Apple [AAPL] has scheduled a staff meeting for retail employees to be held on February 27. Attendance at the meeting requires that all staff sign an NDA from what sources say.

What can be expected at this meeting is that Apple could announce Joint Venture which is a service that could bring Apple Geniuses in to the homes of prosumers as well as to small businesses. The service would also be offered one-to-one over the phone if needed.

[Read more…]

Intel has sent out invites for a press conference this coming Thursday. Although Intel makes no mention of what will be unveiled, they do say that “new technology” will be discussed. You might also remember over the last few days, rumors of a new MacBook Pro with Light Peak technology have been hinted at, well what we see here is some perfect timing for Intel to introduce Light Peak followed by a launch of a new MacBook Pro range.

Of course, a lot of this is just speculation at the moment, but thanks to a patent revealed and some inside knowledge, it appears that these rumors could end up being correct. [Read more…]

Three new URL’s have been found on the web based Android Market that hint that Google [GOOG] is expanding in to music, movies and books for Android devices.

The new URL’s are directories from the main market.android.com domain and are as follows:

[Read more…]

Google has updated Google Docs Viewer to now include 12 more file types.

For those not familiar with Google Docs Viewer, it is the system that Google uses to allow you to read documents found in emails without downloading the attachments, or at least thats one way to use it. Rather than cluttering your harddrive with a bunch of documents you have downloaded, the Docs Viewer lets you quickly view them in GMail for example where a webpage opens containing the document. Once verified as safe and correct, you can download if needed. [Read more…]

Apple is expected to soon announce a high-speed connector based on Intel Light Peak technology. The Intel Light Peak system allows data to be transmitted at high speed over copper wires and in the future, copper will be replaced with fiber-optic.

It is believed that the high-speed connector that Apple introduce will use the Light Peak technology, but not use that as the name for it, ie: they will work with Intel and launch it under a different name. [Read more…]

Android Central managed to get hold of a roadmap from Dell about which tablets are being released over the coming year.

Something interesting was found at the end of the time scale for January 2012, that interesting item is a reference to a Windows 8 tablet. Speculation has now begun that Microsoft [MSFT] could begin using Window 8 on tablets as early as the first quarter of 2012 although a number of people have questioned if 1Q2012 is just a bit too soon. [Read more…]

As expected, Apple [AAPL] has now launched subscriptions on the App Store. The new subscriptions service allows publishers of content on the app store to set up a regular automated billing cycle of weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly. The system will use the regular Apple billing system that is already used in the app store. By doing this, it makes it easy for the user to see all subscriptions on a single location and then cancel, edit billing frequency and make other changes when needed.

For content providers, Steve Jobs has explained exactly how the revenue model works between publisher and Apple: [Read more…]

Samsung will be announcing a new tablet this coming Sunday evening at the opening of Mobile World Congress. The new tablet will be larger than the Galaxy Tab in that it will have a 10.1 inch screen although we hear that it will also be thinner and lighter than the smaller 7 inch model.

The device name isn’t known just yet, although it could be the Galaxy Tab 2. The OS running on this new model will be Android 3.0 Honeycomb and when launched, it will go head to head with the Motorola Xoom and the iPad. [Read more…]

After a few years of waiting, Google has now launched a web store for the Android Market. The new webstore allows Android phone users to browse around various apps and click a button to install them on their Android smartphone or tablet.

To get it to work, you just need to register your handset or tablet with the Android Market web store and once done, you can then click to buy (or grab free) apps and via OTA, they are sent to your device. [Read more…]

Apple has made iOS 4.3 beta 3 available to developers for download. The download became available last night and is the next step to bringing the final version for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch owners to download.

The version number is 8F5166b and comes two weeks after the beta 2 launch. This particular version works on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch with a second version of it being made available for Apple TV owners. [Read more…]

The Google Chrome browser is growing in market share recently and now accounts for 10 percent share of the browser market last month.

On the other side of the scale, Internet Explorer from Microsoft is still sliding and has dropped to 56 percent and although that’s still an impressive share of the market, the fact that it’s sliding is something for Microsoft to be concerned about. One thing to note though is that Internet Explorer 9 will also be launching soon which from what we have seen of the browser, could make Microsoft start to gain traction again. [Read more…]

This will certainly have the news sites talking today. It appears that the Sony Reader app for iOS was not approved by Apple. Sony spoke to the Times and basically said that its app was blocked by Apple because it allows in app purchases to be made from a different company. If true, it seems that Apple wants all content to be sold through the iTunes store rather from the Sony eBook store.

What we don’t understand at the moment is what will happen to apps like the Amazon Kindle app, Nook and other apps that allow you to connect up and sync content from a 3rd party location. Will Apple ban these? Perhaps Sony isn’t telling us the full reasons why the app was banned, and maybe they tried to do something different to what Kindle and Nook apps do to get content. [Read more…]