On March 30, Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania announced that all students will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad. Seton Hill is not the only university embracing the iPad: George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon will offer incoming freshmen a choice of a new MacBook or the iPad.

Last fall, Princeton University conducted a pilot program, giving Amazon Kindles to 50 students. Early feedback indicated that many “were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices.”
Complaints centered around the inability of the device to function in many of the same ways that students interact with textbooks, including bookmarking pages, highlighting text, affixing sticky notes or other marks. Many of these same complaints would certainly apply to Apple’s iPad. So, why is Seton Hill giving iPads to incoming students?

According to the university, it is “training students of all learning styles and abilities to be better researchers, better at compiling and...

Ca-ching! Apple has announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter that ended March 27, 2010. The company posted revenue of US$13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share.

These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 % in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58% of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 2.94 million Macs during the quarter, representing a 33% unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 10.89 million iPods during the quarter, representing a 1% unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” says Apple CEO...

On Wednesday the California State Senate's health committee will review a bill that, if passed, will make California the first state in the nation to create a live donor registry for kidney transplants. The bill will also require California drivers to decide whether they want to be organ donors when they renew their drivers' licenses.

Despite California State Senate Bill 1395's near universal support, the ideas behind the bill had languished for years on the desk of Senator Elaine Alquist, according to the "SAI Business Insider" (http://www....

Native Instruments (http://www.native-instruments.com) has released Maschine 1.5, a free update of its computer-based music production system. The upgrade has more classic drum machine features, improved host integration, new sampling functions, an extended sound library, and a more efficient workflow.

Maschine 1.5 introduces two new "vintage sampler" modes designed to emulate the gritty sonic signatures of the popular MPC-60 and SP-1200 models through omponent modeling. The 1.5 version also loads the programs of nearly all MPC models ever built, opening up a vast resource of existing sound and sample material within Maschine.

Maschine 1.5 also enables a new level of DAW integration with host automation through new macro controls, MIDI pattern drag and drop export, direct DAW recording of Maschine events, MIDI pitch bend and CC support, and more. The real-time sampling features...

Monkeybread Software has released version 1.2 of the MBS REALbasic Updater Kit, which is designed to help you in adding an automatic update feature to your application. Version 1.2 fixes a few bugs and improves the language handling.

The Updater Kit requires REALbasic 2008 or newer and a license of the MBS REALbasic Complete License. It's available for US$99. You can learn more and try the sample application at
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/realbasic/UpdaterKit/ .

Remo Software has announced a series of data recovery software tools (http://recovermac.remosoftware.com) for the Mac. Remo Recover (Mac) is an exclusively designed application with all-round poise of simplified recovery tasks and sophisticated recovery technology, according to the company.


It's available in two different editions, Remo Recover (Mac) - Pro Edition & Remo Recover (Mac) Media Edition. The former provides a dual mode of recovery tasks, including photo recovery. Remo Recover - (Media Edition) is designed for regular users and for advanced photographers to recover photos, videos, music and RAW image files from portable storage devices and hard drives. The Advanced mode offers scan options to accomplish tasks such as deleted/lost file recovery, formatted/lost volume recovery, from storage devices having healthy or corrupt HFS or HFSX file system.

The Pro Edition...

Best Buy has set a target to collect one billion pounds of old or obsolete electronics and appliances for recycling.

Starting April 22, the company is asking consumers nationwide to pledge online to “Recycle It On,” encouraging increased use of its comprehensive, convenient recycling and trade-in programs. The one billion pound goal is a significant increase over current levels and is intended to help increase responsible consumer action and capture a greater share of the current electronics waste stream, says Paula Prahl, senior vice president, communications, public affairs, and corporate responsibility, Best Buy.

She says the company's recycling programs collected 120 million pounds of electronic goods in 2009 from U.S. consumers, including 60 million pounds of electronics and 60 million pounds of appliances. The company anticipates meeting the new goal in several years. Starting Earth Day, April 22, consumers can take the pledge to recycle, and encourage others...

Yesterday the 'Net was abuzz with reports that Apple would ship its 3G enabled iPad on May 7. Wrong. Today Apple announced that the Wi-Fi + 3G models of the device will be delivered to US customers who’ve pre-ordered on Friday, April 30, and will be available in Apple retail stores the same day starting at 5 p.m.

Apple retail stores will offer a free Personal Setup service to every customer who buys an iPad at the store, helping them customize their new iPad by setting up their email, loading their favorite apps from the App Store, and more. US Apple retail stores are also hosting special iPad workshops to help customers learn more about this magical new product.

The iPad is available in Wi-Fi models in the US for a suggested retail price of US$499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB models. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available on April 30 in the US for $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB versions.

The iPad is sold in the US through the...

Grantwood Technology has released an updated RunWallet (http://grantwoodtechnology.com/runwallet/), an $11.99 armband product designed to carry IDs, emergency contact information, bank cards, credit cards, car keys, car remotes, house keys, hotel keys, cash/coins during exercise, with the added ability to carry the iPod shuffle or anything else that can be clipped to it.

The RunWallet is a soft, neoprene arm wallet that can accommodate the above items in a secure Velcro closure. Each RunWallet consists of a flexible armband strap that can accommodate both large and small arms.

As a fitness wallet, the RunWallet can be attached to the supplied armband, or can be attached to your shoe, attached to a belt or placed in a pocket. New to the RunWallet is a lanyard to fold over to use as needed. It also has a clear front face which allows items to be clipped to it,...

Dekorra has updated EasyDraw (http://www.eazydraw.com/whatsNew.htm), its vector drawing app for Mac OS X, to version 3.4.1 The new version adds support for the required page size for iPad development.

It provides proper drawing size support for the main icon, Apple App Store icon, small icon and launch screens for the iPad and iPhone. EasyDraw 3.4.1 also provides a few new features and minor bug fixes for the recently released version 3.4.0, which introduced SVG support.

Version 3.4.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. It's Universal Binary so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

EasyDraw 3.4.1 is a free upgrade for licensed owners of EazyDraw version 3.x license and a US$35 upgrade for owners of EazyDraw version 2.x. For new users the cost is $95 for the downloadable version.

Mariner Software (http://www.marinersoftware.com) has released MacJournal 5.0, the latest version of the journaling software. It adds a "None" option to the settings for smart journals so you can set up a smart journal where none of the listed checks are true.

For example, the entry does not contain a certain tag. English-only until localizations can be updated.

MacJournal 5.2.1 is now available for download and requires Mac OS 10.4 or 10.5. It costs US$34.95 for the download version. Registered MacJournal 3 and 4 customers can upgrade for $19.95 on the Mariner web site with their serial number. Version 5.2.1 is a free update for registered users of version 5.x.

Hamrick Software has released Vuescan 8.6.26, a new version of the VueScan software for Mac OS X that's designed to let users produce better digital images from color snapshots, negatives, slides and documents. The new version adds more info to Release Notes for each scanner and fixes some bugs.

The Standard Edition of VueScan costs US$59.95 and the Professional Edition is $79.95 for a single user license. Multi-user licenses are available. A fully functional, trial copy of VueScan is available for download from the Hamrick web site (http://www.hamrick.com).