Posts in news

AViiQ Announces Four New Products For iPads, Laptops, And Mobile Devices

Even if I already wasn’t an acclaimed fanboy of AViiQ’s Portable Laptop Stand (review and giveaway), I’d still be excited to announce that AViiQ is pulling out all the stops with four new products tailored towards your mobile lifestyle. The 2011 lineup is impressive, and includes the AViiQ Portable Quick Stand, AViiQ Portable Case Stand for iPad, AViiQ Portable Charging Station, and new shades of AViiQ’s Portable Laptop Stand. From the press release, the Original Portable Laptop Stand will see a price reduction to $59.99, making the cost of entry even lower if you want a foldable stand for your laptop.

You’ll find new product photos and a press release after the break. For more information on AViiQ, check out their website at www.aviiq.com.

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Evernote’s iPhone App Updated With Extensive Redesign

Evernote, the popular note taking service has just updated its iPhone and iPod Touch app with a completely redesigned user interface.  Everything aspect of the the app has been reconsidered and improved for this 4.0 update to improve functionality, speed and utility.

One of the key improvements has been the addition of a snippet view when browsing through notes. It does a great job at providing as much information as possible into a compact space so that many notes can be skimmed over at once. As the Evernote team says;

If the note only contains an image, then we’ll take a slice out of the image and present it full width. If the note has a mix of text and other forms of content, then we’ll show you the title, some text and a thumbnail.

The other fundamental redesign is present in the new note screen which is presented in a split-screen view, the top half being text entry and the bottom half for additional information or the keyboard. You can attach images, a voice recording (up to 90 minutes long!), a location, tags and assign a notebook for the note.

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New Cydia App “TruPrint” Extends Apple’s AirPrint Support

With iOS 4.2 Apple introduced AirPrint, a new system-wide technology that allows iPhone and iPad users to print emails, photos and just about any kind of document wirelessly without having to worry about drivers or configurations. The problem is, while Apple initially announced that AirPrint would work with a set of “officially supported” printers from HP and any printer also shared on a Mac or PC, issues arose with the OS X 10.6.5 update and Apple was forced to pull support for shared printers. The result: AirPrint only works with a bunch of printers from HP. Okay.

TruPrint is a new Cydia hack from the Intelliborn developers (the folks behind popular tethering and hotspot app MyWi) that promises to bring AirPrint support to hundreds of printers not officially listed by Apple as “compatible with AirPrint”. The app relies on Apple’s AirPrint technology, so iOS 4.2 is still needed to run it, but the support for Canon, Brother, HP and additional printers Intelliborn has baked into TruPrint looks impressive.

TruPrint is available in the Cydia Store at $9.99 with a 3-day free trial. If you’ve been looking for a solution to print to your favorite machine and you have a jailbroken device, this should be it. Check out the cool promo video below. [via iPhoneDownloadBlog] Read more

Opera Debuts On The Mac App Store

A new release to the Mac App Store today is the Opera web browser that can be downloaded for free. The app seems to be exactly the same as the non Mac App Store version and identifies itself as version 11.01 and build 1206.

The app also includes its Presto layout engine, which would have been thought to be an infringement on Apple’s Mac App Store guidelines that state, “Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected.” This raises the distinct possibility that browser engines may not fall under the private API category, in which case other browsers could soon be heading to the Mac App Store including Firefox that uses another layout engine called Gecko. Alternatively it is possible that an Apple reviewer has let Opera slip through without realizing, which has happened before with app reviews.

When bringing the Opera browser to the iPhone and iPad, they had run into similar guideline restrictions and were forced to only release Opera Mini that does not use their own browser engine but instead directs traffic through Opera’s servers to compress data. The more fully featured Opera Mobile which is available for Android and other mobile phones could not be released on the iPhone because of its reliance on their own APIs .

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Steve Jobs Almost Received An Honourary Knighthood

A former British MP has revealed to The Telegraph that Steve Jobs was close to being offered a knighthood in 2009 for his services to technology. According to the former MP, the proposal for his knighthood was blocked because Jobs had previously refused to speak at a British political event.

