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.

One of the biggest frustrations that iPad owners have had is that with the latest OS upgrade Apple has completely done away with the ability of the device to display stored lyrics from iTunes in the music player when playing music (not to mention that the music player generally now sucks – more on that in a moment). What do we mean by display lyrics stored in iTunes? What, you didn’t know that you can add lyrics to your songs in iTunes, and have them display when you are playing your music? Well now you do (by following that link)! And here’s how have those iTunes stored lyrics display on your iPad while you are playing music.

Ok, we’re about to share the greatest little secret: there is an app out there that works with your iTunes library to add lyrics to iTunes for your songs – all of your songs (or at least pretty darned near all). In case you weren’t aware, there is a function that allows you to add lyrics directly to the information associated with each of your songs in iTunes. And you can do it manually (search, find, copy, paste, lather, rinse repeat), but this little app does it for you automatically! We love this app!

Streaming radio service, Pandora, may soon be regretting opening its music box. Apple is apparently sticking with what should be their official mantra, “anything you can do, I can do better,” after reports began to leak that they are working on a streaming radio option of their own. With this one announcement, Pandora shares went into a tailspin, plunging 19%.

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.

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.

Amazon made an exciting announcement today that users can now watch Amazon Prime Instant Video on the iPad. It appears that Amazon is slowly acknowledging that a large portion of its Prime member base has, and is loyal to, an iPad. With many Prime members frustrated that the free book lending benefit of a Prime membership only works on an actual Kindle device, Amazon seems to finally have learned to play nice with their Kindle’s adversary with today’s announcement that Amazon Instant Video is now able to be used on the iPad.

Next time you use that iPad or iPhone, give a silent thanks to In-Q-Tel (pronounced “in q tel” or “incutel”), the CIA-run venture capital fund that has been integral in many technologies commonly used today, such as the touch screen. In q tel, also responsible for investing in what was the beginnings of the technology that became Google Earth, began in the late 90s and was born out of the CIA’s need to manage their huge mountain of data.

Lots of people love Apple, but not Sahar Sabet and Zack Jafarzadeh, two potential customers at different Apple stores in Georgia who were prevented from buying an iPad and iPhone, respectively, for fear that they (the Apple products) will end up in Iran. Iran and the United States are not close, which is why the U.S. holds a complete embargo against Iran, placing it in the company of Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. This means that U.S. goods, like iPads and other Apple products, cannot be exported or sold from the United States to these countries, and a U.S. person is prohibited from doing the same no matter where they are in the world.

We’ve been hearing reports of the LTE 4G iPad going to sleep connected to 4G, but not finding it again upon waking up. In fact, we often experience it ourselves – we will be working on the 4G iPad, and then either ‘sleep it’ with the button or simply let it go to sleep on its own – and when we wake it up again, it will have full bars of service, but no 4G. It’s annoying, but not fatal, and here are the easiest ways to deal with it.

Much of the technology world was stunned to learn that an antitrust lawsuit against technology giant, Apple Inc, and several book publishers, was filed by the US. Government Wednesday morning. The lawsuit charges that Apple and the named publishers conspired to raise the retail prices of electronic-books in order to shun the competition, namely Amazon.com, who many say has monopolized the e-book industry.

While it’s often fine to leave all of the apps running on your iPhone or iPad, sometimes, for various reasons, you want to completely shut down an app , i.e. kill it, stop it from running, or close it.  It’s actually really easy to completely close an iPhone app (or an iPad app), but this is another one of those things that, while easy, is not obvious.  So here is a step-by-step tutorial (only 3 steps!) to completely shut down and stop an app from running.

If you have wanted to add OCR (optical character recognition) to your iPhone or iPad, well have we got a treat for you! This free app will let you take a picture of the text you want to OCR recognize, and then it will email you the OCRed text (along with a copy of the image), within mere moments! Examples and link to this free iPhone app are below!

As part of our iPad series, we would like to introduce you to what we believe, hands-down, is the best iPad drawing game app out there. It also happens to be a fabulous iPhone and Android drawing game. The game is called “Draw Something”, and it is a cross between Pictionary and Boggle (mostly Pictionary, with a little Boggle thrown in). Warning: Draw Something is very addictive! But it’s also a game where you are interacting with others, and using your brain. And there is even a free version! Direct link included below.