Following the success of our Version 1 ‘All flights, everywhere’ flight search app that launched in February this year (and generated over a million downloads in the first five weeks), we wanted to create an even more powerful tool that replicated the best functionality from our website that our customers love. We wanted to go beyond the success of Version 1, which ranked #1 in the travel apps section of the iTunes app store and was so popular that it even featured in Apple’s advertising campaign.

To do this, we created Version 2 that brings the full flexibility and functionality of the Skyscanner website direct to your iPhone, allowing customers to find flights from a specific airport, a city or even a whole country. Those just looking for bargain prices can get inspired by searching to ‘everywhere’ giving them a list of the cheapest flight destinations from their nearest airports.

Those flexible on when they want to travel can view the lowest fares across a whole week, a whole month or even the entire year with the handy ‘chart’ view function, ensuring they find the best deals available. Specific filters can be applied to the search results allowing customers to view flight options for specific airlines, at specific times or simply by price.

You can take a look at our handy YouTube video which demonstrates our versatile app in action.

http://www.youtube.com/SkyscannerLtd

When customers are on the move, saving time is really one of their key requirements. The new Version 2 app allows customers to compare millions of routes and find the best flight deals in seconds, saving them both valuable time and money. What’s new in version 2? Version 2 lets customers book direct with the airline once they have found the flights they want or they can save the flight details to book at a more convenient time. They can even share their flight information with friends.

Here at Skyscanner, we believe the Version 2 app is an indispensible tool for the savvy traveller keen to search for flights while on the go. Available to download on iPhone now, Version 2 is free, it’s fast and it’s available in 23 languages.

We’ve listened to and taken on board comments from customers and app users to create the most flexible, powerful and free flight search app in the world. What about other platforms? Well, we’ve got plans in the pipeline but aren’t giving anything away yet.

The iPhone app is the first native app we’ve developed and given the size of the iPhone App market – and hence the demand from our users – it made sense to start here. Our Android customers are getting twitchy but they’re lucky – by the time we have an Android App out we’ll have gone through at least through releases for iPhone which in some ways will mean things will go a lot more smoothly for their first release – hopefully.

Then there’s iPad and Blackberry and an increasing number of platforms. We’re working hard to reach everyone, particularly by improving our mobile site which hopefully all users will notice a difference with. For those that want to try the iPhone App, you can download it from the iTunes store here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skyscanner-all-flights-everywhere/id415458524?mt=8

MacApper Editorial:

This is an extremely successful application and we appreciate Barry submitting the application to all of us here at MacApper.  We fly quite a bit and have gotten really used to using the airline sites directly and/or possibly looking to Expedia or Travelocity to compare flights.  Those sites are great and have been completely adequate up to this point.  As it relates to Skyscanner, there are a couple of downsides to the application but those are probably trivial for most users. It does rely at least to some extent on the location services of the iPhone which we generally have shut off.  Also, it seems to be best at helping you with international flights while at least for us, most of our travel is domestic. With that said, it's great to be able to have information from so many airlines available at your fingertips.  Plus, the application is FREE so you have absolutely nothing to lose.  It's definitely worth a download and testing to see if the application meets your flight planning needs (especially if you fly internationally).

If you are a Mac or iOS developer, please take advantage of our developer submission program and we will do our best to follow up with you just like we did with Barry.

The iOS is taking the a step into the three dimensional realm. A new demo application entitled “i3D”. The application demonstrates head tracking on the iPod, iPad, and iPhone to create three dimensional effects. To demonstrate the application and the project, French researchers Laurence Nigay and Jeremie Francome posted a video on YouTube of the application and the technology in action.

i3D is a free download from the App Store that is available as a universal binary for the iPod and iPhone and for the iPad. The application consists of a video feed who a red bounding box that tracks the user head movements. From there, the same demonstrations displayed in the YouTube video are presented.

Adobe this week released the first three companion applications to their widely praised Photoshop application. The company showcased a demonstration of what was possible with the new Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit.

“Adobe Eazal ($4.99)

With Adobe Eazel, you can use your iPad and your fingertips to paint beautiful works of art. Paint across your entire iPad screen, and easily access the tools you need. Send your artwork directly to Photoshop CS5 from any locationall you need is a network connection between your iPad and computer. Or do all your painting in the app, and share via email.

