IBLOG SPACE

ColorWare have opened up their inky arms and welcomed in the iPad, offering to make your Apple tablet distinctive for “just” $400. The company can take its usual range of solid, metallic and pearl colors and allows you to choose between them for the aluminum back panel, Apple logo and the home button. If you already have an iPad and are happy shipping it off to ColorWare, they’ll give it the treatment for $400. Alternatively, they’ll sell you a new iPad – complete with whatever dye scheme your imagination can come up with – for $900. Bear in mind that’s for the basic 16GB WiFi model; the 32GB is $1,000 and the 64GB is $1,100. Personally we’d rather go for something less permanent and less pricy, like the GelaSkins we’ve just reviewed; in comparison their $29.95 price tag looks like an absolute bargain. Plus, after hearing the hundredth person tell you “wow, that’s an ugly iPad” you can rip off your custom GelaSkin and avoid further shame.

GelaSkins aren’t new – the company have been cladding scratch-prone mobile gadgets for years now – but their iPad range certainly is. Promising the same balance of distinctive designs, scuff protection and easy application, we’ve been testing out the adhesive skins on the iPad this week. Read on for the full SlashGear review. While the iPad seems reasonably durable, thanks to Apple’s use of lashings of aluminum and glass, as we saidin our review we can see owners being particularly cautious about potential cosmetic blemishes. However, part of the tablet’s appeal is its slender profile, and so cases – like, admittedly, Apple’s own – tend to add more than a little bulk. The alternative, then, is skin-style protection. These generally work in one of two ways: either a non-adhesive stretchy sky, usually made of silicon, which you pull over your iPad, or a set of adhesive panels which add even less to the dimensions but aren’t really suitable for daily swapping. GelaSkins’ range falls into

When it comes to interacting with computers and other gadgets, today both pen input and touch input are very common. For the most part the two methods operate independently with most touch screens not capable of working with a pen or stylus and vice versa. A new video from Microsoft Research shows a project that Microsoft is working on that combines pen and touch input to extend interaction with a computer beyond what either method can offer alone. The video is very cool and the input method looks like it would work very well for many uses. For instance, you can open a new message with one hand and write on it with the pen in the other. The process makes so much sense once you see it in action that I am surprised we don’t have this already. Check out the video below with the good stuff starting at the one-minute mark.

General Dynamics has offered up a new rugged notebook that is designed for the most grueling conditions that the military can throw at the machine. The new notebook is called the Tadpole TOPAZ and is designed to meet multiple military standards for ruggedness. In addition to the military, the machine is aimed at first responder and federal agents needing a rugged laptop with workstation performance. The TOPAZ uses an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 mobile processor and up to 8GB of RAM. it has a 15.1-inch DynaView daylight viewable display with an optional touch layer. The machine can run Windows, Linux, or Solaris OS’. It has three separated Gigabit Ethernet ports, integrated Trusted Platform module V1.2. The notebook has passed military standards MIL-STD-801F and MIL-STD-461E. It measures 2.4″ H x 15″ W x 12.4″ D and weighs 11 pounds with the battery.

Mophie makes all sorts of gear that is designed to give your Apple gadgets longer run time. We have reviewed the mophie juice pack air for the iPhone 3G/3GS before and really liked it. Mophie has announced today a new version of the juice pack air for the iPod touch. The new case is much like the iPhone version offering a rechargeable battery inside the case with a wrap around design to protect the touch from drops and scratches. It features pass through USB to charge the touch and the air’s own battery at the same time. The device also has a four light LED battery status indicator to show how much power is in the battery. Mophie claims that the device will give the iPod touch twice as much runtime with up to 30 more hours of audio and up to seven more hours of video. it is available to purchase now for $79.95.

