Apple has launched its ‘iBooks Author,’ a publishing tool to create multi-touch books for its iBooks catalogue, signalling that its sights are on school education. The App is available as a free download across Apple platforms, including the iMac, and several technology blogs are raving about the move.
Tech blogs now speculate that the launch of the iBooks author is a prelude to the upcoming iPad3 launch and there are strong indications that the next generation of iPad might be priced exorbitantly. Well, there is a reason for hope: Apple has said it would ensure the maximum price of all its textbooks would be $14.99 (some current quality textbooks cost more than $150). Surely similar pricing will be applied to the next generation of iPad so that more school children can actually afford to buy the device.
The company has already tied up with some of the leading international book publishers such as McGraw Hill and Pearson. There could be a great opportunity in this for independent book publishers, big and small, even here.
Israel-Palestine cyber war
That Facebook and most of the popular email services, including Gmail and Yahoo, are not the most secure of systems, has been a subject of much discussion for a long time.
A cyber war between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups over the past few weeks sheds more light on the subject. A hacker, who goes by the name ‘Hannibal’, hacked into Facebook and Google and Yahoo mail services and released user names and passwords of 30,000 Arabs, in retaliation to a credit card hack carried out by a pro-Palestine group earlier this month that goes by the nickname ‘oxOmar’. They had released credit card details of over 3,000 Israelis.
Megaupload shutdown and its aftermath
It has been one of the biggest crackdowns by U.S. law enforcers in recent times. The crackdown on the file-sharing website >www.megaupload.com has not just shocked online users around the world, but has indeed given a preview of how things would be in the SOPA-PIPA era, should the bill be passed.
The details emerging about the crackdown reads like a Hollywood thriller, involving a cat-and-mouse chase that saw investigators from the U.S. cooperating with their counterparts across Europe, Asia, specifically Hong Kong, ultimately leading to the arrest of the company’s big fish in New Zealand. Megaupload’s CEO, the curiously named Kim Dotcom, now face several charges over distributing copyright infringed files.
Reportedly, Megaupload employees had earned in excess of $175 million since 2005, and lived a luxurious life that would put Hollywood moguls to shame. Six top employees owned 14 Mercedes Benz, a Maserati, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce.
As has been the trend over the last two or three years, the U.S police crackdown and arrest of Megaupload staffers, was followed by a serious hack attack by the group Anonymous on the U.S. Government’s Department of Justice website and a few Hollywood websites.
Published - January 25, 2012 06:09 pm IST
