The CueTab case struck me as having what so many cases are missing – optional methods of holding your iPad.

You have to watch the video for yourselves to see the versatility of this design. Needless to say – I want one.

The handle is the clincher. Who doesn’t want a handle on their iPad?! I do! And I like the idea of the handle being used to hang your iPad for easy viewing, or to prop up the case. It does seem pretty complete.

Join me in backing this one! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/202789185/cuetab-case-the-best-all-in-one-case-for-ipad

The aura Year of the Dragon for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S honors the auspicious Chinese Year of the Water Dragon.

TORONTO, Canada – January 31, 2012 — iSkin, a premium brand for fashion and technology lifestyle accessories, announces today a limited edition of its aura line of iPhone 4/4S cases to celebrate the Year of the Dragon.

The Year of the Dragon edition features an intricate laser-etched engraving on an aircraft-grade aluminum fused onto a durable, lightweight, soft-coated polycarbonate frame. It showcases an ultra-light, ultra-thin form, adorned with a unique, decorative design that captures the spirit of the Dragon within the Shēngxiào Chinese Zodiac.

This limited edition possesses the same features that are expected from all iSkin premium cases, including a flash guard that eliminates glare when using the built-in flash of the iPhone in dark environments, and an ultra-clear front screen film that adds yet another level of protection to the front of your iPhone 4/4S.

The aura Year of the Dragon edition arrives in three distinct colors symbolizing Prosperity (metallic red), Love (metallic pink) and Unity (metallic black). It will retail for $44.99 (USD) and is available immediately at: www.iskin.com/iphone4/aura/ and soon at select retail partners around the world.

MISC 

• http://www.solidoodle.com/ 3D Printer – I’m not sure I understand how this thing works, but it looks really cool!! (A friend just bought a 3D printer – can’t wait to check it out!)
• Would Barnes and Noble go bankrupt without the Nook?  Some analysts think so.
• new CEO of RIM arrived, doesn’t look like he has a vision and not changes enough
• 27 German publishers to combat Apple with open digital textbook platform http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/25/27-german-publishers-to-combat-apple-with-open-digital-textbook-platform/
• Online Voting Comes Of Age http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_voting_comes_of_age_but_dont_expect_to_use.php
• Hilary Clinton talks about Google Chrome deployment for embassies etc wordlwide in Feb.: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/26/clinton_state_drawing_down_in_afghanistan_building_more_lactation_rooms_in_washingt , also IE8 coming to same in March (doesn’t that still put them behind?), skipping IE9 and going to IE10. What is your fav browser? (Edward’s and Alli’s: Chrome)

Android

• android phones infested with virus masively, new research from Symantec:
  http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/androidcounterclank-found-official-android-market

Apple 

• Apple will be again biggest smartphone vendor by Q4 2011 (now: Samsung is):
  http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120126006752/en/Strategy-Analytics-Apple-Worlds-Largest-Smartphone-Vendor
• MacWorld was this week – tons of new accessories and some apps
• Edward got promo code for http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-forms-annotate-fill-sign/id479202541?mt=8 and may review it later

Microsoft 

• Kinect will be built-in into windows 8 notebooks – first quasi-official info about it
  http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/01/27/012712-tech-kinect-laptop/
• new version of whatsapp for windows phone 7 fixes bugs
• Microsoft Hints At Xbox LIVE Platform And Titles For iOS http://www.cultofmac.com/142605/microsoft-hints-at-xbox-live-platform-and-titles-for-ios/
• Nokia Sells 1 Million Windows Phones, But Symbian Dropping Faster than Expected http://allthingsd.com/20120126/nokia-sells-1-million-windows-phones-but-symbian-dropping-faster-than-expected/
• Nokia’s Windows Phone transition shows promises kept http://gigaom.com/mobile/nokias-windows-phone-transition-shows-promises-kept/

Google

• New privacy policy – easier to read, but annoying customers –  why? http://www.google.com/policies/

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While it may be understandable why Apple is iOSinizing the Mac OS: the huge success of iPhone and iPad. It is strange why Microsoft is pushing the user interface of very unpopular smartphone. Windows Phone has only 2-3 % of the global smartphone market. And they’re pushing it to cash cows like Xbox (Windows Phone-like update pushed at the end of last year) and Windows (starting with Windows 8 later this year). But well, it’s beyond the point: the fact is Microsoft is doing it, never mind users being angry about it.

So let’s take a look how Windows Phoneification looks like in Xbox now, after latest major update!

Look at this, doesn’t it look like Windows Phone tiles? Yes it does!