Adobe Nav ($1.99)

With Adobe Nav and a network connection between your iPad and computer, you can customize the Photoshop CS5 toolbar on iPad to easily access the tools you use most. Browse, reorder, view, and zoom in on up to 200 open Photoshop documents on iPad. Tap a document on iPad to make it the active document in Photoshop CS5. Disconnect from the network and use iPad to easily share files in person with others.

Adobe Color Lava ($2.99)

With Adobe Color Lava, you can use your fingertips to mix colors on your iPad and create custom swatches and five-swatch themes. Instantly access them in Photoshop CS5all you need is a network connection between your iPad and computer. Or use the app wherever inspiration strikes, and then bring your colors into Photoshop CS5 when you’re connected. Share colors via email, too.”

Developers are already talking advantage of Adobe’s new SDK and creating material to compete with Adobe’s creation. Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 (released last week) or later is required.

This month, there has been information provided that states that Apple is currently working with voice recognition firm Nuance Communications to being their service to the iOS platform with the intro of iOS 5 presumably later this year. New information has been provided that stars that Apple will be using their massive North Carolina data center to power centrally-hosted voice services. This new partnership is said to be revealed at the World Wide Developers Conference in June.

“In digging into the information about the relationship between the two companies, we had heard that Apple might actually already be using Nuance technology in their new (but yet to be officially opened) massive data center in North Carolina. Since then, we’ve gotten multiple independent confirmations that this is indeed the case. And yes, this is said to be the keystone of a partnership that Apple is likely to announce with Nuance at WWDC next month.

More specifically, we’re hearing that Apple is running Nuance software – and possibly some of their hardware – in this new data center. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple will be able to process this voice information for iOS users faster. Second, it will prevent this data from going through third-party servers. And third, by running it on their own stack, Apple can build on top of the technology, and improve upon it as they see fit.”

Nuance is the leader in voice recognition technology. The group has a deep portfolio of patents that are key contributions in the field. Apple being in cahoots with Nuance would seem very likely as Apple absorbed artificial intelligence firm Siri who uses the services of Nuance. It has been said that Apple is currently working on incorporating both voice recognition and innovative AI in the next installment of the iOS linage.

DoubleTwist has updated their mobile application they have made available on Android to support Apple’s new streaming standard AirPlay, as told by Engadget.

“While it isn’t quite as nice as an actual app, it provides nearly all of the functionality that you could ask for. Even the multitasking music controls work flawlessly. Sound quality is said to be “great,” and the only part of it that is a little buggy seems to be the scrubbing capability”

Here are the details listed on the updated application for the doubleTwist Player for Android.

“Recent changes:

- doubleTwist now supports AirPlay for users who have upgraded to AirSync. Stream to Apple TV (music, videos and photos) and DLNA devices (music and videos). Beta support for Sonos.

- When a supported device such as the Apple TV is recognized on the same WiFi network as your Android device, you can start streaming to it from the doubleTwist playback controls if you are an AirSync user.”

The folks at doubleTwist have history with Apple. Their founder, Jon Johansen, gained fame when he successfully reversed Apple’s FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management) on the iTunes Store and the CSS (Content Scramble System) that is used to encrypt DVDs.

The company debuted software for Windows and Mac that ventured out to replace iTunes as the main station for media on the end users machine. Expanding it’s offerings in the following 2009 year, the group included an integrated version of the Amazon MP3 Store. The company is now investing it’s talents into the Android mobile operating system. Their plan is to simplify media on the platform while integrating the Android Market and providing wireless syncing capabilities through Wireless Fidelities (otherwise known as Wi-Fi)

This month, there has been information provided that states that Apple is currently working with voice recognition firm Nuance Communications to being their service to the iOS platform with the intro of iOS 5 presumably later this year. New information has been provided that stars that Apple will be using their massive North Carolina data center to power centrally-hosted voice services. This new partnership is said to be revealed at the World Wide Developers Conference in June.

“In digging into the information about the relationship between the two companies, we had heard that Apple might actually already be using Nuance technology in their new (but yet to be officially opened) massive data center in North Carolina. Since then, we’ve gotten multiple independent confirmations that this is indeed the case. And yes, this is said to be the keystone of a partnership that Apple is likely to announce with Nuance at WWDC next month.

More specifically, we’re hearing that Apple is running Nuance software – and possibly some of their hardware – in this new data center. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple will be able to process this voice information for iOS users faster. Second, it will prevent this data from going through third-party servers. And third, by running it on their own stack, Apple can build on top of the technology, and improve upon it as they see fit.”

