Rejoice, The Easter Update To Angry Birds Seasons Is Here!

By Graham Spencer

Remember hearing about that “amazing” Easter update for the Angry Birds Seasons game? Well just a few hours ago that update for Angry Birds Seasons went live (for the iPad version too) with version 1.4.0 and its full of 15 new Easter-themed levels, and of course some more of those golden eggs!

The new Easter-themed levels (jump the break for screenshots and a video) look just like you would expect with the strong prominence of the Spring sun, chocolate eggs and of course Easter bunnies. Intriguingly the update also brings the ability to send some Angry Birds and Easter themed cards to others.

EASTER EGGS FOR ANGRY BIRDS!
Spring is upon us and the time is ripe for some chocolate eggs and easter bunnies! So shed the winter gear and get in – Easter Eggs have never been this delicious! If you think St. Patrick’s Day was a blast, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet! This episode will again prove that Angry Birds is the most generous update giver of them all!

New Features in version 1.4.0:

- 15 LEVELS FULL OF SPRING
- NEW THEME TO FIT THE MOOD
- GOLDEN EGGS A-PLENTY
- LISTEN TO THE TWITTER OF BIRDS TO GET MORE

Wired Adds Sharing and Shopping Features, Gives Away May Edition For Free

By Graham Spencer

Conde Naste is set to offer its May iPad edition of Wired free for 30 days, thanks to a sponsorship with Adobe. The free edition is also being used as a way to promote the app’s new sharing and shopping features in a hope to attract, and bring back, subscribers who have fallen of the Wired iPad edition bandwagon.

The new sharing features, somewhat overdue, allow readers to share links to articles on Facebook and Twitter, including those that are not yet up on the Wired website or won’t ever be. However for articles that aren’t available on the Wired website, the link will lead to a web page that encourages others to download the relevant issue of the Wired magazine. As for those shopping features, Wired readers will be able to click a “buy now” button that opens an in-app browser (sponsored by MasterCard) displaying the relevant Amazon page for a product featured in an article, and any purchases will give Conde Naste a referral payment.

Wired’s monthly subscriber base for the iPad edition has apparently settled into the 20,000 to 30,000 range, which is considerably lower than the first issue which managed to hit over 100,000 downloads. Yet Wired is by no means ditching the subscription model, apparently determined to grow their business through user subscriptions, and ad revenue, which complements subscriptions.

However, Wired VP-publisher Howard Mittman, said that they felt it was time to show users how the Wired app has improved and making it free was a prominent way to do so. Mittman also admits that the social elements need to be enhanced, noting that “’social’ is real interactive, comment-able experiences, so that user feedback and feedback from our community creates a two-way or three-way conversation between the users and between the users and us.”

[Via AdAge]

Sydney Hotel Deploys iPad 2s In Every Room

By Graham Spencer

After the deployment of iPads in The Plaza hotel and others, The Establishment Hotel in Sydney Australia has become the world’s first to provide iPad 2s in every guest room of their hotel. The hotel, located in the financial district of Sydney, acted quickly to purchase enough iPads for their more than thirty rooms as they went on sale in Australia on March 25^thand has since implemented them earlier this month.

The iPads, which are provided free of charge to all guest rooms, include a selection of music, movies and apps. In particular the hotel includes a welcome video to the hotel, a broad selection of international newspapers on the iPad, travel applications such as Trip Advisor, a Merivale bar and restaurant guide and of course Angry Birds. The hotel also features unlimited free WiFi for all guests and an Apple TV with surround sound system in each of their rooms, letting guests AirPlay content from the new iPads to the TV or sound system in their rooms.

Merivale CEO Justin Hemmes has said that they are looking at what they can do next and how they can bring “innovation to our guests”;

Now that we have the hardware, we are only limited by our own imagination. Well, maybe also by the software developers’ abilities but seriously, we will be looking at ways in which we can integrate this technology further into the whole guest experience

Piecable Viewer Runs iPhone Apps From Your Browser

By Graham Spencer

New startup Piecable today launched their first product; Piecable Viewer and it is really neat, letting anyone test out an iPhone app, but on their browser! The service will let any developer create a web browser compatible version of their app for testing or demo purposes and some apps including Yelp, Hipmunk and Foodspotting are already up and running working flawlessly.

