Ipad

Lu Miao speaks very little English. He's never traveled outside of Asia. He's not a software engineer. But in a few short months, he became the founder of a successful software company selling apps in the United States and Europe. In less than half a year, Rye Studio has sold 1 million downloads of apps with traditional Chinese children's stories at 99 cents each for Apple Inc.'s iPad and iPhone. Lu bought a courtyard home in the city's tech hub, the Haidian district, and converted it into a playful office with a giant replica of a Michelangelo painting and a bamboo garden.

TiVo, the popular TV recording service, will be making its way onto Apple's mobile devices sometime this summer. The service, which is called TiVo Stream, was announced earlier this week by the company, and it will allow users to stream their shows as well as download them, according to a release from TiVo.

Once you've browsed beyond the iPad, the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, you get to a category of tablets that might reasonably be called "the others. " This is a long list of devices both from well-known electronics makers (Motorola, Samsung, Sony) and from a few you've probably never heard of (Asus, Kobo, Huawei, Lenovo). Although the iPad is on the high end of the pricing ladder and the Kindle Fire is on the lower end, the two have something in common that separates them from the others: They're both connected to large, well-known online entertainment empires.

Apple's dominance of the mobile PC and tablet market continued through the first quarter of 2012, according to a new forecast report. Apple towered over the tablet sector with the iPad while also keeping a strong hold at the top of mobile PC shipments, which include notebook PCs.  The iPad continues to be the most-sold tablet, accounting for nearly 63% of market share and seeing year-to-year growth of 162% for the first quarter, according to NPD DisplaySearch's report.

It's a sunny day in San Francisco, with only a few minor earthquakes in Northern California serving as a prelude to Apple's much-anticipated product unveiling Wednesday.  Apple is no doubt hoping to shake the Earth itself with what most people believe is going to be a new iPad.  That could be the iPad 3, the iPad HD, the iPad 4G or some other clever name, but we think it's likely to be faster, have a much-improved display, and probably connect...

Sure, the reviewers are gushing about the retina display, the faster chip and the better camera on the new iPad, of course. But do real people really get it? As it turns out, for some people the distinction between the new hotness and the iPad 2 is a little fuzzy. Despite some dramatic “my eyes, my eyes!” declarations of the iPad experience forever having been ruined by the clarity of the new iPad's retina display compared with the screen of the iPad 2, the casual user doesn't seem able to easily see a difference between the two - other than the $100 difference in price.

Thrifty consumers who bought an iPad 2 from Best Buy in the last couple of weeks have been riding an emotional roller coaster that has ranged from smug elation to hesitation to frustration. It started off well: On Feb. 25, Best Buy launched what sounded like a great deal--dropping the price of its entire line of iPads by $50. So the starting price of the 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 was down to $449.99 from $499.99 and the most expensive iPad, 64 gigabytes with Wi-Fi and 3G capability, was down to $779.99 from $829.99.

With Apple expected to announce the iPad 3 on Wednesday, we're on rumor patrol here at the Technology Blog. The latest buzz is that Apple will not raise prices for the highly anticipated tablet and will keep its current pricing structure for all iPad 3 models, according to 9to5Mac . “Even better, some countries with currencies doing better than the U.S. dollar should expect to see marginal drops in prices,” the blog said. That's good news for the hordes of shoppers expected to line up for the tablet once it's released and is in line with Apple's usual approach of keeping prices the same even as it updates popular products.

Chatter about an iPad mini just won't settle. Another analyst just added fuel to this hot-air balloon with a note to clients. But revisiting Steve Jobs' take on going smaller might just deflate some of this speculation. This week, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu wrote that a 7- or 8-inch screen with resolution that's comparable to the first- and second-generation iPads is feasible, according to Barron's . "From a competitive standpoint, we believe an iPad mini with a lower price point would be the competition's worst nightmare," Wu wrote.

