Reuters reports that Viacom Inc, the parent company of MTV and Comedy Central has settled its lawsuits with Time Warner Cable regarding cable subscribers being able to watch Viacom’s TV shows on iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices. The settlement means that Viacom shows such as Jersey Shore, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and South Park should soon be available to watch on the Time Warner Cable TV app.

“All of Viacom’s programming will now be available to Time Warner Cable subscribers for in-home viewing via Internet protocol-enabled devices such as iPads,” stated Viacom and Time Warner Cable in a joint statement.

Reuters says that although the exact terms of the settlement were not revealed, it was also noted that Time Warner Cable will continue to carry Viacom’s Country Music Television programming. Viacom spokesman Mark Jafar said that the settlement is “very good news for consumers.” So, if you’re a Time Warner Cable subscriber, get ready for a much wider selection on the TWC iOS app from now on.

Source: Viacom, Time Warner Cable reach iPad views settlement | Reuters

Indie developer AlgoCrunch has announced that its iOS word game, Word Fusion, is available to download for free for a limited time, in conjunction with Daily App Dream. Word Fusion is a fast-paced word game with vibrant graphics and intuitive controls that sees the player going on an adventure with Otto and his magical chemistry set, the beakers of which must be filled with knowledge before the experiments explode. In order to win, players have to be both fast and smart. The game helps to develop speed and accuracy skills while also being a lot of fun for players of all ages. If you’re addicted to word games, as so many of us are, you’re going to love the way in which the game gets you to spell and write words in a fun and unique way by encouraging players to find as many words as possible on the game board in order to get bonuses. Word Fusion features 22 levels, and four multiplayer modes where you can compete against family and friends: via Game Center with real-time play, Game Center with turn-based play, Bluetooth, and pass-to-play on the same device.

Click here to download the game for free: App Store - Word Fusion

Source: AlgoCrunch

PCR reports today on a survey from cloud computing firm Nasstar of 300 small and medium-sized businesses, which found that companies that let their members of staff use their own mobile and computer devices, such as iPads and iPhones, at work are a more attractive prospect to employees, and also have better staff morale than those companies that don’t allow their staff to use their own gadgets in the office. Around three quarters of bosses polled in the survey said that letting their staff use their own smartphone, laptop or tablet at work made their company look like a more “flexible and attractive” employer. Sixty-four percent of those polled said that they already allow their employees to bring their gadgets to work, with the same percentage again having written policies already in use regarding taking one’s personal gadgets to work. Furthermore, 58% of respondents said that letting their staff use their own devices in the office had resulted in greater output and better efficiencies. Tellingly, 70% of those polled said that they thought that it was inevitable that staff would ask to use their own devices at work at some point.

Source: Staff happiest using their own tech devices | The latest news from the Computer and IT Industry | PC Retail

Computerworld reports today that conmen in Manchester, England, have been convincing people to hand over their cash using false pretences, tricking them into thinking they are getting an iPhone, when instead all that they are getting are ordinary household objects such as bottles of water, potatoes, or cans of Coke. It’s a variation on the scam that we’ve previously heard reports of in the US, where conmen show an unsuspecting member of the public some iPhones or iPads in the trunk of their car in a parking lot, and then give the hapless person a brick wrapped in an iPhone or iPad box once they’ve handed over the money. In the Manchester scam, the conmen show the mark a bag containing iPhones and laptops, and offer them to them for a bargain price. Then, when they get the bag home, they find out that it contains nothing but the aforementioned potatoes, cans, or bottles. Computerworld relates one particular incident where a man handed over £660 for what he thought was an iPhone and a laptop, only to find he had a bagful of Coke bottles. It is thought that the conmen have managed to scam £3,000 out of unsuspecting people since February. Police say that the conmen are white, with Eastern European accents, in their late 30s, one with an acne-scarred face and a goatee beard. “It is likely they are continuing to target people across Greater Manchester and I would urge anyone who is approached by them to not give them money,” said Detective Constable Michelle Wilkinson from the Economic Crime Desk to the Manchester Evening News.

