THANKS to its superb 9.7-inch screen, pictures somehow look better on the Apple iPad, which is a lightweight alternative to the laptop for photo enthusiasts. Here are some apps that may interest shutterbugs.

Mosaic Photo for iPad (US$0.99)

This app creates a mosaic photo – a montage of tiny rectangular cell images. Go to Create, choose your photo, and the app will do the rest. You can save the new mosaic image in the built-in gallery, but you cannot access the image from the iPad Photo Library. Nonetheless, you can share your mosaic pictures by email or via Twitter and Facebook.

Photo fx Ultra (US$4.99)

If you are fond of filters to do photo editing or add creative effects, then Photo fx Ultra from Tiffen is for you.

Choose from 77 filters containing 934 presets organised in eight groups – Film Lab, Diffusion, Grads/Tints, Image, Lens, Light, Photographic and Special Effects. You can add multiple filters to create different effects. And if you want a particular portion of the image to have an effect, apply filters selectively by painting a mask over the picture. Each filter can be modified to your liking with sliders, controls or presets.

The only drawback of this app is that it does not remember your last editing session.

Photogene (US$1.99)

Probably the most value-for-money photo-editing app for the iPad. Other than the usual crop tool, presets and filter tools, it also allows you to control the exposure, contrast and saturation of pictures. What’s most important is the curve tool, which allows you to make precise image adjustments. A handy red-eye reduction tool is also available, as are fun options like dialogue boxes, frames and text editing. Photogene can even edit RAW files as long as the Apple Camera Connection Kit can import them (the iPad only supports certain types of RAW formats, such as NEF or CR2). The app doesn’t overwrite the original file; it saves a fresh JPEG copy of an edited image. It also remembers your last editing session.

Wireless Camera 2.0 (US$0.99)

No camera on the iPad? Use Wireless Camera 2.0 to connect your iPhone to your iPad via Bluetooth or WiFi. Launch the app on your iPhone first and on your iPad later. The two devices will be paired automatically after a few seconds and you can start snapping away! Note that you need to hit the Save button on the iPad to save the image; there isn’t an auto-save function. You can import photos from the iPhone camera roll via the same connection as well. However, the app doesn’t let you shoot videos. Wireless Camera 2.0 works on iPhones that support iOS 3.1.2 and above. But it will only work via Wifi on the first-generation iPhone.

Photo Wall for iPad (US$1.99)

Having a blast on your vacation? Show off your fun in a photo collage. You can add a background plus up to 24 photos and textboxes in this user-friendly app. Select different colours, font styles and transparency levels on the text; crop the pictures or shake your iPad to shuffle the images on the canvas. When you’re done, upload it to Facebook or email your friends. TREVOR TAN

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Apple is loosening its grip on its app development for its mobile devices, announcing Thursday that it will drop restrictions on what programming tools developers can use to create iOS apps.

The company also dropped a ban on certain in-application ad serving tools that had effectively cut off Google’s AdMob service.

The unexpected move means Apple is standing down in what had become an increasingly heated battle between the company and the developers who have created the more than 250,000 apps that stock Apple’s App Store.

“We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart,” Apple said. “This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.”

Apple’s rule changes are quite technical, and developers raced to pore over the fine print and figure out exactly what they mean.

But the practical upshot is that programmers will be able to use tools from Apple’s rivals — most notably Adobe — to build software for Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods.

Adobe’s current Flash development suite includes a tool for converting apps to run on Apple’s platform, but the company said in April that it would stop further development on that tool because of Apple’s restrictions and focus more on Google’s Android operating system.

Adobe on Thursday praised Apple’s change of heart. “We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices,” the company said in a written statement.

A company representative declined to comment on the fate of Adobe’s stalled Packager for iPhone tool.

But Flash programmers were quick to chime in: “We’re back in the game,” one posted in Adobe’s forum right after Apple’s announcement.

Developer Brad Manderscheid expects the new rules to be a big boost for his Milwaukee-based application development company, ActionMouse.

Most of his work is done with Adobe’s Flash, and Apple’s move to block Flash-to-iPhone conversion tools meant some of his planned projects for clients had to be scrapped.

“A lot of work that we had pending went away,” he said. “I was more mad than anybody I know — Adobe built all these tools for us to do all these cool things, we had all these beta programs ready to go, and Apple comes out and says ‘stop.’”

