Apple makes iWork app available for iPhone, iPod touch users

Press release:
Apple today announced that its groundbreaking iWork productivity apps, Keynote, Pages and Numbers, are now available for iPhone and iPod touch, as well as iPad. Created for the Mac and then completely redesigned for iOS and Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch interface, Keynote, Pages and Numbers allow you to create and share stunning presentations, beautifully formatted documents and powerful spreadsheets on the go. iWork apps are available on the App Store for $9.99 each to new users and as a free update for existing iWork for iPad customers.

“Now you can use Keynote, Pages and Numbers on iPhone and iPod touch to create amazing presentations, documents and spreadsheets right in the palm of your hand,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The incredible Retina display, revolutionary Multi-Touch interface and our powerful software make it easy to create, edit, organize and share all of your documents from iPhone 4 or iPod touch.”

Keynote, Pages and Numbers import and export documents from iWork for Mac and Microsoft Office; print wirelessly using AirPrint™; and include beautiful Apple-designed themes and templates. All iWork apps now include improved document management with thumbnail images that let you find your files quickly, organize them and group them into folders using intuitive gestures. From the Tools button in the toolbar, you can easily share any presentation, document or spreadsheet without leaving the app.

Keynote makes it easy to create impressive presentations, complete with animated charts and transitions. You can play your presentation in Full Screen view on the stunning, high-resolution Retina display or connect to a projector or HDTV for a large audience. Available separately, the Keynote Remote app allows your iPhone or iPod touch to control a Keynote presentation on any iOS device or Mac.

Pages is the most beautiful word processor ever designed for a mobile device and has everything you need to create amazing documents. Pages takes full advantage of the high-resolution Retina display on iPhone 4 and iPod touch so you can see all the detail and richness of your documents. To make working with text easy on iPhone and iPod touch, Smart Zoom automatically zooms in to follow the cursor while you’re editing and zooms back out when you’re done.

Numbers uses Multi-Touch gestures and an intelligent keyboard to help you create compelling, great-looking spreadsheets with over 250 easy-to-use functions, flexible tables and eye-catching charts. Just like Pages, Numbers takes advantage of the high-resolution Retina display and Smart Zoom to make working with text and cells on iPhone 4 or iPod touch easy.

Pricing & Availability
Keynote, Pages and Numbers are universal apps that run on iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPod touch (3rd & 4th generation). Keynote, Pages and Numbers are available from the App Store for $9.99 (US) each for new users, or as a free update for existing iWork for iPad customers. Keynote Remote is sold separately via the App Store for 99 cents (US).

Sony introduces colorful new B160 series Walkmans

Press release:
Sony, the leading consumer electronics brand, today announced the launch of the latest Walkman B160 Series of MP3 players that deliver rich sound plus street-smart looks, making it a gadget to flaunt whether jogging, travelling, or just hanging out with friends.

Weighing just 28g and less than 10cm long, Walkman B160 Series boasts an eye-grabbing two-tone finish in a vivid choice of contrasting colours.

Despite its compact size, the easy-to-use Walkman B160 Series delivers big, bold sounds that stand out from the crowd. Whatever the user’s listening choices, a rich Walkman audio-quality experience with full, deep bass is guaranteed. A push of the Bass button will stream even more low-end power that also sets off the colour matching power illuminator pulses in time with the music.

A generous 18-hour battery life allows for long-time listening. Or, if in a hurry, plug in the Walkman® for just three minutes and get it charged for 90 minutes playback time.

A new feature, the detachable clip, attaches Walkman to a belt, bag strap or outside the pocket of the shirt or jeans.
Loading up Walkman with the user’s digital music collection is easy. All that needs to be done is to connect the player’s built-in USB connector to the PC to drag and drop files or transfer them via Windows Media Player 11/12.

ZAPPIN song search technology allows effortless browsing through the music archives. Hitting the ZAPPIN button activates a short snatch of each track without fiddly searches through menus or playlists.

The new Walkman NWZ-B160 range of ultra-portable MP3 players is currently available in the UAE at all Jumbo Electronics showrooms.

Steve Jobs to announce iOS5, Lion and iCloud next week

Now this is a first from Apple- pre announcing products before events. But as the PR states, Mr. Jobs will be back to announce iCloud, iOS5 and the upcoming Lion next week at WWDC.

PRESS RELEASE:

CUPERTINO, California—May 31, 2011—Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by Apple engineers. Mac® developers will see and learn how to develop world-class Mac OS X Lion applications using its latest technologies and capabilities. Mobile developers will be able to explore the latest innovations and capabilities of iOS and learn how to greatly enhance the functionality, performance and design of their apps. All developers can bring their code to the labs and work with Apple engineers.

Samsung prepping 4G tablet, Galaxy S III

While we wait to have our hands on the Galaxy Tab 8.9″ and 10.1″, Samsung’s mobile head is already talking of the next generation of tablets and smartphones.

In an interview with Newswires, Samsung boss J.K. Shin said that the Korean company plans to release a 4G LTE-equipped version Galaxy Tab tablet later this year. A new Galaxy S is also planned, presumably dubbed Galaxy S III, with a launch window in the first half of 2012.

