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Posts tagged with "iPad"

iPads to Enter Yet Another Parliament, This Time in Britain

The British House of Lords is set to soon allow it’s parliamentarians to use the iPad and other tablets, smartphones and e-readers, for a one year trial period. This embrace of the iPad is just the latest in a long line of examples where the iPad has gone beyond just a consumer entertainment device to one that is for students, Fortune 500 companies and politicians across the world.

The British parliamentarians will however be restricted to only accessing parliamentary documents and other clearly related files and websites to ensure that the devices do not detract from the key role of the House. This is undoubtedly a rule to try and avoid what happened last week in Italy when a member of their parliament, Simeone Di Cagno Abbrescia was caught browsing certain escort agency websites on the iPad during a parliamentary sitting.

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The Plaza Hotel Deploys iPads in Every Room

The five star The Plaza hotel in New York city has recently deployed iPads to every single one of it’s rooms and has a seriously cool iPad app running on them. The application allows the hotel visitors to do everything from turning lights on, changing the air conditioning, making restaurant reservations, ordering amenities and much more.

According to The Plaza’s general manager they had previously tried a similar system that was a touch panel but it “wasn’t sophisticated enough for what we wanted to do” and the iPad was chosen because “it is a great piece of equipment that is here to stay and won’t disappear tomorrow.”

Jump the break for a demo of the iPad app, made by Intelity, and its wide range of abilities.
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“The Daily” Super Bowl Commercial [Video]

In case you missed it a few minutes ago, here’s the commercial News Corp. ran during the XLV Super Bowl to promote its iPad-only newspaper, The Daily. The ad is admittedly cool and nicely animated, too bad we’ve seen the app is nowhere near the fluidness from the video below. If The Daily was as fast and stable and snappy as the app from this ad, it would be perfect.

Nice commercial, but we’re still waiting for a better app. Read more

Hacker Brings FaceTime to iPad

In spite of the iPad lacking a camera (that should change very soon with the iPad 2), hackers have managed to port the FaceTime application for the iPod touch 4th gen to the tablet and make it work even without access to any kind of camera. The hack, called Intell, requires a pretty laborious installation process you can check out here, and involves changing permissions and values to a series of files inside the iPad’s filesystem.

The FaceTime app has been resized to scale nicely on the iPad’s larger screen, although it’s very clear that is an iPhone / iPod touch app running on a screen that’s not meant for it. The hack works from iPad to any other FaceTime device and, of course, iPhone users calling iPad owners will only receive audio. The app works over WiFi as required by FaceTime.

With the next-generation iPad coming in a few months with FaceTime capabilities it shouldn’t be so hard to wait for video calling on the tablet, but if you really want to try it now, follow the instructions and check out the demo video below. [via 9to5mac] Read more

iPad Helping Remove Bookshelves, Save Space in Japan

With Japan’s cramped living quarters, arrival of the iPad and other tablets and it’s non-existent e-book market, there has been an explosion of start-ups offering consumers to turn their paper books into e-books that can be used on such tablets as the iPad. Japan currently has the largest market for paper books and magazines, worth over $24 billion a year, yet the e-book market is currently earning less than $1 billion per year, driving customers to alternatives such as scanning books into PDF’s for use on tablets and e-readers.

One such start-up, Bookscan was founded by Yusuke Ohki and childhood friend, Shinya Iwamatsu last April and has done gangbusters, expanding its workforce to 120 people in less than 12 months. Ohki said to Bloomberg “the iPad’s release is the biggest factor in making this business possible” and said his inspiration for starting the business was the 2000 physical books that were crowding out his small Tokyo apartment.

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greenpois0n Available for Windows, Mac Version Updated

A few hours ago the Windows version of greenpois0n was made available (as was promised) and an updated version of the Mac client, RC5 Beta 3 was also released.  This jailbreak solution allows for iOS devices running 4.2.1 to be jailbroken and be untethered, which means the device can be restarted without requiring a program to boot the device.

If your iOS device has already been jailbroken with redsn0w, just run greenpois0n and it will untether it without removing anything. There is no word yet on whether a Linux version is in the works.

To download head to greenpois0n.com for the Mac and Windows downloads, or alternatively the mirror site.

[Via iH8sn0w on Twitter]

iPhone and iPad Changing People’s Reading Habits

Read It Later, the Instapaper-esque service for saving articles for later consumption has released some fascinating information on how users of the service, depending on the device used, have very different reading habits.

Posted on their blog they reveal that content is encountered pretty much constantly throughout the day, with only a slight drop after work finishes at around 5PM. As for when articles are read, those who use the computer have two key periods, during work at 8AM – 4PM and during the night at 6PM – 9PM with a slightly higher peak during which articles are read.

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iPad 2: Carbon Fiber, NFC Features, 7-inch Model?

A report posted by iLounge details some of the new features and tech specs that may go into the next-generation iPad. First off, the website reports a 7-inch model of the device is still being tested by Apple, in spite of Steve Jobs claiming that 7-inch tablets will be “dead in arrival” because of their form factor, not suitable for portable computing.

Our source notes that a key iPad, iPhone, and iPod component provider has been asked by Apple to develop a part for use in a seven-inch iPad. Our source believes that this part is for a new version of the device that is still in development, and doesn’t know whether it will go into production.

The fact that Apple is still considering the idea of a smaller iPad sounds reasonable, but it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see a 7-inch iPad by the rumored April launch. iLounge goes on to report the iPad 2 may have a new shell in carbon fiber to reduce weight:

While our source urges caution on this point, it’s possible that the company will use a new material similar to carbon fiber rather than aluminum for upcoming iPads.

Some people claim carbon fiber enclosures for the iPad have already been spotted, although it’s unclear whether they came from OEM, or unauthorized third-party manufacturers. Last, the most interesting tidbit is about the iPad 2 and Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities:

In the most basic implementation, an accessory could announce its presence and potential functions to an iPad or iPhone without the need for a Bluetooth or similar connection; our source suggests that an otherwise simple case could include a radio chip so that an inserted iPhone or iPad could go into power-saving hibernation mode automatically. More complex accessories will go far beyond that.

Several reports in the past suggested Apple is willing to implement NFC in future iOS devices.  [via MacRumors]

#MacStoriesDeals - Friday

Thanks again to AppShopper.com and MacAppDeals.com for helping me find great deals for our readers! Here’s today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot! Read more