Data sent from iTunes represents 1.9 percent of North American Internet traffic every night, a share beyond all other competing digital storefronts, but also well behind the bandwidth served up by Netflix.  ...

Miracles do happen. BlackBerry today announced that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will be available on iOS and Android this summer as a free download.

On the BlackBerry blog, BlackBerry employee Donny Halliwell stated that availability is dependent on approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play. BBM for iOS is huge, considering the number of people that use the system: over 51 million daily active users who use BBM an average of 1.5 hours per day, sending over 10 billion messages per day.

Rumors about an iOS version of BBM first started floating around in earnest in March of 2011, but this is the first word from BlackBerry that the app will actually appear.

BBM for iOS should feature the ability to do multi-person chats,...

Creaceed has released the next major version of its Prizmo iOS app, complete with an all new user interface and support for PDF files. Version 2.0 is now a Universal app, working on both the iPhone and iPad, and offers iCloud integration for automatically syncing documents between multiple devices. The document scanner has also been improved with automatic frame detection when taking images, as well as enhanced tools for better corner positioning when cropping. Other new features includes 30 new OCR languages, voice guidance for positioning documents within the camera's line of sight, and mult... ...

Mobile payment processor Square on Tuesday revealed a new hardware accessory for Apple's iPad: the Square Stand, which turns the popular tablet into a register capable of accepting credit card payments.   ...

Blackberry has announced that its BBM messaging service will be released as a free iOS app this summer, complete with support for iOS 6 and above. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said the release of BBM on other platforms is a “statement of confidence,” and noted that the free app is…

Internet payment company Square has announced a new accessory that turns your iPad into a high-tech cash register, complete with built-in credit-card swiper and a slew of point-of-sale accessories.

Aimed squarely—if you’ll pardon the pun—at small businesses, the $299 Square Stand allows you to connect an iPad to a secure card-swiping machine; it’s designed to work alongside the company’s free Register app. This, in turn, combines a credit-card-processing facility with a powerful point-of-sale system that can be used to maintain inventory and charge customers, essentially working like a souped-up version of a traditional cash register.

The Stand also features a hub that can be used to connect external accessories to the system, including a receipt printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanner. The current version works with an iPad 2 or a...

In a quiet server-side update, Apple has given Siri the ability to respond to requests with quotes, notably to suggest that the user is being too long-winded. When asking the assistant a question — presumably one that Apple’s servers find too long or difficult to parse — Siri responds with…

There are apps that teach kids the basics of programming.

And then there are robots that get the job done.

At least, that’s the vision of a group of four tech entrepreneurs who late last year formed a company with the purpose of creating educational robots for kids.

The Bay Area-based company, called Play-i, is still in the early stages of building out its bots and determining their form and functionality.

Vikas Gupta, Play-i’s founder and CEO, says the robots will be targeted at children aged 5 to 8, and will most likely work in conjunction with tablets. Using a tablet or other mobile device running compatible software, the child will be able to program his or her robot to perform certain actions.

Gupta says the company is aiming to keep the price point low — very low. Unlike the...

This might have been a good idea in 2008.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Square announced a new product called Square Stand for vendors using Square Register for iPad to process payments.

Square Stand features the familiar credit card reader that made Square so popular with smartphone and tablet owners. The stand looks to replace traditional POS cash registers by mounting an iPad in a stylish case that resembles Apple’s iMac desktop computers.

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Square can already replace your cash register with its...

There’s a fair bit of news coming out of Blackberry’s BlackBerry Live 2013 keynote this morning — the unveiling of the new Q5 Qwerty phone and the first point release update of BlackBerry 10 for the Z10. But the biggest news of all concerned BlackBerry’s plans for its popular messaging platform, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). At long last, the company is taking the service cross-platform.

Come summer, BlackBerry will release BBM as a standalone app. Initially, it will be targeted at Apple’s iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and above, and will provide a basic feature set. But CEO Thorsten Heins says the company intends to flesh it out further in the months that follow.

“We’re committed to making the BBM experience on...

Although BlackBerry has been rumored to bring its BBM messaging platform to iOS and other devices before, today the company has made things official announcing at its event that support for both iOS and Android will be arriving in the coming months. The service, which BlackBerry says currently has about  60 million monthly active users, will come to devices running iOS 6 and Android 4.0 or above when it’s launched as a free app sometime this summer in the App Store and Google Play.

