Man, Apple’s been coming down pretty hard on third party vendors lately. First it was the sexy apps, then the WiFi sniffers, then the book-only apps. In the latest round of purging, Apple takes it to the physical world. Whether it’s just because they want more store space for their own products or they’re cooking up their own screen films or they really think their oleophobic glass screens are all that tough, Apple has told screen protector vendors that they’re quits as far as the Apple Store and the website goes. Whaaat? Rumors are abounding that Apple has contacted vendors and told them they won’t be stocking anymore screen protectors. 9To5Mac links to Dan Frakes at Macworld who says he’s heard from multiple vendor sources about the heave-ho. And it’s not even confined to straight up screen protection. Even sleeve protector products that contain cling films are being asked to step outside. Image Source: iphone-products.com Personally, we don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a screen protector for their iPhone. In fact, we bought one the day we got our iPhone and put it on the moment it was registered, and the handy little cling film has never been off since. While we go out of our way not to put keys or any other hard metal objects in the same pocket with our iPhones (and many women we know have a dedicated pocket for it in their purses), we’d still never go without our screen protector. Even worse, we’d never even think of picking up an iPad with its four times as large screen without some serious cling action to protect our baby from scratches. So far, as is typical with everyone’s favorite computer company, Cupertino’s being a bit tight lipped about the whole thing

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Apple Thinks Their Screens Are Plenty Tough

9to5Mac reports that Wired magazine showed off the tablet version of their magazine at SXSW , and dropped hints of an iPhone version soon to come. It’s a whole lot more than a screen version of a print product! Wired simply ported over their entire March issue into tablet form. Swiping horizontally acts a bit like a table of contents, taking you through the ads and the first pages of sections and stories. Scrolling vertically lets you scan through the whole content of longer stories. The app is very sensitive to orientation, with different images being displayed for an article based on whether the device was tilted in portrait or landscape mode. See about 3:30 into the video below for an example. A tap brings up a scrubber that lets you scroll through the magazine, seeing thumbnails–perfect for those who tend to riffle through publications. Some articles included tap links, bringing up additional information at a touch

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Wired Demonstrates its iPad Version of the Magazine

It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Steve Jobs is simply too important, too impressive, too easy a target not to base a character on him and turn it into a sitcom. And that’s what might very well be happening, if the pilot currently in development in Hollywood gets optioned for a series. Yesterday, Media Rights Capital released a statement on its website describing how, working with cable channel EPIX, they have green-lit a pilot episode for a proposed sitcom series entitled — what else? –  iCON . From MRC’s website: EPIX and Media Rights Capital have made a team for iCON, a comedy series pilot that will be developed by Larry Charles, the Emmy-winning TV writer/producer, and the director of the Sacha Baron Cohen features Borat and Bruno. Charles will oversee development of the script and will direct the half-hour pilot of a series written by Dan Lyons. A technology consultant for Newsweek, Lyons created the Fake Steve Jobs blog and wrote the novel Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs—A Parody. Yes, you read that right. Fake Steve himself is penning the script (it’s most likely he already has , given how sporadic the updates have been in recent weeks on the Fake Steve Jobs blog .) If you’re a fan of Fake Steve, this is exhilarating news; Lyons is not only an insightful author but is in possession of a Sahara-dry wit, to boot. In addition to his Fake Steve sideshow, Lyons is the author of Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs – A Parody . You might say he really knows the subject matter. And then there’s Larry Charles.

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New Sitcom Pilot to be Based Not-So-Loosely on Steve Jobs

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad Filed under “things Apple normally doesn’t do,” it appears as if our favorite Cupertino based company has changed the function of one of the hardware switches on the iPad before making it available to customers. Apparently, as shown by the outlined diagram of the device on their website, the switch that was once in place for muting the device will now serve as a way to lock the screen rotation. Considering there have been complaints about the inability to do this on the iPhone, it’ll certainly be a nice feature to have on the iPad. Via [ 9 to 5 Mac ] Full Story » | Written by Josh Holat for Appletell . | Comment on this Article »

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iPad mute switch switched to screen rotation lock switch

Last week DynDNS released its beta support for Wide Area Bonjour and DNS Service Discovery. This means that if you own your own domain name, and you have a Custom DNS service with DynDNS, you can configure your Apple AirPort device (AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express and Time Capsule) to present itself as part of that domain, automatically updating your domain name and broadcasting configured services. What is Wide Area Bonjour? Wide Area Bonjour enables the same zero-config automatic service discovery functionality over the public Internet that we all enjoy on our local network (seeing our shared files, printers, scanners and so forth). If you have a MobileMe account and utilize the Back To My Mac functionality, you’re already using Wide Area Bonjour without even knowing it. Why would we use this? Most of us who use DynDNS use it to be able to let the IP Address that our ISP give us resolve with a friendly domain name (such as myname.homedns.org). This basic free DynDNS service works really well as long as you have a third-party router that supports DynDNS (which most of them do). Unfortunately Apple, being Apple, does not support DynDNS in its routers, leaving you to run the OS X DynDNS updater application on your computer. The downside to this is that if your computer is asleep and your home Internet connection drops and reconnects (giving you a new IP address) DynDNS does not get updated until the computer wakes up. When wanting to use Snow Leopard’s Wake On Demand feature this is a problem, so this has meant “tough luck,” requiring you to run the DynDNS Mac client on multiple machines and hope the IP updating occurs often enough. It generally works fine, with the occasional expected downtime when your home IP changes at midday if computers are sleeping. Does it work?

