Archive for December 18th, 2010

Yesterday Peter Kafka from MediaMemo had reported that according to multiple sources the News Corp's newspaper Daily will be launched on Jan. 17. He added that previously the launch date was shifted several times, but the reported date is a "much safer bet".

Rumor has it the Daily will cost only $0.99 per week and will be updated every day. The publication will be only available for Apple's iPad and include multimedia features like "some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about".

Read the rest of this entry »

Another Apple's patent application had been unveiled this week by the U.S. Patent and trademark Office. It is entitled "User Interface for Media Playback" and describes a new UI for browsing music albums on the iPhone and other touch-based devices.

The technology uses the idea of Cover Flow interface, which allows users to flip through album art and select the desired music, but now albums are proposed to be moved in a spiral form, not horizontally.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although Apple blocked the producer of a lifelike action figure of Apple CEO Steve Jobs from selling it, one of the figures was sold for $2,500 on eBay. In November the producer quickly sold out the initial run of 300 limited edition figures. Some days later Apple sent a cease-and-desist email to the website, citing California Civil Code Section 3344, "which prohibits the use of any person’s name, photograph or likeness in a product without that person’s prior consent." Now we see that one of the figures was listed for sale for a starting price of $1,000, but eventually sold for the $2,500.

The Japanese newspaper Nikkei reports that Apple and Sharp are partnering to build a 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) plant in China to produce LCD displays for the iPhone. “Sharp Corp will spend about 100 billion yen to build production lines for small and midsize LCDs, with Apple Inc slated to purchase bulk of the output for its iPhone”, - the newspaper said. Mass production is expected to begin in the second half of 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

Word Lens is an eye-catching iOS app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It is based on an augmented reality technology and offers real time translation of text. The only thing you need to do is just to point your device's video camera at a sign and the program translates and superimposes the translated text onto the video in real time. Now available only language packs for Spanish to English and English to Spanish for $4.99 each. More language packs are in the works. Text is translated on a word-by-word basis, so context is not taken into account.

Apple may refresh an iWork pretty soon. Some Apple Store Employees report that “there is no iWork on the shelves, no iWork in stock and none on the way”.  A quick check to Amazon shows none in stock there. Family packs are only available. Meanwhile, Apple's online store auto-completes "iWork 11" as a possibility when searching for "iWork". Perhaps, Apple is planning on launching iWork '11 alongside the Mac App Store. Apple promised to launch the Mac App Store on January 6th, 2011.