This just in…

Mashable is reporting that Barnes and Nobole will launch an application for the Apple iPad.

The Barnes and Noble App for iPad will most likely be very similar to the Barnes and Nobole e-reading app for iPhone, Mac, PC, and BlackBerry.

People who download the iPad Barnes and Noble app will have access to the thousands of book offered on the Barnes and Noble E-book store, as well as access to the Apple E-Book selection.

Seems as though the ereading producers will embrace the iPad. Look for an app from Amazon to come out soon….

Today my phone (Tmobile G1) buzzed all of sudden indicating an update was available. My heart started to beat fast hopping that it might be the long waited 2.1 update. When I click for “More Info,” it says the following indicating that its going to fix calling issues. So does that out TMobile Android phones are having background issues?

-FlexDroid

Its was beginning to get clear that the HD2 would hit Tmobile around the 24th but sources have confirmed that the 24th is indeed the date, and that the phone will run $199 on a two-year contract (or $449 off-contract). The March 23rd date that recently cropped up is apparently just the day the MobiTV software will go live. Also it has been confirmed that the phone won’t be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7 Series.  So lets see what happens over the time period!

-FlexDroid

As the press release says below, the mobile phone maker Palm has announced that their OS is now for the mighty public. The press release say it all!

-FlexDroid

Palm webOS PDK Public Beta Now Available

Palm Demonstrates New Games at Game Developers Conference

March 09, 2010 09:00 AM Eastern Time
Game Developers Conference 2010

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Game Developers Conference (GDC) – Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) today announced that a public beta version of the Palm® webOS™ Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is now available at the Palm Developer Center (developer.palm.com). Palm is demonstrating new games from early PDK developers in its booth at GDC (No. 2016).

The PDK complements the Palm webOS Software Development Kit (SDK), letting developers use C and C++ alongside the web technologies that power the SDK and mix them seamlessly within a single app. The PDK enables new functionality, including immersive 3D graphics, and gives developers who have built games for other platforms an easy way to bring their titles to the webOS platform. Developers can download the beta PDK and start developing today, but distribution of games built with the beta PDK will require functionality provided in an upcoming Palm webOS update.

“Palm webOS is the go-to platform for great games on two of the three leading carrier networks,” said Katie Mitic, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Palm, Inc. “We have both the developer tools and the hardware necessary for a world-class gaming experience, and an impressive portfolio of webOS game titles from top-notch developers to show for it.”

At CES in January, Palm introduced 12 games built by four leading developers with early access to the PDK:

* “Asphalt 5″ (Gameloft)
* “Brain Challenge®” (Gameloft)
* “Glyder 2″ (Glu Mobile)
* “Let’s Golf!” (Gameloft)
* “MONOPOLY” (EA Mobile™)
* “Need for Speed™ Undercover” (EA Mobile)
* “SCRABBLE” (EA Mobile)
* “Sudoku” (EA Mobile)
* “Tetris®” (EA Mobile)
* “The Oregon Trail” (Gameloft)
* “The Sims™ 3″ (EA Mobile)
* “X-Plane” (Laminar Research)

Since then, more than 20 exciting webOS titles have been launched by these early-access developers:

* “Apollo” (Laminar Research)
* “Assassin’s Creed™ – Altair’s Chronicles” (Gameloft)
* “Brothers In Arms®: Hour of Heroes” (Gameloft)
* “Castle of Magic” (Gameloft)
* “Deer Hunter 3D” (Glu Mobile)
* “Dungeon Hunter” (Gameloft)
* “Earthworm Jim” (Gameloft)
* “Gangstar: West Coast Hustle” (Gameloft)
* “Giant Fighting Robots” (Laminar Research)
* “Guitar Hero 5 Mobile” (Glu Mobile)
* “Hero of Sparta” (Gameloft)
* “Real Soccer 2010″ (Gameloft)
* “Real Tennis” (Gameloft)
* “World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend” (Glu Mobile)
* “X-Plane Airliner” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Carrier” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Extreme” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Glider” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Helicopter” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Racing” (Laminar Research)
* “X-Plane Space Shuttle” (Laminar Research)

“The Palm webOS PDK is extremely powerful and far-reaching, as evidenced by the number of titles we’ve been able to bring to the webOS platform in a very short time,” said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing, Americas, Gameloft. “It’s quite difficult to make a great phone that’s also an outstanding gaming platform; Palm has been successful delivering both.”

More information about the beta PDK is available at the Palm Developer Center (developer.palm.com). More information about games for Palm webOS is available at www.palm.com/applications.

About Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc. creates intuitive and powerful mobile experiences that enable consumers and businesses to connect to their information in more useful and usable ways. The company’s groundbreaking Palm® webOS™ platform, designed exclusively for mobile application, introduces true multitasking and Palm Synergy™, which brings your information from the many places it resides into a single, more comprehensive view of your life.

Palm products are sold through select Internet, retail, reseller and wireless operator channels, and at the Palm online store (www.palm.com/store).

