AppleInsider reports today that the popular Gmail-based iOS email app, Mailbox, has now been updated by developer Orchestra, who have just released an iPad-specific version. Orchestra announced the news on their official blog, saying , “You asked, we listened. Mailbox is now available for iPad, so you can swipe your way to inbox zero on all your iOS devices.” Unfortunately for owners of older iPads, the app requires iOS 6 to run, however. Mailbox is popular because it makes your Gmail inbox a lot more user-friendly. According to the app’s iTunes blurb, features include being able to scan a whole conversation at once by organising it chat-style, and the ability to “snooze” your emails to read later with just one tap, meaning that they will automatically reappear in your inbox again once you’ve dealt with your current priority. Unfortunately the app is only compatible with Gmail at present, but Orchestra says that it is working on other versions.

Click here to download the free app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mail...576502633?mt=8

Source: Mailbox for iOS gains native iPad compatibility
Mailbox - Put Email In Its Place

As previously stated, the iPad has managed to become a very popular and worthy educational tool. Many schools and colleges hope to acquire grants in the hopes of purchasing iPads for their students. So far, feedback of using Apple tablets in the educational sector has been very positive, with students benefiting from such technology improving their grades visibly.

Now, Logitech is trying to penetrate this new education​​al sector as well, offering a brand new keyboard especially designed for the iPad. Logitech has put out a number of other iPad keyboards which function using Bluetooth, but this one conserves the wire that connects it to the “master” system. The new Wired Keyboard for iPad has been called “the first iPad keyboard made specially for the classroom environment”.

You might be thinking: what’s the advantage of using wires in the classroom? Logitech explains that the endeavor of syncing iPads with several wireless Bluetooth keyboards might be too complicated for teachers and students alike. But the problem goes away if you add the wire in the equation. You just turn on the iPad and start working.

The keyboard has big enough keys, a special home button and comes equipped with a Siri shortcut button. Most importantly, the accessory is water resistant, which is a very important attribute to have when you have to deal with children.

When customers will purchase the Wired Keyboard for iPad they will get a Lighting connector or a 30-pin connector. The keyboard is available for $59.99.

Source: Cnet

We have been reporting how innovators around the world have been using their iPads in ingenious ways all the time. Remember the iPad diary and its magic locket or the iPad cash register. This time, we’ll take you to a field that isn’t traditionally related to technology – art. But as we advance in the new millennium, technology has started infiltrating in every single sector of human activity.

Meet Japanese artist Seikou Yamaoka – who has posted some videos of himself creating beautiful drawings on his iPad. To do so, he makes use of the ArtStudio app and a lot of swaps. The videos found on the Internet are only a few minutes long but Yamaoka actually spent five hours working on his digital masterpieces. He created with his magic fingers the exact replica of Johannes Vermeer’s famous painting. In another video he “paints” a Japanese girl.​​

The images amaze the viewers with the complexity and degree of detail displayed in them. Every portrait seems more like an actual photograph. Yamaoka is not a stranger of creating art on Apple devices. He previously worked magic with his fingers on the iPod Touch using the same extremely cheap ArtStudio app.

The little software can be purchased by anybody who wants to try their hand at art for just $2.99. And if you think Yamaoka is only a digital artist, you should also check out his other videos. For example, the one where he uses watercolors to paint the portrait of a Japanese girl wearing a traditional kimono.

Source: Kotaku

Welcome to the Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai – one of the most luxurious places you can find in the whole wide world. It was designed by Khuan Chew and it stylishly combines lush Occidental and Oriental architecture. 8.000 square meters of the hotel are covered in golden foil so you can probably see that this is an extremely fancy place.

At the Burj al-Arab, guests can eat the finest dishes, relax in huge luxury suites and even have a butler following them around during the stay, fulfilling their every need. However, in order to spice things up for their guests, the hotel management introduced a new idea. Each guest checking in will be awarded a golden plated iPad when arriving at the hotel. The high end device is a 24-carat gold plated tablet provided by Gold & Co.

The iPad basically acts as a hotel guide, which is very useful indeed, since the establishment is quite massive. The tablet will keep guests up to speed regarding restaurants, spa services and basically finding things around in the hotel. The golden iPad costs no less than £6,715 ( around $10139) and guests must return it upon departure.

Every suite at the Burj al-Arab has an iMac, as well, proving that the hotel management is a very big fan of Apple products, apparently. Maybe more will start popping in soon. The Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai is the only 7 star hotel in the world, even if officially it is tagged as a 5 star deluxe one.

