Elgato (http://www.elgato.com) is shipping the Thunderbolt SSD, "the ultimate portable high-speed storage solution." It combines a solid-state drive with Thunderbolt technology. Housed in a metal enclosure, the drive draws its power directly through the Thunderbolt port and operates completely silently. The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is available immediately for US$429.95 (120GB version) and $699.95 (240 GB version).

Eastman Kodak has asked a bankruptcy court to decide on its patent dispute with Apple, opposing a motion by Apple for permission to resume the patent litigation in another court, reports "PC World" (http://macte.ch/ipsXl). Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy in January, said in a filing that the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York and not a separate court should decide on the ownership of the disputed U.S. Patent No. 6,292,218. The chapter 11 cases would quickly become unmanageable, if ownership claims relating to the estate were litigated on a piecemeal basis in courts around the country, the company claims. Eastman Kodak has agreed to sell its online photo services business to Shutterfly Inc for US$23.8 million; however a dispute with Apple over patent rights is complicating things, reports "Reuters" (http://macte.ch/vKdNf). The company that invented the hand-held camera has said it will quit the camera business and is expected to fetch $1 billion to $2 billion...

Russia's national customs agency has reclassified the iPad as a personal computer, a change that will allow customers to avoid a 5% import tax that was previously applied to sales, according to the Russian-language Vedomosi" publication -- as reported by "AppleInsider" (http://www.appleinsider.com). Russia's Federal Customs Service has nixed the 5% fee by nixing the "navigator" classification that was previously applied to the iPad, the article adds. The Apple tablet was previously considered a navigation device because it can include a GPS radio for positioning data. However, as "AppleInsider" notes, only the 3G-equipped iPad model includes GPS; the Wi-Fi-only model doesn't.

Canon U.S.A. (http://www.usa.canon.com) has announced the Pixma MX892 Wireless Office All-In-One (AIO) printer as the flagship model in the family of Canon Pixma office printers. Designed with the home office user in mind, this print, copy, scan and fax machine has a variety of connectivity options for printing of documents and images from the cloud and other compatible portable devices. It will have an estimated selling price of US$199.99. Canon says the Pixma MX892 will support Apple AirPrint wireless printing from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. AirPrint allows users to wirelessly print photos, email, web pages and documents without installing device drivers. AirPrint will be available with all Canon Pixma Wireless All-In-One inkjet printers launched from this point forward. AirPrint works with the iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPod touch (third generation and later) running using iOS 4.2 or later.

Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom.html) for Mac OS X (10.6.8 and higher) and Windows. Lightroom is a digital photography workflow solution designed to help amateur and professional photographers import, manage, enhance and showcase their images. Lightroom 4 costs US$149 for the full version and US$79 for the upgrade. It introduces refined technology for shadow and highlight processing, the ability to create photo books, additional local adjustment controls, and enhanced video support.   According to Winston Hendrickson, vice president of Digital Imaging Products, Adobe, Lightroom 4 adds significant new capabilities and innovations. New adjustment controls maximize dynamic range from cameras, recovering exceptional shadow details and highlights, he adds.The software features new and improved auto adjustments to dynamically set values for exposure and contrast, and additional local adjustment controls including Noise...

Western Digital has announced the availability of its third-generation WD S25 SAS hard drives, designed to serve the performance-optimized, mission-critical enterprise server and storage market. Shipping now, the new 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM, WD S25 with SAS 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer IT professionals an array of high-performance storage, available in capacities of 300GB, 450GB, 600GB, and 900GB. The WD S25 line is designed for the most demanding applications such as online transaction processing and multi-tiered networked storage arrays, says Darwin Kauffman, vice president of enterprise storage solutions, WD. WD S25 SAS hard drives are currently shipping to original equipment manufacturers, with broader availability at select resellers and distributors worldwide later next quarter. WD S25 SAS hard drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty. More info an be found at http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=10 .

iPresentee (http://www.ipresentee.com) had added 10 new premium themes for Keynote, Apple's presentation software. The Keynote themes collection includes over 100 themes. The new release includes these new themes: Golden Leaves, Fashion Show, Yellow Arrows, Share Your Story, Snow Summit, Wood Design, Stripes Design, Glorious Day, Hot News and Glossy Paper. The themes require Mac OS X 10.4.3 or higher and iWork '08 or iWork '09. The latest 10 themes for Keynote are offered for US$9.99. A themes bundle that includes 100 themes for Keynote is priced at $29.99. Free Keynote add-ons are offered free of charge and can be downloaded from iPresentee's website.

