Jordan Kahn

Bono’s (Product)RED charity, which Apple contributes to by selling special red versions of iOS devices and accessories, today announced Apple’s contributions to the charity have reached $70 million. Back in September, the charity announced that Apple’s contributions had reached $65 million making it the largest contributor out of participating companies donating portions of profits from products sold under the (Product)Red branding. 
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The first Family Guy mobile game, The Quest for Stuff, is set for release on April 1o on iOS and…

After announcing the release of the Office for iPad apps late last month, Microsoft announced today that the separate Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for iPad have collectively reached 12 million downloads a week after release. The number also included downloads of the OneNote app for iPad, which has been available for a couple of years leading up to the release of the Office apps, but Microsoft didn’t provide a breakdown of sales by app.
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Apple has acquired Novauris Technologies, a company with a lot of talent in the automatic speech recognition field, according to a report from TechCrunch. The purchase of Novauris Technologies actually happened sometime last year, and the team is now at Apple working to improve speech recognition features of Siri. A quick look at CEO Yoon Kim’s LinkedIn page shows that the company likely joined Apple in September of last year.

The company is actually made up of former Dragon Systems R&D team members, a company with notable history in the voice dictation and speech recognition fields.
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http://vimeo.com/83270004

inMarket, an in-store marketing platform that recently started rolling out iBeacons to retailers, today announced an interesting new twist for the platform: the first consumer packaged goods brand to take advantage of iBeacons in a retail environment. That means that rather than the retailer controlling the entire iBeacon experience and the location-based notifications that get beamed to shoppers, inMarket’s Mobile to Mortar (M2M) platform is giving that same opportunity to the individual brands on the store’s shelves. We’ve also learned it’s about to expand and continue its rollout of iBeacons in retail locations across New York, Boston, and Miami.  
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Back in December, the the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced that a next-generation of USB connectors was under development. The new standard, dubbed “USB Type-C,” introduces a new design, a smaller overall footprint, and usability enhancements such as a symmetrical, reversible connector that doesn’t require users to worry about orientation when plugging in (much like with Apple’s Lightning connector.) It will also allow manufacturers to create thinner and sleeker product designs and scale for future USB performance standards with a transfer speed up to 10Gbps. Today we get our first look at what the cable and connectors will actually look like with a rendering courtesy of Foxconn (via TheVerge).
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Dish and The Walt Disney company announced today that they have reached a multi-year distribution deal that will see Dish subscribers gain access to a ton of Disney content including its ABC and ESPN networks. That means if you subscribe to Dish, you’ll now be able to access the WATCH ABC, WATCH ABC Family, WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH DisneyXD and WatchESPN through your computer, smartphone, tablet and other connected devices like game consoles and Apple TV. The deal will also see Dish launch a number of Disney and ESPN networks while pending litigation between the two companies comes to an end:

The agreement will result in dismissal of all pending litigation between the two companies, including disputes over PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop. As part of the accord, DISH will disable AutoHop functionality for ABC content within the C3 ratings window. The deal also provides a structure for other advertising models as the market evolves, including dynamic ad insertion, advertising on mobile devices and extended advertising measurement periods.

DISH will make available Disney Junior, Fusion, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, as well as Longhorn Network and the upcoming SEC ESPN Network upon its launch. In addition, DISH, ESPN and ESPN Deportes customers will have access to the live and video-on-demand channel ESPN3… As part of the agreement, DISH will launch ESPNEWS, ESPNU, Disney Channel and ABC Family in high definition. ESPN Classic will be reintroduced as a video-on-demand channel.

