Hurricane apps track storms on mobile devices

The start of the Atlantic hurricane season is June 1 and there are several apps in Apple's App Store and Google Play that can help you stay informed through news stories, social media feeds, NOAA radar images, and other tools.

iHurricane HD: Tracks storms, pushes alerts, includes satellite images. Free on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Android.

NOAA Now: News articles, satellite images, and advisories. Free on iPhone, iPad. Android $0.99.

Hurricane Express: Satellite loop images, forecast models, tracking maps, Twitter feed, Spanish-language bulletins. $0.99 on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

NOAA Radar U.S.: Great mix of interactive infrared satellite and radar images that zoom into neighborhood streets to check hyper-local weather patterns. iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $1.99.

Hurricane: Historical information on past hurricane seasons, news feed with links to hurricane and severe weather stories, Spanish-language bulletins. iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. $1.99.

SeaStorm: Tracking tools and marine maps showing water temperatures, wind and wave forecasts, and other advisories for mariners. Android. $1.99.


This article comes from:http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-hurricane-apps-20120529,0,7184815.post

The Latest iOS Jailbreak Is Here - Should You Bother?

A mere three weeks after Apple released iOS 5.1.1, the jailbreaking community has cracked it wide open. The latest version of the Absinthe jailbreaking tool is now available for download and it covers most iOS 5-compatible generations of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Because of changes in hardware - most notably the A5 processor - it took hackers several months to jailbreak iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Now that the biggest technical hurdles have been overcome, these new jailbreaks are coming out more rapidly.

Who Is Absinthe 2.0 For?
The new version of Absinthe covers almost every version of the iPad (except second generation iPads sporting the 32-nanometer chipset) and every iPhone since the second generation (3G). The two most recent iterations of the iPod Touch are supported as well. If you own any of these devices, Absinthe 2.0 should work for you.

If you have any desire to customize your iOS device or run apps that aren't authorized by Apple, jailbreaking is the way to do it. These tools have become easier to use, so it doesn't take a computer science degree from MIT to unlock one's device from Apple's control. With Absinthe, it's a matter of backing up the device in iTunes, clicking a button in the Absinthe UI, waiting and then restoring the device.

Why Jailbreak in the First Place?
Jailbreaking is not about pirating apps, as devotees of the practice are often quick to point out. It's also perfectly legal. For most users, it's about counteracting the type of top-down control for which Apple has long been famous.

Once you've run Absinthe or an equivalent tool, your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch will be granted access to Cydia, which is a repository of apps and tweaks for iOS that would never make their way past Apple's approval process. Some of them are experimental apps. Some are tweaks that let you alter the way the phone's UI looks and works.

Apple has a tendency to adopt many of the features that the jailbreak community has developed. It even hired Nicholas Allegra, a developer better known as Comex, who launched a dead simple, browser-based tool called JailbreakMe.

Over time, the specific rationale for jailbreaking has evolved, and as iOS itself moves forward, nabbing ideas from jailbreak hackers here and there, so too does the community of developers who work on the hacks, apps and tweaks that make the process worth it for so many people.

For owners of the iPhone 4S, for example, jailbreaking helps extend Siri's functionality in ways that Apple is not yet ready to endorse, even if they are perfectly useful. Other popular tweaks do things like animate the homescreen, allow more apps within folders, add a fifth icon to the dock and enable more features and controls within Notification Center.

There are also legally questionable advantages, such as the ability to download classic video game emulators and use your phone's data connection as a wireless hotspot without going through your carrier.

This article comes from:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the-latest-ios-jailbreak-is-here-should-you-bother.php

Apple Could Be at $1,000 Sooner Than You Think

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) shares may have been waffling about in recent weeks, but it's not a crime to dream bigger.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reiterated his bullish call on the company. He outlined several catalysts that will drive the stock toward his price target of $910 -- and then out to $1,000 and beyond.
 
That magically round four-digit number seems far away these days. The stock has meandered since hitting an all-time high last month. However, it's not as if the market should be shocked if Apple finds its way up to that meaty $1,000 milestone sooner rather than later.