“The 4G race has already begun. All carriers are coping with high data traffic with the availability of tablets and without 4G service, it will become increasingly difficult to cope, ” he said.

Shin also commented on the ongoing lawsuit battle with Apple, saying that he was confident of the outcome.

“We have used many similar designs over the past years and it [Apple's allegation] will not be legally problematic.”

PlayStation Store and PSN services fully functional by the end of the week

Sony has issued a statement confirming that by the end of the week, the PlayStation Store, alongside other PSN services will be fully restored.

According to the official press release, only some regions won’t get the functionality, including company’s home turf in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. However, for the rest of the world, Sony stated that the service should be back up in the Americas, Europe/PAL territories and Asia by the end of this week.

By the end of the week, PSN users can finally expect the following services that were put on hold due to the infamous network data breach.

• Full functionality on PlayStation®Store
• In-game commerce
• Ability to redeem vouchers and codes
• Full functionality on Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity for PS3, PSP, and compatible PCs

“We have been conducting additional testing and further security verification of our commerce functions in order to bring the PlayStation Network completely back online so that our fans can again enjoy the first class entertainment experience they have come to love,” said Kazuo Hirai, Executive Deputy President, Sony Corporation. “We appreciate the patience and support shown during this time.”

With the Store planned to go live this week, Sony’s ‘Welcome Back’ program will also start rolling out in the arranged future, so users can finally grab their free vowed PSP and PS3 titles.

Zotac releases three-monitor ready GTX560 Multiview

Press release:
ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world’s largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today kicks off Computex 2011 with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview – the world’s first native triple-display capable GeForce GTX 560 series graphics card. The new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview graphics card enables up to three matching 1080p displays to combine for a seamless multi-monitor computing experience.

Dual-link DVI and DisplayPort outputs deliver resolutions up to 2560×1600 to one display while a pair of HDMI outputs can drive two displays with resolutions up to 1920×1080 for a total of three monitors driven by the single ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview.

“Adding more monitors is an easy way to increase productivity for office applications, coding and other tasks. With our ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview graphics card, we are able to deliver a single NVIDIA CUDA capable graphics card with three independent display outputs,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

Powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 graphics processor, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview delivers the 3D performance users crave with 336 lightning-fast unified shaders. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 560 Multiview is also paired with 1GB of DDR5 memory to feed the graphics processor for phenomenal Microsoft DirectX 11 3D visuals.

It’s time to play with triple-monitors and the ZOTAC GeForce Multiview series.

Ivy Bridge adds USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt in chipset

The awesome team at Anandtech managed to snap a slide from Intel that shows both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt will be integrated into Intel’s upcoming 7-series Ivy Bridge chipset. Thunderbolt is currently only available on Apple iMacs and MacBook Pro models and offers an insanely fast throughput but with chipset integration it is sure to be equipped in many computers.

Twitter to launch its own photo-sharing service.

The days are numbered for Twitpic and Yfrog as Twitter will announce its own photo-sharing service at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos this week. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is set to speak at D9 on Wednesday.

Twitter just acquired TweetDeck for $40 million, and this seems to be the next big step to push them against the big leagues, read Facebook. “This acquisition is an important step forward for us. TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.” The service is said to launch as soon as today, after it is announced at the conference.

Currently, users that wish to post pictures on twitter need to link it to third party websites like Flickr. The twitter service would work around in the same way. This would help twitter earn some cash by introducing branded pages with ads, much like Twitpic and Yfrog.

Interview with Mark Doherty of Adobe

RIM, in association with Adobe held a “Meet the BlackBerry” event in Dubai last week where developers and content creators were invited to get a glimpse on development for PlayBook ahead of it’s Middle East launch on the 12th of June.

I managed to steal some minutes of time from Mark Doherty, a Developer Evangelist specializing in Mobile and Devices at Adobe for the past six years. Prior to that, Mark has worked with Mobile Innovation, Nokia, Samsung and Panasonic holding engineering and consulting roles. In the interview below, Mark presents reasons why Adobe Air should be used to develop applications on the PlayBook as well as talk about the upcoming 2.7 release:

I would like to thank Mark for sparing some time with us and wish him the best of luck.

Galaxy S II sells like “hot cakes”

Samsung announced today that it’s awesome Android-based Galaxy S II has easily managed to cross the 1 million sales mark, making it the fastest of any device the Koreans makers has ever sold.

The sales milestone was achieved in just 40 days since it’s launch on April 29 – meaning the device managed to sell one every three seconds.

“It has been breaking every selling record relating to cell phones in Korea. Since its release on 29th of April, Galaxy S2 passed 100,000 sold in 3 days, and 200,000 in 8 days, and reached 500,000 sold after a fortnight. This fastest 1,000,000 sold record, in particular, shortens its predecessor Galaxy S’s previous record by whopping 40 days.”

Well, congratulations Samsung. Now can we have the 8.9″ tab please?

Next Page »