Velocity Micro is refreshing its NoteMagix line of laptops with three 14-inch Ultrabooks: the U430, U450 and U470. These models aren't the thinnest machines in their category -- the aluminum design tips in at four pounds -- but all three have enough room for a DVD drive. All three models also feature a 14-inch display with a resolution of 1,366 x 768 -- and, notably, none of them come with bloatware. Other specs include a 1.3-MP webcam, integrated Intel HD 4000 Graphics and a rated battery life of six hours.
The $800 NoteMagix U430 is the entry-level model, with a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive spinning at 5,400 RPM. The $900 U450 steps up to a Core i5 processor and a 120GB SSD, while the $1,100 U470 runs a Core i7 chip with 240GB of solid-state storage. The Ultrabooks are available now through Velocity Micro's site -- check out the source link for a closer look.
Facebook announced Thursday that it is testing a system that will let users send prioritized messages to people who aren't among their contacts by paying $1. The initial test, part of an effort to monetize its user base, involves a small group of people. Currently, any messages Facebook members send to non-contacts go into a folder labeled "Other."
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday launched a smartphone security checker website to help consumers ensure their devices are as secure as possible. The page lists various mobile operating systems and also points to a general checklist of actions users can take to secure their smartphones.
Accompanying the release is the launch of Spark, a cute social game that's designed to fuel the adoption of Firefox 4 Mobile, much like last week's use of Glow and Twitter Party during Firefox 4 PC's release.
While the browser still feels a little rough around the edges, it's definitely worth trying out if you're still using Android's stock browser. Its JavaScript performance is significantly better than any other Android browser, and if you use Firefox on your PC, its built-in Sync functionality is awesome.
Over the next few days we'll have plenty of tips and tricks for Firefox 4 Mobile, and a list of the best add-ons available for the new browser.
HP has become the first major OEM to deliver support for Google Cloud Print in retail-boxed printers. In an official release, HP announced that its ePrint-enabled printers are now fully Cloud Print compatible. Just sign in to your Google account, pick your HP ePrint device, and you're ready to fire off a print job from anywhere you've got Internet access. Well, as long as your app supports Cloud Print as well -- like Gmail and Google Docs, for example.
We're curious, though -- how many of you are still printing? Like our pals at Engadget, our printers have been mostly gathering dust for the last few years.
The App Store is flooded with apps, both good and bad, so it can be overwhelming to decided which apps you're going to spend your hard earned cash (or gift cards) on. Stress no more! We've gathered up some of our all time favorite iPad apps that we believe to be worth every penny.
1Password 4
1Password is not only one of the best apps for your iPhone, but one of the best for your iPad, Mac, and PC as well. With 1Password, you can say goodbye to using the same, insecure password for all your logins all over the internet and instead give each login its own individual secure password yet only need to remember one password to gain access to them all.
1Password is not just extremely useful and practical, but it's very well designed and gives the perfect combination of functionality and beauty.
Apple's built-in Calendar app on the iPad is great and all, but if you yearn for something different, Calendars by Readdle by be just what you're looking for. This full-featured calendar app will sync with Google and iOS Calendar and has a great design. Calendar has support for custom repeating events and feature special keyboards for different entry elements to make it quick to enter events. You can also swipe between screens (something that you surprisingly can't do with the built-in Calendar app) and the week and day views feature a visual/spacial design that many users consider a must-have.
Tweetbot has been one of our favorite Twitter apps for quite some time, now. It's perfect for the power tweeter, with useful features like intuitive gestures, granular notifications, and flexible mute filters all wrapped up in fun sounds and a great design.
One of the great advantages to the iPad over the iPhone is that it's larger screen is awesome for photo editing -- especially on the Retina iPad. Camera+ was originally an iPhone photography app that focused on taking better photos, but it's come a long way since then and now includes great tools and sharing options for the iPad. And if you use an iPhone, your photos will seamlessly sync between Camera+ on your iPhone and iPad.