Now, he’ll be able to use Adobe tools to “write once, run anywhere,” and convert his applications to run on iOS as well as platforms like Android.

“I don’t have to be just in one team or another,” he said. “It opens everything up, the way it should be.”

Veteran Apple developer Greg Slepak was so incensed in April by Apple’s new restrictions that he e-mailed his objections to Steve Jobs — who responded. Slepak reprinted the exchange on his blog, where it drew hundreds of replies.

Slepak, who let his iOS Developer Program account expire in the wake of the clampdown, said he’s now considering renewing it. Apple’s policy changes seem to effectively address developers’ concerns, he said.

“This isn’t just about Adobe,” he said. “I don’t much care for Flash apps on the iPhone, but I do care about some of the third-party frameworks that would have been restricted by this. Some entire companies, their livelihood was put into question.”

Apple’s previous policy of banning unapproved development tools had drawn notice from federal regulators, who have reportedly considered launching an antitrust investigation of Apple’s software development rules.

Google  applauded the fact that developers will now be able to use AdMob to sell and serve ads in their iPhone applications.

“This is great news for everyone in the mobile community, as we believe that a competitive environment is the best way to drive innovation and growth in mobile advertising,” the company said in a blog post.

Apple also said it will for the first time publish review guidelines to help developers understand how it vets the applications submitted to its App Store. Developers have frequently griped about Apple’s opaque and occasionally drawn-out review process.

“We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store,” Apple said of its decision to release the guidelines.

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Apple will release iOS 4.2 firmware free of charge to iPad owners in November, adding many new features and improved functionality to the touch screen tablet. The iPad is slated to receive multitasking, folders for grouping apps, and many other features found in iOS 4. The multitasking dock includes brightness controls, music controls, recently used apps and a rotation lock button.

Steve Jobs demoed some of the new features at the Apple media event this week. One of the highlights included wireless printing, which allows apps on the iPad to print from anywhere on a Wi-Fi networked printer. TV show rentals and Game Center will also come to the iPad.

Game Center features multi-player gaming along with social networking features for iOS devices. Other players can be challenged, players will be automatically matched up, scores and games can be shared.

AirPlay is another new iOS 4.2 app coming to the iPad. With AirPlay, video, audio and photos can be streamed over your Wi-Fi network to the iPad from a computer. The AirTunes functionality that may be familiar to iTunes users has been renamed to AirPlay.

Jobs also announced there are now 25,000 iPad apps in the Apple App Store, ready to be downloaded by iPad users worldwide.

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Apple iPad 2.0 is in the Works and it Might Have a New Screen.   Word on the geek street is that the Apple iPad 2.0 is already in the works. What’s the rush, Apple? Most people haven’t even had a chance to dirty the first iPad with their finger prints—Brits, for example, as Tech Digest is quick to point out.

According to Tech Digest, the Apple iPad 2.0 is being developed right now and it will most likely “get an OLED overhaul.” This means, the 2.0 version of the Apple iPad will have a brighter screen than the current iPad, which uses LCD panels for its screen.

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HTC will release Google Chrome OS tablet on the 26th of November through Verizon network, states Downloadsquad blog. Assumptions have been made about Verizon’s supporting and promoting the tablet heavily, to pitch it against the Apple iPad.

But no information, regarding the new tablet, has been given by either HTC or Verizon . Otherwise, it is likely to have regular features, like an embodied WiFi, multitouch screen, a bluetooth and a webcam, states the blog.

Google has earlier, used the Android 2.2 (Froyo) for the smartphone. Android 2.2 is also expected to be used in the upcoming slates by Samsung and Motorola. But the most attractive feature of HTC’s tablet will be the Google Chrome operating system.

The Chrome OS will be used for the first time for a slate. Until now it had only been used in netbooks, though analysts had affirmed its utility in both power netbooks and tablets.

Earlier in the year, Eric Lin, spokesperson from HTC, had not denied the possibility of HTC’s entering the tablet market, stating that HTC will eventually launch a tablet which will be substantially unique and not merely an old machine with a new name.