An Aparna Sen film is always special. Like her previous endeavors, THE JAPANESE WIFE [a film in Bengali with English sub-titles] also looks at relationships. Only thing, this time it's about two strangers, who start off as pen friends, exchange letters, get drawn towards each other, even get married through letters, but never meet each other. Despite staying apart and not meeting even once, the couple share an honest and chaste relationship, confiding the smallest of incident to one another, thru letters and phone calls. This unique story [penned by Kunal Basu] is translated beautifully on celluloid thanks to Aparna Sen's deft handling of the material. Of course, a story like this unwinds at a leisurely pace, but there's no denying that the proceedings keep you engrossed for most parts, mainly towards the penultimate moments. Aparna Sen also gets it right because her choice of actors is perfect. And the characters they portray are real as well as unreal. Real,

The Apple iPad has been on the market almost a week and so far it has been a very popular device. Many of the major companies in the eReader market are probably hard at work on their answer to the iPad. BenQ has stated that it will focus on a color screen eReader rather than an iPad-style tablet. BenQ expects to offer a color screen version of its nReader eReader on the market later this year. BenQ believes that the screen is key and claims its display is easier on the eyes than an LCD. The BenQ display also promises more battery life with BenQ claiming its eReader will last for weeks between charges rather than the iPad’s 10 hours. However, Yahoo News reports that an eye doctor states eye fatigue has nothing to do with the screen and is more to do with the light surrounding the screen. BenQ will also have a hard sell on its hands if the price of its eReader isn’t cheap considering the $499 iPad has many more features than the eReaders on the market today.

ASRock has unveiled a quartet of new mainboards with two of the new boards available now and two of them coming later. One of the boards available now is the P55 Deluxe3 supporting Intel processors and using the P55 chipset. The board also supports ATI CrossfireX and Quad CrossfireX as well as SLI and quad SLI. It offers USB 3.0, 2.0 as well as SATA 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s ports. The second board available now is the 890GX Extreme3. This is an AMD Phenom II X6 compatible board with 6Gb/s SATA ports, USB 3.0, and lots more. The board supports all Crossfire modes including Hybrid Crossfire and quad CrossfireX. The first of the boards coming soon is the 870 Extreme3. This board supports AMD X6 processors and uses the AMD 870 + SB850 chipsets. It will offer USB 3.0 ports, 6Gb/s SATA ports, and will support Quad Crossfire and CrossfireX. The other coming soon board is the 770 Extreme3. This board uses the AMD 770 + SB710 chipsets and pack in SATA 6Gb/s along with multiple USB 3.0 ports.

Remember early this month when I mentioned the rumor going around that Apple would be updating the MacBook line this month? Well those rumors just won’t die. Another rumor has surfaced that pegs early next week for the update. We can blame Acer for the delay in updates according to yet more rumors as the computer maker gobbled up all the new Intel Core processors in one big order. That processor shortage is said to have ended opening the door for Apple and other firms to toss more notebooks onto the market running the new 2010 Core line. Gizmodo reports that the new rumors originate from Macworld Australia and that the Aussie publication has been told by sources the new rigs will land Tuesday of next week. Going along with that rumor is the fact that existing 15-inch MacBooks have disappeared from Best Buy’s website here in the US.

We got our hands on the cool and smallish Alienware M11x late last month and had some fun playing with the machine in our review of the little rig. If you were intrigued by the smallest Alienware machine around and are thinking about ordering one up for yourself, you might want to put that off until the summer. A rumor is going around that the M11x might be getting some even better tech this summer. According toEngadget, the M11x is set to get an NVIDIA Optimus update and new Intel CPUs. Optimus tech would mean the rig will have both integrated and discrete GPUs. That little gem will help the machines battery life and give gamer’s better graphics. The new Intel Core 2010 line of CPUs will also land in the rig now that the shortage is said to be over. These two new features should make for an all around better machine. This is still an unconfirmed rumor at this point, but both of these upgrades would certainly make sense.

When OCZ announced that it was vacating some of the categories that it was working in a while back to pursue core categories like SSDs and RAM, the company was serious. Since then we have seen several new SSDs for the company and today OCZ has pulled the wraps off two new SSDs. OCZ has unveiled the new Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSDs. Both of the SSDs are 2.5″ form factor drives and use a new controller that promise better performance across the board. The Vertex 2 is the high-end SSD of the pair and offers improved transfer rates with 4KB random writes at up to 50,000 IOPS. OCZ promises transfer speeds for the drive of up to 285MB/s read and 275MB/s write. The Agility 2 SSD provides the same read and write speeds with 4KB random writes at up to 10,000 IOPS. Both SSDs connect to 3Gb/s SATA ports and will be offered in 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, and 400GB capacities.

