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BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — In Russia, if you want to come up with a mascot for your company or a character for your app, there’s no focus groups or testing: it all comes from the top down.

That’s why when Russian app development and publishing company iFree wanted to release a new virtual assistant for Android and iOS to take on Siri, i-Free’s Kirill Petrov dictated the design of i-Free’s latest character. He would be an all white, gremlin-like humanoid with huge flashing teeth and glowing yellow eyes. He would hail from the planet Edelweiss (named after a beer), and he would come to Earth in the time-honored tradition of many alien invaders before him: namely to kidnap our women for his own lascivious pleasure.

Meet Spoony. He’s terrifying. He uses much of the same core technology as Siri, the distant relation he’d eventually like to kill, or at least surplant. Presumably after making out with her first.

Despite being known mostly for his monumental impact on the tech world, Steve Jobs also played a huge role in the movie industry. Not only did iTunes change the way movies are distributed, but Steve’s dedication to Pixar changed the way visual stories are told. Pixar stands as one of the most admired movie studios in the industry thanks in large part to Jobs’ assistance in isolating the company from Hollywood and his trust in the talent of his young directors.

John Carter, directed by one of Pixar’s most prolific directors, Andrew Stanton, comes out next week and though it’s not a Pixar film, it is dedicated to the memory of the legendary Steve Jobs. During the credits, a card reads:

Dedicated to the Memory of Steve Jobs, an Inspiration to Us All

At a recent press junket, Stanton was asked why he decided to dedicated Carter to Jobs and his answer was both logisically sound and beautifully poignant.

Despite RIM’s reassurances to developers at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the mass exodus of its government customers continued as another U.S. federal agency announced that it would ditch BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. The agency in question is The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which announced that it will be abandoning the BlackBerry and RIM services beginning this month.

As the agency revealed its plans, RIM attempted to cast a softer light on the situation by playing up it’s overall standing with the U.S. government.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — On the surface of things, Asus’s Eee Pad Transformer Prime is just a wonderfully swell idea. Why have both an ultrabook and tablet when you can have one that is both? What if you could take your iPad, snap it onto a keyboard + trackpad, and have a MacBook Air?

It’s a nice dream, and, in actuality, the Transformer Prime is a beautiful piece of hardware. But the challenges aren’t hardware: they lie in software. And in software, neither Android nor iOS is yet up to the challenge of driving both a mobile and laptop OS. But after Windows 8 sets the bar higher, they both could be.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — If you thought that Adobe’s new Photoshop Touch was just a cut down, iPad-sized version of the desktop app, think again. I just watched a hands-on demo here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and this deceptively simple little app is pretty amazing.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Fujitsu’s made the first Android phone that I, as an iPhone lover, found myself drooling over… which makes it a doubly good thing that the phone in question is waterproof. And not just waterproof! As thin and light and as perfect in the hand as a dream.

The only problems? Because of Fujitsu’s bizarre way of selling their devices, this phone, which has been on sale in Japan for months, doesn’t even have a set name. And forget about getting one Stateside. How does a company make a phone this beautiful and then have no idea how to market it?

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — What if you could swipe your credit card and then — moments later — have the transaction details appear on your phone. Better still, what if all of your payments could be organized in a beautiful app, an app which could actually make managing your money fun. This service now exists for your iPhone, and it’s called Boku.

Raspberry Pi, the $35 computer-on-a-board developed by a team from Cambridge, UK, went on sale at 6am GMT this morning.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the iPad 3. In the mean time, we can only speculate. So here’s our analysis of the secret meanings behind Apple’s iPad 3 invitation. Modest expectations, wouldn’t you say?

Apple has been grilled for iOS security problems repeatedly over the last few weeks. Path started the firestorm when it was revealed that the popular iPhone app secretly uploaded a user’s entire address book to its private servers. Despite the fact that Apple is firmly against such practices, many apps continue to take advantage of Apple’s poor guideline enforcement.

The New York Times sounded the bell again earlier today with the revelation that an iOS app can collect your device’s entire Camera Roll (not just the location data) without your permission. A new report claims that Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working to fix it in a future iOS update.

Aatma Studio put together this incredible concept video of a futuristic iPad. The bezel-less, holographic tablet probably won’t hit the shelves for at least a few more years, but a guy can dream! In the meantime, an iPad 3 event next Wednesday will have to satisfy.

If you’re a fan of the official Twitter for iPhone app, get ready for ads. As an app that remains in the App Store’s top 10 list for social networking, Twitter for iPhone is used by millions of people. Twitter is monetizing those eyeballs with “Promoted Tweets,” “Promoted Trends,” and “Promoted Accounts.”