Source: Telegraph UK

Remember when you were a teenager and everything revolved around best friends, secrets and crushes? Well, since then, things have evolved a little bit as to accommodate the technology that is so characteristic of our era.

For example, ten years ago who wouldn’t have wanted a magic delete button in case your mom went snooping through your room worried that you are hanging out with the wrong people? Well, Dano ha​​s put out a virtual diary app entitled iHeart Locket Diary that works in concert with your iPad. The locking option is actually a safety measure. Are you insecure of leaving your secrets lying around? Are you worried your family might want to take a sneak peak at your secret information? Then just push the button embedded in the lock and all the diary entries will magically disappear from sight, as if written with invisible ink.

The app should prove to be quite appealing for teens. The interface is quite colorful and cute, featuring the possibility to write text, store pictures, transform speech to text and write post-it like notes.

Some parents might be reticent to buy their children such a locket, but the gadget could be also interpreted as a way for grownups to express their trust in their child. And as the era of technology progresses, notebooks and old school diaries will certainly become a thing of the past. The locket is available for purchase for only $24.99 and it could be a fun way to encourage creative writing in young adults.

Source: Cnet

Microsoft just announced their new sucessor to the Xbox 360, and it is not called the Xbox 720. It's called the Xbox One and it absolutely blew us away! From the fantastic specs to the rich and amazing feature-set, this new Xbox One is poised to take the home entertainment world by storm. The Xbox One will hit retail shelves later on this year and just might transform the way we think about games, movies, music, Skype video calling and more.

We are so excited we just had to start a new forum for this white hot device! We wanted to share it with you guys to give you an opportunity to join in on the discussions just begninning. Please check it out at the Xbox One Forums!

According to a solid batch of rumors, Apple is most likely setting up things to start the production of the next generation iPad. Yet we will not see it out on the market sooner than this autumn, as the assembly process is believed to kick start in July.

Analysts have been making predictions about the hardware and software components of the tablet, but also about its design. One of the most prominent Apple analysts, Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI Securities, supports the popular theory according to which the fifth generation iPad will sport a thinner and narrower frame. As a result, the next Apple tablet might also t​​urn out to be lighter. Actually, the latest report coming from DigiTimes claims that the iPad 5 will end up being up to 25-33% lighter than previous models. This coincides precisely with the predictions of the analyst mentioned above, who previously stated:

“The display of the new iPad, which will hit market shelves as early as September, will still be a 2,048 x 1,536 Retina display, the same as the one used in the 4th-generation model, except that the new display is built on a glass substrate of 0.2mm, thinner than the 0.25mm one for the 4th-generation device, the sources said, adding the new table will has a narrow bezel.”

If we listen to the rumors, we can obviously see that the design of the new iPad is quite similar to the iPad mini. This has been seen as well, in leaked photographs that supposedly showcase a fifth generation iPad sporting a narrow bezel and a cover glass.

Source: MacRumors

Rumors of Apple designing a smart watch users could just wear around their wrists have been popping up now and then, but recently they have intensified. This indicates that theory is slowly becoming reality. This week we have stumbled upon another piece of information that seems to hint that the iWatch will soon become a tangible object.

Reports coming from Taiwan Economic Times via sources familiar with the matters at hand claim Apple is ready to start the experimental stage for its iWatch project. Even more, the tech giant has unleashed the production process. Testing will begin with the building of 1.5-inch OLED displays.

According to the newspaper, RITEK’s RITdisplay has already started to produce and test displays that resemble the ones seen in iPod nanos. Ritek is a company that produces flash memory, LED products, AMOLED and OLED screens mainly. The sensors for the smart watch are going to be produced by one of Ritek’s partners – RitFat.

The second report claims that, one of Apple’s leading manufacture partners, Foxconn, has already received specific orders to start building the iWatch and is now gathering the supplies it needs to kick start.

Previous rumors have stated that Apple technology chief Bob Mansfield is especially promoting the iWatch. A team of 100 or more engineers has been set up to work on the device and they designed the screen taking inspiration from OLED screens.

If the rumors are correct, the iWatch might be one of the amazing products Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company will release in autumn? We surely hope so.

