Archive for March, 2010

Navigon created a series of regional U.S. GPS turn-by-turn navigation applications for the iPhone. Each costs just $24.99. This is significantly cheaper than its more comprehensive MobileNavigator North America ($79.99).

These apps divide the United States into three overlapping segments, permitting customers to purchase discounted versions covering their area of the country. Additional regions are available through in-app purchasing for $12.99. Here are AppStore links: U.S. East, U.S. Central, U.S. West.

Navigon reports that сгккуте prices are valid through April 12th. After that date MyRegion apps will cost $29.99 for the application and $14.99 for in-app expansions.

An iPhone user with a nickname Urikane have put together almost full alphabet using 500 apps. That obviously took a lot of time. Watch the video:

As you can see, there is no "W" letter, and the status bar is moving with apps, so Urikane was probably just browsing the photos, but still this work must have taken forever.

Starting today Apple will be accepting developers' iPad apps for review. If you want your application to be considered for the grand opening of the iPad Store, then submit it by March 27, 2010. Company says they will let developers know about the readiness of their apps so they will have a chance to make necessary changes before a final review submission.

Here are several screenshots from updated iTunes Connect interface that now allows submitting iPad applications.

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For some time people interested in the iPad's tech specs were wondering where the Dvorak keyboard support is. With iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 5 released on Tuesday developers finally found it. But on the evidence above it is clear that there is a hardware support, but not software (so you can connect external keyboard, but there is still no way to change iPad layout to Dvorak's).

It is interesting that though the hardware support is developed, there are no Bluetooth Dvorak keyboards produced at the moment to connect to the iPad (on the other hand you can always take usual keyboard and apply stickers to its keys).

To know more about Dvorak keyboard layour read here.

Last week Fox Business Chanell had an interesting interview with Rupert Murdoch. News Corporation Chairman talked much about the upcoming tablet devices that will reinvigorate the industry of advertising for new media. As the iPad was the only known tablet presented at the moment Rupert said:

"...all media will be coming to the iPad whether it be music, or books, or newspapers or movies".

Murdoch also hopes there will be more iPads with even larger size.

Alexx Henry Photography recently produced something what they call "motion magazine cover" for Viv Magazine. It is a new type of content that will be delivered to iPad. Its creators Alexx Henry and his partner Andrew Gant said that they tried to "put motion into print" in a way never seen before.

"As photographers, we can build off the foundations that work really well in print, because in the end, we aren't making moving pictures... We're creating pictures that move."

The video behind the scenes is under the cut.

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Fortune has two sources saying about the number of iPads that will be pre-sold by Friday.

Venezuelan analyst and blogger Daniel Tello, who tried to track order numbers that were submitted by internet volunteers, said:

“I think sometime during Friday, perhaps before noon, the counter should roll to 200,000 units pre-ordered.”

Boy Genius counted 222 retail locations in the USA with 700 in-store pick-up reservations for the first week of pre-orders. Fortune believes it is almost the same rate as online.

Summing the numbers of online and offline pre-orders we'll have almost 400,000 iPads to be pre-sold for only 7 days!

Macworld reports they have information from vendors who wish to stay anonymous that Apple will no longer sell screen protectors (and any other adhering products) for their devices. Some sources say the reason is an installation difficulty that leads to a higher rate of returns. Another explanation is that Apple tries to reduce the impression that its products require screen protection.

It is interesting that ban is related to any films, even anti-glare and those for the laptops, so many case vendors are looking now for the best and quickest way to repackage their products.

Apple hasn't yet commented on this situation.

German website touch-this.de has received new screenshots of the instant messenger app for iPad. It is a new version of iM+ that keeps you connected to Skype, Gtalk, ICQ, AIM/iChat, MSN Messenger, MySpace, Facebook and Jabber all-at-once. More pictures are under the cut.

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iPad gets more and more popularity because of the buying craze and more information being revealed. That is why some users continue to create jokes about the upcoming device. Here is another set of the funny pictures.

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Almost twenty years ago Scientific American posted an article of Xerox PARC. Its authors were thinking about the future technology and decided the next stage of it will be the ubiquitous computers.

"Ubiquitous computers will also come in different sizes, each suited to a particular task. My colleagues and I have built what we call tabs, pads and boards: inch-scale machines that approximate active Post-It notes, foot-scale ones that behave something like a sheet of paper (or a book or a magazine), and yard-scale displays that are the equivalent of a blackboard or bulletin board.”

They were right - tabs are the iPhones and iPods Touch and pads are iPads. But does it mean that we can expect from Apple something really huge like big-screen hubs? Such devices have already been developed (the best example is Microsoft's Surface table, the other one is Samsung MultiTouch Board shown on the picture), but they are still too expensive because of a flat-screen TV components.

Since the iPad SDK became publicly available January 27 there were more than 2,000 apps released in App Store. The mobile metrix firm Flurry analyzed some facts and made a conclusion: in comparison to December the number of new iPhone OS apps released in February is more than 185% higher. Most of them are customized versions of the apps released for iPhone/iPod Touch earlier.

Flurry said that iPad allowed AppStore to gain more apps and increase the distance between it and its biggest rival Android's Market Place.