Source: Conmen replace iPhones, laptops with Coke and spuds*( - Hardware Systems - Consumer Electronics )

Switchy is a Cydia Tweak which will double your App Switcher. This allows you to see 8 recently open applications per page instead of 4. The Switcher now fills up about half the iDevice screen but it's well worth it, no need for the other half anyways. Swiping to the right will take you to your standard iOS Music Controls and Rotation Lock. Then you can also swipe one more time to the right and now you have a few new options. On this page you are able to adjust your brightness using the slider, go into your Settings by tapping the icon, and also an open to kill running apps. Switchy is a very useful Tweak and it can be found for $1.00 under the Big Boss Repo in the Cydia Store.

LaunchSpeak is a Cydia Tweak which will let you type out a word for your iDevice to say every time you open an app. You simply go into the Settings to enable the Tweak, then you type out whatever you want your iDevice to say. Remember to respring after you've set it or else it won't work. Not quite sure how much use this is to anyone but hey, you never know. LaunchSpeak can be found for FREE under the ModMyi Repo.

According to a report on AppleInsider, Sprint will not be making any profit from carrying the iPhone until 2015, but even so, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says that he and Sprint are still “very happy” with their Apple deal. Sprint will be spending around $15.5 billion on the iPhone over the next four years, but Hesse did not appear unduly concerned by this during Sprint’s shareholder meeting on Tuesday, as reported on by All Things D. “We believe in the long term, and over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers,” said Hesse. AppleInsider notes that not all of Sprint’ shareholders have been so happy about the deal, and especially the amount of money Sprint is putting into it, which is why Hesse returned $3.25 million in compensation last week after some shareholders complained that Sprint had left the financial burden of carrying the iPhone out when calculating employee bonuses.

Source: Sprint won't profit from carrying Apple's iPhone until 2015, has no regrets

MacRumors reports today that Apple has once again kicked off festivities for its annual London iTunes festival. Not the festival itself, you understand, that doesn’t get going until September 1 (it’s been moved from its usual spot of July this year, maybe because of the Olympics in London) but an updated version of the annual free festival app has just appeared in the App Store, and the first acts to appear have already been announced, and pretty spectacular most of them are too, with the whole shindig kicking off with Usher on September 1, Emeli Sande on September 5, Jack White on September 8, Norah Jones on September 10 and One Direction on September 20. All gigs take place at London’s legendary Roundhouse in London, and all are free to enter, but you have to be lucky enough to win a ticket by applying either in-app or on one of the websites below. We certainly are lucky to have this amazing festival in the UK, and to get to see incredible acts for free in a great venue, but you don’t have to be in the UK to enter, as fans from Ireland, France, Germany and the Netherlands can also take part in the lottery. The app will also stream live videos of the shows, as will iTunes. It’s always worth entering, you have a great chance of being lucky, I remember one year I got to see N.E.R.D and Jay Sean!

iTunes Festival, let’s get it started! Click here to download the free app: App Store - iTunes Festival London 2012

Source: Apple's Annual iTunes Festival in London Moves to September - Mac Rumors
iTunes Festival 2012
iTunes Festival 2012

The big news of the day is now officially out. Facebook's IPO was launched and priced out at $38, with a valuation set at $104 billion. Mark Zuckerberg himself rang the NASDAQ bell to start the trading day off with the big announcement. But, of course, he and the rest of his team at Facebook couldn't just do it the old fashioned way. They are code-junkies and hackers, after-all. So, they did things a little differently. One was pretty simple. Without a word, he rang the bell remotely from his company's headquarters (normally new IPO's will go to New York to ring it in person, although not always, so he was not the first to do this). Second, and this it where things get more interesting... beforehand, his team of engineers at the HQ found a way to hack the remote NASDAQ button, so that at the exact moment he hit the button to ring the bell, it would post the story to his Facebook timeline to let his friends and subscribers know. Here's a quote from the TechCrunch article with a few details,

During lunch, some us started talking about how cool it would be if the second Mark rang the bell, a story would post to his timeline to let his friends and subscribers know.

I was so excited about this idea that when I got back to my desk, I posted on Facebook: “We should totally hack the button so it pushes an open graph action, “Mark Rang the NASDAQ bell”.

The first person to comment? Zuck: “It would be epic if you pulled that off.”