Nuance is the leader in voice recognition technology. The group has a deep portfolio of patents that are key contributions in the field. Apple being in cahoots with Nuance would seem very likely as Apple absorbed artificial intelligence firm Siri who uses the services of Nuance. It has been said that Apple is currently working on incorporating both voice recognition and innovative AI in the next installment of the iOS linage.

MacStories is chiming in today with an anecdote that steps into the mind of Apple’s head honcho Steve Jobs for a bit. The story was made first available as an in-app purchase through the Fortune magazine subscription on the iPad (later made available on the web on print copies).

The story shares some interesting information about Steve Jobs and the launching of the MobileMe web service. Specifically, the article shares the reaction Jobs had to the initial bogged networks and downtime of the service.

“In Fortune’s story, Lashinsky says Steve Jobs summoned the entire MobileMe team for a meeting at the company’s on-campus Town Hall, accusing everyone of “tarnishing Apple’s reputation.” He told the members of the team they “should hate each other for having let each other down”, and went on to name new executives on the spot to run the MobileMe team. A few excerpts from the article.

“Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continues, “So why the f*** doesn’t it do that?”

Jobs was also particularly angry about the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg not liking MobileMe:

“Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us.”

As a result of all the issues the service had starting off, Steve appointed a new director for the MobileMe service. Something else that a lot Apple enthusiast also found interesting is the training, or as some have stated, “the Apple way of life” after, or should, Steve Jobs decide to take a backseat.

“Steve Jobs hired dean of Yale School of Management Joel Podolny to run the Apple University, an internal group also featuring business professors and Harvard veterans that are writing a series of case studies to prepare employees for the life at Apple after Jobs. These case studies focus on Apples recent business decisions and internal culture, they are exclusive to employees and taught by top executives like Tim Cook and Ron Johnson.”

MacStories summarizes some of the other articles related to the anecdote on their website

iFans chimed in and gave some information on changes made with the Amazon Cloud Player. Among the changes, one of them was noted as Amazon making their Cloud Player software iOS compatible.

“While it isn’t quite as nice as an actual app, it provides nearly all of the functionality that you could ask for. Even the multitasking music controls work flawlessly. Sound quality is said to be ‘great,’ and the only part of it that is a little buggy seems to be the scrubbing capability”

While the new feature allows for iOS users to play music they have stored on the Amazon Cloud Drive service, it doesn’t allow for uploading content from their iOS device as that service requires Adobe’s Flash to make that possible. Drag-and-drop organization for playlist also appear to be unsupported as well as iOS compatibility seems to be only in the US. The software also doesn’t seem to auto format for iPhone, iPod and iPad making it rather awkward to use the service on the iPhone and iPod as those devices do not possess the screen real estate like the iPad.

TechCrunch is chiming in the Apple is currently talking to  Nuance Communication, the same providers for some of the voice recognition/voice control applications that are presented on the Mac OS and iOS platform, to bring voice recognition to the core of the iOS.

“Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we’ve heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.”

Siri, an artificial intelligence company bought by Apple last year, has already based the core of its personal assistance software on the App Store with Nuance’s technology. Cupertino is also working on incorporating Siri’s technology into their iOS 5 software set to release this year, reportedly.

“The other option is for Apple to build the technology themselves. And some recent job postings suggest they may be thinking about that. But to get to where Nuance is today it would take a long, long time. Perhaps more importantly, it’s well known in the industry that Nuance holds key patents for their technology and is very aggressive in protecting them. Even Apple would have a hard time dancing around this if they did go it alone.”

Based on the new information provided, it is unlikely that Apple is looking to capture the company for their own as Nuance market value is around $6 billion and the company has been known to drive a hard bargain. When Apple acquired Siri last year, Nuance and Cupertino were in negotiations on whether the company should keep their voice service active within Siri. These deliberations are reportedly still pending an agreement.

However, acquisition of the company is still a possibility, but it seems the more likely turnout would be a licensing deal that will allow Apple to use the services of Nuance for a far cheeper price. This would be just until Apple develops their own tailored voice recognition services to replace Nuance’s

Sources have been diving through the new build of Mac OS X Lion and discovering new things. One interesting discovery made by a source is the groundwork and icon for the “Find My Mac” service, which seems to offer the same locating service as Find My iPhone/iPod/iPad. However, to have this ability, it was discovered that one would have to upgrade to a version of MobileMe that is called “Castle”.