There are even bigger horizontal tiles.

And you can use also tile-based television (over Internet naturally).

Social network integration is also included. Typical also for Windows Phone that also integrates both Facebook (where Microsoft invested hundreds of millions) and Twitter (that is so popular that Microsoft can’t ignore it).

On Windows Phone if you hit the search button you get Bing page with some random background. Not surprisingly, the latest Xbox update also gets Bing page.

But how deeply does Windows Phoneification go when it comes to user interface elements?

Well, I checked it out, and noticed that it’s not deep. While user interface elements of Windows Phone are all typically square, not so in Xbox – they are still old-style and round.

One more thing: if you do typical hand waving to your Kinect, then you can move around new tile-based user interface of Xbox also with hand gestures (note the hand icon).

Can you imagine having tiles everywhere, also on your personal computers? If you can’t, then buy Apple hardware only and you may be able to avoid it, but since many companies and people still buy Windows powered computers, we will see many more tiles. And also because soon-to-be-released Windows 8, that is also tile-based, supports not only Intel x86 processors but also ARM processors. So we will see also tile-based touch tablets aplenty.

While you may hate tiles, consider this: yes, it’s true that in the case of video games for Xbox usually users have immersive gameplay experience and users don’t care about the Xbox dashboard interface, but since Microsoft has released (mainly for developers) a Kinect sensor for PC, we may soon see many PCs with both multitouch and 3D hand-gestures control and then tiles may come in handy.

Conclusion: 2012 will be the year when Windows Phoneification of Microsoft user interfaces will be completed by Windows 8 release. But you can see already in current Xbox that even if you don’t have Windows Phone, you might not be able to avoid it.

Porkchop and Mouse is a delightful story with beautiful pictures. You (or your child) can turn the pages forwards or backwards to move through the story just like a paper bound book.

The story moves you through Porchop’s hunt for the poor mouse who took up residency in his house. They go through a range of beautifully illustrated landscapes before landing back at home. Each page not only gives you a visual treat, but often gives you a surprise or two on the page. For example, on the first page is a picture of a piano in the living room. Tapping on the piano brings up a keyboard that you can actually play.

The downside is that the interactive extras are inconsistent. You never know what to click on, and it can get frustrating for small children to keep touching things until something happens…or they run out of things to tap.

Porkchop and Mouse has three reading options. Sit back and let the narrator read to you, read it yourself, or record yourself and then listen to your voice read through the story. I love this flexibility and it reminds me of my own childhood when my mother would read a book so often that I could recite it back with all her inflection.

I actually learned to read this way. Porkchop and Mouse can help here too, because another outstanding feature is the ability to click on any word, highlight it, and have the one word read for recognition. This is whole language learning at its finest, and guaranteed to entertain your children.

My big complaint with Porkchop and Mouse is that the pages turn by themselves if you don’t hurry and do it yourself. This takes away the one constant a child has for reading – turning the pages.

Overall, this is a wonderful children’s book that you can share with your child, or let him read on his own. You can find it in iTunes for $.99 – a real bargain for a book!

MISC

• Protect IP Act (PIPA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), OPEN Act – many sites go dark on 1/18/12 to protest (XDA developers, REDDIT, WikiPedia, CyanogenMod included)
• KODAK company goes bankrupt, some other companies like Microsoft and IBM fear they can long-term also share this destiny. Did you have Kodak camera or somethig? Kodak bankrupt because failed in TRANSITION from analog film to digital cameras.

Android

• Some Sprint devices get Honeycomb update.  Evo 3d only gets an update that removes the embedded “spyware” CarrierIQ.  Interesting since Sprint announced back in November that HTC devices would receive ICS in “early” 2012.
• Diana tries alpha versions of 3 Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs, but WiFi tethering didn’t work, and one ROM wasn’t stable.
• Second update available for Harley’s Galaxy S on C-Spire, but we don’t know what it is because the update won’t install – had to take it to the store for the last update.

Apple 

• Education event 1/19/12: iTunes U app, iBooks 2, iBooks Author
• review of ibooks 2 by Edward, thoughts about it
• Absynthe jailbreak

Microsoft 

• windows 8 app store details revealed this week: open source apps will be allowed, laucnhing in early Beta next month (February),  only metro-style apps will be purchasable/downloadable, non-metro-style not but searchable,
•  Edward this week (!) got popup on his windows phone that new OS update is available – probably “disappearing keyboard”thing – not updated yet because no over the air updates in windows phone like in iOS – shows that microsoft is pushing updates continuously
•  rumor: windows 8 for ARM processor only for OEMs, not widely available so much more expensive, no way to install windows 8 for ARM on android and HP tablets etc.