Steve Jobs made plenty of noise yesterday about the 1,500+ new APIs for iPhone OS developers to play with in OS 4.0, but its taken some SDK sifting to turn up some of the less impressive changes. A section of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement has been amended to not only deny access to private APIs but also prescribe which languages can be used to create apps: C, C++ and Objective-C. The change means that developers looking to use the Adobe Flash to iPhone compiler in the upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release will have to think again, together with those already using MonoTouch and Appcelerator. “3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications tha

Cheap SSDs you say? Solid-state storage is always appealing, but the price tags such drives command tends to put off most mainstream users. Super Talent have outed a new range of drives, the Super Talent VSSD line, which promises not only performance but affordability, however; prices kick off at just $65. Of course, there’s a hitch to that, and not surprisingly it’s one of capacity. $65 gets you an 8GB VSSD with a maximum 90MB/sec read speed and 30MB/sec write speed; Super Talent’s other VSSDs go from 16GB, through 32GB and top out at 64GB, with performance specs in the tablet below. You’re looking at $165 for the 64GB model, mind.

It’s not just multitasking and giving the iPhone user-customisable wallpaper that Apple’s engineers have been working on; the company have announced that they’ve developed a new split-process API for WebKit – the underlying engine of Safari and other browsers – which they’re calling WebKit2. Like in Chrome, WebKit2 splits web content such as JavaScript, HTML and layout into a separate process from the browser UI; however, unlike Chrome, Apple have baked WebKit2 into the framework so that use is not limited to Apple’s own browser. That has repercussions for any browser based on WebKit, which currently includes Safari on Mac and Windows, various mobile browsers and not least Chrome itself (which uses WebKit as its rendering engine). Right now there are binaries available for Mac and Windows, and we can probably expect to see test builds of browsers showing up over the next few months as developers get to grips with it. The potential outcome is a more stable, crash-resilient and faster

We swear we've seen a Motorola phone that looks like this odd square thing before, but it's also possible we're crazy. Either way, it looks like Moto's working on a new Blur set running Android 2.1, and if you thought screen size and resolution issues differences were a big part of Android fragmentation before, well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Oh, and as for the story that this pic came from a student who borrowed the phone from a friend whose dad works for Moto? We'd be more skeptical, except that's exactly how we've gotten other dead-on Moto leaks. So... yeah. Anyway, a square Moto slider running Blur. Does that do anything for anyone? No? Okay.

We don't really know why Apple wouldn't have mentioned iChat at its "tentpole"-filled keynote if it was all ready to go on it, but the eternal optimists within us would like to believe that the merest glimpse of the app would instantly reveal a front facing camera on whatever new iPhone hardware is in the works, therefore relegating the app to secrecy. Still, the evidence does indeed seem to be mounting for the software's inclusion in the OS. Outside of the iChatAgent process that was spotted last week, 9 to 5 Mac has pulled the covers off references within the SDK to moderators, chat rooms, encrypted video conferences, and more. They even uncovered the same notification noises that the desktop iChat application uses. Sure, this could all be one big misunderstanding , but hopefully these breadcrumbs actually do point to a long-overdue, well-integrated IM experience on the device, video or no.

Good secrets are hard to keep, and it looks like at least one of Microsoft's trusted partners has spilled the beans on the company's big announce for Monday. SanDisk used the occasion -- the unannounced occasion, that is -- to let some members of the press know today that Microsoft's Pink devices will be compatible with its line of microSD cards. That seems like a pretty lame way to ride on the coattails of a big hardware launch, but then again, when your most exciting products are nondescript pieces of plastic half the size of a postage stamp, how else are you going to make the news?

We'd heard earlier this year that Aceeca would be sticking with PalmOS for at least a few more devices, and it looks like those hopes have now finally become a reality in the form of the company's PDA32 device. In addition to a leading-edge, one-inch-thick design, this one packs a 320 x 480 display, along with a 400MHz Samsung S3C2440 processor, 64MB of RAM, 128MB of flash storage, an SD card slot for expansion, and optional Bluetooth and WiFi (in case you don't need such things). Still no official word on a release date, but a preliminary spec sheet that's turned up lists April 10th, and a price of just $199 -- belt holster not included.