Click OK to open System Preferences and complete your upgrade from MobileMe to Castle.

Consomac.fr, the sources who made the discovery, said that it could be just a placeholder until Apple adds the iCloud name it recently purchased.

One of the biggest talks of the tech world would be the purchase of the iCloud name that is speculated to be around $4.5 million, although, that figure can’t be confirmed. iCloud is speculated as the name that will untimely replace the MobileMe name in total once the  software has prepped for introduction.

Apple is currently working on a new feature in Safari that allows for a different kind of bookmarking. “Reading List,” as the company calls it, allows user to save web pages for later reading in a innovative way.

Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.

The icon for the software.

The feature, however, is made inactive and is tucked away in the confines of the software. Apple has not made mention of the new software in any of the Mac OS X Lion beta documentation. With the basic function of the software, it would put it in direct competition with the popular bookmarking services Instapaper and ReadItLater. How Apple plans to exactly deliver that feature remains to be seen. it can be confirmed that Apple is using some form of HTML and JavaScript to help out with the cause. Apple could add a variety of things that would compete with people established in that arena, such as Instapaper and ReadItLater’s ability to synchronize bookmarks across devices.

Apple has released a new beta build for Mac OS X Lion. Developers have been combing through the software to find any changes that have been made since the last seeding of the software. In this build, it seems as though Apple has responded to criticism in some of its software as there has been developers chatting about the confusion in the selector in various areas of the software. Apple has cleared up the confusion by giving the impression that the active function a “pushed in” looks opposed to the previous one.

Earlier builds of the software showcased slider, if you will, that let the user know which item on screen was active. It was illustrated as a lighter colored button when active and confused many. This has also been a documented experience in iOS.

As far as the Mac OS X software is concerned, Apple has implemented the button look to appear more natural and free up confusion among users. A similar change was made to the new revamped iCal in the software.

In the midst of the purchase of the iCloud domain name purchase by Apple, it is now being said that Cupertino is already using the iCloud name in software beta builds of iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion.

Apple has begun adopting the “iCloud” name within several products currently under development, suggesting the appropriately labeled moniker is indeed the frontrunner for the company’s soon-to-debut Internet cloud service, which will span beyond streaming music, AppleInsider has learned.

According to people familiar with the matter, Apple is prepping beta versions of both iOS 5.0 and Mac OS X Lion ahead of its annual developers conference that integrate with a service dubbed “iCloud,” enabling users to sync and store much of the same information they currently can with the company’s existing MobileMe service, such as bookmarks, email, contacts and iCal events.

Much of the discussion of the new cloud-computing service coming from Apple is surrounded by their deliberations with music labels on allowing their content to be used in the new service. However, it’s been highly believed by some that the service will scale wider than that, allowing for a slew of multimedia and other content to be stored on the servers. There has been reporting going back over year stating that their will be some sort of video component in the new Apple cloud service. The facelift of MobileMe is said to attribute stateless storage for multiple types of content.

Earlier on in the week, a source gave GigaOM information stating that Apple has purchased the domain name iCloud.com for $4.5 million. It was assumed that Apple is planning to roll out their new cloud-based music service under that particular name. The original owner of the name have renamed the site CloudMe and redirected visitors who try to navigate to the site using the iCloud domain name.

My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.

It seems as the Cupertino purchase is definitely legit as All Things Digital has been able to confirm that Apple has purchased the name from the group, though ATD wasn’t able to get the exact purchase price of the name.

Apple has indeed acquired the domain name iCloud.com from Sweden-based hybrid cloud computing outfit Xcerion. Sources in position to know confirm that Apple bought the domain as GigaOm first reported Thursday, though they declined to say whether its rumored $4.5 million price tag was accurate.

A very interesting discovery made on the Mac OS X Lion have led some to believe that Cupertino is planning to release Retina Display Macs. The new installment of the Mac OS X Lion beta program included very high resolution wallpapers that equal to a resolution measurement of 3200 x 3200. This has been concluded as the highest resolution images that Apple has bundled in their software. This, in turn, has indicated to some that Retina Display Mac are on the horizon.

MacRumors made some interesting observations that Apple added some under-the-hood changes which included these same extremely high resolution images, them also summing up that ultra-high resolution displays on Macintosh machines where immanent.

“Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4′s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.”

MacMagazine.com found other ultra-high res images that Apple has added to the software further indicating the aforementioned theory. Appleicatoin icons have been doubled from the typical 512 x 512 res to 1024 x 1024.

These images wave flag that Apple may be taking the first steps to implementing such hardware when it comes available. Going by typically Apple fashion, the company may have already seized components necessary to make such machines and displays.

Gaming network OpenFeint announced this week that they been bought out by Japanese company Gree for $104 million.

GREE, Japans leading mobile social gaming platform, today announced its entrance into the global market with the acquisition of OpenFeint’s outstanding securities for US $104 million, plus additional capital for accelerated growth of the OpenFeint platform.

Gree is said to be very big in Asia. It has been regarded as THR largest social gaming network in the area with a user base of 25 million and a market cap of about $5 billion. OpenFeint adds another 75 million users to the company’s gaming communality which exist between iOS and Android platforms.

OpenFeint started as a two-person iOS game which was one of the first applications to come on the App Store when it was introduced known as Aurora Feint: The Beginning. The game received great reviews, but the developers seen opportunity in the gaming network they developed. Hence, OpenFeint began to integrate themselves into other iOS gaming application and eventually to the Android platform. The gaming community is now embedded in the most popular games on the iOS platform which includes Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. OpenFeint says they are continuing to update the network with new features with the support of Gree at their disposal.

[Click for actual size]

A very interesting discovery made on the Mac OS X Lion have led some to believe that Cupertino is planning to release Retina Display Macs. The new installment of the Mac OS X Lion beta program included very high resolution wallpapers that equal to a resolution measurement of 3200 x 3200. This has been concluded as the highest resolution images that Apple has bundled in their software. This, in turn, has indicated to some that Retina Display Mac are on the horizon.

MacRumors made some interesting observations that Apple added some under-the-hood changes which included these same extremely high resolution images, them also summing up that ultra-high resolution displays on Macintosh machines where immanent.

“Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4′s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.”

MacMagazine.com found other ultra-high res images that Apple has added to the software further indicating the aforementioned theory. Appleicatoin icons have been doubled from the typical 512 x 512 res to 1024 x 1024 (shown above).

These images wave flag that Apple may be taking the first steps to implementing such hardware when it comes available. Going by typically Apple fashion, the company may have already seized components necessary to make such machines and displays.

Here at MacApper we recently reported that their are groups on the Internet that have been providing a remote unlocking service where customers can pay to have their iPhone unlocked and placed on any carrier of their choice. Apparently, these groups were working with information that granted them access to Apple’s database where they could alter IMEI numbers in order to unlocking the phone with Jail-breaking.

However, our friends over at Cult of Mac have received information that numerous groups providing this service have suddenly shut down and are refunding monies to customers that they have not rendered service yet to, including one of the more popular unlocking mediums who are dubbed CutYourSim.com.

What happened? Even a representative of CutYourSim doesn’t know.

“Unfortunately, we were not able to complete the rest of the unlocks waiting in our queue due to our suppliers being unable to offer the service anymore,” CutYourSim told Cult of Mac. “Our suppliers have told us that there is a possibility that the service may return, but they do not know when, so we have decided to start processing refunds for any orders that we were not able to complete.”

Reportedly, CutYourSim wasn’t even aware of who their supplier was. It’s been theorized that a sole entity had access to Apple database of IMEI number and shopped the information around on the Internet and sold it to interested parties by receiving a big cut of the services rendered while remaining behind the scenes.

In other words, CutYourSim’s iPhone unlocking service was as much of a black box to them as it was to customers. They would throw an iPhone into one end, wait for the light to go on, then pull it out, carrier unlocked. No one knew how it worked, but it did.

The problem with black boxes, though, is that when they break, no one knows how to fix them… or even what’s wrong with it in the first place.

Cult of Mac made an interesting hypothesis by stating that Cupertino may have caught wind of the activity by detecting a significant increase of IMEI numbers being added to their database. As clever as the theory, their still isn’t a solid reason why these groups decided to close shop. Whether it’s the cease and desist on Apple’s part or the groups and/or the individual source providing the information decided to halt services in light the consequences that would occur remains to be known.

