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Paid App for free from Apple's iTunes Promo

Apple's iTunes Promo Gives Paid Apps Away for Free. Apple may be following in the footsteps of Amazon's App store for Android by offering a paid app for free on a regular basis. Apple recently used its ongoing “App of the Week” feature to promote Cut the Rope: Experiments as a free download. Cut the Rope: Experiments is priced at 99 cents on the Amazon App store and Google Play. Apple made the announcement via the App Store Twitter account.


Typically, discounted app promotions on Apple's App Store are initiated by the app developer, not Apple, and that may be the case with Cut the Rope:Experiments. It's not clear whether Apple plans to offer a free weekly app the way Amazon promotes a daily freebie on the App store. Zepto Labs announced on Thursday a new level pack for the game. Hard Candy has 25 new levels and additional game elements, and at launch the company said the app will be available free of charge. So this may be a joint Apple-Zepto Labs promotion, or Apple may simply be using Zepto Labs' announcement to promote a great free app on the App Store.

A weekly promotion would probably be a better deal than a daily one, if Apple does plan to regularly offer paid apps for free on the App Store. Amazon first launched free daily apps when the App store for Android debuted in March 2011. The online retailer got off to a strong start by offering free downloads of Angry Birds Rio a popular new paid app at the time.

Recent free apps have included My Sketch, Alphabet Coloring, FactBook, and Fruit Sorter Extreme. All of them have 3 to 3.5 star reviews on Amazon. But Amazon has to fill its free spot every day, so they can't all be winners. Amazon's current free app is Quote Unquote a word game that mixes crossword clues with famous quotations.

Available for you: AMD Radeon HD 7970M

In two notebooks, AMD Radeon HD 7970M is now available and should be shipping in 2-3 weeks according to AVADirect. The HD 7970M features 1280 pixel shaders, a 256-bit memory bus, and 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory. It is the single fastest mobile graphics card available. 

AVADirect is currently offering it in two Clevo notebooks: The P150EM and P170EM, which have 15.6" and 17.3" screens, respectively. Pricing starts at a tad over $1,600 for both models. The HD 7970M is a $210 upgrade over the base Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M.

P150EM Product
  • Item Code: NBK-CLV-P150EM
  • The current gaming laptop configuration is priced at: $1597.11
  • Price shown will be adjusted in the checkout with respect to shipping and taxes (where required)

P170EM Product
  • Item Code: NBK-CLV-P170EM
  • The current gaming laptop configuration is priced at: $1652.11
  • Price shown will be adjusted in the checkout with respect to shipping and taxes (where required)
Use custom gaming laptop build configurator at the bottom of this page to upgrade or downgrade components to fit specifications into your budget and requirements.

USB cable accessories for your Samsung Galaxy Note or Galaxy S II

Get yourself a full size gender USB cable for your Samsung Galaxy Note or Galaxy S II, you will be happy to buy awesome accessories for your smart phone. This is because both the smart phones of the Galaxy series have really cool accessories, both genuine accessories from Samsung and third party companies.

And now that the ‘Android King of the Year’, the Samsung Galaxy S III is coming out shortly, the prices of these accessories for the Samsung Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Note are dropping. So it is your chance to grab hold of as many accessories as you can before they hike up again. While looking for some cool accessories myself for my Galaxy Note, I came across this awesome piece of electronics which would really change my life.

This is a very small accessory, but with very big list of applications. What you see in the image is a gender USB cable for the Samsung Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S II. This USB cable not only helps you charge your smart phone, but also lets you connect a host of USB devices to your smart phone and use them on your smart phone like you use the USB device on your laptop.

For example, connect a USB keyboard to your Galaxy Note with this USB cable and you will be able to use that keyboard to write lengthy emails and if you are a blogger, even write lengthy blog posts, just like this one. And now that the prices of accessories like this one have dropped, it is a good time to buy them. This genuine Samsung USB cable which would easily cost you £11 just a few weeks before is now available for just £4.04. Is that not a very sweet bargain? There are many other similar accessories from third party manufacturers, but they all have very bad reviews. So choose a proper one when you do, no matter how cheap the accessory may be. You can buy this one over here.

Mobile phone competition fall short to keep up with iOS, Android

Smartphones running Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android operating system are outshining the rest of the smartphone market, says a new report from market researcher IDC. Both Android and iOS have seen their share of the smartphone market grow progressively over the last twelve months, with Android accounting for 59% of the smartphone market and iOS 23%. During the first quarter of 2011 Android and iOS accounted for a combined share of 54.4%.

"The popularity of Android and iOS stems from a combination of factors that the competition has struggled to keep up with," says Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program. "Neither Android nor iOS were the first to market with some of these features, but the way they made the smartphone experience intuitive and seamless has quickly earned a massive following."

Previous market leader Symbian saw a sharp decline over the last year as Nokia transitioned to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. BlackBerry was also on a downwards spiral falling from 13.6% of the market in 2011 to 6.1% in 2012.

While Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile currently accounts for just 2.2% of the market, the platform is expected to show moderately increased growth in the latter half of the year and beyond as both Nokia and Microsoft boost WP7 sales volumes. IDC notes that platform growth will be slow until “Nokia speeds the cadence of its smartphone releases or more vendors launch their own Windows Phone-powered smartphones.

A separate report from analyst firm ABI Research suggests shipments of “phablets” -- devices that are bigger than smartphones but smaller than tablets -- such as the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Note will exceed 208 million units globally by 2015.