It's been a rough month or so for Palm, as the only thing keeping the company's tanking stock price from falling completely into the gutter are buyout rumors -- RIM here, HTC there, even Lenovo, for some crazy reason. But that's apparently not enough to get CEO Jon Rubinstein down: he just sat down with Fortune for a remarkably candid chat, saying that although his company hasn't done so well, he still thinks there's potential -- and that he obviously wishes some things had gone better. The big one? The Verizon launch -- and Jon thinks that if the Droid and Pre had had their launch dates flipped, the Pre would have done better. One of the analysts on our earnings call asked if we had launched when Droid launched, and Droid launched when [we] launched at Verizon, would the story have been opposite? I said I think we have a better product than Droid, and customers would have been happier with it. It's certainly an interesting thought experiment, but we've alw

Amazon just hit us up with the knowledge that it's blowing out each and every AT&T-branded handset in its inventory for a single penny on contract, pretty impressive when you consider that you'll be paying as much as $200 for the same phones if you go through AT&T directly (and paying sales tax in the process). Of course, theiPhone is prominently missing from Amazon's inventory here, but let's be honest: if you haven't bought a 3GS at this point, you're probably planning on holding out for whatever Apple's bringing to the table this Summer anyhow. The deal's only good through April 16, so if you're planning on taking advantage, you'd better get moving.

So Phandroid has scored some internal Verizon rah-rah type material teasing a device announcement on Monday, and they're thinking it's the upcoming HTC Incredible -- but we're not so sure. This lines up all too well with Microsoft's mysterious event in San Francisco, an event that we've heard repeatedly from a multitude of respected sources (Paul Thurrott and Ina Fried, to name a couple) would be for Microsoft's long-rumored Pinkhandsets, likely for launch on Verizon. Couple that with Verizon's verbiage here -- "it's new, it's unique, living exclusively on... Verizon Wireless" -- and we kinda think that a device as similar to phones already in the marketplace as the Incredible is doesn't warrant the hype. Fortunately, we'll have this all sorted out in less than 72 hours' time.

Nobody likes getting lost, and nobody likes paying too much for a reheated lunch at a franchise restaurant when there's a mouthwatering family joint hiding just around the corner. Wouldn't you know it, there's an app that solves those problems -- quite a few of the things, as it turns out. Following up on our earlier look at non-iPhone GPS apps, we took a look at the top iPhone navigation choices in the App Store and narrowed it down to the five below, then threw in a no charge option for kicks, covering a range of prices from free to upwards of $120 per year. As it turns out there's a very tangible difference between the discount and the "premium" options here, but is that extra really worth it? Read on to find out.

Don't get too excited -- this isn't Android 2.1, unfortunately, but it is another stab at making the CLIQ stable and usable. We speak from personal experience when we say that Motorola's first Android device has a tendency to bog down and do strange things, so we're pretty excited to see what this latest update does for users since it's promising (among other things) improved battery life, stability, touchscreen accuracy, widget response, and a reduction in unsightly "Force Close" messages. It also throws in support for WMV and WMA media for good measure -- and with the myTouch Slide seemingly around the corner, competition's about to heat up for this guy, so there's definitely some pressure to get this particular update bang-on.

Web browsing fiends of the world already have enough reason to envy N900 owners on account of the built-in browser's excellence and the availability of an official Firefox release -- both with full Flash support -- but if that's enough, there's now another name-brand option in the works. Well, sort of. You see, Chromium for Maemo isn't an official port -- but the Maemo community is filled with tinkerers, and that has inevitably led to the availability of a hacked version of the Debian release that apparently works quite wonderfully on the N900 (yes, including Flash) with a 100 score on the elusive Acid test. It's said to be a little buggy at the moment, so hopefully that'll improve over time; you've got to download and install the package manually rather than going through a repo, but as an N900 owner, odds are pretty good that you're familiar with the tactic already. Perhaps Google wants to take this little project over?