mLearnCon News and Updates

The jQuery Mobile team is happy to announce the release of Beta 1. We’re proud of the refinements we’ve made to make jQuery Mobile faster, extensible and more compatible over the last 12 weeks and look forward to having more frequent releases as we work up to 1.0 in late summer. We’re planning on releasing a second Beta in about a month that will begin decoupling our code so you can include only the components you need, add greater extensibility to support dynamic JS-driven sites, and bring even broader device support.

Note that jQuery Mobile 1.0 will require jQuery core 1.6 as a baseline. Going forward, we’ll be supporting the two latest major versions of core but we’re starting with a cleaner baseline for launch. Here is a summary of what’s new and improved in Beta 1.

Read more from JQueryMobile.com here

Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM)’s PlayBook tablet computer, panned at its April debut, has an edge over Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad in the Army thanks to RIM’s encrypted servers.

That advantage may soon dissipate as Apple’s more broadly popular devices march toward Defense Department security certification, which may come as early as this month, military officials said.

Tablet computers are being tested across all military branches, according to interviews conducted by Bloomberg Government since May 17. The services pay $500 to $600 per tablet, less than half the cost of laptops that are “ruggedized,” or enhanced with a shell and toughened to withstand harsh environments. Tablets also may replace paper manuals, maps, biometric devices and some communications tools.

The U.S. Army is leaning toward the PlayBook because RIM “addressed security concerns from the get-go,” said Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dosmann, who oversees mobile device pilot- testing for the Army’s cybersecurity division. Security remains an issue for Apple and may hold back wider use of iPads, he said.

Apple, Dell Inc. (DELL), RIM and other tablet makers are vying to tap the military market for computers, laptops and servers worth $2.9 billion in the government’s 2010 fiscal year. Of that amount, spending on enhanced laptops was $33 million. The department spent $37 million on tablets in the same fiscal year, according to Bloomberg data.

‘Disruptive Technology’

Tablets are a “disruptive technology” that can replace heavier and more expensive equipment, Dosmann said. “As an infantry soldier, the last thing I want is something more to carry.”

To secure the devices so they can only be accessed using the common access card carried by all military service members and Defense employees, the services must install additional software or hardware, Gary Winkler, the Army’s former program executive officer for enterprise information systems, said in a June 20 telephone interview. Winkler oversaw about $4 billion, or 56 percent, of the Army’s information-technology budget.

“It’s very tough to drive the manufacturers to make the tablets and the devices with the embedded security that only the Defense Department needs or only parts of the federal government needs because the market just isn’t big enough,” said Winkler, who now heads Fairfax, Virginia-based Cyber Solutions and Services Inc., a government consulting and contracts support company.

Read more here from Bloomberg.

An absolute gem of an article by John Brandon and Graham Barlow from MacLife on 30th March over at TechRadar. This is going to become my iPad manual from here on in. Customised iPads for all

iPad 2 tips and original iPad tips - get 'em here!
With great new features like two video cameras, a faster processor and a thinner design, the iPad 2 is the world's best tablet device.

It's also fully capable of running the latest version of Apple's iOS operating system and great apps like iMovie and GarageBand. Here we present 50 really useful iPad 2 tips. We cover everything from customising your Home screen through to getting more from built-in apps like Mail and Safari. The vast majority of these tips will also work on the original iPad, so owners of the first generation device shouldn't feel neglected. For 50 more iPad tips, check out a new iPad app called 100 Tricks & Tips for iPad 2, brought to you by our colleagues on MacFormat.

1. Create folders

iOS now supports folders. To create a folder all you need to do is tap and hold on an app until they all start to jiggle, then drag the app over another icon and release. Your iPad will create a folder with both the apps in. The folder will be named according to the category of the apps it contains, but you can rename it as you like.

2. Access all running apps

Double-clicking the Home button shows you all the apps that are running on your iPad in a bar along the bottom of the screen. To switch to a running app just tap on it here in this bar. Just swipe the screen downwards to remove this bar.

All this week, I've been talking about how amazingly useful mind-mapping is for a variety of creative and business tasks. In my last post, I looked at a few of the best mind-mapping tools for Windows. Today we'll check out some of the coolest mind mappers for smartphones and tablets.

Mind mapping is an awesome activity for mobile devices, because it's inherently quick and requires very little typing. You can pull out your phone and tap up useful mind maps as you ride the train, wait to order lunch, or while you're standing in line at the airport. It's precisely this low-friction simplicity that makes mind maps such a powerful tool for productivity.

Here are a few of my favorite mind mapping apps for the most popular smartphone platforms.

SimpleMind+ for iPad/iPhone

SimpleMind+ is about as easy as mind mapping gets on iOS.There's no terrible shortage of mind mapping options for iOS, and some can set you back as much as $50. But for my money (which is about $0), it's hard to beat SimpleMind+. The basic version is free for either iPad or iPhone, and as of this writing the manufacturer offers an upgrade to the full version (which supports both iPad and iPhone) for $2.99 as an in-app purchase.

SimpleMind+ is simplicity itself. Tap a little plus sign next to any node on your mind map to add a subnode. Tap in a label and then create more nodes. Tapping and dragging instantly rearranges your maps, and you can drop one node onto another to reassign it as a subnode. In all my years of mind mapping, I've yet to find a mind mapper as cheap, easy, and insanely useful as SimpleMind+ on the iPad. The iPhone version runs a close second.

See more from PCWorld here

Can storage ever be sexy? Well, slap on Wi-Fi capabilities and a wireless media server to an external hard drive and it can start to look rather attractive.

That’s what Hitachi has done with its G-Connect 500Gb external drive launched today - the Wi-Fi lets the drive act as a local mini-cloud for serving movies, music and photos to iPads and other devices that lack its huge capacity to store media.

The concept may sound familiar – we wrote about Seagate’s 500Gb GoFlex Satellitedrive last month introducing the same capabilities.

And with Kingston’s Wi-Drive and AirStash’s wireless flash drive also emerging (albeit in smaller 32GB sizes), there is a definite trend being catered to here.

People are finding a 16Gb iPad 2 does not hold that much stuff when you add up all the apps, movies and music, plus photos and videos being taken. Its memory can’t be expanded and those who realise they need more before buying have to pay an extra $100 for a 32Gb model or $200 for the 64Gb one.

Read more here from FT Tech Hub.