I got to work that night.

The hack was successful. The IPO went off without a hitch, breaking several records. And the rest, as they say, is history...

Here's the full official press release for the IPO:

Facebook Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 421,233,615 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $38 per share. The shares are expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on May 18, 2012, under the symbol “FB.” Facebook is offering 180,000,000 shares of Class A common stock and selling stockholders are offering 241,233,615 shares of Class A common stock. Closing of the offering is expected to occur on May 22, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.

In addition, Facebook and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 63,185,042 additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments, if any.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Allen & Company LLC, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities are serving as book runners for the offering. RBC Capital Markets and Wells Fargo Securities are serving as active co-managers.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10014, Attention: Prospectus Department (Tel: +1 866 718 1649; e-mail: prospectus(at)morganstanley.com); J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, (Tel: +1 866 803 9204); or Goldman, Sachs & Co., 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, Attention: Prospectus Department (Tel: +1 866 471 2526, e-mail: prospectus-ny(at)ny.email.gs.com).

A registration statement related to these securities has been filed with, and declared effective by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Steve Jobs was very closely involved with the redesign of the next iPhone before he passed away in October of last year, according to sources in the know quoted by Bloomberg today, and which also say that Apple has been working on this significant re-design since before the iPhone 4S was launched. Bloomberg’s report also gives further credence to stories out of Asia yesterday which said that Apple was planning a complete redesign of the next iPhone, including a much bigger screen. Bloomberg says that this will be the first re-design for the iPhone since 2010 and the introduction of the iPhone 4. The report goes on to say that the planned redesign, and in particular the larger screen, is intended by Apple to head off increasing competition from the likes of Samsung, whose popular phones have ensured that Google’s Android is the most widely used operating system for smartphones.

Source: Apple Said to Plan Overhaul of IPhone With Bigger Screen - Bloomberg

MacRumors reports that Chillingo’s popular iOS game Feed Me Oil is available for free on the App Store just for today. Both the iPhone and iPad versions are free, with the former usually costing $0.99 and the latter costing $1.99. The game has previously topped the App Store charts in the US, UK, Russia, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Australia. The gameplay takes the player to a weird and wonderful world where the land is literally alive, and starving. It’s up to the player to get the oil from the broken pipes to the mouths of strange, beautifully rendered creatures, using all manner of creative tools, as well as their intuition, to solve the carefully designed puzzles. The game was created by HolyWaterGames, and has had several updates since its initial release back in June 2011.

“HolyWaterGames is an exceptionally talented developer with strong design, art, sound engineering and coding expertise," explains Joe Wee, Co-General Manager, Chillingo. "They created an amazing puzzle game with excellent physics mechanics; we knew from the very start that Feed Me Oil was going to be something very special,”

Click here to download the iPhone version: App Store - Feed Me Oil

Click here to download the HD iPad version: Feed Me Oil HD for iPad on the iTunes App Store

Source: Physics Puzzler 'Feed Me Oil' Free for Today Only - Mac Rumors

The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference is fast approaching. Rumors of the iOS 6 beta version potentially being released in San Francisco are stronger than ever. The latest update on the subject comes from the 9to5Mac team. One of their sources, a developer, claims that devices running iOS 6 have began popping up in their application usage log. Is the iOS 6 already alive but hidden?

Apparently the hits have been popping up since late April. Apple might be looking to test the compatibility of some apps with the new operating system. It is not so uncommon for testing like this to be performed before the beta release actually goes out to the public. The information was provided by an analytics program used by developers in order to track visitor information.

This scenario is not new. Apple was been doing the same exact tests with iOS 5, so the bigger mystery here is not if Apple is actually doing the tests but when is the official beta version going to be released? Last year the iOS 5 was launched in October, so many feel that Apple will keep this tradition. And then there are those who really hope they are going to see the iOS 6 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in just one month.

The new iOS 6 is expected to bring in some powerful additions. One of them has been reported this week by the Wall Street Journal and involves Apple axing its partnership with Google Maps and adding its own 3D Map application.

By Radu

Source: Developers begin seeing iOS 6 hits in App Store application usage logs | 9to5Mac | Apple Intelligence