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Logitech Announces Wired iPad Keyboard for Classroom Use

J.R. Bookwalter — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:44:17 +0000

We live in a mostly wireless world these days, but there are times when a good old-fashioned wired accessory works best -- such as an external keyboard for the iPad when used in the classroom.

Logitech announced its Wired Keyboard for iPad this week, a first of its kind accessory targeted for the classroom. Available with either Lightning or 30-pin connectors to support all iPad models, the keyboard will retail for $59.99.

But why have a wired keyboard at all when the iPad is clearly such a mobile, wireless-centric device in the first place?

“Schools are increasingly purchasing iPads for use in the classroom,” said Mike Culver, vice president and general manager of mobility at Logitech. “While tablets are enabling new ways of teaching and testing, there’s a challenge when a teacher needs to simultaneously pair multiple iPads with multiple wireless Bluetooth keyboards. We developed the Logitech Wired Keyboard for iPad to specifically solve this problem, so students can now simply plug it in and start typing.”

But the Logitech Wired Keyboard for iPad doesn't just solve a problem: It's also built to be durable enough to withstand students spilling drinks on it or even banging away at the keys for long periods of time. (Logitech claims it has a key lifespan of more than five million strokes.)

The Logitech Wired Keyboard for iPad with the Lightning Connector will be available first in August, with the Logitech Wired Keyboard for iPad with the 30-pin Connector following closely behind in October.

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Twitter Debuts Login Verification, Mac Version Adds Notification Center

J.R. Bookwalter — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:29:09 +0000

Plagued with high-profile hacks in recent months, Twitter is finally getting serious about security with a new two-step login verification -- but users will need to actually enable it first before they'll be protected.

Twitter announced Wednesday that the microblogging service now has a "login verification" option available to users. That's basically their fancy way of saying two-step authentication, a feature that has been making headlines after being adopted by the likes of Google and Apple.

Login verification is a method to prevent email phishing schemes or password data breaches from affecting Twitter users. Once activated, any login will require a six-digit code in addition to the password, with the password only being sent via SMS to your cell phone.

While that method works great on Twitter.com, users will need to actually generate a temporary password to log in from third-party applications, which can only be done from the dedicated applications page.

To activate login verification, users must first head to their account settings on Twitter.com and check the "require a verification code when I sign in" option near the bottom of the screen. Add a phone to your account and you'll be good to go.

Login verification may have been the big Twitter news on Wednesday, but the company also pushed out another update to its Mac application, finally adding Notification Center integration. The update also adds a number of big fixes for Growl, composing tweets and more, so be sure to download version 2.2.1 from the Mac App Store today.

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imo.im Introduces Social Discovery for Mobile Apps with Broadcasts

J.R. Bookwalter — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:10:25 +0000

Messaging is perhaps the hottest category of app around, so it's little surprise developers keep finding new ways to enlist new users while retaining those already hooked -- and imo's new Broadcasts promises to do just that.

imo.im announced Thursday that its iOS and Android apps have been updated with a new mobile Broadcasts feed, part of a bigger push to make its imo Network a more social experience for users.

“Social discovery is an important feature,” said Ralph Harik, CEO of imo.im. “We want users to find relevant and useful information, people, news and other content that will make their lives better. imo Broadcasts is a platform to achieve that.”

Broadcasts is a channel where users can discover news, topics and information they care about as well as other people to share it all with. Users will be able to upload photos directly to Broadcasts and share them with others, all without having to search for friends or topics of interest.

imo uses a proprietary algorithm to rank Broadcasts content based on each users' interests, in turn generating connections with other like-minded users or even entire groups of people based on their activity within the imo Network.

imo.im is available as a free app for iPhone/iPod touch or iPad on the App Store, and is also available for Android devices.

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Overnight Recap: Shazam Encore 6.0, MediaFire Streaming, BBM Confidence

J.R. Bookwalter — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:51:42 +0000

The week may not be quite over, but most Americans are looking ahead to the extended Memorial Day weekend. And what better way to enjoy three days of fun and sun than with some app updates and improvements? We've got a few of those for you in our Thursday recap, along with some bold words from BlackBerry's founder on BBM's chances for survival with iPhone users, so read on for more.