There has been some recent moves made by Apple that has many to believe that Cupertino is gearing up to introduce the new versions of iWork and MobileMe. With the iWork and MobileMe software products, Apple has always offered a discount to customers who decide to purchase the software bundled with a Macintosh machine. Back in February, Apple discontinued selling retail boxed version of the MobileMe web software and channeled it strictly for digital distribution. They also halted selling the software at a discounted price with the purchase of a new Mac during that time.

As some of you who may know, a incentive in the likeness aforementioned existed with Apple’s collection of office software known as iWork. With the purchase of a new Mac, the customer could choose the option to have the software pre-installed on customized Macintosh systems and receive a $30 discount from the full retail price, bring the grand total to about $49 dollars. Users also had the option to mail in a rebate to receive that same $30 discount if they purchased their Mac through authorized Apple retailers. It seems as though as that option is no longer available as customers on the Net have witnessed as they are building the machine of the specifications, they do not receive the discount. Apple appears to have notified official resellers as well that the promotion has ended has of April 18, 2011

This could very well indicate that Cupertino is on the verge of unveiling the new impression of the MobileMe and iWork software. It has been reported that Apple is in the works of updating the products with some saying that iWork will extend even further and be more integrated into their iOS counterparts and MobileMe receiving a complete makeover to implement new features that will include the web service to act as a “digital locker” for the user’s content and being able to stream that stateless information on demand.

it is not for certain when these updates will surface, as the iWork update was said to accompany the Mac App Store launch. However, many are stating that Apple is planning to unveil the new softwares at this year World Wide Developers Conference scheduled for early June.

Condé Nast, one of the first conglomerate publication to invest into digital distribution of their content through the the iOS platform (more specifically the iPad), have decided to take things slower in that direction as the company’s forecasted numbers with this medium have been greatly under-appreciated.

“It’s a shift,” one Conde publisher said. “The official stance was we’re going to get all our magazines on the iPad because this is going to be such an important stream. The new change is maybe we can slow it down. In my opinion it makes Conde look smart because we have the ambition, but we’re not rushing.”

“They’re not all doing all that well, so why rush to get them all on there?” the publisher added.

Reportedly, it is now up to their individual publications whether they want to embrace the iPad, iPhone, and iPod platform or not. The company is giving individual liberties to their publications and moving away from pushing all their titles through the iOS platform.

Condé Nast is developing a way where the iPad versions of magazine titles provide an in-depth, and more importantly, exclusive experience compared to their physical magazine counterparts. They have gone as far as to provide exclusive offers and taking advantage of their digital canvas to add things like interactive reading and video. Advertisers are also trying to discover what the possibilities are in these digital publications.

Apple seems to be putting some enforcement down in the App Store in order to protect the interest of their users. The company is cracking down on the ratings of applications in the App Store as some app developers have taken into adopting incentives, also known as “offer walls” to encourage users to download other applications in return for virtual credits in which the offer wall is embedded. The goal for the developer is to boost downloads in order to be more likely to appear on the App Store’s Top Apps page. It has been said that Apple has indeed made provisions to the Top Apps rankings, this was first noticed by mobile ad firms and offer wall creation groups.

“We’ve been noticing changes in the Top Free rankings for at least three days now,” said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, which serves 80,000 applications with its analytics product. “From our point of view, Apple is absolutely considering more than just downloads, which we believe is the right direction to go in to measure the true popularity of an app.” Other pay-per-install networks tell us they’ve been detecting these changes too.

While it’s too early to tell exactly what the new weights are, a reasonable hypothesis would be that Apple is considering factors such as active usage. But we’ll keep talking to top developers and ad networks to learn more as we go.

Following up the discovery of the altercation to the App Store rankings, Inside Mobile Apps has reported that Apple is rejecting offer wall applications in their entirety. Offer walls fall under App Store policy for manipulating user reviews and App Store rankings.

Developers began receiving rejection notices for dozens of apps late last week and yesterday, saying that they are prohibited from having offer walls. Apple looks like it is changing the interpretation of clause 3.10 in its developer agreement, which says, “Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program.” It’s uncertain what will happen to the thousands of apps that have already been approved and have offer walls.

Companies that create the offer walls, such as Tapjoy, are defending the purpose of their work justifying them as a win for everyone by promoting more application installations, improve target advertising, and earn free “premium” content for users. With the recent shift change in policy from Cupertino, it’s has yet to be seen how things will pan out.

