The senseless attack on a Tucson, Ariz. political rally for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords two weeks ago has had many secondary effects: a million accusations from both sides of the political aisle accusing the other side of bearing some culpability or seeking some advantage; calls for some measure of weapons control from both the right and left (including by Dick Cheney); and, most signifcantly, eloquent and sincere memorials from across the country.

And, though this is a small thing in the larger scheme of things, I find downright moving the fact that part of Rep. Giffords’s remarkable recovery has been flipping through family photos on an iPad with her husband.That’s a heart-rending scene if I’ve ever heard of one.

It might be sappy to say, but I genuinely feel it’s an endorsement of the view of technology that Apple has been championing from the start. Why should computing be made as simple and intuitive as humanly possible? To let the maximum number of people possible use them.

And that means a public official and wife brutally cut down in broad daylight can touch a magic window and see her family. Technology can’t aspire to higher aims. Our best wishes to Rep. Giffords and the other survivors of the Tucson attack for their continued speedy recoveries.

USA Today: Gabrielle Giffords stands with help for first time

Behold TankBot, a nifty little robot you can control with your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

Plug in the dongle and you can use your iDevice to control TankBot as it navigates, roams and clears obstacles. Then charge it up with a USB cable instead of batteries, a 30-minute charge gets you 15-minutes of over-hill-and-dale action.

Perhaps the best part: the price should hover somewhere under $20.

Desk Pets International brought it out at the New York Toy Fair, it’ll be in stores sometime this year. They are touting it as the first cheap robot toy that fully integrates with Apple devices.

All I know is that every year, I pretend to buy something for a nephew when it’s really for me. TankBot is going on the nephew wish list.

Via Gizmo Watch

Another intriguing fossil unearthed from the second iOS 4.3 beta is the mention of two new services called Media Stream and Photo Stream, which 9 to 5 Mac’s Marc Gurman speculates is meant to be just one more element of an eventual Apple-run social network which will debut in iOS 5.

If you for whatever reason doubted that the next iPad would be FaceTime compatible, a new screenshot found inside the latest iOS 4.3 beta gives stronger indication than ever that there will be both front and rear-facing cameras in the iPad 2.

Earlier this week, Leander predicted that Apple would sell its ten billionth app this coming Friday, giving the lucky App Store downloader a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to mark the occasion. CoM Reader Allan disagreed, arguing that it was more likely to happen on Saturday evening, PST.

Here’s some more soothsaying to consider, if you’re holding off on buying some apps in hopes of winning the Golden Ticket: a new website called tenbillionapps.com has launched, and it is counting down to the ten billionth app in projected real time.

When does tenbillionapps.com think the milestone will be reached? Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 at 12:31pm EST.

The scarcely, randomly reputable boys over at Digitimes are recycling weeks-old rumors by insisting that one of their sources from inside AAPL’s component supply chain says that the iPad 2 will boast a Retina Display.

Well, no, it jolly well won’t. But just in case that doesn’t convince you, how about some extrapolation due Moore’s Law?

Designer Charis Tsevis built this photo mosaic of Steve Jobs for the Italian magazine Panorama. Look carefully: it’s all Apple products. Can you spot the original iSight camera? Check the detail of the eye below.

A game developed by a 14-year-old has knocked Angry Birds from its perch as the top free game in iTunes.

The game, called Bubble Ball, is a physics puzzler developed by Utah teen Robert Nay. Nay wrote the 4,000 lines of code using Corona SDK. He did have had a little help from his mom, Kari, who lent a hand with the graphics. Although he’s only in the 8th grade, Nay has been programming for six years and currently codes in languages including HTML, PHP, AJAX and Java Script.

Bubble Ball launched December 29, shortly after iTunes announced that Rovio’s Angry Birds ruled the roost as the top paid and free game.

Nay’s game has had some three million downloads since launch.

What’s it like?

Players try to move  a bubble from point A to point B. To keep things moving along, players use  geometric shapes to create ramps, platforms and catapults to send the bubble to its destination.

Simple, but perhaps that is what catapulted it to the top of the crowded gaming heap on iTunes.

I haven’t played it yet, but looking forward to checking it out: I’ve got three versions of Angry Birds on my phone already.

Source: IB Times

AirView is a free new app that allows you to send video wirelessly between your iOS devices, as well as from iTunes to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

As perhaps is obvious from the app’s name, AirView taps into the AirPlay functionality in iOS 4.2 which allows you to beam video from your iPhone or iPad to a compatible device like an AppleTV. However, AirPlay doesn’t let you beam video from iTunes to your iPhone, or from your iPhone to your iPad.

AirView remedies that. Just open it on any iOS device and it will show up on your WiFi network as a new destination for video, just as if it were an AirPort Express or AppleTV.

Pretty neat, but grab it now: who knows how this might fall afoul of Apple’s sometimes inscrutable whims.

[via Gadget Lab]

Reader Adam from Cape Town thinks Apple should call the next iPad the “iPad 2x.” Here’s his reasoning:

Calling the next iPad the iPad 2x makes a lot of sense. It can be used effectively in their marketing messages, to differentiate it from the current iPad, and also to set it apart from its competitors.

It’s the iPad 2, twice as good as the original iPad, with:

2x resolution per axis (even if the camera will take smaller resolution pics).
2x the speed, with dual core processing.
2x the RAM, to achieve the above.
2x cameras. And if one of the cameras were 8.3MP, it would by 2x full HD…
One could add even more to the list.

I’m pretty sure they won’t get 2x docks, but it would be a nice! Similarly, I doubt they’ll squeeze 2x battery life out of the new iPad.

Of course, the one thing that’s difficult to market is 2x as thin and/or light, makes more sense to say half as thin and/or heavy…

What do you guys think? Anyone got a better name?