Piecable Viewer runs the emulated app through Flash and it doesn’t require any code modifications to work except for the addition of a single line of code. Piecable CEO Fred Potter said “It ends up being the easiest way ever to share an iPhone app on the web,” further making the point that there is no hassle of UDID exchange or the 100 device limit that Apple imposes “it’s zero friction and hassle”.

The service, which is also set to support Android soon, is employing a tiered pricing plan for developers wanting to use it. It is free for 1 simultaneous viewer, 1 app and a link that expires, $30 for 3 simultaneous viewers and 5 apps and $60 for 10 viewers with unlimited apps and no expiry date on the links. Jump over to the Piecable Viewer website to try out running an iPhone App in your browser!

[Via TechCrunch]

Apple Hires Carbon Fiber Expert As Senior Composites Engineer

By Graham Spencer

It was yesterday discovered that Apple has discreetly hired Kevin Keeney as a Senior Composites Engineer. What makes this hire interesting is that Keeney is the CEO of a carbon fiber bike designer, Kestrel Bicycles, and has previously worked with Apple on a carbon fiber shell patent in 2009.

There is potential that by making Keeney’s position a permanent one, Apple may be ramping up an effort to produce Apple products with carbon fiber. Like the evolution of using aluminum, which has become a staple in Apple products, the use of carbon fiber could further push its products to even lighter and thinner levels whilst maintaining the strength of aluminum. There are some issues that need to be resolved however, mainly dealing with the cost of carbon fiber compared to aluminum and the reduced ability for heat absorption, which could prove troubling.

Keeney has extensive experience with his 20 years of design work and supply chain management, both of which would be beneficial in any potential job of rolling out a mass-production of carbon fiber based products. It had been falsely rumoured in February that the iPad 2 could potentially replace the aluminum backing of the original with a carbon fiber based one.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs Coming Early 2012

By Graham Spencer

Publishing firm Simon & Schuster yesterday revealed that a biography of Steve Jobs is currently being written with an expected release date of early 2012, and unlike previous biographies of Steve Jobs this one has the blessing of Jobs himself. Being written by former Time executive Walter Isaacson and titled ‘iSteve: The Book of Jobs’, it will likely prove to be a fascinating and unprecedented look into the life and mind of Jobs.

Isaacson, who has also written biographies on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, has interviewed Jobs as well members of his family, co-workers and competitors for the book and was supposedly invited by Jobs for a tour of his childhood home. In a statement the publisher of Simon & Schuster, Jonathon Karp, said that “This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world’s greatest innovators.”

A previously unwelcome biography, ‘iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business’ led to Apple banning and removing all books by its publisher, John Wiley & Sons, from Apple’s retail stores.

[Via MacRumors, AppleInsider]

Adobe To Launch 3 New iPad Apps That Highlight Potential of Photoshop Touch SDK

By Graham Spencer

Adobe today announced that it will release Creative Suite 5.5 (a “mid-cycle update”) on May 3 along with three new iPad apps that will complement the full-featured desktop version of Photoshop. The three apps are actually designed as a demo of how developers can take advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK (which was released today) and create their own apps that complement and add additional functionality to the desktop version of Photoshop but through an Android, BlackBerry or iOS app.

