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Epson Unveils “MegaPlex” Projectors with iPhone, iPad Support

Earlier today Epson officially announced “MegaPlex”, a new line of projectors that are compatible with iOS devices, as well as computers, tablets and other smartphones thanks to standard HDMI, USB, and VGA ports. The MegaPlex MG-850HD and MegaPlex MG-50 come with a rear-facing dock for iPhones, iPods and iPads, enabling users to view their photos and videos and listen to music on a bigger screen. Epson says they want to make it easy for iOS users to browse and display content, charge a device, and share the experience with friends and family. Similarly, the MegaPlex projectors can accept media from a variety of non-Apple devices.

MegaPlex is the ideal big screen projector for the new digital lifestyle. Enabling consumers to share multimedia content from their iPod, iPhone, iPad and a wide assortment of other digital devices, MegaPlex is changing the way movies, gaming, slideshows, presentations, music, and more are viewed by eliminating the confinement of a smaller screen,” says Jason Palmer, product manager, Epson America. “With the high-quality, versatility and portability of Epson’s MegaPlex solutions, consumers can literally dock their iPad, iPhone or iPod, click and immediately share multimedia content on a big screen wherever they may be.

Both projectors are powered by 3LCD technology to deliver “vibrant colors”, though only the MG-850HD offers 720p video output at 2,800 lumens. The MegaPlex MG-50 will deliver 540p video and up to 2,200 lumens of color and white light output. Both systems feature two 10W stereo speakers, and a microphone.

The Epson MegaPlex MG-850HD and MegaPlex MG-50 will be available later this month through select retailers and Epson’s online store at $799 and $699, respectively.

News.me iPad App Drops Subscriptions, Goes Free

We first covered News.me, a “social news reader” developed by Betaworks, when it first came out in April, aiming to take on other “social magazines” for the iPad like Flipboard and Zite. Unlike its competitors, News.me was based on an interesting business model: the app would let you “see” what your friends were reading, at a price. Built with Apple’s subscriptions for iOS apps, News.me allowed users to subscribe to access the app’s social-reading functionalities. From our review:

Like I said it’s difficult now to say whether News.me’s smart filtering system really works or not, but I’ve noticed a couple of interesting factors that might increase the quality of the social aggregator. For instance, you can swipe right on a story in your timeline to “mute” it and tell the app to hide it forever, or check out a “people who read this story also read” section at the bottom of popular articles. This section aggregates stories from the same source that are linked to the one you’re reading, and should provide a meaningful way to discover news that might interest you. Another feature I love is the importance News.me gave to attribution: you can tap on a writer’s name to open a popover menu that allows you see his bio and follow him on Twitter. Unlike Flipboard, News.me got attribution absolutely right.

With an update posted today, the News.me team has announced the iPad app is now completely free (no subscriptions), and the company will be run separately under Betaworks.

Over the past year, News.me has been incubated within bitly. Today, we’re pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly into an independent company under betaworks. As I wrote earlier this year, with News.me we are seeking to rethink and reinvent the way that people discover news; I’m very excited that News.me is now set up and running as a standalone company with the resources it needs to fully pursue that vision.

The new version of News.me for iPad (1.2) doesn’t seem to introduce any new feature aside from free access without subscriptions. There’s no doubt this new model will help the app gain more readers, so we’ll make sure to check back in a few weeks to see how user adoption can contribute to News.me’s social graph. You can get the app for free on the App Store.

iMessage for OS X To Be Integrated with iChat?

According a series of code strings found by MacRumors in the current version of iChat for OS X Lion, Apple may be building support for the new messaging system first announced at WWDC for iOS 5 devices inside its IM desktop application. The properties found in iChat’s code refer to “read” and “delivery” receipts, two iMessage features that inform users when a message has been read or simply delivered to another device, respectively. These code strings can’t be found in earlier versions of iChat, apparently, and MacRumors believes they can relate to iMessage support being built inside iChat for Lion.

The “timeDelivered” and “timeRead’ fields indicate the tracking of delivery and read receipts for instant messages. These features, however, are not supported in any of iChat’s native messaging protocols, while the same features are offered in Apple’s iMessage protocol. These properties were also not present in previous versions of iChat prior to OS X Lion. We believe the only reason Apple would have added these properties was to build in cross compatibility with their new iMessage protocol.

Ever since its introduction in June, many have wondered whether Apple could support iMessage, a free messaging protocol for iOS devices, on the desktop as well, allowing iOS users to send text messages to Mac users in their Address Book, and vice versa. Unlike FaceTime, iMessage works on both WiFi and 3G, but similarly to Apple’s video-calling solution it’s completely free of charge and works with email addresses and phone numbers – if an iOS user is already in your Address Book and he’s using the same phone number or email, iMessage will work. The service will be iOS 5-only when it launches this Fall, and Apple hasn’t revealed plans for OS X or Windows versions yet. iMessage has been compared to other free messaging solutions, like RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger, or Google’s Huddle.

A few code strings are no confirmation of Apple’s plans to build iMessage for Mac, but if history is of any indication, it would make sense for Apple to support its new app on multiple platforms. Whereas iChat as an app is still nowhere to be seen on iOS, FaceTime as a service was ported to the OS X and later built into every new Mac. For this reason, many are speculating iMessage could follow a similar trend, perhaps as a standalone app, or a service plugin for iChat.