More information about Palm, Inc. is available at www.palm.com.

Palm, Synergy, and webOS are trademarks of Palm, Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

via Levelselect.co.uk

Just today, Valve officially announced that they’d be bringing their popular PC game store to the Mac in April – coincidentally near the time the iPad launches.

Steam has been re-knowned for it’s ease of access and wide selection of available games. If they can uphold the same standards for Mac, they’ll be golden. And hey, maybe Apple will even take a hint and make a partnership deal.

The first week it launches in April, Steam has promised us: Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. That’s no small feat for the first week, let alone year! Especially since none of those games have previously been available for Mac, I think there may actually be a future for Mac gaming.

…and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. – Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Steam.

As you can see from the quote above, Valve doesn’t plan to just bring their service to Mac, they plan to add at least one awesome feature – Steam Play. Instead of buying both a Mac and PC version of a game, why not just buy one medium game that you can play on both? Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Thank you, Valve!

Now of course nothings perfect – particularly when we’re talking about game ports. I for one will be very surprised to both play a game off of Steam on my Mac, and also compare it to the PC version. I have a last generation iMac, which runs Call of Duty 4 as if it was made years ago – slow, blurry objects, etc. I think that Steam is definitely possible, but we’ll have to see how dependent the games are on hardware.

On a side note, what if Apple really starts to like Steam? I’m not talking about them buying Steam, that wouldn’t be very strategical for Apple, but how about a partnership? What if you could play big titles on your iPad – Left 4 Dead 2, etc. – that would be pretty awesome, although hard to control. Or at least a gaming partnership where you could buy any Mac game available right from Steam – that would be nice, especially if Steam keeps getting PC ports!

What are your thoughts about Steam for Mac? Will it change the Mac gaming industry? Would you play full games on an iPad or iPhone? Let us know in the comments below!

Hey! Did you know that the Backflip has been released and there already has been some stories coming up about it already! It seems that Backflips are being shipped without the ability to turn on non-Market installations, meaning that AT&T has effectively locked you into getting all of your content through the walled garden. Add in the Yahoo debacle and the egregious amount of unremovable useless apps they’ve left in ROM. So is the CEO keeping his word like he said here:

Ralph: Well, to be open. (Laughter.) Right? I mean, the whole idea behind Android is that it’s gonna be an open OS, and so I don’t wanna roll an open OS to market that has primarily Google apps on it, and I think that’s gonna happen. I mean, I see a lot of activity, I think it’s got a good future, and I think it makes a lot of sense that the OS is open-source, separate from Google apps that are also very good.

-FlexDroid

Apple has created a mobile phone revolution with their iPhone. With over 40 million units sold worldwide they have captivated more than 60% of the market and turned thousands of tech lovers into drooling fanboys with open wallets.

All seemed perfect until Google came along with it’s hippie mobile platform that they planned to make open source. After the dissapointing release of the G1, Google slowly made a stand as its latest Android phone, the Nexus One, has completely blown the iPhone out of the water in features (sadly it has barely made any sales…for now).

In fact, Google’s Android phones have now captivated 15% of the market while Apple’s iPhone continues to lose its power. Web analytics firm Quantcast has reported that the iPhone has lost 3.2% of the mobile market and it seems due to the direct impact from Android. So is this the ill effects of taking a bite at Google through their lawsuit against HTC last week? Probably.

Let’s take a look at why Apple is no longer the company that it was as it attempts to grab a chunk out of Google’s growing power.

Apple’s Reputation

Apple has an amazing reputation with thousands of tech lovers at their heals whenever Apple secretly builds up hype to launch their next revolutionary product.

According to Fortune, Apple has become the World’s most admired company for the third year in a row, and by a hefty margin at that. It’s all possible through the crazy finish on all their products, which is why legal action against a company like HTC seems just preposterous coming from a firm revered so much.

However the most important thing that this survey by Fortune has shown is that Google is a close second.

Numerous companies trust Google almost, or even more than Apple.

——————————————————————————————-

Tensions Heat Up

Apple and Google were functioning what seemed to be idealistic harmony, yet a powerful showdown was brewing beneath the scenes. Visit Gizmodo’s article for a more in depth look at Apple and Google’s previous romance.

It all started when Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt came over to Apple’s board of directors and took his superior search engine onboard the iPhone at it’s launch. However, Apple’s success would give Google new ideas as things went haywire from there.

Android Arrives

Google released its free and open source mobile platform Android, giving freedom to all phone vendors, something that the iPhone would explode on itself before committing to.

The first battles were fought behind the screen as Google’s phones continued to be less than the dazzling iPhones. Google wanted multitouch, Apple said no.

Then the press started getting hints of Apple’s hatred starting with several executives criticizing the “inferior” Android and ending with Job’s remark on Google’s slogan, “It’s bullshit”.

Android also threw the iPhone out of the spotlight as Google launched its own Appstore copy: the Android Market. Apple hit back by rejecting Google Voice from their Appstore.