The former senior British MP told The Telegraph that he had nominated Steve Jobs for knighthood and that despite reaching the final stages of approval, was inevitably refused by Downing Street. He claims that they explained the refusal was based on Jobs’ refusal to attend an annual Labor conference, just his appearance at the event would have been a big political win for Gordon Brown.

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Unreal Engine 3 To Power Four Gameloft Games In 2011 And 2012

Gameloft has today announced that they have partnered with Epic Games to bring four games to mobile devices using Unreal Engine 3. The game engine will power two games this year and two aimed for release in 2012.

Unreal Engine 3, which was released late last year, was the game engine that powered the tech demo of Epic Citadel as well as Epic Games very succesful Infinity Blade.  The Unreal Development Kit is free for developers to download and try, but if used they must pay a $99 licensing fee and a 25% royalty fee after the first $50,000 in sales.

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March 2nd Liveblog: The iPad’s Second Coming

There couldn’t be a more hyped announcement than this week’s Apple Keynote at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 2nd, and we’ll be hanging out with all of you guys at a safe distance for when the fireworks misfire. Rumors will be settled, white iPads will be tossed into (non)-existence, and awkward picture moments with new cameras will be had. Plus, you can expect those heart tingling show-stoppers with a Jony Ives speech, and maybe (just maybe) a new look at the next generation of iOS. Excited yet?

Join us at 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (that’s the New York gamut) for an hour long pre-show where we’ll kick around iPad predictions, overdose on coffee, and potentially ruin a perfectly good stress ball before the event. As always we’ll be consolidating all of the major announcements into a streamlined feed from everyone’s favorite websites.

Bookmark this page and come back before the event starts on March 2nd for lots of fun, question answering from the audience, and maybe a guest or two.

Time Zones:

13:00 – New York, New York
10:00 – San Francisco, California
08:00 – Honolulu, Hawaii
05:00 – Sydney, Australia
03:00 – Tokyo, Japan
02:00 – Shanghai, China
23:30 – New Delhi, India
21:00 – Moscow, Russia
19:00 – Rome, Italy
18:00 – London, England

Don’t see your city? You can use this link to get your exact time. Read more

The Pocket Stand - A Kickstarter Project

We’ll admit, we love unique ideas, especially ones that are driven toward Apple products. We’ve found another Kickstarter project to show you on MacStories, it’s called The Pocket Stand.

The Pocket Stand, by Mike Paek and Sam Chan,  is an iPad accessory, you could also call it a compact multi-tool for the minimalist. It is both a speaker amplifier and a stand that props your iPad in multiple configurations (Bonus: It also functions as a bottle opener). In the end, The Pocket Stand allows you to gain extra functionality without sacrificing the mobility inherent of the iPad. Read more

Surprise: Leaked iPhone 5 Dock Connector Looks Just Like iPhone 4 Dock Connector

Usually-reliable Taiwanese website Apple.pro [Google Translation] posted a photo of what they claim to be a leaked part of the next-generation iPhone, most specifically the 30-pin dock connector Apple has always used to let iOS devices and computers communicate and share data with each other. The most surprising part – the dock connector doesn’t show any big difference from the one Apple is currently using in the iPhone 4. Perhaps the new one is slightly narrower in the section where it connects to the device’s logic board. Apple.pro notes part number is 821-1300-02, while iPhone 4 has 821-1093-A.

On a related note, it’s interesting to notice Apple hasn’t made any changes to its dock connector after the European commission approved a new standard a few months ago that would require smartphone makers to adopt micro-USB as a universal connector for their devices. But, then again, Apple could just get away by bundling a micro-USB adapter in the iPhone 5’s retail package – something that, admittedly, would be pretty cool in our opinion.

Last, Apple.pro says the “leaked” iPhone 5 screen we saw last week is fake. Several readers pointed out that image could be easily Photoshopped, indeed. [via MacRumors]