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DynDNS Wide Area Bonjour Support Goes Beta

(Image courtesy of Lifehacker) Love your Magic Mouse but not so much when it comes to the hand and wrist pain resulting from its less-than-ergonomic use? For only 10 bucks, you can fall in love with your Magic Mouse all over again. Lifehacker has all the details on this cost-saving tip to make your Magic Mouse more ergonomic. The solution is a $10 block of silicon called Magic Mouse, Fixed . Designed by a Magic Mouse user named Will, who was “tired of sore hands after using the otherwise pleasant to use mouse.” As you can see from the the photo at the top of this post, Magic Mouse, Fixed is simply a ergonomic-friendly block of silicon that suction cups onto the back of your Magic Mouse, providing a “soft but solid” surface for your hand to rest on. We know, your hand is already thanking you just for thinking about it. If you don’t believe us, check out the video below to see it in action or hit the Magic Mouse, Fixed website to order yours. Hey, spending 10 extra bucks to make your Magic Mouse more hand-friendly sounds like a bargain to us.

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Ergonomic-ify Your Magic Mouse for Only 10 Bucks

While traditional print publishers are practically falling over themselves to get their product on Apple’s new iPad, the new media has taken the attitude of “Talk to the hand.” Cult of Mac is reporting on an Association of Online Publishers poll which hit up 1,500 members and asked their opinion about where the business is heading this year. The good news is, most of them were optimistic — just not about iPads or even e-readers in general. Half of the poll’s respondents predicted “strong growth” as high as 10 percent, “mainly from display ads and an uptick in video, with a number of smaller revenue streams adding to the bottom line.” But for whatever reason, when asked about tablets and e-readers this year, “that sunny outlook was a bit scarce.” Here’s a sampling of what the Association of Online Publishers had to say in video interviews, courtesy of Cult of Mac : “These are still really really embryonic devices that are great and fantastic, and I want to be at the top of the queue to buy one and play with it,” remarks Mail Online MD James Bromley. “But we’re talking about a very, very narrow subsection of society that will have these in 2010. This is the time that we learn about these devices — ‘11, ‘12, ‘13 is when these might become slightly more mainstream.” Conde Nast Digital UK manager Emanuela Pignataro was even more direct: “E-readers will be the novelty of 2010. I don’t think it is a short-term adoption — it will take years.” “I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” says Thomson Reuters consumer GM Tim Faircliff. Finally, Incisive Media digital manager John Barnes: “The issue with tablets is, they’re not really servicing the needs of color, with graphics and diagrams — it’s a bit like version one of the iPod.” Somebody should tell all of this to the rumored 150,000 people who preordered their iPad last Friday…

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iPad Will Have “Absolutely No” Impact in 2010, Says Online Publishers

Traditional publishers may be feeling the heat to develop iPad apps and versions of their pubs, but online publishing execs are adopting a wait-and-let’s-see 2.0 attitude. The Association of Online publishers polled its 1,500 members, finding them optimistic for 2010 — but not about e-readers or iPads.  Half of the respondents predicted strong growth of 10%+, 

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Online Publishers: iPad, E-Readers Will Have ‘Absolutely No’ Impact in 2010

Electronista reports that Wearable began shipping their AirStash wireless flash drive today. Those concerned about the lack of an SD card slot now have a highly portable way of accessing media on SD/SDHC cards wirelessly. The AirStash is effectively a portable WiFi access point with an SD slot. It has a pop-out USB plus for easily loading files from your computer to an SD card. Then carry the small unit with you and access it as a wireless network through the iPhone app. It has its own battery, so it doesn’t add any extra drain on your iPhone. It connects at 802.11g rather than 802.11n, so don’t be expecting 720p HD video on an iPad. But they claim a full 30 frames per second at 640×480. The AirStash supports a wide variety of video, audio, and image formats, but surprisingly also claims support for web pages, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, PowerPoint, and Acrobat files. Since it acts as a WiFi access point, it should let you take extra documents with you on a trip and share them with every laptop in the meeting. Don’t have a DVD system in your car? Your kids in the back can watch movies on their iPod touches streamed from an AirStash as seen in the video below:      

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Stream Media from an SD card on the iPhone and iPad

All Things Digital reported today that some major content providers, like National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal, are hurrying to put together new versions of their websites optimized for the iPad. The main difference–no use of Adobe Flash. NPR is actively working on an iPad-optimized version of their iPhone app, but they’re also redesigning the site so that if the site detects that a visitor is using an iPad it will display a different version. NPR’s digital media head Kinsey Wilson says they have redesigned their site to make it easier to support multiple versions. He also said that NPR has a sponsor signed up for both the iPad app and the iPad version of the site. Of course the fact that NPR uses very little advertising is an advantage; sites accustomed to selling lots of Flash-based ads will have a more significant transition. That may be part of the reason The Wall Street Journal isn’t committing to an entirely iPad-friendly site. Their front page will be customized, but not all video associated with articles will necessarily be converted from Flash format…at least for now. Clearly this is an indication that they’re expecting a huge iPad audience, or they wouldn’t go to the trouble. Advertisers will also want to avoid having to create multiple versions of their ads, and will likely start using tools other than Flash. Another interesting comment in the Media Memo was a quote from NPR’s Wilson about the anticipated audience. He sees iPhone apps as a "very intentional experience" where the user is going for something specific. On the other hand, he also thinks the iPad will be a "lean back device"–which sounds a lot more like the way we think of a television than a computer.  

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NPR and Wall Street Journal Going Flash-free for iPad