Ipad

Is it an app or a live travel agent? Desti is from the makers of Siri, and hot from South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. Name: Desti Available for: iPad What it does: Provides answers to questions you'd ask a travel agent, such as suggestions for kid-friendly restaurants near your hotel or girlfriend getaway ideas at five-star hotels with spas in San Francisco. Cost: Free What's hot: Desti's tips go well beyond hotels and restaurants.

A few weeks back while speaking at a technology conference, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook stressed that what made Apple superior was not just great gadgets. No, the real advantage was its ability to make it all: hardware, software and services.  "Apple is in a fairly unique and, in my view, unrivaled position because Apple has skills in software, in hardware, and in services," Cook said in February. "The reality is that the model that grew the PC industry, where someone specialized in one thing, that model is not working for what consumers want today.

Samsung is investing $112 million for a 3% stake in struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp -- a key supplier to rival Apple. The South Korea company will purchase nearly 36 million shares at a price of about $3.11 in a move aimed to strengthen the two companies' relationship, Sharp said. The deal is expected to be completed by March 28. Photos: 10 tech companies to watch in 2013 Samsung's investment probably will lessen Sharp's dependency on Apple. Currently, Sharp supplies screens for Apple's iPad and iPhone 5 devices.

Over the last year or so since I became a mother, what was my iPad has morphed into the family iPad, has been renamed Elmo by our nearly 2-year-old son, Christopher, and seems to be a bit of a mystery grab bag when I finally get it back in my hands. From his many early FaceTime and Skype chats with "Nana," my mother, he's gotten quite proficient at using it. He now slides the virtual arrow to open it, selects the on-screen folder that reads "Chris' books" and deftly taps through a series of book apps that entertain and engage him. And he knows the ones he wants.

IFixit, the California company known for its tech tear-ups and how-to-fix guides, has posted a helpful "tablet repairability list" that ranks tablets based on how easily they can be fixed. The list includes many of the most popular tablets and is a helpful guide for users looking to buy tablets that can be quickly fixed or upgraded with better parts. "Some may care that their tablets are easy to repair and upgrade; others may not," IFixit said in a statement. "For those that do, we've aggregated our repairability scores for the best-selling tablets into one convenient page.

Apple has agreed to hand out more than $100 million in iTunes store credits to settle a lawsuit alleging that its iPhone and iPad apps allowed children to make purchases without their parent's knowledge or consent. The lawsuit, which was filed by five parents two years ago, alleged that Apple did not create parental controls to keep children from buying extra features sold within a video games app. The parents who filed the lawsuit said they didn't realize their children were charging their accounts until they were billed.

Samsung, Sony and Hewlett-Packard took to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, over the weekend to announce new tablets that could rival Apple's iPad. The most notable of the tablets is Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0, which will be the South Korean tech company's direct competitor to Apple's iPad mini and the Google Nexus 7. As noted by its name, the Galaxy Note 8.0 has an eight-inch screen with a 1,280-by-800-pixel resolution. Like other Galaxy Note products, the new Samsung tablet will also come with the S Pen stylus.

The iPad has a lot of apps, but if there's a glaring hole, it's the absence of Microsoft Office. Although there have been reports that Microsoft has built an iPad version of its Office suite of programs, the Redmond, Wash., company has yet to release them. Those programs would include Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. So how much is Microsoft leaving on the table by not placing Office on the iPad? About $2.5 billion a year, estimates Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt. PHOTOS: Tech we want to see in 2013 In a note sent to investors, Holt said he calculates that if Microsoft released Office for the iPad, as many as 30% of iPad users would buy the software, according to a report by AllThingsD . If that number swelled to about 200 million in 2014, Microsoft would make $2.5 billion -- and that's after Apple takes its 30% cut for selling the app on the App Store.

The next time an iPhone or iPad comes out, you might be able to pick it up at a Staples store. The news was announced over Twitter by a couple of Staples employees, but they may have shared it prematurely. Neither Apple nor Staples have put out a press release, and two of the employees have now removed their tweets from public view. "After Canada, #Apple products are coming to #Staples in US. Great news!" said Regis Mulot , Staples' senior vice president of global human resources, in a tweet that now appears to have been deleted.

A noted analyst says he expects Apple to hold some kind event this spring, mostly like to reveal some kind of updated iPad.  In a note to clients this week, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray & Co. wrote:  "We believe that looking at the history of time between Apple product launch events suggests that the company will introduce something new in March or April. Over the past two years, the Spring event has been iPad updates. " PHOTOS: Tech we want to see in 2013 Munster didn't claim to have any inside info.