Cheap is relative
Let's put things into proper perspective. Apple at $1,000 translates into a market cap of nearly $950 billion, but keep in mind that the class act of Cupertino has $110.2 billion in cash and long-term investments on its balance sheet. In other words, Apple at $1,000 with its top-heavy balance sheet calls for an enterprise value closer to $850 billion.

Apple's balance sheet is an important component in valuing the company. After all, on a market-cap basis, Apple is fetching 12 times this fiscal year's projected profitability, and a little more than 10 times next year's forecast. Back out the company's net cash to weigh Apple on the fairer enterprise value basis, and the multiples drop by roughly 20%. Yes, Apple really is fetching just 10 times this year's earnings and 8 times next fiscal year's target.

Now let's look at Apple with a share price of $1,000. Its P/E starts looking more like P.U. at that point. Apple would be priced at 21 times this fiscal year's earnings and less than 19 times next year's earnings. That doesn't seem like much of a bargain, especially as analysts see revenue and earnings growth slowing to 20% and 15% respectively in 2013.

Stack that up against Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) . Analysts see China's dot-com darling growing revenue and earnings by 42% and 39% respectively next year, and it's only fetching 18 times 2013's earnings. Is Apple really worth a slightly higher multiple at less than half the growth?

Well, when you back out the company's cash -- and it would be closer to 13% of Apple's market cap at $1,000 -- the fiscal 2013 multiple on an enterprise cap basis is closer to 16. Oh, and even with Apple's new dividend and next year's buybacks, the company's cash hoard will continue to grow with every passing quarter.

Target practice
Another thing that makes Apple cheaper than it seems on paper is that it's a pretty safe bet that the tech darling is going to obliterate Wall Street's estimates.
With the exception of a rare miss two quarters ago, Apple has consistently landed ahead of market profit expectations for years. Outside of that Halley's Comet of a miss, Apple has landed ahead of analyst bottom-line forecasts by 34%, 37% and 23% over the past year.
This is ridiculously encouraging -- and probably by more than you think.
It's not just that dozens of well-paid analysts are perpetually underestimating Apple's reality. It's that they are way off the further out they go.

See, we can't just look at the average percentage that Apple has historically achieved in its beats. Let's look at the past year. Let's add in the 5% miss during Apple's September quarter, even if it stemmed largely from analysts underestimating the impact of the iPhone 4S being released after the period came to a close. We're still talking about Apple landing ahead of the prognosticators by an average of 22%.

The knee-jerk bullish reaction would be to just apply that markup to the $53.95 a share that the market's banking on for the fiscal year that begins in October. At $1,000, Apple would be trading at just 15 times the $65.82 a share that landing 22% ahead of the target implies.
But it gets better.
A lot better.

You haven't seen anything yetApple beats are based on what the pros were forecasting at the time. Analysts have a silly ritual. They miss a quarter. They jack up their estimates. It isn't enough. A quarter later, they jack them up again. Yes, this even happened during last year's quarterly miss -- as analysts slapped their foreheads and realized that Apple would be selling a ton of iPhones during the new holiday quarter.

Let's flesh out the magnitude of this very important point. Just six months ago, analysts were expecting a profit of $34.77 a share in fiscal 2012 and $38.96 a share in 2013. Today, those targets have increased by 35% to $46.94 a share this year, and 38% to $53.95 a share come next year. In other words, even before we get to the actual beat, the starting line is being moved up aggressively.

Here, history teaches us that the further out you go, the larger the gap between perception and eventual realization will be.

What I'm trying to tell you is that if you eye the fiscal 2015 target of $80.59 a share -- argue that $1,000 would be a pretty cheap price for Apple then -- that you shouldn't be surprised when Wall Street's estimates are far higher than even that as we get closer.

So don't be surprised if Apple hits $1,000 in a matter of months -- and not years. Time has been very kind to Apple. Reality has been even kinder.

This article come from:http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/05/27/apple-could-be-at-1000-sooner-than-you-think.aspx

Apple's next invention: The iPen?

