’t sell iTunes movies, or if you rip your own DVDs. The forthcoming 3.0 version of It’s Playing for iPad, though, not only plays pretty much any movie format without having to re-encode it on your computer first, it also puts in some amazing new features not seen anywhere else.

Last week, we showed you how to create a stack to show all your recent items. Today, we’re going to show you a way to change the default look of all your stacks, to a list view. This might be easier on your eyes, might appeal to your inner aesthetician, or it just might be a neat way to change the way your OS X Lion Mac behaves.

Over in rainy Britain, members of parliament (MPs) might have something to smile about. The Commons Administration Committee has recommended that they all be given iPads and cellular data plans. This would cost a relatively small amount, around £260,000 ($415,000) plus data plans.

With more than 100 Android devices out in the wild and more being manufactured every day, OEM’s are running out of clever names for their devices. Of course they could always use the highly technical Android Phone Name Generator to come up with the next magnificent mobile moniker, but that would be too easy. Instead, it appears manufacturers are looking to the condom industry for their tantalizing trade names.

Well, it seemed like only a matter of time before Apple’s promises of 4G data on its new iPad got the company into trouble. Australia’s competition watchdog is now threatening to sue the Cupertino company over its ‘misleading’ advertising for the new device, which can actually only connect to 4G LTE networks in the U.S.