MindManager 9 for Mac Coming June 23, iOS Versions Due Mid-June

What is “Mind Mapping?” Well, if you want to take your analog thoughts and put them into the digital world, Wikipedia tells us that “a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.”

MindJet, who makes MindManager, one of the premiere apps in the market selling 1.8 million copies worldwide,  is scheduled to ship MindManager 9 next month. It will cost $249 for new customers and $149 for current users wanting to upgrade. New features will include a presentation mode, “quick entry,” WYSIWYG priting, dynamic content like schedules and web links, offline import/export for iWork and Office, plus project management mode. For more info, read the Mac press release here. Read more

Apple’s Data Center Makes A Google Maps Appearance

As noted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune, Apple’s new data center in Maiden, North Carolina, is now visible in its entirety from Google Maps’s aerial view. The tidbit of information isn’t particularly interesting as far as the building goes – it’s the same white, anonymous construction we’ve been seeing in other shots from the past months – but the timing is interesting: according to Fortune, Apple started allowing Google to display the data center in their Maps service soon after the official WWDC announcement yesterday. In that announcement, Apple confirmed the WWDC keynote would see Steve Jobs and other executives on stage to unveil iOS 5, OS X Lion and iCloud. The data center was rumored to host a bevy of Internet services and online iTunes content, but the press release and the timing of this sudden Maps appearance seems to confirm that, yes, Maiden’s massive facility will be used for iCloud and all the cloud-related features of iOS 5 and OS X Lion.

But if you asked Google Earth or Google Maps to show you the intersection of U.S. Route 321 and Startown Road – where the data center is located – the current satellite imagery stopped a few yards short of the construction site. West of Startown Road, there was, as recently as two weeks ago, nothing but woods and farmland and a bit of driveway that ended abruptly in the middle of a field.

After Apple’s announcement Tuesday that Steve Jobs was ready to reveal iCloud – the “upcoming cloud services offering” presumably based in Maiden, N.C. – we thought we’d give Google Maps another try.

Lo and behold, there it was: A huge, white, nondescript building with a road leading in, a road leading out, and almost no employee parking.

The data center in Maiden, North Carolina, is rumored to go under an expansion at 1 million square feet (from the current 500,000) and other reports claimed Apple was using highly custom equipment and a unique design to power its new Internet services and applications. As speculation is running wild on how Apple will use the data center with iCloud and iTunes, the company has reportedly already commissioned a new, smaller data center in Santa Clara, California.

Hidden App Leads to MacBook Thief Identification and Arrest

Yesterday I stumbled upon a Tumblr blog that, in spite of the subject, made me laugh for a few minutes. The “This Guy Has My MacBook” blog by Joshua Kaufman had pictures of a man using a computer that was stolen from Kaufman back in March – the photos, the descriptions and the fact that this man was using a MacBook not knowing the whole Internet was looking at him were kind of hilarious. All of this in spite of the fact that, yes, that was about a guy who just wanted his MacBook back.

Soon after I found out about Kaufman’s blog, the thing went viral as dozens of other websites picked it up and wrote about this guy monitoring his Mac’s thief using Hidden, a Mac app that’s a great tracking tool which can remotely snap photos through the iSight, take screenshots, grab location and send you other detailed information about your stolen computer. As the Internet began spreading the link and the photos, I had a feeling the Oakland Police Department had to do something – Kaufman’s originally wrote on his blog OPD couldn’t help him due to “due to lack of resources”. A few hours later, Kaufman tweeted that OPD had successfully taken in the computer and arrested the thief who, by the way, was a taxi driver, hence the pictures of a MacBook inside a car (one of the mysteries when the blog became popular yesterday).

Update: (May 31, 8:37 PM PST) ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA! The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up. Nice work OPD!

Kaufam’s story is yet another example of how important it is nowadays to consider the installation of tracking and recovering software on our Macs. Apple provides a great, free solution on the iPhone and iPad that’s called Find My iPhone which is rumored to be coming to the Mac as well with Lion, but in the meantime I would recommend the aforementioned Hidden and the excellent Witness to detect motion in your room through an iSight and receive photos of what’s happening in front of your computer. The story also reminded of a popular YouTube video about a hacker that explained how he tracked down his old Mac years after it was stolen thanks to a background daemon like DynDNS that automatically finds a computer’s IP and associates it with a web address as soon as it’s connected to the Internet. It’ a great story, different from Kaufman’s – make sure to watch the video after the break if you missed it.
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Apple Begins iPad 3 Component Certification for 2012, No AMOLED

Digitimes reports Apple has started the certification process for components the company will use in the iPad 3, set to be released in 2012. Digitimes says some part markers have already landed certifications such as Radiant Opto-Electronics with LED backlight units, with others rushing to get the deals done in the upcoming months.

Taiwan-based component makers for backlight modules and light bars have received certification from Apple, however, the certification of panels is still in progress, added industry sources.

According to component makers, the timing for the launch of iPad 3 should be in 2012. Taiwan-based firms think iPad 2 will become the mainstream and Apple will lower its price to compete with other tablet PCs.