Yahoo has launched a new tool for searching the Web, called Yahoo Axis. This is not a browser, but rather a plug-in that attaches to your desktop browser, and it's also an app for Apple devices. So why use it? It's supposed to be a faster way to comb through search results. Start typing in your search term, and a horizontal bar will showcase thumbnail previews of websites you can jump to. Also, searches and bookmarks are saved across all your devices that use Axis.

But perhaps Yahoo just launched this too quickly. For starters, a security hole was found in the browser add-on. And I found the desktop version irritating to use. The tool attaches itself to the bottom-left corner and blocked anything in that space. I couldn't access spreadsheet tabs in Google Docs because the Axis bar was in the way.

Regardless of the tweaks they still need to make, Axis proves Yahoo can be innovative in search. (But as for Yahoo's advertising, well, it could use some work. Bro, headbutting the Web doesn't make you more awesome.)

Apple has filed a patent application for the iPen. It would be a stylus that gives feedback with vibration, and it would feel different depending on how the pen was pressed or how quickly it moved across a screen. The site Patently Apple was first to uncover the application, but keep in mind that Apple often files applications for products that never become real. This idea was originally filed with the Patent office at the end of 2010, but it was made public Thursday.


After a month, the case of Oracle versus Google is at its end. The jury found that Google did not infringe on two of Oracle's patents. Now the judge has to make a final call on another question: Can APIs be copyrighted? If the judge says no, that's another win for Google. The trial starts back up on Tuesday to address that question.

The updated Google+ app is now available for Android users. Aside from the snazzy new look, it also lets users edit posts from the app and start a video chat Hangout though the Android phoneor tablet. Hangout requests can also ring on the phone like an incoming call.

Have you lost your addiction to Draw Something? There's been a big decline in users for the game, even though just a few weeks ago it was top of the download charts. But Zynga told the Wall Street Journal that the game still has plenty of life.

Want to share your thoughts on a story? Your questions and comments can make it on the show! Use Tout to message Bridget with a 15 second video reply from your webcam or smartphone camera. Or, simply post a reply video to the CNET YouTube channel. You can alsosend an email.


This article comes from:http://news.cnet.com/8301-33692_3-57441190-305/apples-next-invention-the-ipen/

Future Generates More Than $5 Million in Revenue Since October Launch on Apple's Newsstand

Future, a leading specialist hybrid media group, today announced a milestone in its digital strategy, generating more than $5 million in gross revenue from over 830,000 copy sales across its brands since Apple's Newsstand launched in October 2011.  The success is a testament to the company's move from traditional print to digital, as the business restructures around high value audiences and a truly borderless digital marketplace for its market-leading products.

"As part of an aggressive digital strategy, our launch on Apple's Newsstand exemplifies the success of our transition and underlines the vitality of our brands," said Rachelle Considine, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Future US. "Our focus on creating a clear, unified global product line and digital platform are already helping us to unlock the potential for our best-in-class specialist content in both domestic and international markets. As tablet penetration continues at a pace, Future has a golden opportunity to deliver its wealth of high value content to audiences beyond the reach of our print products."

Future's successful fast-to-market approach demonstrates its ability to quickly address the rapidly evolving media marketplace by developing and delivering relevant digital products. Additionally, Future's success in the tablet market underlines the global appeal of its content, ranging from technology and cycling to gaming, music, movies, crafts, and digital design.

Brands including Mac|Life, Total Film, Fast Car, T3 and many of Future's games and music titles have all found large international audiences through their exposure to tablets like Apple's iPad. Overall, 33% of revenues through the Newsstand have come from the domestic U.S. market, with 25% coming from the U.K. and the other 42% coming from countries as diverse as China, Korea, Germany and France. Additionally, more than 50% of all the revenues are attributable to subscriptions sold.

In the U.S., Mac|Life has seen tremendous success, quickly becoming the top selling technology magazine on Newsstand.

Future has also developed its own proprietary software called FutureFolio, as an Apple-approved app creation tool for enhanced and interactive digital products on the Newsstand, and is licensing this software to other publishers.