In the past months, a number of fan-made mockups have tried to imagine what an hypothetical iMessage for Mac would look like. Just like the theories floating around, some imagined the service being supported in existing apps like iChat or Mail, others created videos showing iMessage working as a separate app for effortless Mac-iOS communication. Below, we’re embedding an iMessage concept by Jan-Michael Cart.

iMessage is currently available for iOS 5 beta testers, and it’ll publicly launch with iOS 5 and iCloud this Fall.
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Apple Has The Thinnest Smartphone→

Apple Has The Thinnest Smartphone

TechCrunch reports the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has ruled Apple, and not Samsung, has the world’s thinnest smartphone with the iPhone 4:

The ASA ruled that since the iPhone’s thickest point is thinner than the Galaxy S II’s thickest, Apple has the right to continue claiming the title. Samsung likely isn’t too pleased — save for a single thick bit, their GSII is mostly thinner, and Apple gets to maintain their positioning (in the UK at least) as purveyors of slim, sleek design.

This is a minor detail in the sea of ongoing litigations and lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, but a curious piece of information design-wise. The Galaxy S II is thinner than the iPhone 4 on most of its surface (8.71mm at the thinnest points, versus the iPhone’s 9.3mm), but the thickest point at 9.91mm (see photo) makes sure that the iPhone 4 can still claim to be the thinnest smartphone. The ASA’s interesting choice is that they didn’t measure by average thickness, they simply looked at the thickest point of the device.

Apple has touted the iPhone 4 as the world’s thinnest smartphone in its commercials and magazine ads.

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VMware Releases Fusion 4, Brings Full Lion Support

VMware Fusion 4 has today been released by VMware, the latest version of the popular emulation software for running Windows on Macs. It comes just two weeks after Parallels Desktop 7 became available, which brought significant enhancements to the software when running on Lion.

Enhancements to VMware Fusion® 4 make it a breeze to run Windows and Mac applications side by side on a Mac,” said Pat Lee, director, client product management, VMware.

Todays update to VMware Fusion similarly brings full support for Lion including the ability to add Windows programs to Launchpad, Mission Control support and even utilising full-screen mode. Furthermore, VMware claims that performance has also been improved markedly,  potentially running up to 2.5 times faster than previous versions of Fusion. Other new features include the support for running Lion in a virtual machine (as per Lions new License Agreement) and more of a “Mac-Like Experience” when running Windows.

VMware Fusion 4 is available from today for $49.99 until the end of the year, when the pricing will revert to $79.99. VMware is also offering customers who purchased Fusion 3 on or after July 20 a free electronic upgrade to Fusion 4. You can purchase it online or at select resellers including the Apple retail and online stores. Jump the break for some screenshots of VMware Fusion 4.

[Via The Loop]

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Microsoft Releases Office 2011 14.1.3 Update, Patches Some Lion Issues

Microsoft announced in late July that it was preparing updates for Office 2011 to fix bugs and generally improve Lion support. That first update finally went live late yesterday, fixing a variety of minor bugs that affected Office 2011 in Lion. Unfortunately one of the biggest complaints when Lion was released was that Outlook 2011 couldn’t import emails from Mail.app - that issue has yet to be fixed, with Microsoft simply disabling the ability to import email on Lion.

As Microsoft’s Mac department revealed back in July, another more significant update for Office 2011 will arrive in a few months. In that update Microsoft has said they will bring support for new Lion features such as Versioning, Auto Save and full-screen mode to their applications.

Jump the break for a full list of improvements, whilst you can manually download the update from the Microsoft Download Center.

[Via TUAW]

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Belkin Reveals New Thunderbolt Express Dock

Today at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Belkin unveiled the Thunderbolt Express Dock featuring 3 USB ports, a Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining, a Firewire port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. DailyTech notes that this is the same port setup that’s found on the new 27″ Apple Thunderbolt Display – it seems very convenient that it’s the same arrangement as what Apple is already using.

The Belkin Express Dock could be very handy for Mac users wanting to expand their current port offering and don’t want to pay $999 for a Thunderbolt display. Pricing and availability have not yet been announced but the price should be reasonably below the cost of a Thunderbolt display. The next question is, will Belkin also include a Thunderbolt cable so you don’t have to dish out an extra $50 for one? [DailyTech]

New iPad Factory in Brazil Is “Ready”, Already Making iPads for December

According to a report by Brazilian website UOL, the Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology, Aloízio Mercadante, has confirmed during a hearing with the Commission of Economic Affairs that the new factory in Jundiaí is “ready”, and already making iPads that will begin shipping in Brazil starting this December.

At first many doubted, but it will be the first time that the company will produce iPads outside Chinese territory. We are taking a big step for digital inclusion in the country,” he said. Mercadante also said that the federal government will announce in the coming days to invest in a big factory of games in the Manaus Free Zone.

Originally scheduled for November, the availability of iPads made in Brazil is the result of a joint effort by the Brazilian government and Foxconn, maker of several Apple devices and peripherals including the iPhone and iPad. A first report from April suggested Foxconn would invest $12 billion in this new factory, with iPad production starting in late August / early September – the timeline seems correct. Additionally, it was reported in June Foxconn had already hired 175 engineers and sent them to China for training on how to build iPads.