Starting really soon, you’ll start seeing promoted tweets from brands you follow in your timeline.

Mobile customers have been waiting for what seems like forever for family shared data. One carrier that’s been slowly working on making it happen is Verizon. Not to long ago we saw leaked training material from Verizon that showed they were gearing up for some sort of family shared data plan. We now have a better idea of when to expect these changes as Verizon’s Communication CFO Fran Shammo spoke about them in an investors meeting yesterday.

Comic book junkies rejoice: Marvel has brought 80 graphic novels to Apple’s iBookstore. Titles like Civil War, Avengers, Dark Tower, Spider-Man, X-Men, and more are now available in the iBookstore for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

More titles will be added to the iBookstore every week, and Marvel is offering a full issue of New Avengers for free to wet your appetite.

Speculation abounds, but we all know what Apple is really saying here. Brilliant.

Over the last few weeks, third-party iOS developers received a lot of heavy venom from the Internet after reports surfaced that apps are accessing users’ address book information without users’ permission. It appears that the situation is worse than first thought and that apps can access more than just address books without notifying users. Photos on iOS devices are also susceptible to apps once a user has granted an app permission to their location information.

Apple’s stock price has been breaking its own records pretty frequently of late. So, it doesn’t come as much surprise that the price per share shot up to a new record high today after the company announced its iPad 3 launch event.

Already trading at over $500 per share, the price began skyrocketing once the news that Apple had delivered press invitations to the event – breaking its own recent record and reaching a high of $534.62.

[polldaddy poll=”5989098″]

Apple loves putting little Easter eggs in their invitations to tease fans about what to expect at their events. Along with some sly cryptic phrases that are meant to intrigue you without actually telling you jack squat, Apple sometimes includes a few app icons to give fans a hint about what’s coming. The iPhone 4S invitation had a “1” above the phone icon to denote that they would be announcing only one new phone. In their latest invitation, Apple has given us the picture of an iPad with three apps in the dock – Maps, Calendar, and Keynote – along with the phrase, “We have something you really have to see. And touch.”

What does it mean!? Well, after taking a 30-minute online web course in Cryptology, I’m pretty much an expert at reading into Apple’s secret codings and here’s my break down of what to expect based on the secrets of the invitation icons.

It seems pretty likely that the invitation to Apple’s iPad 3 event includes a shot of the new model.

The display is particularly sharp and smooth – just like the anticipated retina display for the device.

The spacing of the icon’s on the iPad 3 pictured on the invite clearly indicate that it’s in portrait orientation rather than landscape.  But there’s no sign of a home button, a design change that Apple has been allegedly been toying with for some time.

Oh those clever bastards at Apple are up to it again. Sitting back in their glass spaceship palace in Cupertino acting so coy as they unleashed their trickery on the world in the form of a simple invite . Right as Google’s Eric Schmidt was taking the stage at Mobile World Conference to talk about how awesome his company’s Android platform is, Apple completely distracted the entire internet by sending out invitations to their iPad 3 event.

Mere coincidence you say? Bullshit. Apple usually sends out invites exactly 7 days before the date of a keynote, but today they broke tradition and sent the invites out 8 days before the event just to screw with Google.

It’s here! The long awaited iPad 3 Event has finally been announced. Apple just sent out invites to a special event that will take place at 10:00am on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The tagline on the event invite reads “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” Apple is expected to announce the iPad 3 that will have a better processor, improved graphics, and a new Retina Display.

In addition to iCloud, there are a number of other cloud services available to Mac and iOS users. Dropbox, Box.net, and Google Docs all come to mind immediately and each offers its own set of features. Another option that isn’t discussed so much by Apple users is Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Although SkyDrive has offered a basic iOS app and web access from Macs and iOS devices, the functionality has been a bit limited. Newly leaked details of an OS X SkyDrive app, however, indicate that Microsoft may be planning to compete against iCloud on Apple’s home turf.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Scalado, most recently seen removing people from photos like a cold-war-era dictatorship, today showed me some of its other fancy photo-processing apps. Scattered across Android, Windows Phone and Symbian, but mostly Android, there is an embarrassment of cleverness in fast photo processing.

9to5Mac reports that one of their most trusted sources has revealed Apple will launch a new Apple TV in March alongside the iPad 3. Rumors have claimed Apple would be releasing two major new products in March and it appears that a new Apple TV and iPad 3 will be the two products in question.