Earlier this week, Centrify launched an open beta of the company’s DirectControl for Mobile service. The service, which supports managing iPhones, iPads, and Android devices in business and enterprise settings, currently includes a subset of the features typical in other mobile device management (MDM) systems. Centrify, which is known for providing enterprise integration technologies for OS X as well as various Unix and Linux distributions, plans to maintain the current selection of controls as a free solution when the product emerges from beta while adding further management capabilities to a commercially licensed version.

Most MDM solutions are of the bolted-on variety – they run on a dedicated server or cloud offering that can pull information from enterprise systems like Microsoft’s Active Directory but use a separate management interface and data store for management profiles and other information. Centrify’s DirectControl does offer a cloud management system, but it uses Active Directory itself as the primary interface and data store, an approach that has several advantages including a very minimal learning curve for experienced systems administrators.

I’m always looking for new wallpapers. There’s something about a nice, clean background that makes the iPhone more enjoyable to use.

Writer and designer Chris Herbet has created a beautiful collection of minimal wallpapers for the iPhone. His new collection was put together using designs from Subtle Patterns and a little secret sauce. It’s beautiful magic.

I’m always looking for ways to enhance my music listening experience on the Mac. For the last several months I’ve been using Bowtie to control iTunes with keyboard shortcuts, and Ecoute is another great alternative for managing iTunes in a minimal, simplified way.

When the developers of Skip Tunes contacted me, I was intrigued by the app’s menu bar interface. For quick access to simple music playback controls, it doesn’t get much better than this.

The guy in the picture above is named Bill Flora, and according to the caption accompanying his smiling face from this CNET article, Bill’s a key leader on the team that created the Metro interface that Microsoft will be using for all desktops, laptops and tablets running Windows 8.

Looks like a nice guy, right? Now take a look at Bill’s work desk, and notice that he is designing Windows 8 using exclusively Apple products, including an Apple Cinema Display, a MacBook Pro, an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and what appears to be a Magic Mouse.

Good taste in hardware, Bill! Windows 8… good enough to be designed on a Mac. Hey, that should be Microsoft’s new tagline!

[Thanks for the tip, Paul!]

Update: Apparently Bill is no longer with Microsoft. Here’s hoping Apple snatched him up!

Apple has officially responded to the contact sharing debacle that was highlighted by the Path iPhone app last week. After it was discovered that Path secretly uploaded a user’s entire contact database to its own servers, the controversy sparked more discussion about how Apple needs to enforce its user privacy guidelines more to protect customers.

Third-party apps will have to ask for permission to access contact data from a user, according to Apple. The issue will be remedied with an upcoming iOS update.

Maybe I’m just a greedy bastard, but if I found a shiny new iPod wedged in between couch cushions at a hospital waiting room, I might ask around if it belonged to anybody, but I probably wouldn’t make the effort to return it to someone who lives thousands of miles away. Dalton Williams is 14 years old, and he’s also a better person than I am because he didn’t just make a weak effort to return a lost iPod to someone nearby, he tracked down the owner who was living 6,000 miles away in Iraq.

Four years ago, I wrote a column about the incompatibility between Apple and China . And four years later, that observation is proving to be truer than ever.

What do I mean by “incompatible”? Countries have cultures. And companies have cultures, too. And the cultures of China and Apple are diametrically opposed to each other.

As recent events have demonstrated, Apple is incompatible with China’s business culture, legal system and worker culture.

Read the rest of this column here.

Never have I felt worse about buying a gadget accessory than I did buying the Speck SmartShell, a flimsy plastic cover for the back of the iPad 2 which Speck somehow summons the stones to sell for $35. Worse, I bought it in Europe, where it goes for €30, or $40. After a few months of use, though, it turns out to be the best iPad “case” I own (and I have rather a lot).

You might have suspected that the right music – whether it’s thrash metal or Mozart – keeps you more focused or relaxed.

Now a trio of brain researchers have studied the effects of playlists on the brain, resulting in a nifty little book called  Your Playlist Can Change Your Life. In the book’s 200-or so pages, they explain how to use specific playlists to alleviate anxiety, promote concentration, get happy or move into a flow state thanks to Brain Music Treatment or BMT.

If you can’t make it to New York for BMT therapy, for $9.99, you can also download a Common BMT File. Created from more than 2,000 people’s brain waves with the help of evidence-based BMT tech, they say it acts as a kind of aural “first-aid” before you get your own playlists together.

Intrigued (my current nightstand read is Mark Changizi’s excellent Harnessed about music and the brain), I talked to author Dr. Galina Mindlin about what playlists have the most impact, cleaning up your music collection and her current heavy rotations.

A week ago, it was discovered that the popular social networking app Path uploads users entire address books to their servers. They’ve since apologized and nuked the data. But Path’s not the only ones doing this: other high profile companies like Twitter are also doing it. And Apple’s letting them.

Not so surprisingly, Congress isn’t liking what it’s hearing about the address book security issue. In fact, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Commerce Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chair G.K. Butterfield have written Apple a letter asking some hard questions about how Apple has allowed this to happen, and “whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.”