Aerohive Networks (http://www.aerohive.com), which specializes in cloud-enabled enterprise networking infrastructure, has announced a new feature that enables management and control of Apple’s "Zero-Configuration Networking" technology, called Bonjour, to make services such as AirPrint and AirPlay usable across large, multi-subnet networks regardless of the underlying topology. Aerohive’s new patent-pending Bonjour Gateway, will be delivered as a software upgrade for existing customers and as an out-of-band device compatible with customers’ legacy wireless and wired networks. With the increasing prevalence of Apple devices on both enterprise and education networks, particularly with new bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, it's necessary for the network infrastructure to be natively aware of Bonjour, Apple’s service advertisement and configuration technology, according to the folks at Aerohive. Bonjour (or Zero-Configuration Networking) is used to configure services like...

Following Apple’s announcement that over 25 billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, ISI Group’s Brian Marshall tells clients in a note -- as reported by "Barron's" (http://macte.ch/j2Si7) -- that he estimates the company’s cumulative shipments to date of devices based on its iOS operating system probably totaled about 315 million in the December quarter, up from 165 million in the year-earlier quarter. The analyst says Apple’s revenue is secured in the same way as the cable companies, with a high recurring aspect as users buy a “$650 high-end ‘set-top box’ with an ~18-month replacement cycle." Marshall is estimating that the “implied value per iOS user” right now is $1,900.

Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.7.3 Supplemental Update, which fixes an issue when restoring a Mac from a Time Machine backup. You can obtain the update via the Software Updates component of Mac OS X's Systems Preferences app. The 24.55MB download is recommended for every Time Machine backup using running Mac OS X 10.7.3.

A new study by Spaceport (http://spaceport.io/), the cross-platform mobile game development tool maker, says that Apple's iOS runs HTML5 games three times faster than the Android operating system, reports "VentureBeat" (http://macte.ch/igwYf). Spaceport.io created a benchmark dubbed PerfMarks to test performance at running HTML5 code. The benchmark tested a device’s ability to animate image movement. The report measured the number of moving images on a screen at 30 frames per second (FPS), a frame rate which provides a near-native user experience. Repeated tests showe that iOS performed far better at running animations than Android, notes "VentureBeat."The newest iPhone 4S scored 252 PerfMarks and the iPad 2 score 327. That compares to just 53 for the iPhone 3GS from 2009. By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone scored 147 and the Kindle Fire scored only 25. The iPad 2 beat every single Android device tested, reports "VentureBeat." The new Android Galaxy Nexus was the only...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Apple and Google, charging that both steal users’ private contacts and photos without users’ consent, reports "Mashable" (http://macte.ch/jcR9K). "These uses go well beyond what a reasonable user understands himself to be consenting to when he allows an app to access data on the phone for purposes of the app’s functionality," Schumer says. "When someone takes a private photo, on a private cell phone, it should remain just that: private." Such usage violates both Apple’s and Google’s terms of service, Schumer argues. Apple hasn't commented.

On the eve of Apple's suspected launch of the iPad 3, The Business Journals' (http://www.bizjournals.com) new national study among small and mid-sized business (SMB) owners reveals how critical the iPad and other mobile devices have become to this business segment.  According to the findings, iPad usage has nearly quadrupled among the SMB market over the past year, growing from 9% in 2010 to 34% in 2011, indicating that the iPad is the fastest growing technology among the SMB market. In addition, since the iPad's launch in April 2010, familiarity with the product has reached incredibly high levels in its less than two year life span with 75% of SMB owners report now being "very or somewhat familiar" with the device. Godfrey Phillips, vice president of Research at The Business Journals, hypothesizes that the growth of the iPad is part of a new phenomenon overtaking the SMB market.  "Our research has shown that for SMB owners, productivity and efficiency, which used to be the central...

