Verizon Wireless to Sell Apple iPad

Apple and Verizon Wireless announced this morning a partnership that would bring the iPad to Verizon Wireless Stores across the U.S. on October 28. While the collaboration won’t see Verizon compatible technology embedded in the iPad, it will bundle the iPad Wi-Fi with a Verizon MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot.

The iPad will be available in three bundles:

• Apple iPad 16GB + MiFi: $629.99
• Apple iPad 32GB + MiFi: $729.99
• Apple iPad 64GB + MiFi: $829.99

As far as data plans for the iPad, Verizon will offer one: Up to 1GB of data for $20 per month.

Industry sources are saying since facing intense competition from phone makers wedded to Google’s Android software, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, finally plans to make the iPhone available on VerizonWireless, the largest wireless carrier in the United States.

Must Have Apps for iPhone to Help Fight Poverty

The Social good movement has revolutionized and re-energized fundraising, with mobile apps  The ability to help others is now a tap away.

Here are five iPhone apps to help in the fight against poverty.

1. Make Poverty History

The white bandwith the words “Make Poverty History” can be purchased as a background for your phone for $0.99, with 100% of the profits going to charity.

With more than 50 million iPhones sold world wide, and more than 3 billion apps downloaded, if every iPhone owner was to download this one app, it would definitely be a start towards making poverty history.

2. Give Work

Give Work is a free app designed to benefit the refugees in the developing world. This app is a little strange: It asks you to complete a task on your phone and a person in a developing region will do the same thing. Your partner will get paid for both tasks.

The organization behind the app, Samasource, works with refugees by giving them “life-changing opportunities via the Internet.” Samasource says that in doing so they “enable socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the U.S. to contribute to economic development by buying services from our workforce at fair prices.”

3. Compassion

Here is an app to tug on your heartstrings and open your check book. Compassion gives you access to information on child poverty from its blog, and connects you to the organization’s Facebook Page andTwitter feed. Compassion International is a Christian child advocacy group that began providing Korean War orphans with aid and Christian values.

With this app, you can search through profiles of children in need of aid in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean and make your selection of who you’d like to sponsor. If sponsorship is not for you, there is also the option to donate directly from your phone to the Disaster Relief Fund.

4. CauseWorld

CauseWorld is a geolocation app that allows you to check in, earning you karma points instead of badges, which you can cash-in as donations to charities.

The app has you performing “good deeds” just for walking into a stores like Trader Joe’s and Borders. Sponsors like Proctor and Gamble, Citibank and Kraft donate money for your checkins. You can choose where the money is going: Poverty in Africa, Chilean relief efforts, clean water initiatives, chimpanzee habitats, tree planting efforts, education, and cancer research are just some of the deserving causes. You can earn more karma points by scanning the barcodes of specific products, and you can download certain associated iPhone apps, both free and paid, to earn more karma.

To date, CauseWorld and its karma have been able to offset 1.4 million pounds of carbon, raise more than $100,00 for Haiti and Chile, donate more than 228,000 meals to hungry Americans, plant more than 58,000 trees in rain forests, donate more than 24,000 books to children, and provide more than 18 million liters of clean drinking water.

If you are going to check in somewhere it might as well count for something good, right?

5. Donation Connect

If you’re a busy person, it’s sometimes difficult to talk to the college-aged kid canvassing on the street for charity even if you really want to. Here is an easy solution: Donation Connect brings all your valued charities right to your phone.

Download the app and hit “Find a charity.” You’ll be directed to a list of categories where you can pick which charity you’d like to support. The amount that you choose to give will then be charged to your wireless bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. You’ll never not have time to give again.

source

Windows Phone 7 Syncing for Mac

Microsoft revealed that it will offer a Mac version of the Zune software by the end of the year. In a Twitter tweet that was subsequently removed, a Microsoft source stated, “I’m glad to confirm that Mac users would be able to use Zune on their Macs to sync with [Windows Phone 7].”

Apple’s iTunes software has been available for the Windows operating system for years, Microsoft’s Zune has not.

However, both the Apple iPhone, and the recently unveiledWindows Phone 7 smartphones rely on the respective music and digital content platforms to sync the smartphones with music, photos, and other data. Allowing Mac OS X users to join in the Windows Phone 7 fun by providing Zune for the Apple OS makes strategic sense.

Stay tune for more info.

Kaplan SAT Prep Game App for iPhone and iPad

Kaplan and game maker Aspyr Media have adapted their SAT test prep video game, FutureU, for iPhone and iPad devices.

The free FutureU SAT study game — which includes four $1.99 in-app premium upgrades for additional levels.

The application includes games designed around three key study areas: reading, writing and math.

“Students are always on the go and busier than ever. So for us to work with Kaplan to develop a mobile version of futureU for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices that allows students to study — even when they might only have a few extra minutes here and there — just made sense,” Aspyr Media CEO Michael Rogers says.