It’s already been reported that Apple and their cloud-based iTunes is “ready to go” at this very moment, however, some have pondered about the dealings that Apple was having with the music labels and the status on those deliberations. Now, CNET is reporting that Apple has recently made deal with the Warner Music Group, one of the four major music labels, to support the new cloud-based initiative.

Apple has an agreement with Warner Music Group to offer the record label’s tracks on iTunes’ upcoming cloud-music service, music industry sources said.

In the race to the cloud, Apple is apparently stepping on the gas. All Things Digital reported Thursday that Apple has signed two of the top four record companies. ATD reported that Apple content chief Eddy Cue was due to fly to New York on Friday to try and finalize agreements with the two labels that were still unsigned.

It is unclear whether Warner was one of those two that had previously licensed Apple or whether the label inked a new agreement on Friday.

WMG is the third largest music label with the other three being Sony, EMI, and Universal. These four groups set the tone in the music industry. This agreement seems to be a key one as Warner is the same group that has been giving Spotify and Google hassle into coming in agreement with their musical ventures.

There hasn’t been a set date for the launch of the new music service, but Apple seems to be racing to wrap things up to unveil the new initiative. WWDC is said to be the perfect ground for Apple to introduce this new service.

Legendary video game maker Atari has released a collection of it’s most popular gaming titles on the iOS platform in an emulator titled Atari’s Greatest Hits. Within the application, Atari has packaged about one hundred titles from users to choose from. Among the titles are some you might recognize from your PC days such as Missile Command, Tempest, Battlezone, Centipede, and Asteroid. All the games come in a bundled four-pack and charge $0.99 each as an in-app purchase. You can also purchase all 100 of the titles for $14.99. What’s even better is that Atari has mentioned that the software will be compatible with the iCade iPad gaming setup.

Some may not remember the iCade gaming case for the iPad or possibly never heard of it. The iCade gaming controller for the iPad was presented as an April Fools joke last year. However, many thought that the casing for the iPad was real and withdemand for the item that wasn’t even in mass production, it became an actual product. The iCade presents as a miniature version of an arcade gaming cabinet. It is also presented with actual working controls and can fully interact with applications that have support built for it. Asteroids was demoed on the product at the Consumer Electronics Show and Atari said that they had a “huge suite” of software made for the product. This seems to be the product they had mentioned then. The iCade gaming cabinet for the iPad is currently in the production phase and is scheduled to be for order in June. As for Atari’s Greatest Hits on the iOS, that is available right now on the App Store for no charge.

Valve released teaser images for their software when the company announced that they we making their software available on the Mac. We don’t know what to make of these images, but MacRumors made a interesting observation stating that the images could possibly be a teaser for the Portal Alternative Reality Game, likely promoting their Portal 2 launch. The original Portal received high marks from critics, including it’s use of physics based puzzles which involved players manipulating two different portal entrances. Portal 2 should be on it’s way to Xbox, Playstation 3, Mac, and PC on April 19.

There are a bundle of websites out their that are offering users of the iPhone a remote method to unlock their iPhone without having to jailbreak the device first. Acclaimed iPhone hacker “MuscleNerd” explains that the method includes accessing Apple’s own database to add modified IMEI device identifiers to allow corresponding sources to unlock the user device.

they’re not using a hack. They’re using actual access to the Apple database (which is why the unlock happens through iTunes)

A site dubbed cutyoursim was the first to be seen performing this service, charging $170 for devices to be unlock. Interestingly enough, the site appears to be executing this service through some third party rather than directly unlocking the phone themselves. There also seems to be competition as several other sites have offered the same service in the $160 – $180 range. It’s not really clear whether all of these services are operating solely or there is some joint effort established with another party that does the work while the main groups operate behind the scenes and collect profit.

This method conducted how it is mentioned should permanently unlock an iPhone. Equally, Apple could locate these modified IMEI identifiers themselves and administering a halt to the operation by reconfiguring the device locked with the new code they implement. As a result, these groups guaranteeing that the unlock will remain permanent are falling short of that promise as Apple has that control.

Be that as it may, those who are interested in seeking services from the these sites should research the group first to confirm legitimacy of the product before going ahead and having the group in question render services

Microsoft Releases Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1

Microsoft this week released Service Pack 1 to their popular Office collection of software for the Mac. The update brings a number of fixes to the software while adding several new features to the suite which including enhancement to Outlook. Bug fixes seem to be on the way for previous iterations of the productivity software from Microsoft as well.