If you think about it, printers are probably the worst-designed gadgets in our homes (unless you own the same awful Samsung Behold as I do). But despite the mythical advance of the paperless office, nobody has been able to kill them off. Until now. A new survey says that the iPad has finally doomed the printer, and is even saving trees.

Oh, man. We’ve seen some dorky iPad accessories in our time, but none has managed to be both embarrassing and stylish at the same time. The GoPad performs this seemingly impossible feat, and adds a little bit of campness at the same time.

As most recently referenced in Tim Cook’s comments on worker safety at Goldman Sachs yesterday, Apple is spending a lot of effort in 2012 trying to solve allegations of abuse in their supply chain. This initiative has most recently culminated in Apple going to the unprecedented step of asking the Fair Labor Association to audit their factories.

The FLA’s report isn’t due until March, but already, the Fair Labor Association’s president Auret van Heerden has spoken out, saying that at first blush, Foxconn’s facilities appear to be “first-class” in comparison to the garment factories the association usually monitors.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBm9DVtu5Y

No, Clear isn’t the only App Store release that is worth getting excited about today. League of Evil 2 from Ravenous Games is also on the list. This is the sequel to the popular platformer that became a huge success on iOS last year, and it’s on sale for launch at just $0.99.

When you’re snapping a tacky, cliched vacation photo, isn’t it annoying that all those other tourists are buzzing around and generally getting in the way of that monument/handsome plaza/amusing statue? Short of climbing up into a bell tower and, well, you know what, there’s little that you can do to remove these scampering human ants. You could take a sequence of photos and buy Photoshop just to paint out the milling hordes, or you could try Scalado’s Remove app. If you had an Android phone.

Apple’s iAd hasn’t received much in the way of attention since it’s announcement as part of iOS 4 almost two years ago. The platform was designed as a way for advertisers to create powerful interactive mobile ads and to make it easy for app developers to integrate those ads into their products. Of course, it was also intended to help Apple take a big slice of mobile ad spending.

Despite a big introduction in 2010, iAd quickly fell off almost everyone’s radar. Apple initially set a high barrier of entry by requiring iAd campaigns to commit $1 million. The company later cut that in half and this week lowered the required initial investment to $100,000 – one tenth of its original requirement – something that speaks volumes about the company’s mojo when it comes to selling ads.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that unauthorized iOS apps obtained from the likes of Cydia aren’t as careful with your personal data as those approved by Apple for sale in the App Store. In fact, the opposite is true. Jailbroken iOS apps respect your privacy more than those obtained from the App Store.

Beyond the sheer number of devices sold, one of the biggest ways to Apple and Google try to position themselves as having the top mobile platform is by comparing the number of third-party apps available for users to download. Apple usually takes the number of apps available one step further when comparing iOS to Android by pointing out how many apps take advantage of the iPad’s tablet features such as screen size.

This is one of the reasons that an active and developer community is crucial a mobile platform’s success. Although Android entered the app race after Apple had begun to establish a successful developer community, the platform began to catch up quickly. All that seems to have changed over the past year, with a new report showing iOS developers are now creating three apps for every single new Android app.

ZOMG! Never lose your iPhone again with the ZOMM Wireless Leash Plus, a hardware/software combo that wirelessly ties your iPhone to a needy dongle that cries whenever the two are separated. It can help you to remember your phone, your keys, or even where you parked Grandma.

With a quick thumbing of Command+Tab, the built-in OS X Application Switcher is a great way to navigate apps for when your hands are just too busy to leave the keyboard.

One annoyance, though, is that no matter what, Finder is always listed in the Application Swticher, which you may not want to constantly have to be navigating against to go from, say, your e-mail and iTunes. Luckily, for advanced users, removing it from the Application Switcher for good is only a terminal command away.

It’s taken a while, but it seems that the dried up tear-duct that was the supply of Thunderbolt accessories is about to turn into a torrent of high-speed, daisy-chainable tears of relief. Hard drive supremo LaCie will at last sell you a 2big Thunderbolt Series external drive.

Ever wondered how come iOS titles make it into the App Store’s top 25 list? Some iOS developers have been using download bots to purchase their own apps and manipulate the App Store’s top 25 list, according to a new report from Inside Mobile Apps. The software has been in use for over 12 months to fraudulently promote iOS titles, and some marketing firms charge up to $15,000 a time for the service.

Proview Technology, which is currently suing Apple for its use of the “iPad” trademark in China, revealed yesterday that it is seeking a ban on all iPad shipments into and out of China. If successful, the move could delay Apple’s iPad 3 launch with the device unable to leave the Chinese factories in which it is assembled.

However, according to Chinese customs, Proview has no chance of blocking iPad shipments because customers just love it too much.

While Apple’s trademark dispute with Proview Technology rages on, the iPad continues to feel the strain in China. Following its ban in one Chinese city, the device has now been pulled from Amazon China and the retailer has frozen all orders.

Makego is a cool new app that makes your kids’ real world creations come to life.

The two-dollar app comes with three virtual vehicles – a racing car, an ice cream truck, and a river boat. All you have to do is make one (out of Lego, paper, or anything else you can think of), plop your device inside, and run the app.