The company said that it would be bringing messaging and groups functionality to new platforms first but also has plans to introduce voice features, screen sharing, and its just announced ”social engagement platform” dubbed ‘Channels’ in future releases. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said the company is “committed to making the BBM experience on other platforms as fully featured” as possible.

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While features...

Apple has told the US District Court in California hearing motions for the upcoming second patent-infringement trial against Samsung that it intends to add the Galaxy S4 as an infringing device. In order to do so, the iPhone maker will have to drop one of its previously-listed infringing devices from the list, such as the Galaxy S III, S II, Note or Nexus (among other possible models). Judge Lucy Koh is attempting to keep both companies down to a minimum number of patent claims and infringing devices.... ...

You can’t knock healthy competition.

Per The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Google announced that it will be upgrading its complimentary Google Drive storage space from 5 GB to 15 GB.

Google says the changes will be rolling out over the next several weeks to all customers. All that space is shared, so if you are just using Google Drive Photo (for example), that 15 GB is shared with any other Google services that require storage.

With this move, Google has unified its storage system, a similar concept to the Apple pool of iCloud storage, although at this point Apple does not count image storage in Photo Stream...

It’s a rumor, so it kinda sorta has to be true…

Per Cult of Mac, the next-gen iPhone 5S handset could come with a sapphire crystal capacitive touch home button that incorporates a new fingerprint sensor, according to supply chain sources in Taiwan and TechNews.tw.

Apple is expected to do away with the traditional physical home button, which has long been one of the most unreliable components on iOS devices. It’s thought that...

Adds two new designs geared toward image galleries, plus adds support for optimizing Web site images for Retina displays. ($79.99 new, free update, 37.8 MB)

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Aereo is bringing its streaming broadcast service to Atlanta, Georgia, on June 17th the company announced today.

//

The company has been making the headlines with its controversial methods for delivering its service.

Check out the full list of cities where Aereo plans to launch this year.

You can read the company’s press release below for all the details:

Aereo Sets Launch Date for Atlanta

Atlanta Will Be the Third City to Launch Aereo’s Groundbreaking Technology

More Than 5.3 Million Atlanta Metropolitan-Area Consumers Will Have Access to Aereo’s Innovative Antenna Technology to Watch Live...

Apple rumours have become almost beyond parody, an industry in themselves with websites, twitterfeeds and columns inches dedicated to digging them up and dishing them out. Charlotte Henry thinks that may be behind some of Apple's rushed products, and Apple fans, media and bloggers are to blame.

Adds support for OAuth 2.0 authorization and Google’s new CalDAV API for Google Calendar. ($29.99 new, free update, 9.4 MB)

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Analog Camera for iPhone by Realmac Software

From the wonderful folks who brought you Clear for iPhone and...

In a discussion of where Apple needs to take iOS 7, WWDC, and the App Store, TidBITS Contributing Editor and iOS programming book author Matt Neuburg contributes his exhausting mix of detailed analysis and irrepressible ranting to Chuck Joiner’s MacVoices podcast, along with John Brayton of Golden Hill Software.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Reader John has a hard disk gone bad and needs to recover some files off it before he moves on to a newer, more reliable disk. With that, though, he's having trouble deciding which data recovery software to use, in part because there are no good reviews of any options out there.

With iGoogle scheduled to be axed in November, orphans of that offering will be looking at alternatives like uStart, Protopage, Netvibes and Myfav.es. While those alternatives will meet the needs of many iGoogle users set adrift by the search company, some souls may want to create their own homepage substitutes for the versatile portal. Since the whole idea behind iGoogle is to avoid the hassle of creating homepages, it might seem a bit incongruous to suggest doing so as an alternative to it.

The $30 Innotraveler Universal Car Mount attaches to the inside of your car’s windshield, letting you mount your iPhone for easy access—say, for GPS guidance—while you’re on the road.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday issued Apple a patent for an audio-based input system in which various noises made on a laptop's chassis are translated into actions, basically turning the computer into one large input device.  ...

We've mentioned before that we are far from a paperless society. For now, at least, there are tasks that require a piece of paper for confirmation, proof of purchase, or a litany of other needs. Laser printers have existed since the first practical commercial model in 1984 and have been known for excellent text quality. One name present in printing for years at this point is Brother -- the lineage ......   ...