Chrome (OS) Is Conjured

Google Chrome was the last straw for Steve Job’s delicate temper, as the browser and the operating system both hit Apple smack in the jaw. Soon enough, Chrome’s web browser market topped that of Safari’s and Eric Schmidt finally left Apple’s board of directors.

Battle of the Market

The market was the next destination of the battlefield as Google quickly snatched AdMob from under Apple’s nose while Apple retaliated by seizing Quattro Wireless and then later Lala, which Google had been eyeing for quite a while.

With a bit of time, Apple’s sworn enemy transformed from Microsoft into Google.

——————————————————————————————-

The Final Blow

Apple suing HTC was as surprising as the Chile Earthquake shifting our planet and consequently the length of our days. What’s more is that HTC was just as shocked to hear the news as we were, and that’s a first.

Now Apple’s legal action against HTC has hit the headlines of last week quite heavily yet their is nothing but hot air behind the alleged patent infringements since all of them target the software (cough, Google and Android, cough), which all Android phones share including the Droid by Motorola. So why is Apple suing HTC and not Google, or Motorola for that fact?

It’s to eliminate the Nexus One, the greatest threat to the iPhone, and avoid pissing on the Google giant. The competition is becoming too much for Apple to handle and they directly state in the legal claim that they want to immediately stop all further production of the phones that infringe their patents. Yet Google won’t just stand by as one executive stated,

“We stand by our operating system and those who have helped develop it”.

Now even as I’m writing this i’m sitting at the keyboard of a 13″ Macbook in Safari, with an iPod Touch to my side, and several Apple stickers spread across my room. Even though Apple wasn’t able to make me a drooling fanboy they have caught my admiration, and that’s exactly why this impudent attack upon a fantastic brand, HTC, leaves me so disappointed. The iPhone never captivated me and never will. Nevertheless, Apple’s obnoxious threat onto the Android platform and Google itself will make me think twice next time I want to buy one of their eye-catching, overpriced, closed-platform products.

Oh, and I’m also texting my friend while I write this on my Android powered HTC Magic phone from T-Mobile.

Seriously Apple what has become of you, if in fact you were the ones that have been stealing all the great works to create your amazing Mac. And come on, Android is open source for crying out loud, you can just steal it-why do you need to sue?

Read the Article at it’s original source: iTechJoy

UPDATE 3/9/2010:

New sources revealed by Gizmodo in this post shows that Steve Jobs has had a tendency to want to sue people that create interfaces similar to Apple’s. The story goes that Sun’s former CEO Jonathon Schwartz received a call from Steve Jobs where the Apple CEO stated the following concerning Java’s new concept the Looking Glass,

“If you move forward to commercialize it, I’ll just sue you.”

Ouch! However, Sun’s CEO wasn’t lost for words and kept Apple of his back, which apparently HTC and possibly Google weren’t capable of.

A few months ago Ubisoft announced Assassin’s Creed II for iPhone and iPod Touch, now you can join your friends online in their top-down-style strategy game.

You take the role of one out of four characters each match and your job is to find your enemies. The game is all about being incognito and making wise, timely decisions on when to kill your prey.

The game switches off between a couple maps, each looks very city-like and almost identical to a top-down adventure game you might find on a GameBoy. The graphics and music are definitely not the bread in the basket for this game, but if sneakin’ around and killing your friends is your type of fun, why not get the app for free?

SimFlecks Rating: 3/10 – Graphics need to improve, along with a less repetitive music track.

Download from iTunes (free for limited time!)

It looks like the devices are slowly making their way westwards. After appearing on Amazon Germany’s site for €519 ($707), the Desire has now reached the UK with an even steeper £528 ($795) price and an estimated arrival time of April 1.If the rate of the price increase continues like this westwards by the time it reaches the states it’ll probably be in the four figures. The HTC Legend is also slated for an April 1 delivery and carries a price of £400 ($602), while the HD Mini will straggle a tiny bit with an April 14 launch and a palatable £369 ($556) price. All are without contractual obligations, so it’ll be interesting to see what incentives carriers can come up with to get us to jump on board.

-FlexDroid

….

At the Teens in Tech conference we were able to check out a couple awesome touch-screen tablet PCs running Intel chips.  These were Viliv tablets, a mash between a laptop and a rotating touch screen.  They Make a Great variety of these, even some with multi-touch capabilities!  These are up in competition against the iPad for it’s portable, touchscreen interface… then again, these have a real computer OS, and have flash, multi-tasking, etc.  The ones we played around with were,

….

.

(White Model: S7)

includes:

9.5 hours of computing

7 hours of video playback

Intel atom

integrated 3G data model

windows XP 7

SDHC slot

rotating screen

and more!

(Sleek Model: X70 EX)

includes:

6hours video playback

Windows XP 7

Intel atom

Vibration feedback touchscreen

Wi-Fi, blue-tooth, and GPS

32GB

pocket size

and more!

From the year of the tablets,

-NetSpyder