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Novothink on Thursday released its Apple-certified hybrid solar charging Surge cases for the iPhone and iPod Touch, along with Solar Planner, an app for estimating charging times.

The case against the four people involved in the running of Pirate Bay is heading back to court at the end of September.

The band Pink Floyd has won a legal ruling that prohibits record label EMI from selling individual tracks from its albums.

Tank Raider is a retro tank arcade game by Sunday Solutions that puts you at the controls of an arcade tank pitted against three crafty computer-controlled tanks. Your mission is to capture and hold more gems than the other tanks.

A new report from AppleInsider via Forbes has Apple making some last minute tweaking to the App Store and iBookstore prior to the forthcoming April 3 launch of the iPad.

The report has Apple having designated 20 categories for books on its iBookstore, and they will be available for download on the iPad.  That number had previously been listed at 35 back in February.

The categories of literary goodies include "Fiction & Literature," "Comics & Graphic Novels," "Reference," "Romance," and "Cookbooks."  Top-tier categories include a litany of more than 150 sub-categories, such as "Manga" under the comics category.

At the same time, Apple has also allegedly went through and classified some apps as compatible with the iPad as developers continue to retool and refine their existing products on the App Store.  Developers were given the option to take their apps for a test drive for iPad compatibility when they updated their apps, and after that, only about 16,700 of the more than 140,000 seemed to be compatible.

Since the Wi-Fi iPad lacks a GPS receiver, Apple also went through and termed certain apps as "iPad Wi-Fi" and "iPad 3G."  About 40 of the 16,700 certified apps were 3G only according to the report.

Image courtesy of hothardware.com

 

The Khronos group has published the complete specifications for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 for upcoming and modern graphics hardware.

A new patent application revealed this week, titled "Real-Time Interaction with a Virtual Competitor While Performing an Exercise Routine," notes that while yes, there's lots of ways and methods to motivate athletes, some continue to want to push the bar even further, according to AppleInsider.

The application filed by Apple portrays a networked system that would download a workout file that would be associated with a virtual competitor.  The system would also determine the performance of the said athlete using the iPod or iPhone, and compare the athlete's performance against that of the virtual competitor.

The system would then track the "performance metrics" of the user in both physiological terms, factors such as heart rate, blood oxygen content and temperature as well as non-physiological performance factors like speed and distance.  

In regard to the competitor, the system could possibly display visual aids, such as location, via GPS, on Google Maps, and would demonstrate the athlete's position in relation to that of the virtual competitor.  The system could also be used audibly, and would allow the athlete to focus on their performance.

The application reads, "For example, as user… passes the 2-mile mark, and audible cue played through the headset… may announce a 2-mile split of 10:27."  "If user… has a lead… cues may be played if the lead is less than a predetermined distance.  For example, if the lead is less than 100 feet, an audible cue may be played, such as 'He's right behind you.' For smaller leads, an audible cue may be the sound of footsteps thumping."

Now if runners like to utilize a treadmill indoors, cycle, or even an elliptical machine, the competitor system would be turned into a game, where the runner could use "tactical maneuvers," that would be tracked via a camera, and could be used to conduct certain actions.  The competitor would then be crowded out by the user with a hands-free mouse, and then these actions would gain the runner points in the game.

Image courtesy of ybyl.com

 

Motorola will start loading Microsoft Bing search and map services onto its Android smartphones in China, and possibly elsewhere later.

The Ultimate Sith Edition is set in the years between Episode III and Episode IV in the Star Wars canon. Darth Vader has sent you, his secret apprentice, to track down and kill rogue Jedi.

It’s no secret that many recording artists -- especially those from the bygone era of the long-form LP record format -- prefer listeners to enjoy their music as a whole, rather than on a song-by-song basis. One of the pioneers of such concepts, Pink Floyd, has just scored a legal victory that may change the way we buy such music from iTunes in the future.

BBC News is reporting that Pink Floyd has score a legal victory with its record label, EMI, over the company selling its songs by track through Apple’s iTunes Store, according to MacRumors. The high-profile band objects to the label splitting up what it considers to be single pieces of work.

“The rock legends, signed to EMI since 1967, said their contract meant their albums could not be split up without their permission,” BBC News reports. “A judge agreed, saying the contract contained a clause to ‘preserve the artistic integrity of the albums.’ EMI has been ordered to pay £40,000 ($60,000) in costs, with a further fine to be decided.”