"FutureFolio was developed by us to deliver the flexibility we need to create flexible and interactive apps for our iPad editions. We believe it could potentially be a leading industry standard among other publishers who are looking to take a similar approach of going from print to digital," said Considine. "The success of our launch on Apple Newsstand not only puts Future ahead of other publishers in this arena, but reveals that people pay for digital content.

Through FutureFolio, we hope to reveal new opportunities and channels for the digital publication market."
This article comes from:http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/future-generates-more-5-million-173000148.html

iBooks author:Create and publish amazing Multi-Touch books for ipad

 

Available free on the Mac App Store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.

This article comes from:http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/

Apple, Samsung CEOs Begin Two-day Court-directed Talks To Settle Patent War

The heads of U.S. technology giant Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (SSNLF.PK, SSNNF.PK) are currently engaged in talks at a U.S. federal court to reach an out of court settlement on the various patent lawsuits against each other.
Teams led by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung have begun their two-day court directed discussions on Monday to reach a settlement, after the CEO's were summoned and directed by federal court judge Lucy Koh back in April. The talks are being mediated by a magistrate judge.
Though Cook has always maintained that he dislikes legal action and prefers to settle disputes rather than sue, Samsung has reportedly mentioned that they are far from an agreement and sees cross-licensing as a neat settlement option.
Apple and Samsung are locked in various patent infringement battles in at least 12 courts, nine countries, and four continents involving smartphone and tablet patents since April 2011. They have accused each other of copying design and patent infringements primarily in Australia, Britain, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy.
Cupertino, California-based Apple has alleged that Samsung copied designs and features in its iphone Smartphones and ipad tablets, while Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung has claimed that Apple uses a number of its patents without a license. Apple has continued to seek injunctions and import bans.
In the past one year and more, Apple and Samsung have sued and countersued each other numerous times, with Apple mostly having an upper hand. Samsung's countersuits have mostly failed to win injunctions. However, Samsung has always worked around the lawsuits to continue selling their Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets across the world, with the lawsuits not having any effect on their shipments.
Since the patent war began in April 2011, Samsung's smartphone shipments have increased four-fold, and has also reportedly exceeded Apple's iPhone sales by a large margin in the first quarter. Samsung has also reportedly narrowly beaten Apple in smartphone shipments in 2011.
With the smartphone and tablet PC segments being among the fastest-growing markets in the technology sector, companies are using patent lawsuits as a tool to ward off competition and to garner higher market share.
This article comes from:http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-samsung-ceos-begin-two-day-court-directed-talks-to-settle-patent-war-20120521-01319

Apple forces new name for London Apple Expo, Microsoft signs up

Apple has sent legal correspondence to the organiser of a London based Apple Expo warning them that use of the name Apple is a trademark infringement.

However, this hasn't stopped Microsoft booking a stand at the newly renamed Appule Expo that will take place in London this October. This will be the first Mac show to run in London since 2008. The Mac Expo show was last run London in 2007, then renamed Creative Pro Expo in 2008 before ceasing. The Apple Expo show last ran in Paris in 2008. 
The Appule Pro User Live Expo will take place at The Barbican in London on 11 and 12 October 2012. According to the website it is "strictly for professional Apple Computer users only". However, the iPad, iPhone and iPod are not forgotten: "Design, print, publishing, audio, video, photo, web. PLUS business applications & specialist products. PLUS iPhone, iPad, iPod for business - all under one roof for two days," states the website.

Tickets will go on sale in June. Subscribers to Macworld can apply for free admission to Appule. 

The show can't be called Apple Expo because Apple has sent legal correspondence to organiser Indigo Media, warning of potential trademark infringement, according to reports. 
Microsoft is said to be planning to showcase its Office for Mac products at the Appule show, which may suggest that a Mountain Lion enhanced update to the Office suite is in the pipeline before October. Microsoft is also said to be working on Office tools for iPad and iPhone, which it may be planning to demo at the UK show.

There is zero chance of Apple attending the Appule show. The company claims that it gains more access to consumers via its Apple Stores than it ever did via trade shows. 

