This update comes from foxnews.com  -  Looks someone something big is coming from Apple.  Read the story below:

Apple just announced an event on January 27th that will no doubt dazzle us with what the company is calling its "latest creation." At the event, Apple will unveil the company's long-rumored tablet device.

Apple sent out invitations to selected media outlets this morning, asking people to "join us for an invitation-only event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 27 at 10:00a.m." Fox will be live all morning long from San Francisco, bringing you all the fruit (and gadgets) that the Apple tree bears.

Reports suggest that this device has been years in the making (just take a look at this enthusiast-generated gallery of Apple table concepts, originally posted to Gizmodo two years ago), and I'm as excited to see it as you are.

I spoke to a source at Apple this morning, before the invite hit my inbox, who said the event would likely focus on three projects: The tablet device, iPhone 4, and a new round of iLife 2010 software. While we won't see new iPhone hardware just yet, we will see the next-generation software.

Complete news at foxnews.com

The Avatar Movie is still #1 in the box office, I went to see it a week ago, I highly recommended for everyone.  But this post isn't about the movie, it's about the iPhone Game App that has already been created for Avator,  Daniel at intomobile.com gave us a full preview on the game.

The platforming at first could be a little tricky, but once you get the hang of the controls, moving around Pandora isn't that much of a challenge. There will be times where a jump or two will be missed resulting in your untimely demise, but thankfully, the game is very lenient with deaths as numerous checkpoints litter any single level. Since this is a game that's running off a mobile device, the checkpoints can be a life saver if you suddenly need to stop playing.

Check out the video below and for complete review, click here.

Mophie, a technology company will be showcase it's cool credit card add-on this CES in Las Vegas, we will try to get as much info as possible at CES and post on here.

The Credit Card Reader will be a combination of a dedicated hardware device that bolts on to your iPhone or iPod touch, and third party app that will allow small businesses the ability to take credit card payments on the go.

This is only available on iPhone for now.  but not surprise to see it on Android soon as well

via: pocket-lint

Pretty good success for Apple, who sold about 2 million iPhones in France only this year (2009).  This means Apple will have taken 20% of France mobile market value. "The French market is expected to grow this year through the sale of 3.5 million smartphones," said Matthew Cortesse, director of telecoms research.

via: 9to5mac

TechCrunch is reporting that VoiceCentral, whose third-party Google Voice app was also removed from the App Store, will bring Google Voice back to the iPhone.

Interestingly though, it will be using a browser, completely bypassing Apple's app restrictions and revenue sharing. Bad news for Apple.

The experience will look and feel exactly as it would were it a normal app (swiping and all). Black Swan, as they're calling it, will feature everything you'd expect, with the only exception being your contacts. You will first need to import your contacts into your Google account before being able to use them.

Here what it can do:

• Place calls through Google Voice^TM
• Browse your recent call history
• Listen to your voicemails
• Read and send SMS messages
• Import Google Voice^TM contacts for easy dialing/SMS
• Review your billing and transaction history
• It can even be used offline to browse your contacts, call history, voicemails, and SMS messages.

Here are the mains specs and features of LG UX280 Wine:

240 x 320 pixels internal TFT display with 262K colors

GPS

Bluetooth

1.3 MP camera

Hearing aid compatibility

Talk time: up to 4 hours

Standby time: up to 7 days

3.89 x 1.93 x 0.66 inches

3.32 ounces

The new LG clamshell can be found online, as well as in U.S. Cellular's retail stores.

Apple Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs said Wednesday he is taking a medical leave until the end of June - just a week after the cancer survivor tried to assure investors and employees his recent weight loss was caused by an easily treatable hormone deficiency.

Apple's stock plunged 7 percent.

Jobs, 53, said in a letter last week that he would remain at Apple's helm despite the hormone problem, and that he had already begun a "relatively simple and straightforward" treatment. But in an e-mail to employees Wednesday, Jobs backtracked.

"During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought," he wrote.

Apple's shares have surged and crashed over the last year in step with rumors or news about the CEO's health and his gaunt appearance. While the top executive's health is an issue for investors in any company, at Apple the level of concern reaches fever pitch because Jobs has a hand in everything from ideas for new products to the way they're marketed. Investors fear that without Jobs, Apple will not be able to sustain its growth of the last decade, which has seen Apple branch out from its Mac computers into the iPod and the iPhone.

Last week, Jobs said his disclosure of his hormone problem was "more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say" about his health. It came on the eve of Macworld, the biggest Apple trade show of the year, and Jobs said he wanted everyone to relax and enjoy the show.

Even so, the limited amount of medical information in that announcement did little to soothe Wall Street's nerves, and in interviews last week analysts predicted that the health watch would continue.

Apple's history of keeping information about Jobs' health under wraps is only fueling the speculation. The company waited until after Jobs underwent surgery in 2004 to treat a very rare form of pancreatic cancer - an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor - before alerting investors. That type of cancer is easily cured if diagnosed early, unlike the deadlier and more common adenocarcinoma.