The iPad is a great device for editing videos and creating movies, but with the restrictions of simply shooting video and trimming clips, the built-in Camera app doesn't give you much flexibility, but iMovie does! iMovie is a fantastic video editor because it's super easy to make fun videos in just a matter of minutes. Videographers may yearn for more, but for everyone else, iMove is an excellent video editor for the iPad.
If you own a printer, Foldify will make it fun again. If you don't own a printer, Foldify will make you seriously consider rushing out to get one. The reason for that is Foldify's ability to project itself from the iPad, where the app runs, to the real world, where the app's results live. The idea is remarkable simple -- draw one pre-defined templates, then print them out, fold them up, and enjoy real, touchable, arrangeable models of what you made. The execution is even more remarkable, because the developers managed to keep the app as simple as the idea, and that's no easy feat.
Weather 2x is an absolutely gorgeous weather app for both the iPhone and iPad. The included gestures are perfect and intuitive and the information is displayed and organized in a very elegant manner. If you're in the market for a full-featured weather app that includes everything under the sun, then Weather 2x isn't for you, but if you're looking for a beautiful, minimalist weather app that brings the most important information to you in an elegant package then Weather 2x may be exactly what you're looking for.
Instapaper is one of the most popular read-later services on the web and iPad that saves web pages and articles for offline reading and is optimized for readability on your device's screen. It offers a distraction-free text only environment with the ability to adjust fonts, text sizes, line spacing, and margins to truly satisfy your specific reading needs. You can save articles to Instapaper via a bookmarklet that you save in Safari or from one of the many Twitter, reading, and social apps in the App Store.
If you use Google Reader, you want Reeder - plain and simple. It's an RSS reader that will sync with your Google Reader account and present your feeds on a beautiful and clean interface. You can also choose to sync with Fever and Readability and Reeder allows you to share to nearly every social service out there.
Instacast 3 is the all new version of Vemedio's popular iPhone and iPad podcasting app. With it, Vemedio has switched out a lot of old methods for newer technologies like automatic reference counting and Core Data to make Instacast better and faster. Alongside these fancy new technologies is Instacasts new Cloud sync. Instead of using Apple's iCloud to keep your podcasts in sync, the folks at Vemedio put in a lot of work to create their own. All you need to do to use it is sign-up for a free account and all your data will be seamlessly moved to the cloud. If Apple's free Podcasts app isn't up to your needs, give Instacast a whirl.
Byword is a text and Markdown editor that focuses on being simple, distraction free, and beautiful. It's available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac and can keep all your work in sync via iCloud or Dropbox. It also features a special keyboard with a swipable row at the top that includes selective word and character counters, a tab key, smart paring characters, and undo key, Markdown helpers, and more.
Notability is a full-featured handwriting app that you can use to take notes, annotate PDFs, and more. The inking in Notability is quite beautiful and taking the tiniest of notes is a breeze with the zoom window or by simply pinching-to-zoom into your document. In addition to handwritten notes, Notability allows you to add text and record audio notes. It also feature a convenient auto-sync feature with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or WebDav so that you can be assured that your notes are always backed up and accessible from anywhere.
Some people poke fun at the idea of taking photos with an iPad, but Scanner Pro offers an unarguably awesome use for the iPad's camera -- the ability to scan documents and store them as PDFs. The resulting scans look just like a job done by a scanner, not a camera. Scanner Pro features an auto-edge detector that is very accurate and will help fix any distortion that you may have capture by not taking the photo from directly above the document. It also syncs with iCloud, Dropbox, and more to ensure that your documents are accessible from any device.
Want to create posters, write papers, design spreadsheets, and create presentations? Apple's iWork suite consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote has go you covered. All three of these apps are universal for both the iPhone and iPad and sync over iCloud with their Mac counterparts.