A brief posting on the Google Fiber blog has noted the addition of a new locality to Google Fiber. Gladstone, Missouri has voted to allow Google to expand its network to the city, a suburb of Kansas City. The new locality is Google's fifth announcement in a handful of weeks regarding expansion of its gigabit Internet service....  ...

Foursaken Media's Heroes and Castles has been updated yet again, with lots of new content to play. The game, which allows you to level up a hero by defending a town and its various resources against an army of invading minions, has been popular for Foursaken already, and the team told me during GDC that they were planning on adding plenty of extras to the game this year. They've reached version 3.0 now, and the latest update adds three new heroes: an Assassin, a Barbarian, and a Druid, each with their own abilities and weapons.

There's also a brand new campaign for the game that must be unlocked to play, with new maps to fight over, and new allied units to join you in battle. You can upgrade buildings and units even further, the graphics now boast real-time shadows, and the game's performance has been upgraded overall. Finally, there are new...

Facebook today updated its iOS app to version 6.1. Overall, the update is rather minor but it does add some welcome enhancements to the way photos are handled within the app.

Under the previous version of the Facebook app, users were only able to comment, like or tag a photo. With the new update, however, users can now make a photo their profile picture with a single tap. Even more exciting is that users can now share photos they stumble across on their own timeline or on the timeline of friends. Other additions to the update include improved places editing when checking in on the iPhone and faster loading of events.

Here's a quick run through.

Here's how photos showed up in the previous version of Facebook.

Not much you can do here, aside from like, comment or tag.

But with Facebook 6.1 up and running, here's how photos now appear.

When you select the three dots...

The next entry in our seemingly endless parade of new iPad keyboard cases is the Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case for iPad (US$129.99). This case, which works with the second- through fourth-generation iPads, has some new features that make it attractive as a full-time companion for your tablet.

Design

Like the the recently-reviewed iPad Keyboard Folios from Logitech, the Ultimate Keyboard Case is designed for full-time use on your iPad, protecting the back of the device while providing a flip-out keyboard for easy data entry.

The keyboard in this case is backed with a nicely-designed aluminum shell, and uses black keys with white lettering. The iPad cover is kind of an odd affair -- it's made of what feels like hard polyurethane around the sides, but the "hinge" that connects it to the keyboard and...

After just over a month of sputtering sales, and a subsequent price drop to $0.99, AT&T will reportedly discontinue the HTC First, otherwise known as the "HTC Facebook Phone."  ...

While the Origin Stories series has typically focused on products, in the coming weeks we're going to focus a bit more on the people and personalities behind the products. In this episode I spoke to Saul Mora of Magical Panda during the MacTech Conference in 2012 to learn about how he got started in iOS development.

Origin Stories: Saul Mora, developer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 13 May 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | ...

GungHo Entertainment is a game publisher based in Japan, and the company has just released some really wild financial numbers. According to the latest numbers, GungHo made $118 million this past April alone, most of it from one game: Puzzle and Dragons, currently available on iOS. Puzzle and Dragons is pulling in so much money (from audiences in both Japan and around the world) that GungHo says it's making $3.75 million a day. In Japan alone, Puzzle and Dragons is claiming 13 million players -- which is over 10% of the population there.

That is a phenomenal success story, and it gives GungHo a higher market cap than even the legendary game publisher Nintendo. As a result, the company's stock has skyrocketed, and it's even challenging current megapublisher...

The wait is over. Random Access Memories, Daft Punk's first proper album* since 2005's Human After All, is now streaming in its entirety over at iTunes. It features guest spots and contributions from Chilly Gonzales, Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams, Julian Casablancas, and others. While the album doesn't officially hit stores until May 21, its leak earlier today most likely brought about this early stream.

Head over to iTunes to stream the album in one glorious 74-minute track. Don't worry, that's just the format of the stream. If you're not sold on Daft Punk or have been living presumably dance-free under a rock for a few years, we've included their delightful tune "Get Lucky" featuring Pharrell Williams for your listening pleasure below.

*Yes, they did the soundtrack for Tron: Legacy. No we don't count that as a proper album.

...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent letters to several smartphone makers asking them to explain what they're doing to deter thefts, Bloomberg reports. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung are said to have been contacted on May 10th. "I seek to understand why companies that can develop sophisticated handheld electronics, such as the products manufactured by Apple, cannot also create technology to render stolen devices inoperable and thereby eliminate the expanding black market on which they are sold," reads Schneiderman's letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.... ...