And last summer, Apple insisted Jobs' weight loss was due to a common bug, even as The New York Times cited anonymous sources who said Jobs had undergone "a surgical procedure" to address the problem.

Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, will take over Jobs' responsibilities while he is on leave, though Jobs said he plans to remain involved in major strategic decisions while he is out.

The Palm Pre version announced at CES on Thursday, which Sprint will get exclusive access to in the U.S., supports EV-DO Rev A for mobile broadband access, but Palm is also working on a more Euro-friendly 3G version of the handset. Colligan didn't elaborate on any of the technical details.

But if the Pre follows in the footsteps of other recently announced smart phones, it will likely support for HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) at 7.2Mbps (megabits per second), as well as HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) at 2Mbps.

The Pre comes equipped with Palm's new operating system, WebOS, and combines a touch interface with a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom of the phone.

No pricing has been announced so far.

In some ways it's unfortunate that every touch-screen phone that comes out these days is compared to Apple's iPhone. But given the popularity of the iPhone, especially here in the U.S., it's difficult not to do the comparisons.

 

My first impression of the new N97 is that even though it has impressive specifications, like a total of 48 gigabytes of potential storage and a 5-megapixel camera and video recorder, the phone seems more like an evolution of Nokia's N-95 or N-96 smartphones rather than a ground-breaking new touch-screen device that could potentially be the next iPhone killer.

 

For one, the touch-screen wasn't terribly sophisticated. Icons could be dragged and dropped using a finger, but unlike the iPhone, which allows you to pinch text to magnify it or reduce it, or even the new BlackBerry Storm that allows you to double click on text or images to make them bigger, the N97 didn't offer these features.

 

 

Design-wise the phone looked more like Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a tilted screen. In this way, it's an improvement over the N95 or the N96, which offer tons of features and functionality, but lack full QWERTY keyboards.

 

That said, there are a few key features that the N97 offers that the iPhone doesn't. For example, the Nokia Web browser on the N97 supports Flash and Flash video, something that Apple's Safari browser doesn't support. And of course, heavy texters and e-mail enthusiasts, will like the full QWERTY keypad. I've had several iPhone owners tell me that they still carry around a BlackBerry for sending e-mails on the go, because they don't like the iPhone's virtual keyboard for typing longer messages.

 

The phone, which Nokia's marketing team calls a "mobile computer" also offers a whopping 32GB of storage on the device with the option of adding up to another 16GB of storage through a microSD card. And then there is the 5-megapixel camera, which also records DVD-quality video.

 

By contrast, the iPhone only offers up to 16GB of storage and users are unable to add additional storage via microSD cards. Also, the iPhone's camera is only 2 megapixels, and it doesn't offer video recording.

 

 

With HP wireless printers, you could have printed this from any room in the house. Live wirelessly. Print wirelessly.

Apple iPhone 3G.If you expected startling news to come out of Monday's keynote for Apple's World-Wide Developers Conference (WWDC)--headlined, of course, by Steve Jobs--you went away unstartled and disappointed.

This event was mostly about confirming widely reported rumors: The high-speed iPhone 3G is indeed arriving shortly (on July 11), it's half the price of its predecessor ($199 for an 8GB model with a two-year contract), and it has GPS. Otherwise, much of the keynote was devoted to recapping stuff announced back in March regarding the iPhone's SDK for third-party applications and its support for Microsoft's Exchange e-mail platform.

As the day progressed, information emerged about certain things that Jobs and company hadn't mentioned, such as the fact that AT&T remains the exclusive U.S. carrier and will charge $30 a month for all-you-can-eat data. Gizmodo reports that the iPhone 3G must be activated in person at an Apple or AT&T store--a major step backward from the slick at-home iTunes activation of the original version.

In short, we're awash in answers. But as usual, I'm wrapping up the day of a major Apple announcement in connection with an extremely promising product still curious about a bunch of things. Things that--as far as I know--remain mysteries. Such as...

1. What's with the plastic back?

The 3G iPhone's plastic back (black version).As Jobs ticked off the design achievements of the iPhone 3G at the WWDC keynote, he mentioned its "full plastic back." I think that this change may indeed be a virtue--the shiny metallic backs sported by first-generation iPhones and most varieties of iPods are maddeningly effective magnets for scratches, fingerprints, and grime. But Apple usually upgrades its products by replacing plastic with metal; it's hard to imagine the company going the other direction unless it had a motive unrelated to aesthetics. Was it able to shave a millimeter or three off the required thickness by using plastic? (Cramming everything in was clearly a challenge. Despite Jobs' pollyanna-ish statement that the new iPhone is "even thinner" at the edges than its predecessor, Apple's official depth spec for the iPhone 3G is 11.6mm, versus 12.3mm for the original iPhone.) Maybe the metal would have interfered with GPS reception? Or did Apple simply have to go with cheaper materials when it cut the cost of the iPhone in half?