Time does not pass quickly when you're going nowhere fast. Suddenly, however, a new crop of stationary cardio exercise machines has livened up the indoor workout world, adding everything from Internet compatibility to ecology aids to creative new movement patterns. Here's some innovative aerobic body blasters worth working up a sweat for. -- It runs on you Woodway EcoMill: Curve-shaped manual treadmill with no motor, no buttons and a running surface made of 60 tank-tread-like rubberized slats that travel around a track, rather than a conventional, continuous tread belt pulled over a hard deck by two rollers.

It looks as if fall could be a very busy season for Microsoft. The software maker appears poised to release Office for iPad and Android tablets and an Outlook Web app for iOS this fall, according to reports.  Although officially Microsoft has no comment, reports have surfaced that the full suite of Office apps will have a November release, according to website BGR. And the app is said to look almost identical to the leaked images from a few months ago, according to BGR's source.

Ever want to video chat with a few of your closest friends? How about 11 of them at the same time? That's what video chat service ooVoo offers free through Facebook and a new iPad app. The company, whose name represents two sets of eyes looking at each other, lets users access video chat rooms from the iPhone and Android phone over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G LTE as well as via Web and desktop apps. The desktop apps allow up to 12-way chat, screen sharing and sharing of files up to 25 megabytes.

A just-released update for Mint's iPhone and iPad app lets users take the information graphed out about their spending habits and set their own ranges and limits by sliding the indicator up or down. In addition to being updated for the iPad's new Retina display, the latest Mint lets users spin the pie chart that gives a quick view to categories of spending and drill down detail with a tap. The change I'm most excited about, though, is the ability to personalize budgets.

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

Time does not pass quickly when you're going nowhere fast. Suddenly, however, a new crop of stationary cardio exercise machines has livened up the indoor workout world, adding everything from Internet compatibility to ecology aids to creative new movement patterns. Here's some innovative aerobic body blasters worth working up a sweat for. -- It runs on you Woodway EcoMill: Curve-shaped manual treadmill with no motor, no buttons and a running surface made of 60 tank-tread-like rubberized slats that travel around a track, rather than a conventional, continuous tread belt pulled over a hard deck by two rollers.

Scott Forstall, one of the Apple Inc. executives behind the company's blockbuster iPad and iPhone, cashed in his products' successes last week to the tune of $38.7 million. The sale represented 95% of his Apple stock holdings, leaving his very lucrative cupboard bare — for the time being. Apple stock's meteoric rise has hit some bumps lately, with shares down 5.4% over the last month. The stock hit a bigger skid starting in mid-April, dropping 13% before it rebounded after Apple's huge earnings release last week.

Are you damaging your new iPad just by charging it? That seems to be what Apple is suggesting in response to questions about whether the third-generation iPad continues to charge even after the battery indicator reads 100%. Last week, DisplayMate Technologies reported discrepancies between the charge indicator and the power available. According to DisplayMate President Raymond Soneira, if you stop charging the iPad when the indicator reads 100%, you're really only about 90% charged . This means you probably won't get the maximum running time you'd expect from a fully charged device.

Netflix just got a little sharper for the new iPad. Amid the flurry of upgrades for the higher-resolution Retina display, Netflix released its Version 2.1.1 with Retina-ready artwork, better playback on external screens and fixes for accessibility option VoiceOver. Another revision, 2.1, released earlier this month was for faster switching between apps. With this upgraded screen on the iPad, all you're getting are improved icons and still images for movies and TV shows?

Plan a private event, ask a friend to lunch or gather a large gaggle of people for a public meet-up - all from your smartphone or device. Great for business or leisure. Name: GiddyUp Available for: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android What it does: Lets you organize events by inviting contacts on your iPhone, iPad, Android, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. Cost: Free What's hot: It's liberating to skip the back-and-forth email chains when planning a lunch or party.

The Kindle Fire appears to be burning up its competition — on the Android side, anyway. Amazon.com Inc.'s tablet computer is catching on in a big way in the U.S., accounting by end of February for 54.4% of tablets that run Google Inc.'s Android system software. That represented a near doubling of the Fire's Android market share since December, when it was at 29.4%, according to new data from ComScore Inc. The Fire first went on sale in November. In a way, the Kindle Fire is gobbling up the small fish in the pond — far outpacing Samsung's Galaxy Tab (15.4% of Android)