Source: AppleInsider

Forbes reports today on a new interview with Bill Gates on the 60 Minutes news show, during which he talks about his friendship with Steve Jobs. In the excerpt at the top of this post, he talks about how he spent a lot of time with Jobs during his final days, saying that even towards the end, Jobs was not “melancholy” but was instead talking about what Apple had yet to achieve, and even about the new boat that he was building, despite knowing that he most likely would not live to enjoy the boat. Gates also talks about how Apple beat Microsoft in coming up with a viable tablet first, even though Microsoft had been thinking about launching a tablet prior to the launch of the iPad. Gates also said how he wished that he had had Jobs’ sense of design, “everything had to fit a certain aesthetic.” It really is a very nice interview to watch, so be sure to check out the clip at the top of this post if you missed the original interview.

Thanks to Super Moderator AdmiralAdama for the heads-up on this story.

Source: Apple Loop: The $610,000 Cup of Coffee, Cook's Tax Talk, Bill Gates On 'Growing Up' With Steve Jobs - Forbes

Yahoo’s Small Business Advisor writes today that Philips has just launched an intelligent LED light bulb called the Hue 1.1, and has partnered with Apple in order to distribute the light bulb to early adopters by selling it in Apple stores. So what exactly are the main features of a “smart” light bulb? According to Philips, Hue has a geofencing feature meaning that it can be programmed (via an iOS app) by the user to change colour, or turn off or on when you enter or leave your home or office. In fact, Philips says that owners of Hue light bulbs, “don’t ever worry if [they’ve] switched [their] lights off or not. Just walk out the front door and they’ll switch themselves off.”


Yahoo explains that the smart bulb also has an alarm feature, whereby it can be set to wake the owner up naturally by slowly becoming brighter at your chosen wake-up time. As you might expect, Hue has many other timer features, such as turning itself off, or flashing, or changing its colour at set times. Hue bulbs can even be configured to change colour for certain set events, such as letting you know when it’s raining (this one would be on all the time in the UK!), blinking to show when your sports team that you follow is starting to play, and you can even change the colour randomly via text message. Although this all sounds like fun, Hue bulbs have some practical uses too, such as flooding a room with bright light automatically if someone is moving around inside the house in the early hours of the morning, for example. This could be used to startle a burglar and alert the householder of their presence, or stop an elderly person from falling over and hurting themselves in the dark.

As you might expect from all that, the bulbs are pretty pricey, with a starter set costing $200, and each Hue bulb costing $60. This price is expected to halve by 2020, however, and by 70% in the next 10 years.

Source: Philips Partners with Apple on Smart LED Bulb - Yahoo! Small Business Advisor

If you’re an avid iOS gamer, then AppleInsider has some great news for you today, reporting that two of Gameloft’s very popular games are available to download for free for a short time (no idea for how long). The games in question are Gangstar Rio: City of Saints, and N.O.V.A. 3, and both usually retail for around $6. There’s no denying that Gameloft’s games are often a little similar (cough) to other games such as Grand Theft Auto, but this doesn’t make them any less fun to play. Gangstar Rio sees the player controlling a customizable gangster in Rio, across more than 60 missions, wielding lots of weapons, and even flying with the aid of jetpacks! N.O.V.A.3 - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance is the latest edition to this incredibly popular FPS series of games from Gameloft, where the player takes on the role of an armoured shooter on a mission to save the earth. You can even indulge in 12-player multiplayer battles using live chat. So if all that sounds enticing to you, then click on the links below, but be warned, both games are very large to download, with N.O.V.A.3 weighing in at 1.69GB, and Gangstar Rio taking up 878MB.

Click here to download N.O.V.A. 3 - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/n.o....474764934?mt=8

Click here to download Gangstar Rio - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gang...453051448?mt=8

Source: Gameloft's Gangstar Rio, N.O.V.A. 3 go free on iOS for a limited time

The US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command spokesperson has told James Rogers of The Street, via AppleInsider, that using iPads instead of bulky flight manuals will save the US Air Force $750,000 on fuel alone, and will save a further $5 million per year in printing costs. In total this would come to a saving of $5.7 million annually, adding up to a saving of over $50 million in the next 10 years according to Major Brian Moritz, manager of AMC’s electronic flight back program.

"We're saving about 90 pounds of paper per aircraft and limiting the need for each crew member to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper file," Moritz told Rogers. "It adds up to quite a lot of weight in paper."

AppleInsider says that Rogers also got to see the iPad in action in the US Air Force up close and personal when he was embedded with the force recently, so he knows what he’s talking about. Rogers said that using iPads instead of paper manuals would reduce the weight carried by a C-5 aircraft by around 490 pounds.

Source: US Air Force expects to save $50M with use of 18K Apple iPads