A handful of recently discovered job listings suggest a possible next-generation iWork software suite may soon see release, with the latest postings asking for specialists in quality assurance, one of the final steps in software building.  ...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSS

Daily Update for May 13, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 13 May 2013 17:15:00 EST. Please see our...

How can you type on an iPad? You could muddle along on the virtual keyboard; or you could carry a physical Bluetooth keyboard around with you. The TouchFire takes a middle course.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

We've seen beer-pouring robots before, but MIT has recently put together a smartphone-controlled robot bartender, with three robot arms that can pour and mix up to 100 different alcoholic and non-alcoholic flavors. The Makr Shakr lets you order up a drink directly from your iPhone, and then it will make the drink and deliver it to you as requested.

The robot will be officially unveiled later this week at Google's I/O conference, and for now it's just an interesting robotics project, so it's unlikely you'll see your own robot bartender in a local watering hole any time soon (plus, who would you flirt with if there was a robot pouring you drinks?). But this is a fascinating idea -- it would save bars time and money to have a robot behind the counter, and the fact that nearly...

One of the most common frustrations among mobile phone owners is the feeling that you're paying way too much for services you're not using. Being locked in a contract that doesn't fit your needs just because it's all that offered is the pits. Zact, a new service from the Verizon-backed software company ItsOn, is looking to change that. Zact provides a flexible, changeable, data plan that empowers users to only pay for the services they actually use.

Along with customization of how many minutes and texts you pay for each month, users are offered an unprecedented amount of flexibility for data plans, down to forgoing traditional plans and just buying app-specific data. In addition the service credits back any money you paid for a plan that was bigger than you ended up needing. Families can connect an unlimited number of devices to a single plan. The service also including powerful parental controls, including curfews on service, app lock outs, and even contact restrictions....

Two iOS apps, Twitterific and 1Password, have today received significant updates. Twitterific 5.2.2 adds support for bookmarking service Readability and image service Droplr. A number of smaller improvements have also been made, such as automatic flipping of the read/unread state of tweets as users scroll, and similar updating of indicators in timeline tabs. Yfrog images should appear in the in-app browser instead of the photo viewer....  ...

Triple Town is one of my favorite games on iOS over the past few years -- it's a puzzle game with a simple ruleset and a whole lot of complexity. The creators of that game, called Spry Fox, have announced a new title in development called Road Not Taken, and you can now see some concept art from it over on the official blog.

The game is sort of a roguelike, according to the developers, and as you can see above, it has some similarities to the grid-based Triple Town. But instead of building up a world, it's more about finding a path through the world, and avoiding or confronting various dangers on the way. As you can tell from the title, which refers to the famous Robert Frost poem, the game will offer various paths, and it seems like most of the strategy will come from choosing your own way.

Sounds interesting. Road Not...

The Attorney General for the state of New York has asked Apple and other tech leaders to do more to stop smartphone thieves and, further, aid in the elimination of a growing black market for the stolen devices.  ...

The use of automatic repair routines on newer Mac Minis and iMacs may combine two separate drives into a Fusion drive. Fortunately, there's a way to get around that.

Sometimes all it takes is a moment of time and an open mind to change your opinion of someone. In a recent column at Forbes, Drew Hansen, a management expert specializing in hyper-growth startups, writes about Steve Jobs and how The Lost Interview movie changed his view on the Apple co-founder.

Hansen says he ignored Steve Jobs' advice on building a company and cautioned entrepreneurs not to model themselves after the Apple founder. This attitude changed after Hansen watched the Lost Interview and realized he and Jobs share many of the same thoughts on building successful teams within a company.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview is a 70-minute conversation between Steve Jobs and Robert Cringely that was held in 1995. It was recently turned into a movie and...

1Password 4, the popular login manager for iPhone and iPad has been updated to version 4.2 today. The new version sports a bunch of new features and bug fixes, including the ability to search for items in your vault by their URL, improved sharing of vault items, and more. This update also features the fill animation that appeared in the desktop browser extension recently.

The update is available for free on the App Store...

The newest national carrier of the iPhone, T-Mobile, has ended a promotional "introductory price" period for the iPhone 5, raising the down payment from $99 to $149 for the 16GB model -- with similar $50 increases for the 32GB and 64GB models. Though it is still one of the cheapest ways to buy an iPhone 5 rather than buying a no-contract phone or going through a contract with one of the other carriers, the price difference with a T-Mobile plan is now down to about $20 less than buying the iPhone outright....  ...