This really is just a short list of fantastic apps out there, and we know there's some other great ones that have been left out. That's where you come in! What are the best paid apps you have installed on your iPad and use regularly? Let us know in the comments below!
If you're keeping track of the multiple, and let's face it, tiresome Samsung / Apple patent debacle, a document that just turned up at the ITC might spell more trouble for the Korean manufacturer. It's a publicly redacted version of Judge Pender's recommendations, and pertains to the October ruling that deemed Samsung borrowed four of Cupertino's designs. The most iconic being design patent D618,678 (that which you see above). The others include multi-touch patent 7,479,949 (which was tentatively invalidated) along with two other patents (RE41,922 and 7,912,501) relating to graphic display elements and audio hardware detection. If the recommendations are adopted -- and FOSS Patents suggests this is entirely possible -- Samsung could face a US import ban after a 60 day presidential review, an order prohibiting "significant" sales of infringing products in America along with a posting a bond for 88 percent of the entered value of mobile phones (plus 32.5 percent for media players and 37.6 percent for tablets) that include the breaching design features. Pender has, however, reportedly cleared several Samsung "designarounds" which, if implemented to satisfaction, would mean the tech giant could continue trading. For now though, the recommendations are awaiting the Commission's review.
At the core of any major political argument like gun control or abortion is power. If you believe in Argumentative Theory, these battles are less about actually doing the right thing and more about one side or the other gaining social status. For instance, right after the Newtown event, Twitter came alive with gun control advocates calling anyone on the other side any number of unacceptable names.
Working conditions at the Chinese factories operated by Foxconn, where vast amounts of the gadgets used around the world are made, including Apple's iPhone and iPad, are improving. Granted, that's going from truly terrible to slightly less bad, but it's movement and momentum in a direction decidedly better for the people who make the stuff that we use. That according to Keith Bradsher and Charles Duhigg, writing as part of the New York Times' iEconomy series.
When [Apple senior vice president of operations, Jeff Williams], returned from that March meeting to California, changes began. Among them, say people with firsthand knowledge, was the hiring of roughly 30 professionals into Apple’s social responsibility unit in the last year, which tripled the size of that division and brought high-profile corporate activists into the company. Two widely respected former Apple executives — Jacky Haynes and Bob Bainbridge — were recruited back to help lead the unit, reporting ultimately to Mr. Williams and the chief executive, Timothy D. Cook.
The iEconomy series itself seems to have changed as well. Apple isn't in the title of this article. Cynically, it's possible that an article about improvements doesn't benefit as much from the added sensationalism. Optimistically, it's possible that the NYT realized their focus on Apple was undermining the seriousness of the very real problems they're covering. (Though Apple enjoys the positive effects of the massive amount of attention they're given, and being singled out for criticism is the equal and opposite edge of that sword.)
Yet working conditions remain arduous, and problems multifaceted.
But last summer, fed up with the 25-hour train trip to see his family, Mr. Zhang moved to Chongqing and joined Quanta. He enjoys the better facilities and dorms. He frequently visits his parents’ home. But his take-home pay has fallen by nearly a third and the thought that his brother may have to drop out of school so he can help the family gnaws at Mr. Zhang. Instead of working in the factory each night, he spends hours playing an online game, Dungeon Fighter. “I’d like to work 80 hours a week,” he said.
It's a complex social and economic issue, and one that will take massive global, perhaps generational, changes to solve. Hopefully the improvements continue, and the effects ripple.
Boombotix is a San Francisco based company who originally started developing portable speakers for urban cyclists as an alternative to headphones. They currently have a Kickstarter project for a new speaker called the Boombot REX. The REX is an ultraportable 2.1 speaker system with a rugged ABS plastic body and a built in noise canceling [...]
Keeping track of battery life on your phone can be a major stressor for the obsessive compulsive. Battery Status is the perfect app to put those worries to bed. More »
Moments ago, Mozilla stripped the release candidate moniker from Firefox 4 Mobile and 