In the same post and in a separate report, Digitimes also notes Apple will continue using standard LCDs for the next-generation iPad, as opposite to rumors that claimed Apple was considering adopting AMOLED displays from Samsung Electronics. As AMOLED still wouldn’t be able to meet Apple’s demand, Digitimes believes Apple will rely on LCDs again.

Taiwan-based panel makers pointed out that Samsung brand tablet PCs have not all adopted AMOLED panels. Only its Galaxy S II smartphones feature AMOLED panels, hence, it is unlikely for iPad 3 to adopt AMOLED panels. Industry observers indicated that demand for small- to medium-size AMOLED panels has been increasing, therefore, causing a shortage. The production might not catch up with the schedule of Apple’s iPad 3. It is more likely for Apple to adopt AMOLED panels in products after iPad 3.

A series of reports from earlier this year suggested Apple could release two iPads in 2011, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore according to recent speculation and claims that the iPad 3 will follow Apple’s usual schedule for the device with a release in Spring 2012.

Google Renews Maps Deal With Apple, Plus Other Tidbits From Schmidt’s D9 Appearance

Last night the annual D9 conference kicked off with an interview with Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt. It led to a number of interesting revelations, perhaps of most significance is that he revealed Google has “just renewed [their] Map and Search agreements with Apple”.

The renewal of the Maps agreement confirms rumors we reported on last week where it was suggested that although Apple is looking to improve the iOS Maps application, it would not replace the Google service that powers it. Speculation about Apple launching their own Maps service was ignited last month after Apple posted the location tracking Q&A post, which talked of a crowd-sourced service to improve traffic information.

Speaking of the new platform war, fundamentally based on the Internet, Shmidt said there is, primarily, a gang of four that includes Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. He says that whilst there may be a debate about who is fifth and sixth (suggesting perhaps PayPal and Twitter), it is pretty clear that Microsoft is not included. Asked why, he says Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution – they are focused on corporate and are doing so successfully – something that will likely continue for decades to come.

Whilst talking about the Chrome OS, Schmidt took off on a tangent and claimed that Chrome was a more secure browser. Then when prodded by Walt Mossberg on what else users could do to improve security, Schmidt said they “could use a Mac instead of a PC”, citing the observation that viruses are less likely to affect users.

When Google launched its cloud music offering, many were disappointed that it was just a locker for music to be stored, with no way to purchase music directly. Asked why Google failed at signing with any of the record labels, Schmidt simply says, “I’ve just not been successful in doing that”. Finally, make sure to jump the break to watch the (fictional) acting-CEO of News Corp, Jane Lynch, launch the D9 conference, with some jabs at The Daily and other News Corp entities.

[Via AllThingsD]

The Beatles Anthology To Launch As iTunes Exclusive

The Loop reports The Beatles Anthology series will debut exclusively on iTunes on June 14, expanding the existing music catalog of the Fab Four that was released after years of rumors and speculation last November. Apple heavily promoted the launch of The Beatles’ music on iTunes as a day music lovers and iTunes customers would never forget, granting EMI and The Beatles 5 million songs sold in two months. The Loop reports The Beatles have now sold more than 8 million songs and 1.3 million albums on iTunes worldwide.

EMI on Tuesday said the The Beatles’ three remastered Anthology music collections will debut on June 14. Anthology, Vols. 1-3 are available for preorder on iTunes starting today.

The Anthology Box Set comes with all 155 tracks from the three volumes ($79.99) and an exclusive 23-track “Anthology Highlights” collection of standout tracks from each ($12.99).

The Anthology is available for pre-order now, with a special introductory video and a “Meet The Beatles” radio series available for streaming in iTunes, for free. The new sets, Anthology box and streaming material can be viewed on The Beatles’ official iTunes page.

OmniOutliner for iPad Tutorial: Learning the Nuts & Bolts by Tracking Expenses

When The Omni Group brought OmniOutliner to the iPad, they didn’t just create an outlining app for text and field notes. While useful for preparing research, taking notes, and organizing ideas, OmniOutliner can adapt to a variety of needs and circumstances with relative ease. Combined with a personal desire for customization, OmniOutliner can be tailored to solve a variety of creative problems such as the one we’re looking at today.

The flexibility in OmniOutliner can be admired when we apply a real world scenario such as tracking your daily spending. Mint might be useful for telling you how you spend your money, but nothing beats your own checklist when it comes time to compare the month’s expenditures against a bank statement. Writing your purchases down enables you to catch maintenance charges, find fraudulent activity, and become better aware of your current financial status. With paper likely being a rarity in our lives thanks to the iPad, OmniOutliner fits the bill nicely.

The tutorial past the break will teach you how to modify a provided template to your liking; you’ll learn how styles work in OmniOutliner; we’ll cover date, number, and pop-up columns; and lastly we’ll put it all together to make something terrific. Even if you have zero interest in tracking your spending, this tutorial will help you learn quite a bit about how OmniOutliner’s features fit together quite beautifully.

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iOS 5 To Feature Direct Twitter Integration?

