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How Effective is the iPad as a Business Tool?

Right from the start the iPad was marketed as one of the best unique devices to be launched on the market. It’s screen size and ability to render amazing images as well as it’s great video playback lives up to this claim. However, there is more to the iPad than just this because the device offers business-savvy users some very interesting apps they can really benefit from. Although Apple is pretty independent, it does however, have in-built support for Microsoft [...]

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Fake Apple Hardware: 9 Knockoffs That Would Make Jony Ive Cringe

Apple offers three generous gifts to product bootleggers: an iconic design language, an easily replicated logo and the most lucrative brand ID around. This leads to some pretty spectacular knockoffs. So here are 9 of the weirdest, most unique Apple-branded bootleg items of all time.

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Three UK offers an HTC One X update of its own, promises battery life improvements

British network Three sends word via the Twitters that it's now pushing out the 1.28.771.9 firmware update for its branded versions of the HTC One X. This is the original OTA for the One X, which started going out to unbranded units a couple of weeks ago, not the newer 1.29 update that emerged last night. So Three-branded One X's are getting 1.28 just as it's been succeeded by a newer firmware version, which we're sure will irk some users. But to be fair to Three, a two-week turnaround on a firmware update is pretty fast for a European network -- in the past customers have had to wait a month or more, especially for minor updates like this.

Writing on its official Twitter account, Three says One X owners can look forward to "improvements [including] increased battery life" -- which matches what we've heard from One X owners running the unbranded version of 1.28.

If you've got a One X on Three, head to Settings > About > Software updates to grab today's OTA.

Source: @ThreeUK

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Obama, Romney offer classic choices on big issues

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gestures as he speaks at the state fishing pier, Monday, April 30, 2012, in Portsmouth, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gestures as he speaks at the state fishing pier, Monday, April 30, 2012, in Portsmouth, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

President Barack Obama gestures while speaking to the Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference, Monday, April 30, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? For the better part of a year, Mitt Romney has tethered himself to an array of positions designed for the Republican presidential primaries, stances that put him to the right of where he's been through much of his career and raise questions about where he really wants to go. President Barack Obama's politicking has tacked to the left, thanks to all those speeches to Democratic fundraisers and other activist-heavy events that play up the liberal in him.

Now, though, it's time for both politicians to start maximizing their appeal to the broad electorate, a task Obama had the luxury of starting early as the incumbent without an intra-party struggle to settle. And as they compete for that middle ground, the essential differences between them may become harder to see.

Those differences surely exist. Obama and his Republican challenger are offering voters a distinct choice on taxes, a sharp disagreement over health care and a classic ideological divide on social issues that neither candidate seems eager to talk about. So, too, Obama has shown he believes in the power of the purse ? or the power of debt ? to right an economic downturn in ways that Republicans find hard to swallow.

Take taxes. Romney and Obama are at odds over whether low taxes on the wealthy help fuel the engine of economic growth or are an unfair giveaway to people who don't need it.

That's far more than a debating-society point. Despite the substantial tax cuts Obama has supported since becoming president, he wants to push even more than in 2008 to raise taxes on the rich and on companies that outsource jobs. Romney wants lower rates for all incomes and no special tax penalties on corporate behavior.

Romney vows to try to roll back Obama's health care law if the Supreme Court doesn't do it in its pending ruling on the case, and to set a different course that lets states drive policy on that front.

Should he succeed, it would be a massive uprooting of one of the most significant reconstructions of social policy in generations. This from a man who, as Massachusetts governor, pioneered the approach Obama adapted for the nation at large.

Although presidential candidates rarely are explicit about it, they have a hefty interest in reworking the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, now with the slimmest conservative majority, should they get that chance.

Romney's opposition to abortion rights can't go very far when those rights were affirmed long ago by the court, but that could be a different story with the addition of another conservative or two. Obama's health care law would not be in judicial jeopardy if he'd been able to nudge the court left.

Both have records that defy easy labels.

Romney governed pragmatically in Massachusetts. He says he had no choice in a state so dominated by the opposing party. That record, along with his flips on some issues, has fed the perception that he's a man of the middle, not necessarily a terrible place to be in a general election. But if he's gone through the GOP race as a moderate in conservative's clothing, that's not to say he and Obama are indistinguishable on the big and little issues of the day.

Obama clearly believes in the value of regulation, despite efforts to roll back some burdensome rules. Romney just as evidently wants to cut them, despite assurances he's not looking to throw out the whole federal rulebook. Obama's environmental record is mixed, even disappointing, in the eyes of advocates, due to his aggressive posture on drilling and his failure to win a cap and trade law even from a Democratically controlled Congress.

