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

.

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.

Despite promising that it would provide its rivals with royalty-free licenses for its nano-SIM technology, Nokia still isn’t convinced by Apple’s proposal for the next-generation of miniaturized SIM cards. The Finnish company has already spoken out against the tiny SIM, but following Apple’s offer of free licensing yesterday, it has labelled the plan nothing more than an attempt to devalue the intellectual property of its rivals.

For some iPhone 4S users, Siri is a novelty that quickly wears off within a week or two of unwrapping the handset. But believe it or not, 87% of iPhone 4S users are still using the intelligent assistant at least once a month, according to a new study. Not many of them are using it to its full potential, however.

The Guardian’s excellent iPad app has been updated to make it cleaner, faster and easier to use. The Guardian is the one Newsstand periodical I pay for because, even though you can get almost all of the same content on the website for free, the app is outstanding.

The new version makes it even better. However, there is one huge omission: support for the new iPad’s Retina Display.

BYOD is certainly one of the biggest technology buzzwords right now. The concept of users supplying their own iPad, iPhone, or even their own MacBook can create challenges for IT, but it can also provides advantages. Users choosing the devices and apps that they feel most comfortable and productive using is one. Businesses not needing to pay for mobile devices themselves or plans to support them is another.

One of the basic assumptions when it comes to considering, testing, and implementing a BYOD program is that the ability to bring personal tools into the workplace is something that users ultimately want and think will improve their work. The rest of the discussion, including practical issues like device or data management and the range of devices to be support, is predicated on this core assumption that BYOD is desirable on the part of users.

But what if that isn’t really the case? According to a report based on research in Australia and New Zealand, that may not be the case and it may actually be a form of peer pressure driving the BYOD revolution more than pressure from users.

Apple has released Safari 5.1.5 in Software Update with a fix for those running the browser in 32-bit mode. The small update doesn’t have any known changes other than the 32-bit fix, and it weighs in at a slim 46.4 MB. The update will still require you to restart your computer, sadly. The last public release of Safari was version 5.1.4 on March 12th.

Safari 5.2 is currently in the hands of developers. The next major iteration to Apple’s browser includes great Mountain Lion features like iCloud tabs, a unified address bar, and more.

Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.

Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:

Apple recently announced the winner of its 25 billionth App Store download contest. Fu Chunli from Qingdao, China won a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the free Where’s My Water? iPhone game.

After she won, Apple flew her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.

https://youtu.be/AcZOpKZLnV8

This video is old — it hails from the original iPad’s 2010 debut — but it’s still a gorgeous piece of eye candy: a 3D, CGI tour through 35 years of Apple product design. Absolutely stunning.

[via The Loop]

It doesn’t take a huge stretch of imagination to picture some of the ways that the iPad can be used in the workplace. The idea of it as a sales tool, an electronic medical chart, and as a digital textbook device all come immediately to mind as common on-the-job iPad uses. But the iPad’s versatility lends itself to a variety of industries and jobs that you’ve probably never considered.

One example is agriculture management from the cab of a farm combine – one of the unexpected places to find the iPad that Hard Candy Cases CEO Tim Hickman mentioned to me during a recent conversation. His company, which also produces the ruggedized Gumdrop Cases, has received bulk orders for iPad from some surprising sources and has led to iPad adoption  in places beyond where most of us would expect. I decided to follow up on that conversation with some research of my own.

With all of the questions surrounding the new iPad’s battery life and heat temperatures, users will be comforted to learn that Apple’s latest tablet can serve as a mobile LTE hotspot for a staggering 25.3 hours. That means you could technically use your iPad’s Personal Hotspot feature for more than a day on a single charge.

Popular multitasking tweak CardSwitcher has been updated to version 2.0 in Cydia for iOS 5. If you remember Palm and the webOS platform, the look and feel of CardSwitcher will be very familiar. For jailbroken iPhones, this slick tweak brings the card-like multitasking environment of webOS to iOS.

If you want a change of pace from the tiny app switcher Apple has implemented when you double tap your Home button, CardSwitcher 2.0 is something you want to consider. There’s also an included multitasking interface that iPad users will enjoy.

If you know your Apple history, you’ll probably know that NeXTSTEP, the grandfather of modern OS X, had a clever feature called the Shelf, a placeholder where you could temporarily drop files while dragging them from one location to another. Sadly, Mac OS X has never replicated this in Finder.

So today there’s a brand new app for OS X that seeks to fix this. It’s called DragonDrop, and you can buy it for five bucks.

Developer Mark Christian released it independently today after weeks of trying to get it into the Mac App Store. Apple weren’t interested, and rejected it every time.

Is your iBooks library starting to outgrow those beautiful bookshelves that Apple provided for you? Have you purchased way too many Jim Butcher novels, only to find them crowding out your beloved Harry Potter collection?

Well, there’s a simple way to manage a burgeoning iBook collection, and we’re here to tell you how.