Though speculations have been made about the tablet’s capability of succeeding as a low cost Internet connection device, there are doubts about it being sufficiently capable of giving competition to Apple iPad’s OS. To make it a success in the tablet market, it will have to priced at a considerably low rate, states Jack Gold, of the Technology Analyst Firm, J.Gold Associates.

Is this compatible to Android?  Anyone knows?  Please let me know.

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The iPad was supposed to change the face of computing, to be a completely new form of digital experience. But what Steve Jobs showed us yesterday was in fact little more than a giant iPhone. A giant iPhone that doesn’t even make calls. Many were expecting cameras, kickstands and some crazy new form of text input. The iPad, though, is better defined by what isn’t there.

Flash

Many people will bemoan the lack of support for Adobe’s interactive software, Flash. It wasn’t mentioned, but eagle-eyed viewers would have seen the missing plugin icon on the New York Times site during yesterday’s demo, and given that Apple clearly hates Flash as both a non-open web “standard” and as a buggy, CPU-hungry piece of code, it’s unlikely it will ever be added, unless Apple decides it wants to cut the battery life down to two hours.

Who needs Flash, anyway? YouTube and Vimeo have both switched to H.264 for video streaming (in Chrome and Safari, at least — Firefox doesn’t support it), and the rest of the world of Flash is painful to use.

In fact, we think the lack of Flash in the iPad will be the thing that finally kills Flash itself. If the iPad is as popular as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Flash-capable browsers will eventually be in the minority.

OLED

One of the biggest rumors said that there would be two iPads, one with an OLED screen and one without. But as our own Apple-master Brian X Chen pointed out, an OLED panel of this size runs to around $400. Add in the rest of the hardware and even the top-end $830 model wouldn’t be making Apple much money.

OLED also has some dirty secrets. It may be more colorful, but it uses more power than an LED backlit screen when all the diodes are lit up (white on black text is where OLED energy savings shine). It is also rather dim in comparison, and making an e-reader that you can’t use outdoors would be a stupid move from Apple.

USB

The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up. But there is a workaround: the dock connector. Apple has already announced a camera connection kit, a $30 pair of adapters which will let you either plug the camera in direct or plug in an SD card to pull off the photos.

The subtle message here is that it’s not a feature for the pros: the lack of a Compact Flash slot in that adapter says “amateur photographers only.”

Expect a lot more of these kinds of accessories, most likely combined with software. How long can it be before, say, EyeTV makes an iPad-compatible TV tuner?

GPS

Apple put a compass inside every iPad, so you’d think that there would be a GPS unit in there, too. The Wi-Fi-only models get nothing, just like the iPod Touch, but more surprising is that the 3G iPads come with Assisted GPS.

Assisted GPS can be one of two things, both of which which offload some work to internet servers and use cell-tower triangulation. The difference is that some AGPS units have real GPS too, and some don’t. We’ll know which the iPad has as soon as we get our hands on one.

Multitasking

From the demonstrations at the Jobsnote it appears that, like the iPhone, we can’t run applications in the background. This will annoy many people, but it will not matter at all to the target user, who will be using the iPad to browse and consume media. In fact, this user will benefit, as the lack of CPU-cycle-sucking background processes is likely a large part of that ten-hour battery life.

If you are authoring content, like this post, then multiple browser windows, a text editor, a mail client and a photo editor all make sense. If you’re reading an e-book, not so much.

Keyboard

Nobody really thought the iPad would have a physical keyboard. That won’t stop the whining, though. The difference, again, between the iPad and a MacBook is that one is a multi-purpose device and the other is a media player.

The fact that Apple actually has made an optional keyboard for it is the biggest surprise (apart from the iPad’s base $500 price). In fact, this little $70 keyboard will mean that, despite its simplified nature, the iPad is enough laptop for many people. Why bother with a $400 netbook when you can have this instead?

Camera

No video camera, no stills camera, and no webcam. The first two will likely never make it into a future iPad, as we all have our iPhones or actual cameras with us, too. But the lack of a webcam is odd, as it closes off the possibility of using the iPad as a videophone.

I figure this is a cost-saving measure on Apple’s part. Too bad, though, as it is the only thing that stops me buying an iPad for my parents, whom I talk to on Skype. There seems to be no other reason not to have a webcam in the bezel other than price. We expect to see one in v2.0.