The three iPad apps; Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav will all arrive on May 3^rd on the same day as Creative Suite’s 5.5 update goes live. Adobe Color Lava (priced at $2.99) is in simple terms a digital paint palette that will allow you to mix paints and generate a five-color palette that can be sent to the Photoshop color chip or swatch palette. Adobe Eazel ($4.99) is essentially a basic drawing program (similar to Brushes) that features a unique interface in which by placing 5 fingers on the screen a pop-up menu will appear above each finger, sliding up with the relevant finger will select that menu which will then let you to alter the relevant value (such as color or brush size) . Finally and perhaps most useful is Adobe Nav ($1.99), this app turns the iPad into a dedicated control that has the various tool palettes displayed, selecting a particular tool will select that tool on the desktop version of Photoshop, the app will also let you easily cycle between the various files you may have open in Photoshop.

UPDATE: Shawn Welch has already shown off his third party app that takes advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK. His app, Photoshop Remote, allows users to view a live preview thumbnail of any image that is open on a network connected Photoshop client and it can handle multiple clients at once. It even adds a dashboard that replicates a lot of the functionality of the Adobe Nav application including; “tool selection, color selection, filters, adjustment layers, and more.” Jump the break for his video demonstrating the app.

Also after the break is a video demonstrating Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav apps and jump over to CNet where they wrote a short review of each of the 3 apps, also if you are a developer that is interested in implementing the Photoshop Touch SDK make sure to visit the Adobe Developer Center.

Microsoft Releases Bing for iPad

By Graham Spencer

Bing for iPad has just been released onto the iTunes App Store and it is Microsoft’s first app to make it onto the tablet device. Just like their Bing iPhone app and the Bing website, the daily image is the first thing you’ll notice with the app and it looks beautiful on the iPad’s screen. Furthermore the app gives you a quick glance of key information of Weather, News, Movies, Trends and more in a bar at the bottom of the screen.

The app contains a wealth of features and has been exceedingly well-designed to take advantage of the iPad’s strengths - this can definitely not be called just a search engine app. Those bottom tabs of information are a gateway into a full screen of lots more information. However probably the best feature of the app is the Trends page which gives you a very nice, almost FlipBoard-esque, page with all the top searches on Bing, along with a relevant image. Like the iPhone app it features a Voice Search (which works pretty well) and search, whether it be done via text or voice, can be for a website, news, image, video or map.

There is a lot of swiping that can be done in the app and it allows you to go back and forward from your last ‘panel’ of information, whether it be a web search, news page or weather. Bing Maps is included and fully functional letting you search for an address or business, find local business and even get directions.

The iPad app is curiously only available in the US iTunes app store which is certainly odd considering the web version does have international editions, that even have a different daily picture. However even weirder is that I downloaded it from the US store and ran it in Australia and it not only gave me the correct weather but the daily image was the Australian one and even Bing Maps showed my location and correctly showed local businesses, only the movie theatre times didn’t work. Jump the break for some more screenshots of the app.

Apple Patent Reveals Potential E-Ink And LCD Hybrid Display

By Graham Spencer

A new patent revealed today shows that Apple has given consideration into a hybrid display that could dynamically switch and even simultaneously use e-ink and a traditional LCD system for displaying content for a device such as an iPad. The patent filed in October of 2009 and entitled “Systems and Methods for Switching Between an Electronic Paper Display and a Video Display” has a clear purpose in that it could be used for easier reading of text, particularly in an application such as iBooks.

The system described in the Apple patent would work by placing a translucent e-ink display above the traditional LCD panel (and below the touch panel), and depending on what content is supposed to be displayed, the switching on and off of the panel would be done by the system rather than the user. E-ink displays have some clear benefits in that they do not require a backlight, are less likely to induce eye strains than the bright screens of an LCD display and can be read in direct sunlight, as this Amazon ad last year highlighted to great effect.

An LCD obviously reigns supreme with high-resolution, dynamic and coloured content whilst e-ink is best for static text in black and white. The Apple patent aims to solve such an issue by allowing for separate display regions that can be independently activated when necessary. It was in fact previously rumored that the iPad 2 would have greater anti-reflective and anti-smudge treatments as a way to improve reading on the device but such a system described in this patent with a hybrid display of e-ink and LCD technology would be a far superior answer to the problems of reading in direct sunlight.

[Via AppleInsider]