The Pragmatic Studio has announced more dates for their iPhone Programming course: April 10-13 and Aug. 13-16. In this four-day, hands-on training course, participants will learn the tools and APIs [application programming interfaces] in the iOS 5.0 SDK [software development kit], Xcode 4.3, Objective-C and Cocoa Touch programming. This course is designed for: experienced programmers who are new to iOS development; new iOS programmers who have started building an app and need help putting all the concepts together; and small programming teams that need to get up to speed quickly on building iOS apps. You can sign up early and save US$400. For more info go to http://pragmaticstudio.com/ .

RE:Vision Effects (http://www.revisionfx.com/) has released Twixtor for Apple's Final Cut Pro X. The US$329.95 app lets you create slow motion shots with no need to rent a high speed camera. Twixtor synthesizes new frames by warping and interpolating frames of the original sequence. It employs employing RE:Vision's proprietary tracking technology that calculates motion for each individual pixel, says Pete Litwinowicz, president of RE:Vision Effects, Inc. For this initial release, Twixtor is supported within Final Cut Pro (FCP) X. However, Twixtor Pro remains only supported within FCP 6 and 7. Volume discounts are available.

Apple has posted a "creating jobs through innovation" page (http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/) showing how it created jobs in the U.S. The site says there are 514,000 jobs created or supported by Apple in all 50 states. 
Apple says there are 304,000 jobs ranging from engineering to manufacturing to transportation. That's in addition to 210,000 iOS app economy jobs. 
The site says: "A study by Analysis Group found that Apple has directly or indirectly created 304,000 U.S. jobs.* These jobs — spread across all 50 states — include thousands of jobs in numerous industries, from the people who create components for our products to the people who build the planes and trucks that carry them to our customers. For example, this figure also includes workers in Texas who manufacture processors for iOS products, Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone, and FedEx and UPS employees. Together with the 210,000 iOS jobs generated by the app...

InMobi (http://www.inmobi.com), an independent mobile ad network, has announced the results of its custom iPad-focused study, "iPad 3 and the Mobile Market." The InMobi announcement acts as a forecast for the March 7 media event Apple is holding. Commenting on the study, Anne Frisbie, vice president and managing director, North America, InMobi, says: "Nearly one-third of respondents are planning to buy the iPad 3, and 44% would only consider the iPad if purchasing a tablet. Interestingly, 65% of those who intend to buy an iPad 3 would consider buying an iPad or iPad 2 at a reduced price instead,indicating that whether or not consumers purchase an iPad 3 versus an older model, the excitement around the iPad 3 release will likely increase iPad penetration in the tablet market." Key highlights from the study include: ° Twenty-nine percent of respondents are planning to buy the iPad 3.  ° Fifty-four percent of those who are planning to buy the iPad 3 do not already own a tablet. ° Sixty-...

According to Associate Press (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/t-relents-unlimited-data-plan-174637221.html), AT&T is relenting some on its unpopular policies towards "unlimited" users. Recently, there's been reports of AT&T throttling unlimited users starting at as little as 1.5 gigabytes of usage -- as as AT&T ahas said, when users entered the "heaviest 5 percent" of data users for that month or that area. Thursday, the company has changed its policy and will now slow down "unlimited" data users after they reach 3 gigabytes within a billing cycle. Until the change, there was no way for users to find out at what point they would be throttled. Instead, AT&T would send a text message to the customer when they were approaching being throttled. With the new policy, they know the limits of their "unlimited" data plan. According to AP, "AT&T has about 17 million 'unlimited' smartphone subscribers, most of whom use iPhones." Furthermore, "As part of the new policy, the...