Mac Expo was last held at Olympia in 2007, the year that Apple pulled out from exhibiting at the show. In 2008, Apple said it would not participate in the Paris Expo. Then Apple announced that 2009 would be its last year at the largest Mac gathering, the San Francisco based Macworld Conference & Expo.

The company issued a press release at the time, claiming: "Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple's Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million.
This article comes from:http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/inews/apple-forces-new-name-for-london-apple-expo-microsoft-signs-up
















people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways."

Apple Patents Steering Wheel Remote Control For Safer 'Hands-Free' Driving

As smartphones and tablets become more ubiquitous in our ever more mobile world, driving becomes an increasingly dangerous activity. Local and federal governments are trying to enact "hands-free" laws to keep people's attention on the road, and devices and technologies like Bluetooth are doing their parts to keep drivers safe. Apple has created ways to make its iPhones completely hands-free (thanks to Siri and VoiceOver), but iPods, which are often the music players of choice now over in-car CD players and radio systems, still require a drivers' hands and attention to operate.
Apple hopes to make all drivers safer with a new invention that lets users wirelessly control the music playing in their car without ever taking their hands off the steering wheel. In a patent that was quietly granted on Tuesday, Apple describes a remote control that can be clipped onto any car's steering wheel, which borrows largely from the original iPod clickwheel but also adds a new touch-sensitive element to the design.
In its patent filing, Apple explained that most cars contain in-vehicle entertainment systems that can interface with a portable media device (like an iPod, iPhone or iPad), which essentially allows riders to control their music players through the in-car system. Yet some in-car entertainment systems can't control an external device, so users must use the controls on the iPhone or iPod itself. This can be extremely dangerous, as adjusting iDevices takes precious attention away from the road.
Apple's solution to this attention dilemma is a wireless remote control that can fit on any car steering wheel, which can be configured to control any portable media device. The remote is essentially a faceplate with a clickwheel identical to that of the iPod, except that this clickwheel is touch-sensitive. The sensors on the faceplate can detect pressure from a finger, but can also detect the location and magnitude of the pressure sensation thanks to a sensing mechanism based on capacitive sensing, resistive sensing, and surface acoustic wave sensing.
The remote connects to the steering wheel using hinged "clamping feet," which can accommodate steering wheels with various thicknesses in a few ways: It can move laterally along the steering wheel, and the hinges can also move mechanically closer or farther apart to clamp onto different-sized wheels. Since the clamps at the bottom of the remote can be moved to any point in the steering wheel, the faceplate itself can be rotated in 360 degrees to accomodate any orientation on the wheel.
This article comes from:http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/342436/20120517/apple-patents-steering-wheel-remote-control-driving.htm

Apple Flashback Removal tool hits Leopard

The malicious software known as Flashback has been a burden on the Apple world for some weeks now, Apple this week sending out an official Flashback removal tool to those users working with the Apple OS X Leopard operating system. This fix comes in the form of a security update not unlike what we’ve seen for OS X Lion in weeks past as well, this version coming in under the name Leopard Security Update 2012-003. This package comes aside another download by the name of FlashBack Removal Security Update, both of these downloads available via your own software update page which can be accessed by hitting the Apple in the upper right-hand side of your screen and scrolling down to “Software Update.”


This set of two updates is ready to remove all known variants of the malware at hand. If you do use any version of Apple’s OS X or Mac OS X software, you should check for a software update immediately. Flashback software has already found its way to thousands of computers across the entire earth, infecting users without their knowledge. The software then works to grab advertisement cash by having your web browsers load webpages without your consent, the creators of the Flashback software netting thousands of dollars in the process.
This software update is now live for both Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion as well as OS X 10.5 Leopard and can, once again, be accessed via a simple check of your Software Updates page from your desktop. This upgrade is not mandatory, but we suggest very much that you install and execute as soon as possible. Have a peek at our timeline below to see the effects of the Flashback software as it spread across the Apple world over the past few weeks.
This article comes from:http://www.slashgear.com/apple-flashback-removal-tool-hits-leopard-15228490/