Updates for the software are seemingly scattered with no actual specified time. The downloads page appears to be on and off and the AutoUpdate tool bundles with the software package still doesn’t have the update active yet.

Cupertino has made some new additions to Safari in Mac OS X Lion since we last seen it. Apple has added a “do not track” tool within the web browsing software to secure users better online, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The tool is included within the latest test release of Lion, a version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system that is currently available only to developers. The final version of the operating system is scheduled to be released to the public this summer. Mentions of the do-not-track feature in Apple’s Safari browser began to appear recently in online discussion forums and on Twitter.

The Mac OS X Lion software is currently in private developer seeding and is scheduled to be due for release this summer.

The “do not track” feature was something that was originally proposed by the FTC. What the feature does is displays a “do not track” request from the browser that has this feature is activated on. However, it is still up to the advertising companies to comply with the request.

Do-not-track tools in browsers automatically send out messages to websites and online-advertising networks requesting that users’ movements around the Web not be tracked. The system will only work if Web companies agree to respect peoples’ tracking preferences.

Wall Street Journal states that the major advertising companies have yet to form a way to honor the feature.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox have already implemented this feature in addition to Apple and their Safari web browser. Google and their Chrome browser have yet to embed the feature in their software.

Upon speculations prediction, Apple has released iOS 4.3.2 for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod. The update brings several fixes to the software including a fix for the iPad in which FaceTime would freeze and become responsive after previous use. It also addresses an issue with Verizon iPads were users were unable to connect to the Verizon network after turning off network connectivity. The CDMA iPhone is still in 4.2.x and received a separate update, update 4.2.7.

This update contains improvements and other bug fixes including:

- Fixes an issue that occasionally caused blank or frozen video during a FaceTime call

- Fixes an issue that prevented some international users from connecting to 3G networks on iPad Wi-Fi + 3G

- Contains the latest security updates

As mentioned before, The Boy Genius Report reported that the update would make it’s way to Apple servers in two weeks prior to this weeks release, again giving a on point accurate estimation of the software release date.

Apple Updates Safari To Version 5.0.5

Accompanying the new iOS 4.3.2 release for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod, Apple released the new installment for the their desktop browser Safari. There isn’t much to say about this update. Safari 5.0.5 administers security updates and irons out some minor bugs in the software. This software can be acquired through Software Update on your desktop machine or through the downloads pages of the Apple website.

Apple is on it’s typical hiring frenzy and the company has picked up Microsoft data center manager Kevin Timmons. Timmons filled the position for Microsoft for a little under two years. He was picked up by Redmond from his previous decade stint with GeoCities/Yahoo!

News that a bunch of us have been discussing is Apple hiring Kevin Timmons (GM of Microsoft’s data center services group). Don’t expect any press releases from Apple or Microsoft on this one. … The position Kevin is going to fill is not known and is not the position vacated by the departed Olivier Sanche. Olivier’s position has been filled by another data center operations executive.

Sanche was Apple’s previous manager for their data center before he passed away recently of a heart attack. Seeing as how the position has been filled, Timmons could very possibly be taking on other projects that are related to Apple’s data services. In fact, his position might even expand outside that of the data center. All Things Digital chimed in by stating that his roles may be larger than traditional and typical data center mangers. These roles may include the launch of a cloud service they may also be very likely linked to Apple’s anticipated remodeling of their MobileMe service.

Timmons left Microsoft this week and the company has confirmed his departure, though it declined to say why he left or where he was headed. But sources in position to know confirm hes hired on with Apple.

Details on Timmons’s responsibilities there are slim, though I’m told his role may extend beyond his datacenter expertise. Which is interesting to hear in light of recent chatter about Apple’s rumored cloud initiatives.

Apple is gearing up to open, or which has been stated as already open, it’s colossal data service center in North Carolina. The structure is said to support Apple iTunes and MobileMe products. In light of that information, many theories have developed into what Apple plans to do to iTunes and MobileMe with the power of this data center, such as the aforementioned MobileMe revamp serving as a “digital locker” for users content, and content being streamed instantly from iTunes, both allowing Apple new pathways into taking their iOS-powered product line.

Panic’s new application entitled “Prompt” [App Store Link] also displays the product name in question. Prompt being a universal application is not the only application unique with this. In fact, other universal apps within the App Store catalog. Obviously, this is just a mere glitch, but some have collaborated that this could potential be a big clue into an unknown device that is on the brink of debut.