Have you ever wished you could have a second screen for your Macbook or Windows PC, but just couldn’t justify the expense or real estate? Well if you have an iPad or Android tablet you’re in luck, because there’s an app to turn your Android tablet or iPad into a second screen! You can even use your iPod or iPhone as a second screen, if you want to!
Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins is branching out. No longer content to be just the CEO of one of the most improbably failingest tech companies, he is now a prognosticator (that’s a fancy word for someone who predicts the future). According to Heins, in five years there will no longer be any reason to have a tablet computer.
Having access to your kids and their data, in the name of ‘educational advantage’, is big business these days. As we wrote about recently, there is now a national database with the personal data of all k-12 children in some states, and children from select districts in others, and companies are being allowed to mine that data. Now meet the Amplify Tablet. The Amplify Tablet is the product of News Corp., and their educational division.
Readers of all ages and backgrounds love a trip to Barnes & Noble for the selection, the atmosphere, and the service. And that really great coffee. But lovers of e-books have ignored Barnes and Noble’s proprietary Nook e-reader in favor of the iPad from Apple and Kindle from Amazon. As a result, the foray into its own tablet has hemorrhaged loses to the point that the retailer appears to have given up on the much ballyhooed effort.
How has the world lived without a waterproof cell phone for this long? Water is the kryptonite of cell phones and for all of the money we pay for them, it seems that they should be a bit more resilient. Well, we can all rejoice and start using our phones around toilets, showers and pools with reckless abandon because technology company HzO has developed a new nanofilm waterproof coating, WaterBlock, that will protect your phone should it come into contact with water. And the first water proof cellphone is due out shortly – with Sony, Samsung and, reportedly, Apple, all planning to bring out a waterproof phone this year.
It won’t be long before we see flexible smartphones and flexible tablets on the market! The likes of Sony, Nokia, LG, Philips and Sharp are all fervently working on technology to bring foldable phones to consumers in the very near future. Prototypes of the flexible phones are already creating a buzz at trade and gadget shows, with news that the foldable phone can be bent, folded and rolled. The excitement of the flexible smartphone and flexible tablet is growing as the possibilities of rolling it up to stick it in a pocket or handbag are wildly appealing to users on the go. Not to mention that a flexible phone is quite the conversation starter.
PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd. has introduced the table PC, a 27-inch table computer that allows users to play boardgames, with the screen responding to up to ten fingers at the same time. Users can stick the 27-inch screen device on top of any table, or create a touch screen table with the optional coffee table that fits the device, and features sliding glass panels to cover the device when you are through playing board games.
The tech world has been abuzz over rumors that Apple is gearing up to release the tiny mini iPad, so far having been dubbed the “iPad Mini.” Speculations based on various “unnamed insiders” and forecasts from technology experts have offered some insight into what we can expect.
Apple unveiled the new iPhone 5 and their new connector cable, Lightening. What Apple today called “the biggest things to happen for iPhone since iCloud,” eager Apple fans are calling, “meh.” Apple unveiled the official iPhone 5, which does not appear to be much different from the iPhone 4S. The phone was introduced as being, “designed and built to an exacting level of standard unlike anything we, or anyone in our industry, have made before.” Except the last iPhone, apparently.
Toys R Us is throwing their hat, or rather tablet, into the ring by introducing the Tabeo. The Tabeo is a tablet made just for children, and is proving that it might be a worthy adversary for the new kid-friendly Kindle Fire HD.
The new Kindle Fire HD has broken the mold by being the only tablet to finally offer parental controls over what their kids access. While parents go to great lengths to control their child’s TV and PC usage, the tablets have managed to slip by the radar, allowing children unhindered access to the very same things that parents have kept them from on other devices. And at only $199, this kid-friendly tablet has quite an attractive pricetag.
The verdict is in: Samsung must pay Apple $1.5 billion for smartphone patent infringement. The lawsuit, filed by Apple Inc. last year, accused Samsung of copying the design of iPhones and iPads. Jurors on Friday produced a 20-page verdict, agreeing with Apple’s assertion that Samsung’s smartphones copied the design of the Apple iPhone, in both design and features. Apple lawyers produced pictures of the Samsung smartphones both before and after the introduction of the iPhone.
Popular social media website, Pinterest, has announced that they have launched an app for both Android and iPad. If the scores of Pinterest users who liken it to “online crack” didn’t have enough access to it, they do now. Additionally, version 2.0 of the iPhone app is available for download in iTunes, offering a new format and some bug fixes.