Of course, Pink Floyd’s contract with EMI predates digital music downloads, particularly those from the iTunes Store, which pioneered the “99 cents per track” option that’s become so popular in recent years. Rather than having to buy an entire album just to get one or two favorite tracks, customers can pick & choose which tracks they’d like to own.

The band’s lawyers “argued that it made little sense that the contract’s restrictions against the splitting up of ‘seamless’ material would apply to physical distribution while digital distribution would be treated as a ‘free for all.’” EMI argued that the use of the word “record” in the contract suggested that it applied only to physical media.

For now, Pink Floyd’s music remains for sale by track on the iTunes Store -- so get it while the getting is good, we figure that will change soon enough, and probably start affecting other classic rock bands as well...

OnLive, the gaming service that promises the ability to play your games whenever, wherever, and on whatever device you want, has announced that it will launch in June.

Mac users who regularly exchange files with Windows users are constantly stymied by one of Mac OS X’s biggest limitations -- you can read NTFS-formatted Windows disks, but you can’t write to them. Thanks to Paragon’s NTFS for Mac, you can, and the latest 8.0 version brings faster read & write operations as well as 64-bit support for Snow Leopard 10.6.

Paragon Software Group has long been a leader in innovative data security and data management solutions, and Mac users have frequently turned to their NTFS for Mac OS X solution to eliminate the barriers between Windows and Mac. The company has just announced NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0 Release Candidate, a free 30-day trial of their latest drivers to read & write Windows-formatted NTFS disks.

“We are very excited to offer this new solution to our fast growing NTFS for Mac OS X user base,” said Tom Fedro, president of Paragon Software Group. “Paragon NTFS for Mac 8 is the only solution on the market based on file-system drivers, which makes it unique with regards to stability and performance. Paragon was the first to officially break down the communication barriers between Mac and Windows, and we remain committed to bringing users the newest features with NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0.”

Paragon NTFS for Mac 8 achieves the speed of native HFS+ drivers, with test results demonstrating around 90MB per second during read & write operations. The company bills the software as “the industry’s fastest NTFS driver,” with Mac users provided full read & write access to Microsoft NTFS partitions, allowing for easy modification of existing files back and forth between Mac and Windows without additional costly hardware or software.

Among the new key features of NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0 are full support for the latest Snow Leopard 10.6 in 64-bit kernel mode, fast volume transfer speed, full read & write access, easy installation and removal, create & repair NTFS partitions under the Mac, use non-Roman characters and languages in your file & folder names, no system degradation during file transfers and no limitations on file or partition size beyond those in the Mac OS X or NTFS specifications.

The Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0 Release Candidate is now available for download from the company’s website and gives full access to the feature set for a 30-day trial. Pricing and availability has not been announced for the shipping product, but Release Candidate users are promised a discounted price when it becomes available. Customers who purchase the current 7.0 version will also be entitled to a free upgrade to 8.0.

The titles iPhoto chooses for just-added photos is the annoying "IMG_nnnn" serial number from the camera. This AppleScript simply takes the date of the photo (EXIF info that iPhoto knows very well) and uses it as the photo title. The format is: yyyy-mm-dd-hh.mm.ss, so it's a bit easier to read than the ISO version, but also easily sortable.

Here's the code: tell application "iPhoto" -- activate -- bring iPhoto back to front copy (my selected_images()) to these_images if these_images is {} then error "Please select some images before using this script." set thename to "" set thepaths to "" set thedates to "" repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_images set this_image to item i of these_images --set this_file to the image path of this_image set thename ...

I have a lot of people in my Mac OS X Address Book. I thought it would be a nice idea to have the system check the birthdays in Address Book, and inform me of any forthcoming birthdays via a Growl notification. So I've created an Apple Script to do that (with a lot of help from a few other peoples).

First, install Growl if it isn't installed. Also install the Terminal growlnotify command, which you'll find in the Extras folder on the Growl disk image. Next, copy and paste the following into AppleScript Editor: delay 0.5 set isRunning to 0 set timer to the time of the (current date) repeat while isRunning = 0 tell application "System Events" set isRunning to ¬ ((application processes whose (name is equal to "GrowlHelperApp")) count) ...

If you have entire albums, artists, or playlists excluded from shuffling in iTunes (The 'Skip when shuffling' flag is set), your iPhone 3GS will fail to play these albums, artists, or playlists when you select them using Voice Control if it has shuffle play mode enabled.

The manner in which it fails makes it seem as if something is seriously amiss (hence this hint): It acknowledges your voice input, indicating that your selection is about to play (e.g., 'Playing album Avatar'), but then returns to whatever had been playing before. If nothing had been playing before you gave the voice command, the iPhone will remain resolutely silent after acknowledging your input.