Apple’s mobile devices are trending towards becoming educational and learning tools now that respected educational publishers mold their textbooks and learning tools for iPhone or iPad.

Wal-Mart to start selling Apple’s iPad this Friday

Wal-Mart said the iPad will be available in hundreds of its stores in the United States to start, expanding to more than 2,300 outlets by mid-November.

Wal-Mart rivals Best Buy and Target are already selling the iPad, which Apple launched in April.

Demand for the 10-inch touchscreen tablet has so far been robust, and Apple initially had a difficult time producing enough.

The company sold more than 3 million iPads in the June quarter, and Wall Street expects the company to surpass that mark with ease in the September quarter.

Apple is set to report quarterly results next Monday.

Wal-Mart will sell the iPad for the same price as other retailers, starting at $499 for the more inexpensive model. The world’s largest retailer already sells Apple’s iPod and iPhone.

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple were up $1.75 at $297.11 in midday trading on the Nasdaq.

App Alert: Square iPhone Credit Card Swiping App

While thumbing through the iTunes App Store today . I came across this really cool and useful app today. It is called Square, it’s a mobile payment processing service founded by Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey. Well-funded and ambitious, Square aims to become the standard for mobile payment processing, especially for small businesses.

Check out a video of Jack Dorsey’s presentation of Square at this year’s DEMO conference.

Sonic The Hedgehog 4™ Episode I Is Now Available for iPhone

The Hedgehog lover in me is excited now that Sonic 4 is out and available at the iTunes store. Reviews say that it features classic run and jump gameplay at a breakneck pace. It includes 12 zones, closely modeled on 16 bit Sonic game levels. Both score attack and time attack modes are available, and there are a couple special tilt based iPhone exclusive levels.

According to AppAdvice.com “The game also FEELS like Sonic. It has a classic Green Hills zone. It has a old school Labyrinth zone complete with underwater sections. Mad Gear is based off Metropolis Zone from Sonic 2, including the tube like teleporters and conveyor belts There are enemies and bosses from Sonic 1 such as the enemies that appear then charge towards you and the ones that shoot out of the walls in Splash Hill, which also finishes with a twist on the old school “swinging ball boss” The game’s aforementioned speed and fluidity add to this vibe.”

I am so excited that I about to download now.

source: Appadvice

New App Alert: Zappo App for iPad

First the Amazon.com the world’s largest online retailer releases a Kindle app for Apple’s newest device  in April. Now along with the Kindle app and their own Amazon Mobile app, the company has released an app for its shoe store. The Zappos Mobile app was recently released, putting the world’s largest online shoe store on the iPad.

Zappos.com, which was founded in 1999 grossed over $1 billion in sales in 2009, the year that Amazon purchased the company for nearly $1.2 billion. The name Zappos is derived from the Spanish word zapatos, meaning shoes.

The app is easy to use and fast, even with a 3G connection. You can easily purchase shoes, clothing, handbags, beauty supplies and housewares.

Each item is listed by photo and name, with heavy emphasis on the former.

Items that are on sale are easily recognized, with details and reviews. Plus available sizes; up to 10 different photos of the items and colors are easily readable.  The price and stock number are also shown. You can even read more about the item’s brand, which is nice.

The free Zappos Mobile app is available today in the App Store.

App Alert: Look through Google Goggles for iPhone

One of my favorite Android Apps Google Goggles is now available for the iPhone.Google Goggles launched as an Android app in Google Labs in December of last year. The app processes pictures taken with the phone and recognizes the text within it, creating search results for things like books and business cards. It also recognizes things like landmarks, logos and book covers, but isn’t able to recognize food or animals. Even though Google is working on the functionality it is definitely going to become a must-have  app.

Just In: Motorola Mobility Sues Apple for Patent Infringement

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – Oct. 6, 2010 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that its subsidiary, MotorolaMobility, Inc., has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iTouch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents. Motorola Mobility also filed patent infringement complaints against Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Florida.

Overall, Motorola Mobility’s three complaints include 18 patents, which relate to early-stage innovations developed by Motorola in key technology areas found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.

Motorola Mobility has requested that the ITC commence an investigation into Apple’s use of Motorola’s patents and, among other things, issue an Exclusion Order barring Apple’s importation of infringing products, prohibiting further sales of infringing products that have already been imported, and halting the marketing, advertising, demonstration and warehousing of inventory for distribution and use of such imported products in the United States. In the District Court actions, Motorola Mobility has requested that Apple cease using Motorola’s patented technology and provide compensation for Apple’s past infringement.

Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said, “Motorola has innovated and patented throughout every cycle of the telecommunications industry evolution, from Motorola’s invention of the cell phone to its development of premier smartphone products. We have extensively licensed our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, consisting of tens of thousands of patents in the U.S. and worldwide. After Apple’s late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license. We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple’s continued infringement. Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company’s business.”

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