It’s here! The long awaited iPad 3 Event has finally been announced. Apple just sent out invites to a special event that will take place at 10:00am on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The tagline on the event invite reads “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” Apple is expected to announce the iPad 3 that will have a better processor, improved graphics, and a new Retina Display.

ThumbTack is a Menu Bar utility for OS X that puts your most recent Pinboard bookmarks in easy reach, no matter what application you’re using.

In addition to iCloud, there are a number of other cloud services available to Mac and iOS users. Dropbox, Box.net, and Google Docs all come to mind immediately and each offers its own set of features. Another option that isn’t discussed so much by Apple users is Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Although SkyDrive has offered a basic iOS app and web access from Macs and iOS devices, the functionality has been a bit limited. Newly leaked details of an OS X SkyDrive app, however, indicate that Microsoft may be planning to compete against iCloud on Apple’s home turf.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Scalado, most recently seen removing people from photos like a cold-war-era dictatorship, today showed me some of its other fancy photo-processing apps. Scattered across Android, Windows Phone and Symbian, but mostly Android, there is an embarrassment of cleverness in fast photo processing.

9to5Mac reports that one of their most trusted sources has revealed Apple will launch a new Apple TV in March alongside the iPad 3. Rumors have claimed Apple would be releasing two major new products in March and it appears that a new Apple TV and iPad 3 will be the two products in question.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — If you’re looking for cans on the high-end, you can always count on Sennheiser. Their latest headphones, though, are particular nice. Don’t expect just warmed over tech: their new MM 450-X and 55-X Bluetooth headphones can pipe in some of the clearest tunes you’ll hear without a wire.

While Siri seems to get all the attention when it comes to voice actions, Motorola wants to remind people that Android not only does voice actions, but does them extremely well, if not better. At least that’s the message we’re getting out of Motorola’s latest campaign pitting Android’s voice actions against its top contender Siri. Motorola runs through a slew of voice action challenges using three different Motorola phones and the results are impressive. I’m blown away by how fast both OS’s perform the tasks given and it’s an excellent reminder of the fact that Android has been perfecting voice actions for quite some time. I’m betting there are a lot of you that didn’t even realize your phone could do the things your about to see. Check out the videos after the break.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Speck, the prolific and (very friendly) gadget case maker, had something very special on show at the Mobile World Congress Mobile Focus even last night: An iPad 3 case, which you see above, now liberated and comfortable in the Cult of Mac Barcelona HQ. But all is not as it seems. It turns out the case isn’t quite as mysterious as you might think.

RIM, which is not showing much in the way of new products or technologies at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, sought to dispel the idea that its failures over the past year had created tensions between the itself and BlackBerry developers.

The words, meant to be reassuring to developers and users, had a rather hollow ring to them considering that the company has seen major mobile developers retreating from its existing OS and its new platforms based around QNX. The move comes as RIM is seeking to court developers for its PlayBook tablet and future BlackBerry 10 devices. It also comes following the loss of several high profile enterprise BlackBerry customers, something that is sure to be on the minds of mobile developers when choosing platforms to support.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — As ever, NTT DoCoMo has some weird new tech to show off at the Mobile World Congress. This year, it’s a cellphone battery that charges fully in just ten minutes. and if you’re really in a hurry, you can get enough juice to last a couple of hours in just a minute.

Do you want to rock? Well get ready to enjoy your favorite Justin Bieber tunes in crisp, clear, audio HD, because according to a new rumor, Apple is hard at work developing a new audio file format that will offer adaptive streaming to provide high- or low quality files to iCloud users based on their current bandwidth capacities. Apple’s new format could mean users will have the ability to download high-definition audio to their iOS device via iTunes Match.

Here’s another OS X Lion feature: the Launchpad. It fades in and out when being shown and hidden. You’d think this was just the way things are, but there’s actually a way to disable it. Why would you want to? Older computers that still support OS X Lion might need a little less to worry about, and turning off animations like this (or the “move to dock” window function) can help things feel a bit snappier. Or, maybe you just don’t like the fade in and fade out. Have it your way.

According to this official White House picture, “President Barack Obama receives the Presidential Daily Briefing from Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration, in the Oval Office, Jan. 31, 2012. Part of the briefing was done using a tablet computer.”

Oh really? I assert that President Obama isn’t using a “tablet computer” in this picture at all. A tablet computer is a vague term for some crummy, half-baked Android thingie like the Motorola Xoom or Transformer Prime. No, what President Obama is using quite openly and proudly here is an iPad 2.

Hey, Android fans! Does your president use an Android device? Ha, just kidding, obviously the answer is no.

[Thanks, Tim!]

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Prowling the showfloor for scoops on the second day of Mobile World Congress, we happened to stop by the Windows Phone 7 booth, where we discovered that just hours before, an original first-generation iPhone beat a top-of-the-line Windows Phone in one of Microsoft’s very own challenges. Oh, delicious hubris!