Following today’s news on iOS 5, Lion and iCloud announcements at the WWDC keynote on June 6, TechCrunch reports Twitter’s upcoming photo service, reported by various blogs yesterday and rumored to offer a similar service to Twitpic, yfrog and others, will be directly integrated into iOS 5. The new sharing option will reportedly allow users to instantly send a photo to Twitter like they can already do with videos and YouTube. Provided they have logged into Twitter from the Settings or a specific web view, iOS 5 will sport a new sharing menu to beam photos directly to Twitter, without using a third-party client.

We’ve heard from multiple sources that Twitter is likely to have a big-time partner for such a service: Apple. Specifically, we’re hearing that Apple’s new iOS 5 will come with an option to share images to Twitter baked into the OS. This would be similar to the way you can currently share videos on YouTube with one click in iOS. Obviously, a user would have to enable this feature by logging in with their Twitter credentials in iOS. There would then be a “Send to Twitter” option for pictures stored on your device.

Internal builds of iOS 4 from last year confirmed Apple was testing Facebook integration, but Twitter was never spotted in the hidden settings and code strings, at least not in the way TechCrunch claims iPhone and iPad owners will be able to share media from the Camera Roll. It’s likely that iOS 5 will bring the Facebook option back, integrate Twitter and perhaps even Flickr, but it’s too early to tell. Code strings found in the iOS 4.3 suggested Apple was working on two new features called MediaStream and Photo Stream, which, according to several reports, were targeted at letting users instantly share photos and videos with their friends using Apple’s new cloud system, now officially known as iCloud. Currently, Twitter has native apps for the Mac, iPhone and iPad available for free on the App Store.

A screenshot of an iOS 4 build featuring a Facebook preference panel in the Settings.app:

Update: Daring Fireball’s John Gruber hints at something bigger coming with Twitter integration in iOS 5:

So close to the bigger story, but yet so far. Imagine what else the system could provide if your Twitter account was a system-level service.

Lodsys Starts Filing Lawsuit Against App Developers

With a series of blog posts published earlier today, Lodsys has confirmed [via MacRumors] that they’ve started filing lawsuits against app developers allegedly infringing patents related to in-app purchases and upgrade links in their mobile applications. Lodsys initially said that they would give developers 21 days to license the patents before filing any lawsuits, but the firm decided to change its schedule in order to defend against Apple’s legal response, which showed support for iOS developers and claimed third-party “app makers” were not infringing any patent as Apple is already licensing patents from Lodsys.

Why did Lodsys sue some App Developers on May 31, 2011

Lodsys chose to move its litigation timing to an earlier date than originally planned, in response to Apple’s threat, in order to preserve its legal options.

As for why they have decided to target small, indie developers who don’t have the resources to legally defend themselves, Lodsys writes:

Why are you targeting Apple developers or Android developers? Why are you picking on small developers who cannot defend themselves?

This story is about accountability for actions. If you are a Developer, it’s about knowledge about the scope and risks of your own business.

Lodsys has only one motivation: we want to get paid for our rights.

Lodsys also posted a response to Apple’s claims that third-party developers using Apple’s SDK and agreeing to the company’s terms are not infringing patents from Lodsys. They company also says they’ve sent a letter to Apple’s legal team, which Apple can publish in its entirety if they want to.

The letter was very surprising as Apple and Lodsys were in confidential discussions and there was clearly disagreement on the interpretation of the license terms of Apple’s agreement.  Before, during and after these interactions, Lodsys has carefully considered this issue and consulted several legal experts to consider Apple’s claims.  We stand firm and restate our previous position that it is the 3rd party Developers that are responsible for the infringement of Lodsys’ patents and they are responsible for securing the rights for their applications.  Developers relying on Apple’s letter do so to their own detriment and are strongly urged to review Apple’s own developer agreements to determine the true extent of Apple’s responsibilities to them.

Lodsys previously explained that usage of in-app purchases would cost developers 0.575% of their US revenue over the period the technology was implemented – for example, an app that generates $1 million in revenue  in one year would pay $5,750 to Lodsys. Finally, Lodsys says they’ll send $1,000 as reimburse to developers hit by the lawsuit if the whole story turns out to be wrong:

While it is true that Apple and Lodsys have an obvious dispute about the scope of Apple’s license to the Lodsys Patents, we are willing to put our money where our mouth is and pay you something if we are wrong.  Therefore, Lodsys offers to pay $1,000 to each entity to whom we have sent an infringement notice for infringement on the iOS platform, or that we send a notice to in the future, if it turns out that the scope of Apple’s existing license rights apply to fully license you with respect to our claim relating to your App on Apple iOS.

As many previously suggested after Apple’s response, the story is far from over and Lodsys appears to be pursuing its agenda by suing developers that don’t agree to pay licensing fees. Several bloggers broke down Lodsys’ patent claims in the past weeks, and the EFF even came out and said Apple should stand up for its developers.

Update: Florian Mueller of FOSSpatents tweets the names of the companies and developers sued by Lodsys today.