2. When will we get 32GB and 64GB iPhones?

For some of us, an iPhone can't function as a first-class iPod until it has enough memory to hold every song and video in a fairly large media collection. It's safe to assume that Apple will boost the phone's memory as soon as it can cram enough storage into its case and sell the resulting device at a price that a sane person might spring for. Since the iPhone-like iPod Touch already comes in a $499 32GB version, I'd be surprised if a 32GB iPhone is more than a few months away. But I'd be equally surprised if a 64GB iPhone showed up before mid-2009 or so, given the still-imposing cost for that much flash memory. (Apple charges a $999 premium for a MacBook Air equipped with a 64GB solid-state drive instead of an 80GB traditional drive.)

3. Will we ever be able to use an iPhone as a modem?

As I attended the WWDC keynote at San Francisco's Moscone Center, I was online with my MacBook-- courtesy of my Windows Mobile-based AT&T Tilt phone, which served up high-speed Internet access to the laptop via Bluetooth. Jobs didn't mention similar functionality for the iPhone 3G; if it's on its way, it's likely to cost more than the $30 a month that AT&T says it'll charge for an iPhone 3G data plan. But modem use is so handy that I'd happily pay more for it if it becomes available in some official form. (You can use an original iPhone as a modem, but only through scary, unauthorized techniques.)

4. How about turn-by-turn driving directions?

GPS on the Apple iPhone 3G.The iPhone 3G's GPS capability is nearly as exciting as the 3G itself. But the examples shown at the keynote ranged from the slightly alarming (Loopt's location-based social networking, which lets your friends determine exactly where you are) to the somewhat frivolous (Jobs's demo of "tracking," showing a car zig-zagging its way down San Francisco's famously crooked Lombard Street). The real killer app for GPS continues to be turn-by-turn driving directions, of the sort that companies such as Tom Tom and TeleNav make possible on other GPS-enabled phones. If Apple were planning to release such an application in July, Jobs would surely have mentioned it. Maybe it'll come in a future iPhone software upgrade, but it would be fine with me if a third-party developer beat Apple to the punch.

5. How will the iPhone 3G/BlackBerry Bold wars shake out?

The 3G iPhone's plastic back (white version). An awful lot of folks who are in the market for a multimedia-savvy smartphone this summer will probably winnow their options down to two contenders: the iPhone 3G and RIM's BlackBerry Bold. Then the choosing might get tough. The iPhone has a bigger screen, multitouch input, an accelerometer, and the sophisticated multimedia content engine known as the iTunes Store. And its price ($199) is likely to be significantly less than the Bold's. But the Bold has a real keyboard that feels good and that--unlike the virtual one on the iPhone--never eats away at available screen resolution. It also sports a full-blown office suite rather than the iPhone's relatively rudimentary document viewers. I'm still not sure which phone I'd ultimately pick.

6. What does all this mean for the iPod Touch?

Until now, the iPod Touch has delivered all the goodness of the iPhone (except the phone part) for less money. But things look dicey for the Touch in its current form at its current price point: It doesn't have the iPhone 3G's GPS, and the 8GB and 16GB variants now cost $100 more apiece than their iPhone counterparts. If you're happy with your current phone and have no desire to lock yourself into a pricey two-year voice and data contract to score an iPhone, you might still be interested in a Touch, I guess. But it's hard to imagine that it will stay popular at its current price--and since Jobs didn't mention a price cut today, I wonder if its days are numbered.

7. Will MobileMe be worth 99 bucks?

New iPhone 3G apps.Back in 2000, Apple released a free set of Web-based services called iTools. In 2002, the company redubbed them .Mac, and attached a yearly price tag of $99 to them--which is pretty pricey considering that the Web is rife with comparable (and sometimes better) free services. Yet another metamorphosis is imminent: .Mac will become MobileMe; and rather than focusing exclusively on the needs of Mac users, it'll target both Mac and PC owners who have iPhones or iPod Touches and want to keep their mail, appointments, and contacts in sync.

Apple marketing head Phil Schiller's demo was impressive--and MobileMe's Web-based applications looked as if they might be the first Apple services that live up to the high standards of Apple's traditional desktop software. The one thing that hasn't changed is the price--still $99 a year. A 60-day free trial will give prospective subscribers plenty of time to determine whether that's a decent deal.

8. Is the iPhone on its way to becoming Apple's primary product?

Jobs began today's keynote by saying that Apple had three primary product lines: the Mac, digital music, and the iPhone. Then he launched into a 2-hour keynote that discussed only the iPhone. The next version of Mac OS X, "Snow Leopard," was exiled to a session in the afternoon. That might be because Snow Leopard's release is so far in the future that Apple doesn't want anyone except developers to pay attention yet. But it's also a statement about how rapidly the iPhone has become core to everything that Apple does.

Those are the first eight questions that sprung to my mind, though I'll probably have dozens more as I mull over the keynote's news and the fallout from it. Got any answers or educated guesses--or additional questions of your own? We'd love to hear them.