AdAge reports that although News Corp. and Apple are working together on The Daily iPad newspaper, the service will not utilize Apple’s iAds but instead use the New York-based Medialets as the provider. The report also claims The Daily will run on an App Store-based subscription model, and News Corp. will be charging $0.99 per day to view The Daily’s content (not $0.99 per week?). A two week free trial will be available for those who want to give the paper a run before subscribing and this may represent Apple adding some free-trial features to their App Store. This is something they have been reluctant to do for some time.

Some new details about the actual newspaper have also emerged with a top Virgin America marketing executive stating:

We saw it in the development stage and thought it was highly innovative in terms of their use of imagery.

The Daily is said to utilize a traditional “multi-story front page” with magazine style interfaces for the viewing of news reports. This sounds just like the leak from the other day. The Daily will also welcome Multi-Touch and you’ll be able to swipe, pinch, and rotate through different parts of the articles, including many videos from across the News Corp. empire. The Daily was said to be launching this week but has since been delayed into next month.

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According to HardMac‘s “reliable sources” Apple will follow their discontinuation of the Xserve, by dropping support for both Final Cut Server and Xsan. The move would represent Apple leaving the server/enterprise business and instead focusing more on the consumer and professional side of software. Even more surprising, the report also claims that the upcoming Mac OS X Lion Server will be the final iteration of Apple’s server-based operating system. HardMac‘s report is completely unconfirmed so take it with a pinch of salt. HardMac correctly predicted the iPhone 3GS would keep the same exterior design as the iPhone 3G in addition to the 5th-generation iPod nano gaining a camera.

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I’ve been wondering what you’d find out if you took the number of iOS devices sold and then divided the number of App sales so far by that figure — and guess what — the answer’s sixty.
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Just the other day Angry Birds was sitting as the king of the App Store’s free section but today, 14 year old Robert Nay is number one. His app Bubble Ball is a physics puzzle game and it has been downloaded more than 2 million times. Check out the video at Yahoo and let us know what you think below. Oh the things kids can do…

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We’re approaching ten billion App Store downloads and this is remarkable. The App Store only opened for business on July 10, 2008. And it was only on October 20, 2010, that Apple confirmed over 7 billion downloads via the store during its OS X Lion special event.

This means that in approximately three months Apple has seen near three billion Apps downloaded from the store. Apple confirmed 6.5 billion App Store downloads in September, and 3 billion such downloads were achieved in January.
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We’ve been telling you all about this camera that’s coming in the iPad 2 and thought you might like to see some screenshots.  Our tipster Sonny D. sent us these screenshots that he assembled from files within the SDK of the iPad camera.app.

These screenshots are 1024 x 768 which indicate the same screen resolution as the current iPad.  That might upset those hoping for more a retina-ish display in iPad 2. This may only be because the current simulator only simulates 1024 x 768 so those hoping for more pixels shouldn’t lose hope.

Three more screenshots are after the break.

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News Corp. and Apple’s ‘The Daily’ iPad newspaper has been delayed, according to Media Memo, from next week’s rumored launch date. The delay is said to relate to Apple’s upcoming subscription service needing some final tweaks. The delay was repordely confirmed by a News Corp. PR representative but not by Apple.

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Yesterday BGR reported that Apple would be bringing their popular Photo Booth Mac app to iOS devices, and today we have discovered confirmation of this claim. The discovery comes in two new iOS 4.3 frameworks: “PhotoBooth” and “PhotoBoothEffects.” There aren’t actually any images of the Photo Booth user interface but some hints at the functionality are present.

Photo Booth for iOS looks like it will be a simple application. You will get to pick from a list of effects and switch between the front and back cameras. Unfortunately, the supported devices aren’t listed but we imagine it will work on the iPhone 4, 4th generation iPod touch, and the next iPad with two cameras. The proof from the SDK is after the break.

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News Corp.’s The Daily iPad newspaper is rumored to be dropping on January 19th and today Poynter has discovered what the newspaper application will actually look like on an iPad. The image above was found in some of the website’s source files along with some code hinting at multi-media and social networking options.

In the “Footer” section, along with Twitter and Facebook, are links to icons for both Vimeo and YouTube.

A Javascript file included in the homepage indicates the presence of an embedded video player. But it is not clear how, or if, the publication is planning to distribute its content on video sharing sites. The app has been rumored to include significant photo and multimedia content, so it is possible some of that material could be shared more widely on the open Web.

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COMPUTERWORLD: Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper The Daily launches next week while some claim iPad publishing isn’t the gold rush they’d expected – some big name titles are failing to achieve numbers much beyond newstand sales! How refreshing then to look at this iPad publishing success story: an independently-produced title, called TRVL.