For Apple device users, the majority of the content is available through dedicated iOS and Apple TV apps including WatchESPN, WatchABC, and WatchDisneyChannel. 
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Following jury selection in the latest Apple vs Samsung patent trial in San Jose, today the trial officially started with Apple’s opening statements. In the trial, Apple is seeking $2B in damages for five patents it claims Samsung violated, while Samsung has counter-claims that Apple devices violate two of its own patents. While some thought the case—which unlike previous patent battles between the companies involves only software related patents— could make Android and therefore Google the real target of the outcome Apple is seeking, Apple actually made it clear that’s not the case in its opening statement (via TheVerge):

“Samsung copied many many features, but there are limits in what we can accomplish in a trial,” said Harold McElhinny, a partner at Morrison Foerster, the law firm representing Apple. “We can’t try 50 patents,”… Beyond trashing Samsung, Apple used its opening statement to distanced itself from Google, a company that’s not named as a codefendant with Samsung, but that made Android, which all these devices were running. “It’s samsung, not Google selling these phones,” McElhinny told jurors. “It’s Samsung making these things, and infringing.”

Apple also claimed that Samsung deliberately copied the iPhone and that doing so was “built into the Samsung development process” (via Recode):
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According to a report from Nikkei Asian Review, Apple is currently negotiating with Japan’s Renesas Electronics over the possibility of acquiring a unit of the company that builds chips for smartphone displays used in the iPhone and other devices. The buy, according to Nikkei, could allow Apple to take advantage of the company’s engineering experience to “improve image sharpness and battery life” while bringing development of the components in-house:
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It looks like Apple’s shipping estimates on its new Mac Pro have once again slipped with at least Apple’s US online store listing shipping availability as “5-6 weeks.” That puts the current delivery dates for the Mac Pro at sometime during May. Previously, Apple’s website was listing an available to ship date as “April.”
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Editors Keys, the company behind slick custom keyboards for Mac apps like Logic Pro and Final Cut, today announced its latest…

We’ve been seeing more and more interesting implementations of iBeacons, Apple’s Bluetooth LE standard that opens up a ton of opportunities for location-based experiences as iOS devices communicate with the beacons around them. This, however, might be the most unique use of iBeacons we’ve seen yet:  For the UN’s International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action taking place on April 4, New Museum in New York City will host an exhibit that uses iBeacons to simulate a virtual minefield and let anyone experience the danger of land mines.

Visitors will download an app called Sweeper for iOS or Android that will allow them to experience the fear of land mines as they walk through the space. Here’s how it works:
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This season will be the first that Major League Baseball uses a new expanded instant replay system that it first announced back in January. Now, the MLB At Bat app for iOS devices has been updated with support for the 2014 season and the new replay system. That means that users of the app will be able to view “every decisive instant replay video clip and review explanation,” the same footage the umpires review, through the app’s Gameday feature. 

A little more on the new replay system from the MLB’s announcement:
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Using our voice to control computers has never really taken off. For many of us, using voice recognition technology wasn’t even a consideration until features like dictation and Siri arrived on our iPhones and iPads. There’s good reason too: the voice recognition features built into our devices have always had the reputation of being half-baked. They simply aren’t accurate and consistent enough to replace our tried and trusted mouse and keyboard or touchscreen. While half decent dictation features come with every Mac (and are powered by Nuance’s technology), the voice recognition features you get with latest version of Nuance’s Dragon Dictate for Mac go well beyond simply dictating speech to text. 
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A new app called BeHere aimed at teachers uses Apple’s new Bluetooth LE iBeacon technology to recognize students and automatically take attendance as they enter a classroom.

With the BeHere app installed, the teacher’s iPad acts as an iBeacon and students entering the classroom with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will automatically appear in the app with a profile picture and name. Students will have to install the app on their device too, but thanks to recent iBeacon improvements in iOS 7.1, they won’t have to even open the app or take the device out of their pocket to be recognized as they walk in. 
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XTouch Commercial/Proof of Concept – make every surface tap sensitive from Vladimir Druts on Vimeo.

XTouch, an SDK created by a group at the University of Toronto’s Mobile Applications Lab and funded by JOLT, turns any surface into a touch-sensitive controller for iOS apps with no additional hardware. Since XTouch uses acoustics and vibrations to recognize taps on a surrounding surface, the only requirement is that your iPhone or iPad is placed on the same surface you want to use as a touchpad. An SDK is coming soon that will allow developers to think up many interesting implementations, but for now the company has released two apps that show off what XTouch is capable of.
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