Shazam Encore 6.0 Adds Interactive Maps, Universal iPad Support

Sure, the media recognition app Shazam is available free, but those of us who consider ourselves tagging pros think little of dropping $6.99 to nab Shazam Encore, which has just been updated to version 6.0. In addition to finally adding native iPad support (the app is now a universal build), the update adds interactive maps for discovering what's popular elsewhere on the planet. Shazam Encore now runs in the background so it can tag content while you're composing an email or even playing a game, and a new home screen serves up real-time updates of what's being tagged for U.S. television viewers. The update is free for existing users, and available now in the App Store.

MediaFire Adds Support for Native Music, Video Streaming

The folks at MediaFire have always been pretty generous with the free cloud storage space (50GB is nothing to sneeze at!), but it's been hindered by the inability to stream music and videos from its client software. That changes Thursday, as the company's blog announced a milestone of 30 million registered users who will now be able to natively stream video and music via the web, iOS or Android. For existing users, the celebration comes with one added bonus: 50 percent off a first-time purchase of Pro or Business storage plans, which start at $2.49 per month for 100GB of cloud storage.

BlackBerry Founder Confident iPhone Users Will Flock to BBM

The man who gave birth to Research in Motion (now BlackBerry) may be gone from the company he founded, but he's got a few things to say about its chances for success. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Mike Lazaridis has gone on the record with his confidence that iPhone and Android users will drop their existing messaging apps in favor of BlackBerry Messenger, which will be available this summer for the first time outside of BlackBerry hardware. “BBM is by far the most compelling wireless experience and wireless social-networking environment,” Lazaridis said. A favorite of 60 million BlackBerry customers around the world, the free BBM service sends more than 10 billion messages each day -- but will iPhone users be willing to drop iMessage or any number of other services to use it?

Clear for iOS, Mac Updated Email Lists

Realmac Software announced Wednesday that it's scratched another item off its own to-do list by adding the ability to email Clear lists on the iPhone or Mac. The new feature can be found in the Actions menu on the desktop version, or simply shake your iPhone to call it up. The developers claim emailing lists was "a feature we've received a lot of requests for," so it's likely more than a few readers will also be scratching it off their wish lists this week.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD Now Available in Over 170 Countries

Americans take for granted their ability to saunter over to Amazon.com and pick up a Kindle Fire HD, but starting today, customers in more than 170 countries around the world can do the very same thing. Shipping on June 13, the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are Amazon's best-selling item since launch, now available to order for customers in Ireland and Gibraltar from www.amazon.co.uk; for customers in Austria and Luxembourg from www.amazon.de; and for customers in Monaco from www.amazon.fr as well as "various retailers" around the world.

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Law & Apple: Rand Paul Comes to the Defense of Apple

Adrian Hoppel — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:41:18 +0000

Apple seems to be the target of government and media criticism, once again, for operating the same way every other company in the industry operates. Why does Apple get held to a higher standard in the headlines and in the Senate than its competition? And isn't there anyone willing to suggest that perhaps this treatment is not entirely fair? Of course there is.

U.S. Senate vs. Apple

On Monday, the New York Times published a report detailing Apple's off-shore tax practices, just in time to stir up public opinion for scheduled testimony from Apple to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday. The article detailed the amount of money Apple allegedly avoided paying in taxes, and included several flamboyant comments from Senators and law professors who had plenty of snarky things to say about Cupertino. Also included in the article was a brief mention that Apple's tax practices are basically the exact same things being done by others in the tech industry, including Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, but the focus of the piece was to paint Apple as a legal-yet-problematic tax avoider.

In preparation for the hearing, Apple published a pair of documents featuring the opening statements of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook (PDF) and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer (PDF). The statements focus on Apple's significant contributions to the US economy and defend overseas business practices. Oppenheimer's statement even details how close Apple came to disappearing forever in the late '90s by reminding the committee "I can tell you firsthand, we were facing the very real possibility of a world without Apple."