The solution to this 'issue' is, of course, to simply to turn off shuffle play mode. Unfortunately you can't do this with a voice command (as far as I know).

Sony is developing 3D cameras that will give consumers the ability to create their own 3D content, an executive said Thursday.

It's an age-old problem. You left home thinking you had saved the most recent version of a document to your flash drive or to your MobileMe account, but when you access it at work your "blah blah blah" placeholders are where your charts should be.

The meeting's in ten minutes. What do you do? Recreate the missing charts from memory? You wish. Luckily, FeelHome's got your back.

The open source solution form Nuxinov, FeelHome, is a cross-platform software that allows you instant access to your files from any web-browser anywhere. You register for an account, install the software on the computer you want to access, launch the server and you're ready to go. You can even configure several computers to run simultaneously, disconnect them remotely and even shut those computers down remotely. The interface is customizable as well, allowing you a pleasant, homey experience.

FeelHome runs on HTTPS and uses SSL to handle the security end of things. They merely act as a transfer server and delete files from their system the instant the document is received by you.  And your password is so tightly encrypted that even the people at Nuxinov (theoretically) can't access it. So don't forget it.

The best thing of all about FeelHome is its price. Unlike other remote access packages, FeelHome is free to download and free to use. Now you just have to remember to leave your home computer turned on.

In the wake of the tsunami of iPad related rumors and news both before and after it was unveiled in late January, new rumors about the next iPhone have been scarce by comparison. But that may be about to change, with various sources reporting that multitasking will finally come to the iPhone with the next major software update.

AppleInsider is reporting that “people with a proven track record in predicting Apple’s technological advances” have leaked some significant details that point to a “full-on solution” to multitasking on iPhone OS 4.0. With competitors like Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android flaunting their multitasking in recent hardware, it was probably only a matter of time before Apple figured out a solution for the iPhone.

If the reports are true, it would silence once and for all the one major criticism of the device at long last. Apple introduced push notifications with iPhone OS 3.0 to stem some of the complaints, but ultimately that solution only made things more complicated, since the software is only capable of displaying one notification at a time, which limits its usefulness.

Of course, since iPhone OS has its roots in Mac OS X to begin with, you wouldn’t think that multitasking should have taken Apple four generations to figure out in the first place. The current iPhone OS 3.x software is a “fully preemptive multitasking operating system, but it artificially restricts apps (other than specific ones bundled with the system by Apple) from running in the background” -- for instance, the ability to leave the Phone app during a call while entering another app such as Maps, or playing music via the iPod app while reading e-mail or browsing the web.

Multitasking on the iPhone is not a technical problem, but rather one of battery life and the ability to optimize resources, which Apple has not been shy about stating publicly. Jailbreak users already have the ability to install software via Cydia or Rock Your Phone which will allow multitasking on the device as well.

If it’s true that Apple will introduce multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 -- presumably with a new hardware model in June as they’ve done for the last three years -- the only challenge will be how to implement it in a user-friendly way without consuming further battery resources. Apple, we have faith in you… bring it on!

(Image courtesy of MacRumors)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ stock is rising -- both with his company and in a new annual ranking of the world’s billionaires.

MacRumors is reporting on the latest Forbes annual list of the world’s billionaires, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs ranked at 178th place with $3.4 billion in 2009. Cupertino’s main man leapt up the chart for 2010, tying with six others for 136th place and a net worth of $5.5 billion. Jobs’ net worth is even up from an October, 2009 ranking that Forbes did of the richest Americans at $5.1 billion.

“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop,” Forbes writes of the Apple king. “Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon's Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements.”

Of course, Jobs’ fortune is not all pinned on Apple, Inc.: He’s also Disney’s largest individual shareholder thanks to the company’s 2006 acquisition of Pixar, the computer animation giant that Jobs financially rescued from George Lucas years ago. In fact, Jobs’ stake in Disney alone is worth $4.2 billion, with the rest made up from his work at Apple, where the stock has been high-flying of late.

The top spot on the list of world billionaires was taken by Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim Helú at $53.5 billion, just slightly ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who held the top spot in 14 out of the previous 15 years. Maybe leaving Microsoft wasn’t such a good idea after all?

If you want unique icons for your desktop or for social networking, you can create your own by hand, as we showed in part one of this series. Today, in part two, Chris McVeigh shows you some freeware and shareware apps you can use to help with the process.