Verizon

iPhone users hate AT&T, but the only alternative is T-Mobile, whose coverage isn’t as good. Until Verizon switches to the world-standard GSM SIM card, don’t expect to see an Apple product on its network. You can forget all those Verizon iPhone rumors right now.

16:9

The iPad screen is a relatively square, by today’s standards, with an old-school 4:3 screen aspect ratio. This is not ideal for watching widescreen movies: you get a thick black “letterbox” bar top and bottom. But take another look at the hardware: the Apple on the back, and the position of the home button both tell us that the iPad is meant to be used in portrait mode, at least most of the time. And a 16:9 aspect ratio in this orientation would look oddly tall and skinny, like an electronic Marilyn Manson.

It’s a compromise, and a good one. If you really do spend most of your time watching movies on the iPad, maybe you should think about buying, you know, a big TV.

HDMI

There will be video out, likely through the dock connector, as Jobs said during his presentation that you’ll be able to hook the iPad up to a projector. But no HDMI out? How do you hook it up to your HD monitor?

The short answer is that you don’t. The maximum audience for an iPad screening is two. You want more? Use your laptop and hook that up, or your desktop machine. Remember, there are two kinds of people who will buy the iPad. One, nerds like you and me, who care about things like HDMI and also already own a computer that can do that.

And two, people who are buying this instead of a computer. Those people will probably still have DVD collections, or even VCRs. They don’t even know what HDMI is. I think I can guess what Apple thought about putting another expensive connector into the machine just to please a few geeks.

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Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple’s iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.

On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google’s Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, “Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed.”

The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.

“While its primary focus is Netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power,” according to the Chromium form factors site. Chromium is the name of the open-source developer project that underlies the branded Chrome product.

It’s possible that Chrome OS could be an easier sell on tablets than on Netbooks, the class of device on which Google said it plans to launch Chrome OS. Netbooks often are used as general-purpose PCs, so the browser-based philosophy of Chrome OS is a more jarring transition.

Today’s tablets, in contrast, tend to focus more on a collection of specialized uses such as reading books, surfing the Net, and chores that only require light typing. With that approach, Chrome OS’ break from the PC world could be less jarring. The tablet market isn’t as big as the Netbook market, though.

The ideas are only mock-ups, but Google has established itself as a real if not dominant force in the computing industry. Its Android mobile-phone operating system is increasingly influential, and its Chrome browser continues to steadily grow in usage.

The tablet mock-ups show a variety of Chrome OS tablet ideas, including a virtual keyboard taking up the bottom half of the screen or detached and floating as a separate window. Also included are a slideshow mode, an application launcher, sidebar-mounted browser tabs, and a pop-up contextual menu.

The video mock-up shows a much larger tablet, with hands resizing and moving windows through the multitouch interface, scrolling through text, and typing a search query.

It’s all very rough at this stage, but none of it is too remote from a multitouch-enabled version of the Chrome OS. Google plans to debut Chrome OS in Netbooks later this year, and development of the open-source operating system is well under way.

In a statement, Google didn’t share any specifics about its plans: “Google Chrome OS is still in development, and we are constantly experimenting with various user interfaces to determine what designs would produce the best user experience. As we’ve said all along, the UI is still under development and will continue to evolve as we determine which designs work best for our users.”

Computing companies have been trying to make tablets for years, with little success. Apple hopes its design will change that with its iPad selling from $499 to $829. It’s more of an iPhone with a large screen than a MacBook with no keyboard.

Google is taking a different approach with Chrome OS. Instead of programs running straight on the computer’s hardware and its underlying Linux operating system, Chrome OS applications run directly in the browser.

What’s similar to the iPad, though, is that both have somewhat of an applications head start compared with a computing platform that’s starting from scratch: the iPad can run existing iPhone apps, and Chrome OS can run existing Web applications such as Google Docs.

One thing that’s changed since early tablet years is the arrival of e-book readers as a real phenomenon. Amazon’s Kindle is the most notable example, but there are others, and Apple touted book reading with the iPad. Google, it should be noted, has a conduit to millions of books via its Google Books service.

Given that Apple chose to use a variation of its iPhone OS for the iPad, it’s interesting but not terribly surprising that Google chose to use Chrome OS rather than its phone operating system, Android. In the big picture, Google clearly hopes the browser will be the foundation for applications, letting them run more easily on a multitude of devices.