The Senators present at the hearing, however, picked up right where the NYT article left off, and blistered Apple with what the Washington Post called "righteous indignation." All of the Senators, that is, except for one: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Don't make me filibuster up in here.

"Frankly, I’m offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing," Sen. Paul stated. "I’m offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories."

Sen. Paul went on to point the finger at his colleagues, stating that Apple was operating as best it could inside of a severely flawed tax system that Congress has done nothing to fix. "If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress," Sen. Paul continued. "I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code."

In a long prepared testimony, though not as long as others he has provided, Sen. Paul made clear that Apple was not being accused of violating any laws whatsoever, and implied that the entire hearing, much like the NYT piece that preceded it, was being done for hype and publicity.

"This committee will admit: Apple has not broken any laws," Paul said. "Yet they are forced into a show trial at the whims of politicians, when in fact; Congress should be on trial for chasing the profits of great American companies overseas."

Sen. Paul went on to pose the rhetorical question, "You haul before this committee one of America’s greatest success stories, and you want applause?"

Clearly Apple could not have originated or prospered without the talent and infrastructure that exists in the U.S., and the shell-game accounting methods that Cupertino uses to shelter taxes feel somewhat ungrateful. But singling out Apple as a problem while glossing over the fact that this is what many U.S. tech companies do, and ignoring the fact that the bigger problem lies in the tax code itself, seems disingenuous and self-serving.

In this situation, if anyone deserves applause for calling out the hypocrisy and speaking the truth, it is Sen. Rand Paul.

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iPad Crushes Rival Tablets In Ecommerce Traffic, Generated Revenue

Leif Johnson — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:33:10 +0000

Other tablets might be making inroads into Apple's dominance of the tablet market, but if the Ecommerce Quarterly released by Monetate this morning serves as any indication, they have a heck of a long way to go. As reported by Apple Insider, iPads account for a staggering nine out of 10 tablets used to access e-commerce sites in 2013's first quarter. That's down a mere 2.4 percent from last year during the same quarter.

All total, Monetate's findings revealed that Apple's iPad currently accounts for 89.28 percent of all tablet traffic to e-commerce sites. According to the report, during the same period Android tablet usage grew by 4.75 percent to grab an 8.20 percent share of the traffic, while the Amazon Kindle fell from 3.58 percent to 2.51 percent.

Image source: Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly report for Q1 2013/Apple Insider

In addition, the report revealed that iPad users are more likely to spend more online than users of others tablets, according to Monetate's sampling of 500 million shopping experiences drawn from sites like Best Buy, Frontier Airlines, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority and PETCO. On average, individual Apple tablet users spent $99.05 while users of the Kindle and Android tablets averaged out at $95.48 and $83.58 respectively.

And business is apparently booming. The use of tablets to access ecommerce sites shot up from 5.95 percent to 10.58 percent in the year between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013, with tablets remaining slightly more popular than cell phones for browsing ecommerce sites. (Desktop computers unsurprisingly retain the edge here, with a 78.13 percent hold on the market in first quarter of 2013.)

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Anomaly 2 Review

Joseph Leray — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:50:19 +0000

Like predecessors Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Anomaly Korea, 11 Bit Studios’ Anomaly 2 turns classic tower defense upside down. Instead of fortifying a base with turrets, cannons, and soldiers, Anomaly 2 places you in command of the incoming horde. Armed with a combat suit capable of setting up decoys, detonating EMP pulses, and healing units, you'll be tasked with leading a convoy of tanks, armored mechs, drones, and mobile labs through hostile territory, blasting through metallic alien defenses to clear roads or liberate important objectives.

As the third entry in the series, Anomaly 2 has firm command of the game’s basic conceits: Missions, friendly units, and enemy types are varied and work well together, and the large maps are flexible enough to support multiple play styles. For example, enemy Chargers are vulnerable to missile attacks, and if your squad isn't equipped to handle them, you can call in new units on the fly or avoid the fight altogether by changing the convoy's route.