“One of the chief drivers for phablets is the amount of time people use their smartphones for web browsing, reading articles and newspapers on the go, or simply navigating their journeys,” says senior ABI analyst Joshua Flood. “The larger screen sizes make a significant difference to the user’s experience when compared to conventional-sized touchscreens between 3.5 to 4 inches.” Additionally, new phablet-styled devices provide an attractive two-in-one device proposition and are beginning to see the competition between these larger smartphone form factors and smaller media tablets (less than seven inches)."

Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility this week

Google's Motorola buy seen boosting Android in workplace. With the closing of Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility this week, talk of the possibilities for Android in the enterprise has spiked. While Android has taken the consumer market by storm - the OS runs 59% of smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2012 - IT managers remain wary that maintaining security and control of consumer Android devices devices used by workers may be difficult if not impossible, according to various surveys.

IT managers say they can't get the Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools they need to control Android devices brought into the workplace by employees, analysts have said. Gartner recently reported that it has found adoption of Android tablets and smartphones in large business has so far been "severely limited" because of the complexities of managing devices from multiple vendors running different versions of Android.

A Gartner survey in April found that only 9% of enterprises have made or plan to make Android their primary mobile platform in the next year. That compares to 58% of enterprises that use or plan to use Apple's iOS and 20% who favor Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS.

Some analysts say they are hopeful that Motorola's 2011 purchase of MDM software maker 3LM will improve IT's ability to manage and secure Android, perhaps in time for the release of the coming Jelly Bean and/or Android 5.0 versions.

Analysts say 3LM is not true MDM, but that its software includes a layer of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that could make Android work better with third-party MDM software, analysts said.

Though Google is expected to use 3LM to improve Android manageability, the company wouldn't comment on its plans for the software. Many analysts expect to gain insight into Google's plans at its Google I/O conference in late June. Today, IT shops rely mostly on Exchange ActiveSync to manage Android devices used by workers for job tasks. However, analysts have said that ActiveSync lacks the sophistication required by IT shops.

"ActiveSync is a really low-end solution for MDM," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

"Now that Google owns Moto (Motorola Mobility), I expect the Moto folks to start feeding back into base Android some of the technology they have developed. This is the primary reason that Google bought Moto, in my opinion," Gold added.

Gold predicted that the addition of Motorola Mobility will provide Android with "much more capable management interfaces and APIs." While that won't help current and past Android versions, it will mean enhanced security at enterprise standards for future Android versions, he added.

"None of this helps the Android enterprise users in the short term, unless they decide to work with MDM from Enterproid and others like Good that have a 'two-persona' capability on a device," Gold said. He explained that "two-persona" refers to the ability to partition data on a smartphone or tablets so that a user's personal photos and music won't be destroyed if an IT shops wipes off sensitive corporate data from a mobile device.

For now, IT shops still need to specify makes and models for users to buy if they want to use them on the corporate network, Gold said.

"For the short term, only enterprise level adaptations of Android are safe enough for corporate use, in my opinion," Gold said. "Longer term, in one to two years, this won't be an issue."

Phillip Redman, an analyst at Gartner, was less sure that Android will become a mainstay of corporations, though IT concerns will be eased if Google decides to add MDM APIs or incorporate 3LM software broadly, he said.

"Still, the many versions of Android is an inhibitor," Redman warned.

Google is expected to begin direct sales of Nexus smartphones and tablets through a new process that provides multiple manufacturers - not just Motorola - with early access to future Android versions.

Google would sell the Nexus devices directly to consumers, partly to avoid restrictions or add-ons from carriers.

It is conceivable that Motorola, which will be operated as a separate unit within Google, could become the originator of Nexus devices so that Google could dictate the standard for other vendors to follow, said Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst.

The new Google unit's CEO, Dennis Woodside, has not publicly discussed Nexus or plans for 3LM, but did say in a statement after the deal closed that: "Our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility's remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world."

Gold said the Nexus concept makes sense for Google, whether it's done through Motorola or not.

"Google needs to limit the fragmentation in Android that is causing the market a lot of heartburn, and even more so in the enterprise space," he said.

The Motorola acquisition means Google can use Motorola's "expertise to move into the enterprise market so as to take advantage of [the] 'Bring Your Own Device [movement]," Milanesi said.

Samsung, the biggest maker of Android devices, is already trying to sell both tablets and smartphones for workplaces, while Lenovo is doing the same with tablets, she said. Moving Android into the enterprise is "certainly key for Google, considering the growing trend of BYOD and the decreasing number of people that carry separate devices for work and play," Milanesi added.

Apple's Prepare gives up $75M in dividends

Apple CEO Tim Prepare is providing up $75 thousand in returns on limited inventory that the organization is giving to all of its employees. In a processing with the Investments and Return Commission payment on Saturday, Apple organization said that Prepare expected that his limited inventory systems not obtain returns. The returns that Apple organization employees are getting amount to $2.65 per one fourth for each limited inventory device organised. The stocks are not normally qualified to obtain returns, so Apple's choice is a advantage for its employees.

The choice comes two months after Apple organization presented a frequent results and certified a $10-billion inventory buyback system to start providing some of its cashback to investors. It was a shift that former CEO Bob Tasks long opposed. After his loss of life last year, Apple's control has signaled that it's been considering alternatives for the money, which came to nearly $100 million. Even without the results, Prepare, 51, continues to be one of the highest-paid CEOs in The united states. His pay system was respected at $378 thousand when he became Apple's primary in Aug. That was almost entirely in inventory prizes, some of which won't be redeemable until 2021, so the value could change considerably.

Assuming Apple organization will pay monthly returns of $2.65 over the vesting period of Chef's stocks, the organization said he will give up about $75 thousand in value. Shares of Apple organization dropped $3.03 to $562.29 Saturday.
 
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