Android uses a variation of Oracle’s Java technology as a program foundation. Perhaps ironically, Java was launched with the motto for programmers of “write once, run anywhere,” and it is that vision Google is trying to realize with Web applications.

Source: CNET

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It is reported that Apple does not own iPad domain name.  So strange, and interesting!

Perhaps Apple was just being extremely careful not to draw any attention to the widely speculated name of its  new multimedia device prior to this morning’s announcement, but one simply cannot overlook the fact that the company doesn’t have ownership over any domain names related to ‘iPad’.

For now, that is.

Apple does not own iPad.com, as you may have noticed. Others have, in any case, and some even suggest that the person who registered the domain name (one Martine Bejasa) sell it to the Cupertino company to become an instant millionaire. Unlikely to happen, IMHO.

But what else doesn’t Apple own? Well, they don’t have control over even a single domain name that has iPad followed by a country or generic TLD. Out of Cupertino’s hands, at least for the time being: iPad.net, iPad.biz, iPad.info, iPad.fr, iPad.de, iPad.es, iPad.eu, iPad.se, iPad.cn, iPad.be and iPad.jp. To name but a few.

They also don’t own iBook.com, iBooks.com or iBookstore.com or anything like that, in case you were wondering.

It’s not that Apple doesn’t care about domain names. It paid heavily for iPhone.com back in 2007, and it owns iPod.com, iMac.com, iWork.com, iTunes.com etc. (but not MacBook.com, curiously). Run a search on UDRPsearch and you will find that Apple regularly fights to (re)gain control over relevant domain names that carry one of their trademarks which it doesn’t have for ‘iPad’ (yet), just to be clear.

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Apple Inc. today unveiled its long-rumored tablet, the iPad, not the name gussed by many bloggers such as iTablet or iSlate.

Chief executive Steve Jobs, addressing a packed crowd of technology journalists and bloggers. referred to the device as something in the “middle” — residing in a “third category,” between high-powered personal computers and smart phones.

The iPad has a 9.7-inch multitouch display (measured diagonally; a page of InvestmentNews measures 18 inches for comparison), weighs just a pound and a half, and is pretty thin at just half an inch. That’s lighter than any netbook I can think of and certainly any full-fledged tablet PC.

A 1-gigahertz Apple A4 processor will power the iPad. It will come in 16- gigabyte, 32-GB and 64-GB models. The table will have several means of connectivity, including built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 in both the base model and the high-end model. The iPad’s average battery life is expected to be 10 hours.

Oh, and like the iPhone, it will also have a built-in accelerometer, as well as a speaker and microphone.

Mr. Jobs said during the announcement that he could take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time (side note: He must fly private jets, otherwise you’d think we would have seen some mobile phone images or video of the iPad before today).

As for cost: The low-end 16-GB model will go for $499. The high-end 64-GB model, which also boasts 3G technology, will sell for $829. There is both a touchpad keyboard that will take up half the screen when used, as well as a separate external keyboard (it is unclear what external accessories will be coming with which models in the box at purchase).

During the announcement, an Apple software representative said that iPhone and iTouch users will be able to synch their already purchased App Store applications with the iPad, meaning they won’t have to pay for them twice and that the applications themselves will all natively run on the iPad as well.

It was also announced during the presentation that these applications have already been optimized for the new device.

This means that advisers already enjoying the many financial-services-oriented applications available for the iPhone will be able to run them on the iPad as well. The device should make for lightweight travel and easy web-based presentations with clients or others.

History always seems to get lost with these grand announcements, especially when they seem to be in an-as-yet undiscovered category of computing. That probably has a lot to do with Apple’s naming this the iPad instead of the iTablet. Consumer tablet computers have been around for almost 20 years now.

Former editor-in-chief of PC Magazine Michael J. Miller wrote a great little piece documenting all the niftiest tablets that predate Apple’s announcement. Mr. Miller, who also happens to be a mentor of mine and my former boss, used to show off what these devices could do as they made their way in for review. Over the course of my eight years at the magazine, I saw dozens of them come and go. Thus it’s clear to me that Apple has built this shiny new device after long study of what has and hasn’t worked among its many predecessors.

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