With new waves of enemies spawning and objectives changing mid-battle, playing Anomaly 2 often feels like putting out multiple fires at once. Quick hands and good timing are often as important as critical thinking and sound tactics, and Anomaly 2 addresses our biggest gripe about its forebears: Lieutenant Simon Lynx has never been easier to control. Getting through Anomaly’s long, arduous missions is satisfying, but suffering a loss – or worse, a game crash – after 20 minutes of chipping away is frustrating, especially since the difficulty ramps up significantly toward the end of the campaign.

Anomaly 2’s story mode is a prelude to its new, intricate multiplayer mode, which pits a convoy (a "Squad") against a player-controlled alien installation (the "Towers"). The defense-oriented aliens play more like traditional tower defense or real-time strategy games, as you must gather resources, create chokepoints, and unlock new towers to succeed. While multiplayer matches can be difficult to find, dedicated players will find a fast-paced affair with the nuances expected from the genre. The campaign mode is great training for Squad players, however the complex Tower mechanics suffer from a lack of tutorials or a single-player component.

The bottom line. Anomaly 2 improves on earlier games in the series and puts enough spin on the tower defense genre to attract new players and veterans alike.

Review Synopsis

Product:

Anomaly 2

Company:

11 Bit Studios

Contact:

http://www.11bitstudios.com

Price:

$14.99

Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.6, 2.8 Ghz processor, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB VRAM

Positives:

On-the-fly tactics keep things fresh and fast-paced throughout. Improved controls. New multiplayer modes push the series forward.

Negatives:

Brutal difficulty spikes and technical issues combine to make some sections frustrating.

Score:

4 Great

Deals: Earbuds Designed to Provide Comfort and Great Sound

MacLife Staff — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:00:14 +0000

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Google, Yahoo Also Avoid Offshore Taxes by Setting Up Shop in Ireland

J.R. Bookwalter — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:18:10 +0000

A U.S. Senate subcommittee may have spent the better part of Tuesday grilling Apple executives over untaxed offshore fortunes, but Cupertino isn't the only tech company taking advantage of the same loophole.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that search giant Google Inc. is among a long list of companies who, like Apple, have set up corporations in Ireland as a way to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes on income made offshore.

Even as the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations puts pressure on Apple to pay income tax on $74 billion made overseas during the last four years, it turns out that Google and Yahoo! are both guilty of the same tactics.

In Google's case, Mountain View established a pair of tax shelters in Ireland and the Netherlands, referred to as "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich" by tax attorneys. According to the company's own filings, Google avoids $2 billion in income tax payments to the U.S. each year by shifting profits to Bermuda -- a country with no corporate income tax.

Yahoo! also has an Irish subsidiary where its overseas profits are deposited, but claims to be a tax resident of the Cayman Islands rather than Ireland. The report notes that profits totaling "hundreds of million of dollars" have been funneled through the suburban home of the company's Dutch bookkeeper, where it eventually lands with subsidiaries based on Mauritius and Switzerland.

Apple executives were quick to note that the company does not hold money in the Caribbean as Google and Yahoo! have done, and current U.S. tax laws are based on where a company is incorporated, not where it is actually managed.

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(Image courtesy of Intuit)

Apple Online Store Updated for Father's Day

J.R. Bookwalter — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:06:52 +0000

June is fast approaching, and that means it's time for sons and daughters to celebrate the man who helped bring them into the world on Father's Day -- and Apple.com is already gussied up for the occasion.

As first noted by 9to5Mac on Wednesday, the Apple Online Store went offline briefly and came back with an updated homepage, a few cosmetic tweaks and a dedicated section for celebrating Father's Day, which lands on June 16 this year.

"Make his Father's Day," the prominent section reads. "Celebrate Dad with iPad or iPad mini."

In addition to reminding shoppers that any iPod or iPad can feature a laser-engraved message absolutely free, Apple has updated its page with shipping deadlines for various products to make sure they arrive in time for Father's Day.

The minor store redesign squares off some of the rounded corners previously used on the site, with a more tiled look that's less cluttered overall. However, this may be a temporary change for the Father's Day promotion -- we'll find out when after that date passes on the calendar.

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