Google

• Google Backup of Android devices – GRRR!!!  Even if you turn it off, it still immediately begins to restore the minute you do a hard reset.  This is BAD if you are trying to fix a problem, and you aren’t sure what app(s) are responsible.

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So, the big Apple announcement about eBooks, that touts to revolutionise eBooks is about 2 things: iBooks Author app for Mac (that I am not reviewing here) and iBooks version 2 to display the new kind of eBooks. I am reviewing here iBooks 2 together with 2 textbooks – one free (about Ecology made by green commies) and one commercial (Biology Textbook).

* * * * *

Right now the choice of textbooks is not big and consists of merely 8 items (available only at iTunes USA).

But you can also buy non-textbook eBooks in new multimedia/interactive format, including this one:

Generally these new eBooks consist of text and thumb images that lead to interactive and multimedia content (here: on the left side).

The “multimedia and interactive” content ranges from static (albeit high resolution) images like this:

to interactive presentations where interaction means “tapping various places to get more info.”

There are 3D models that can be rotated.

As usual in iBooks, users can highlight text.

But users can also memorize material with use of cards with questions and answers.

There are also multiple choice questions.

(BTW: note there that since many organisms didn’t leave fossils there might be aliens living once on our planet indeed!)

As you can see, these new eBooks are essentially mini-websites compressed into Apple-specific ZIP file and are not apps. That’s why some kinds of education like for example language learning, might still be better handled by apps rather than by this new kind of eBooks (I can imagine that e.g. apps with speech recognition could learn pronunciation of foreign languages, etc).

Yes, this is not some kind of revolutionary invention and Apple’s iBooks store didn’t get much traction by now, mainly because Amazon’s Kindle is available on all devices and not just on Amazon’s own Kindle devices, and Apple’s iBooks are “Apple devices only”. However I think that by going to schools and offering eBooks and iPad devices at discount prices, Apple could achieve some breakthrough.

I don’t know much about the free iBooks Author app for Mac but from what I have heard Apple explicitly forbids creation of eBooks for non-Apple platforms with it, so anyway, once again Apple-haters will have food for anti-Apple propaganda. One can criticise Apple for being closed but the matter of fact is that standards for eBooks are developing slowly and are fragmented: e.g. Kindle devices can’t read ePub with Adobe DRM but only DRM-free ePub format. Apple, by fostering this new interactive albeit proprietary eBook format, may in fact advance the whole eBook industry.

Conclusion: I’m not very impressed with this iBooks 2 “interactive, multimedia” eBooks but let’s say it’s a good first effort and there is room for improvement. Furthermore this new technology from Apple may spawn other companies like Amazon to also release interactive multimedia eBook formats.

MISC

• ICANN new domains – wtf?! Wasn’t .xxx bad enough? thick whois system ICANN
  wants to indroduce – so no private whois and one needs to identify to registrars etc.
• the US embassy and terror alerts in Bangkok
• Was yours one of the disappearing 4Square accounts this week?
• SOPA
• samsung’s bada OS to merge with intel tizen OS (samsung is biggest maker of smarpthones globally!)
  http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2012/01/13/samsung-merging-its-bada-os-with-intel-backed-tizen-project/

Android

CM lets you put ICS on HP Touchpad. Why would anyone do this other than just to do it?

Apple 

in China – chaos in Beijing

OnLive desktop/CloudOn

Edward saw Mission Impossible 4 movie: 99% of gadgets  in it from Apple: iphone 4, macbook air, ipad (!) and only in 1-2 scenes android sighted.

Microsoft 

dominated the videogame industry last year, with the Xbox capturing nearly half of all consumer spending from physical sales in 2011.

About $6.7 billion, or 40 percent of consumer retail spending, was spent on the Xbox, breaking down into two categories: $2.1 billion on consoles and $4.6 billion on games, according to NPD data released today.

- Allthingsd

2 main CES trends (apart from windows ultrabooks and android tablets) :

1. kinect-like control of TV sets,  2. voice control of TV sets

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/disruptive-power-gesture-voice-recognition.html

*** windows-phone-powered nokia lumia 900 coming to USA in March, announced at CES

*** windows phone supports only 1-core and 800×480 now but microsoft employees claim

nonsense that 2-core not needed, in meantime: Galaxy SII LTE from Samsung has dual-core 1.5GHz while many android phones have dual-core 1.2GHz.