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Last night I was treated to a security demonstration. Cryptography Research director Pankaj Rohatgi pointed a cheap, standard TV antenna at an iPod Touch several feet away, running standard RSA encryption operations.

On the screen of his oscilloscope was a sound-wave generated by his custom software showing distinct troughs at semi-regular intervals. These troughs, and their accompanying flattish peaks, represented the ones and zeroes of the private keys used in every secure communication we make today, sucked right from the iPod. With no further cracking required, all of your private operations can be read as if in plain text.

How is this done? From the electronic noise generated by every microchip as it goes about its processing duties.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Yesterday, Nokia announced its crazy new 41 megapixel camera phone, the PureView 808, and the world chuckled. Just how big is the damn phone, I wondered, when Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee woke me up and told me the news. But last night I spoke to a Nokia engineer, and it turns out this camera is pretty smart after all.

First, while the sensor does indeed contain 41 megapixels, it doesn’t snap 41MP photos. Instead, the sea of noisy data collected from those pixels is combined in software to get 5MP photos. Why? It started with the desire to design a better zoom.

Apple is expected to announced the iPad 3 to the world in less than two weeks. If you’ve been thinking about selling your current iPad in time to upgrade, the clock is ticking. Now is the best time to trade in your current Apple tablet for a shiny new one next month.

https://youtu.be/W0ABfj0ydPA

I don’t consider myself to be a terribly vain individual, but one of the main reasons why I hate using FaceTime is because I’m forced to look at my self-portrait if I want to see the person I’m talking to. My double chin always decides to make an appearance whenever my sister and niece send a FaceTime request, and half the time I just angle the camera away from my face.

Maybe if I were wealthy and cared more about my wrinkles and extra flab I’d call up Dr. Sigal to fix my FaceTime face, because apparently that’s his specialty. No, this isn’t an article from the Onion. Dr. Robert Sigal is a Washington DC-area plastic surgeon who specializes in reassembling human faces so that they’ll look better while video chatting.

Jailbreakers use Cydia to install tweaks and apps that aren’t available in Apple’s App Store. Cydia has been the way to find and install jailbreak apps for years, but it looks like the established storefront could be getting some competition soon.

iTweakStore.com promises to be a “fast, powerful, and very easy to use” web-based alternative to Cydia for jailbreakers. Will it hold a candle or simply fall by the wayside?

Dell attempted today to rebrand itself as an end-to-end enterprise IT vendor amid slowing consumer PC sales. The company appears to be following in the footsteps of IBM, which sold its PC business to Lenovo, and HP, which came close to selling off its personal systems division last summer.

Dell won’t be getting out of the PC business completely, at least not yet. The company will continue to produce its XPS line of computers, which it cites as a success. It will, however, move away from less profitable markets including PC peripherals.

Remember when we told you about Evi, a Siri clone in the App Store? While the iPhone app mimicked much of the features found in Apple’s digital assistant, there seemed to be enough differences to keep it safe from the watchdogs in Cupertino. For instance, you can ask “Where’s a good place to eat Mexican?” and Evi will use Yelp’s API to provide you results in-app.

According to new reports, Apple has threatened to yank Evi from the App Store. The app has been downloaded over 200,000 times and costs $0.99 in the App Store. 

Korg debuted the nanoSERIES2 line following the success of its predecessor, the nanoSERIES line. The lineup consists of the nanoKONTROL2, the nanoKEY2 and the nanoPAD2. As a trio, they offer a truly flexible experience for musicians in the studio and on the go. The only thing you sacrifice with this slim-line MIDI controller series is the bulk and weight of traditional MIDI controllers. Korg and its educational arm, Soundtree, were generous enough to provide test units of the nanoSERIES2 line.

One of the new features of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has been the addition of Gatekeeper. By only allowing apps to be installed from the Mac App Store, Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper feature gives users a new level of security from malicious software.

Some users feel Gatekeeper is a sign that Apple is moving toward a completely closed desktop operating system that will only allow apps from the Mac App Store to be installed. Easing concerns of this draconian controversy, this afternoon Apple announced the Developer ID program that will help third-party developers distribute their apps safely outside of the Mac App Store.

If you’ve read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, you may remember that Apple’s board was initially very hesitant to give Jobs a green light about creating Apple’s retail stores. A decade later, the stores have been an amazing success with hundreds of outlets around the world. They have also become the most profitable retail outlets in America.

Research company RetailSails ranked the country’s top retailers using the common retail metric of annual sales per square foot. Apple nabbed the top spot with sales averaging $5,647 per foot – nearly double high-end jeweler Tiffany and Co., which came in a distant second.

Mobile World Congress is undoubtebly one of the premiere places to see smartphones, but how about 3,500 smartphones fashioned to metal rods to create a 19-foot tall mythical winged horse? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find guarding this year’s MWC thanks to Huawei and London’s Machine Shop.