But he still stands in contrast to an opponent who wants to open more protected waters for exploration, looks dimly on the potential of green energy, questions the science of climate change and blames environmental regulation for holding back the promise of American energy.

For all those Republican primary debates and Obama's time in office, there are blanks that need to be filled in for both.

Obama has not come up with a plan to rescue Social Security; his opponent has made more of a start on that by proposing to raise the future retirement age for full benefits by one or two years and to reduce inflation increases in benefits for wealthier recipients, while protecting the status quo for people 55 and over.

Romney's handling of any number of foreign policy crises cannot be seen until and unless they confront him in office, whereas Obama has a record to judge.

In any event, only so much can be read into their positions. The makeup of Congress after the election will determine whether a candidate's to-do list gets done, a reality often neglected when presidential candidates make bold promises.

Circumstance, too, will shape what gets done. Obama walked into a steep recession, with the financial sector, auto industry and housing market reeling. By necessity he became a manager on the fly, much as George W. Bush did when the terrorist attacks of 2001 changed everything for years to come.

Associated Press

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EchoStar outs its HDT-610R Ultra Slim Box, says it's 'world's slimmest' DVR

EchoStar has come a long way since unveiling that HDS-600RS early last year, and today the European company's taking the wraps off of its newest DVR, the Ultra Slim Box HDT-610R. Keeping true to its moniker, the 610R measures in at a slim 14mm thin, while weighing in at just under two pounds. Physical features aside, EchoStar's managed to stuff a 500GB hard drive inside the DVR's scrawny body, as well as a couple of USB 2.0 incisions and single Ethernet and HDMI ports. On the software end, the device is equipped with a Freeview+ HD feature that offers subscription-free access to over 50 "high quality" and four high-def channels -- though, you will have to pay a one-time fee for the service. The HDT-610R will be available for pre-order starting May 4th, with Amazon, John Lewis and Mapling being the first online vendors to have it for up for grabs. No word on pricing yet, but in the meantime all you Euro folks can gander at the PR below to soak up the rest of the deets.

Continue reading EchoStar outs its HDT-610R Ultra Slim Box, says it's 'world's slimmest' DVR

EchoStar outs its HDT-610R Ultra Slim Box, says it's 'world's slimmest' DVR originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 19:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Italy goes big to save Venice as it sinks into the sea

A multibillion-dollar flood-prevention system will be put in place starting next year, a decade after the project began.

Venetians have been coping with tidal flooding, or ?acqua alta,? for centuries. A recent study suggests the problem may be worsening faster than previously believed.

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But a multibillion-dollar system to be implemented starting next year could help prevent major flooding, according to two engineers who presented the project yesterday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass.

According to scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, the University of Miami, and Tele-Rilevamento Europa, an Italian company specializing in ground deformation measurement, the lagoon city is sinking, and won?t stop any time soon.

The team, who published their findings in the March issue of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, combined GPS and space-borne radar information on the lagoon over the past 10 years and came to the conclusion that the city is sinking about two millimeters (0.08 inches) per year. This contradicts previous studies, according to which Venice?s land subsidence, the scientific term that refers to its slow sinking into the waters, had stopped after the city discontinued groundwater pumping in the 1990s, as reported by the Italian newspaper Il Gazzettino.

?It?s a small effect, but it?s important,? lead author Yehuda Bock said in a press release.

In 20 years, the study says, 80 millimeters (3.2 inches) of the lagoon will be taken over by the sea. But that is not the only thing Venetians should be worried about: The city is also tilting eastward, a problem the authors of the research say wasn?t detected in other studies.

So, is Venice doomed? ?Perhaps not. First of all, some question the study?s methodological approach. Pierpaolo Campostrini, director of Corila, a Venice-based research center that studies the lagoon, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera that subsidence may not be constant. ?It could accelerate or slow down,? he said.

Then there is Mose, a complex 5 billion euro ($6.5 billion) flood-prevention system part of which will be operational in 2013 ? 10 years after the project, one of Italy's largest public works, first began. Mose engineers Maria Teresa Brotto and Giovanni Cecconi were at MIT yesterday to present the project, which MIT faculty helped to develop. Mose?s four barriers, placed in the water at the lagoon?s inlets, are designed to rise with the water level, thus protecting the lagoon from flooding.

The goal, Mr. Cecconi said, is ?to keep the water level under 100 centimeters [3.28 feet]? in the city. Critics of the project, however, are concerned about its environmental impact and its maintenance costs, which Ms. Brotto said will amount to 15 to 20 million euros per year.

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