The city of Vancouver, Wash., has seen substantial savings since switching to the iPad for city council meetings and expects to save as many as 50,000 pages of printing per year, according to "AppleInsider" (http://www.appleinsider.com). Vancouver began its paperless City Council test in January. After two months, the transition to iPads has brought about a 40% reduction in the amount of pages printed for meetings, notes "AppleInsider." Vancouver estimates the city could see printing savings of as much as US$200 per meeting by "going iPad." City departments have spent roughly $17,000 on the Apple stables, with an average cost of $601.50 each, notes "AppleInsider."

A German court on Friday dismissed two cases brought by Apple and Samsung against each other as part of an ongoing legal battle, reports "Reuters" (http://macte.ch/9HiXf). The decision by a regional court in Mannheim covered a claim by Apple that Samsung infringed on its slide-to-lock technology as well as one of three patents Samsung claimed Apple violated. This is another round in the global, ongoing brouhaha between Apple and Samsung involving patent disputes. The two companies have filed more than 30 lawsuits against each other across four continents. The German court is expected to make a decision on March 16 on another slide-to-unlock suit Apple has brought against Samsung.

As Google has killed 60 separate "privacy" policies for its services and said it would now combine data between services despite widespread objection, Consumer Watchdog (http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org) said the new unified policy isn't a privacy policy; it's a "spy policy." "Calling this a 'privacy policy' is Orwellian doublespeak," says John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's Privacy project director. "Google isn't telling you about protecting your privacy.  Google is telling you how they will gather information about you on all its services, combine it in new ways and use the fat new digital dossiers to sell more ads.  They're telling you how they plan to spy on you.  It's a spy policy." Google announced the plans in January. Shortly after the announcement, Stanford Researcher Jonathan Mayer found that Google was circumventing privacy settings on the Safari web browser, which is used on the iPad and iPhone. Google also gave false advice on its website about the effect of the settings it...

Exit Games has unveiled Photon Cloud, a hosted network engine for the development of realtime multiplayer games for Macs, PCs, browsers and mobile devices. Photon Cloud is offered in different packages starting at US$ 9 per month. Upgrading, downgrading and canceling is possible at any time. The detailed pricing is available at http://cloud.exitgames.com/pricing . Photon Cloud free trial accounts can be setup at http://exitgamescloud.com/ .   "Photon Cloud allows developers to build fantastic multiplayer games without any server-hassle, without having concerns of how to globally scale and operate the game as we are taking care of this," says Christof Wegmann, chief technical officer of Exit Games. "With Photon Cloud it has never been so easy and affordable to build an online game. Photon Cloud starts at just $9.00 USD per month so even a small indie can now build a stunning multiplayer experience for a global audience. We think this is a real deal."

Here are the latest updates for Mac OS X apps. Xinfinite and Yaranga have introduced Sticky 1.0 (http://www.isticky.net) for iOS and iSticky 4.0 for OS X, their Productivity app that stores user's notes on iSticky's Cloud server for easy access on multiple devices. The new release for iOS integrates with the OS X version, supports push notifications, allows users to create note lists, share lists with other users, specify list permissions, encrypt note lists, and send notes to other users. Fanurio Time Tracking has updated Fanurio (http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com), a time tracking and billing app for Mac OS X, to version 2.5. The upgrade has a new template editor, an improved tax wizard and more. Noodlesoft has released Hazel 3 (http:///www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php) for Mac OS X. The update of the automated organization tool for the Mac adds numerous features, improvements and fixes. For example, Hazel 3 features a revamped engine that makes it more powerful.

Apple is going ahead with plans to launch a streaming TV service by Christmas "despite making little headway in its negotiations with content providers," according to "The New York Post" (http://macte.ch/Rqaes). Eddie Cue, Apple's senior vice president for Internet software and services, has been leading talks with content providers, the article says. However, the content providers have, so far, balked at Apple's desire to exert control over all aspects of the video service, including pricing, claims "The Post." Apple is purportedly pitching the idea of offering channels as apps for its devices, including its Apple TV set-top box. It’s unclear whether it would group the apps together and charge a fee — similar to a cable-TV subscription — or offer the channels on an a la carte basis, says "The Post."