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Spotify and Shazam have teamed-up to offer a combined service for the iPhone and other mobile devices, with new apps which allow Shazam users to access Spotify directly using a new ‘Play in Spotify’ feature.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG1iM43w2o8&w=480&h=385]

iSpazio found a new file in the updated SDK that hints at some iPod nano 5th gen-esque camera effects. The effects that are possibly en route to an iPhone near you:

• Thermal Camera
• X-ray
• Kaleidoscope
• Normal
• Tunnel of Light
• Collapse
• Turbine
• Enlarge

Microsoft is taking on Apple, protesting at the latter firm’s claim to a trademark on the name ‘App Store’. Ballmer’s boys are arguing that the term is generic and competitors should be able to use it.

Apple applied for the trademark in 2008. It is to be applied in goods and services, including those for computer software solve via the Internet. The App Store is now available for iOS and OS X devices.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdftOloAH9Q&w=640&h=385]

Google has updated their popular Google Goggles application with two incredible new features. The first allows you to point your iPhone’s camera at a print advertisement and it will then search the ad and show you more information about it online. The second feature, as shown in the video above, lets Google Goggles read sudoko puzzles.

Our favorite weekend distraction is a quiet 15 minutes spent solving a Sudoku puzzle. But even that can be an frustrating experience if (like us) you make a mistake and are unable to solve the puzzle. Now, Goggles on Android and iPhone can recognize puzzles and provide answers to help make you faster than a Sudoku champ. So if you ever get stuck, take a clear picture of the entire puzzle with Goggles and we’ll tell you the correct solution. Check out this video to see how it works.

The update is available for the stand alone Android Google Goggles app and will soon be available in the official Google app on the App Store. We’ll update when it’s live for iOS devices.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0k-ZAicEek&w=640&h=385]

We recently reported on the removal of VLC Player for iOS from the App Store and today the makers of the app responded to the removal. Romain Goyet from Applidium provided us with the following statement:

Much to our surprise, we received this friday an email from Apple that said “We regret that the dispute regarding your application named ‘VLC Media Player’ could not be resolved amicably between the parties. We have removed your application from the App Store. For any questions relating to this matter, please contact Rémi Denis-Courmont directly.”

This was a follow-up from an email we received from Apple last October : “On 10/20/2010, we received a notice from Rémi Denis-Courmont that Rémi Denis-Courmont believes your application named ‘VLC Media Player’ infringes Rémi Denis-Courmont’s intellectual property rights. In particular, Rémi Denis-Courmont believes you are infringing their copyright.”

Rémi Denis-Courmont’s complaint came pretty much unsuspected, since we did receive approval from the VideoLAN association before starting the iOS port of VLC. As a matter of fact, some members of VideoLAN even helped us porting VLC to the iOS.

It goes without saying, we still believe the AppStore licence is compatible with the GPLv2 under the which VLC is released. Therefore, together with the VideoLAN association, we’ll do our best to not let this be the end of VLC/iOS.

As a final word, we think it’s pretty sad to deny millions of users the right to enjoy a nice piece of open source software … in the name of freedom.

It appears that Apple is one sided with Rémi Denis-Courmont (the man behind the open source project) and is really putting both parties against each other. Hopefully something gets resolved between all parties and we can back to enjoying VLC Media Player on our iOS devices.

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Park Chan-wook is one of South Korea’s best directors, and he’s generated a huge story with the revalation that his latest short film was shot entirely on an iPhone 4.
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More news from Apple’s AirPlay partner, BridgeCo, the company which manufactures the silicon used in AirPlay devices.

AirPlay devices weren’t so apparent at CES this year, though iHome, B&W and Klipsch all showed solutions implementing the standard, which enables users to stream audio from an iOS 4 device to an enabled speaker system.
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The British Library has introduced its first ever smartphone app, providing access to many of the Library’s most precious titles to iOS (and Android) users.

The app (available in HD for iPad users) is called ‘Treasures’ and offers over 100 library items, including the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Codex Sinaiticus which is thought to be the oldest bible in the world, the battle plan written by Nelson before his victory at Trafalgar, and the original draft of Nicholas Nickleby handwritten by Charles Dickens.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0k-ZAicEek&w=640&h=385]

Nearly two months after a licensing issue arose between the creators of the open-source VLC platform and creators of the VLC iOS application, Apple has removed the application from their App Store. The conflict even broke an Apple-created policy on the App Store regarding DRM and applications built off open-source projects. One of the original creators of the VLC open-source platform announced the app’s removal on their blog and had this to say:

At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.

Update: Remi decided to lighten up his quote we put above with this (notice the differences):

On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.

He also wrote up a nice post about Apple’s involvment (very interesting). It’s posted after the break in case he decides to change that up a bit too.

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CUPERTINO, California—January 7, 2011—Apple today announced that over one million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in the first day. With more than 1,000 free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes account, download and install them in just one step.

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Consider this a general tip: The Mac App Store won’t update third-party applications that you’ve bought elsewhere, despite recognising that they are installed.

It will tell you if software you acquire through the store is updated, but existing installs from outside the store won’t be noted in this way.
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