Amazon 

has released a new ‘Send to Kindle’ feature for PC users. It’s a downloadable extension for Windows that adds a “Send to Kindle” option when right-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer or in the print dialog in any application.

Files sent with Send to Kindle go to the user’s Kindle Library, and they can be downloaded on the e-ink Kindle models as well as the iOS Kindle app. The last-read page, bookmarks, notes and highlights are synchronized automatically, except for PDFs. The Kindle Fire is not listed. Support for Mac is “coming soon.”

.    - ReadWriteWeb

Kindle Touch power user tip: type in search field this:

~ds

… which means “symbol of tilde, <~> disable screensaver” then screen saver wil not come

again but power off button not working as usual and only 20 seconds

holding down helps by resetting. no debug mode needed though!

LTE and NFC 

in smartphones – some have it but not ripe  yet?

NFC in many smartphones already: mobile payments by moving phone to Point Of Sale, gathering local information via NFC, Bluetooth headset that pairs by NFC/touchin device, NFC used to faster log-in to WiFi hotspots, NFC explodes!

mobile world congress next month! predictions: more LTE/4G phones probably

LTE in Europe now available for USB sticks and separate routers, not in phones yet, in USA in phones already

ipad 3 will have LTE (4G)? but what is the point if it has no internet connection sharing?

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The XStand from Brookstone holds your iPad either without a case, or with some cases. (Large cases like the Otterbox, or those with flip covers do not fit.) My iPad is currently in the XStand with no case, although the one I first saw was in a case.

The stand itself is beautiful, and worthy of holding an iPad. The base comes in black or red (I couldn’t resist the red), the arm is chrome, and the part that actually cradles the iPad is lucite. The corner pads are a soft plastic, and while they are a boring grey color, they won’t distract from an iPad whether in black or white.

Because you have the four plastic corners, installation is simple. Just set your iPad in the lower two corners, then lean it back and press until the top corners snap into place. This leaves you some wiggle room if your iPad is naked, but it’s not going anywhere.

The remarkable thing about the XStand is both its complete 360 degree swivel, and its almost 360 degree tilt. You can keep rotating your iPad in the stand, without ever having to reverse direction, moving easily from portrait to landscape. You can tilt your iPad so that you can view your screen at a 90 degree angle straight in front of your face, of 180 degrees so that it is as flat as if it were on a table top.

I’ve found that not only does the XStand work greatl on any table or desk, but it sits well in my lap as well. I can recline in my chair and not have to crane my neck to look down at my lap.

You can purchase the XStand from Brookstone for $49.95.

Edward – resident Windows Phone and Kinect expert
Diana – resident Android expert

What did you like best in the 2011 tech world?

I liked the push for competition, but not so much the litigation.

Plethora of e-readers.

the best in 2011: iCloud, iOS5, Windows Phone mango with multitasking and WiFi tethering, Kindle Touch, Kinect

Siri and clones like it

What do you want to see in 2012?

Whatever happened to those paper thin batteries?

One social network to rule them all, or updates to what we’ve got  so we can have the best of all worlds. Can we kill off Facebook, or will it see a renewal when it goes public? Facebook is still the only social network for many, will never die

Too many social networks for me to keep up with.  I’m having difficulty getting into google+.  Like Alli’s trouble with WhatsApp, hard to remember (or know from day to day) who is on which one.

Built-in cross platform messaging. I loved WhatsApp, but couldn’t’ keep track of who used it, or remembered to reinstall it.

I want to see in 2012: Ivy Bridge Intel processors so that next generation of notebooks has much longer battery life and much quieter fan/ventilator, more martial arts kinect games, apple TV that can run all iOS apps

A winning lottery ticket so that I can afford all this cool stuff!  I would like to  see better  updates to Android devices.

Windows Phone news last week:

- microsoft removes page about updates and says updates only on request from operators and then backs down from it but image lost
- everybody expects nokia lumia 900 at ces – rumors about it
- downfall of HTC continues (courtesy of samsung, nokia, lg)

recent Kinect news:
kinect star wars delayed from 2011 to February 2012 (possibly)
Edward enjoys self-defense camp kinect game
new packs in fruit ninja kinect

Kindle:
Edward loves Kindle touch despite owning ipad
Kindle tip: put “convert” in email with PDF to your kindle and PDF will be converted to “reflow PDF” – easy to read on kindle . can nook do it? -Not at this time (Diana)

iPad 3 rumors: digitimes is prolific in their creation, and they are often quoted.  However, they are just as often blasted for being totally in left field

Nook Tablet vs. Nook Color – where’s the beef?!?!

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