Apple Sends Out Invites For Their March 2nd iPad Event

Boom! One way or another, word of a March 2nd Apple event trickled out yesterday morning — and sure enough, the invite just hit my inbox.

Apple’s straying from their generally coy approach with this invite. There are no mysterious curtains or cryptic guitars for people to spend hours poring over in Photoshop here — they straight up put a picture of an iPad right on the invite, right behind a big ol’ number “2″.

The event will take place in San Francisco on March 2nd at 10 A.M. Pacific. We will, of course, be there live, bringing back every juicy detail at a breakneck pace.

So What Will They Announce?

As with any Apple announcement, this one is (mostly) shrouded in secrecy. With that said, when the entire world is watching and analyzing your every move, it’s more or less impossible to keep things entirely under wraps. A few leaks have sprung up here and there that give us some idea of what to expect.

iPad 2

This one’s pretty much a given, as they put an iPad right on the invite. With the rumor mill churning over the idea of an iPad 2 since just a day or two after the launch of the first, all sorts of crazy possibilities have been whispered at one point or another — but here’s what we’re expecting:

• A tapered, slimmer form factor
• A faster processor (possibly the first device to use Apple’s A5 Processor)
• The addition of both front and rear cameras
• SD Card Slot
• Improved speakers, with a new speaker grille design

The New Final Cut Pro:

Just when many were beginning to think Apple’s Final Cut Pro video editing software had been put out to pasture, we found out that Apple was actually hosting top-secret meetings with select video editors to offer them a preview of the software.

Will Apple choose to share the iPad 2′s spotlight with Final Cut Pro? Perhaps not — but with this next build of Final Cut Pro reportedly looking polished up and better than ever, there’s really no better time.

OS X 10.7 Lion Dates:

It’s been just over four months since Apple gave the world a sneak-peek at Lion, the latest in their series of big-cat-named overhauls for OS X. Over the last month or so, we’ve seen adramatic spike in the number of folks visiting TechCrunch while running Lion. When we start to see those numbers climb, it generally means the OS X engineers a pretty far along in their testing process.

Though Apple almost undoubtedly has a trick or two hiding in Lion’s mane, we already know a solid number of its features:

• Apple’s New OS X App Store, which has been available for a few months now through Software Update, will be included out of the box
• Lots of multi-touch gestures, all built around OS X’s new Mission Control system
• Full Screen Applications
• Application home screens, much like the home screens found on the iPhone and iPad
• Apps that auto-save/auto-resume

Again, it seems unlikely that Apple would spend much time at their iPad event talking up Lion. It’s quite possible, however, that they’ll take the opportunity to announce when Lion will be available for developers to preview.

Apple Unveils Exciting New Features For Latest iPod Nano

Are you ready for some excitement this fine morning? Apple has something special for you if you recently purchased a 6th gen Nano. What is it? I won’t tell until you click through!

Aw, heck, I’ll just tell you.

With iPod software update version 1.1 for iPod nano (6th generation), you will be able to:

Completely turn off the iPod, rather than just put the device to sleep.
Control music or radio playback using the Sleep/Wake button without having to look at the device.

COMPLETELY TURN OFF THE iPOD! WITH A BUTTON! But there’s more!

YOU CAN CONTROL MUSIC OR RADIO PLAYBACK WITH THE SLEEP/WAKE BUTTON! OMGBBQ!

Sure, you can’t install apps on the Nano or improve the clock so it works more like a wristwatch, but the 1.1 update adds more button controls. Today the Apple Update Overlords have been gracious to us, friends, and we must bow our heads in obsequience.

Google offers $20,000 prize to hack Chrome at security conference

Typically, the only prize hackers anticipate receiving is a nice little TRO and watching impotently as their computer equipment is hauled off by feds. Not exactly a fair reward for all their hard work. This year’s annual Pwn2Own contest – held in Vancouver, British Columbia over the course of March 9th, 10th and 11th – offers a generous reprieve: hack well enough, and you might walk away with cash. In the case of Google’s Chrome browser, the prize money totals $20,000.

Pwn2Own devotees may be surprised by this development. The internet giant is the first browser-maker to actually put up its own money at the yearly security summit, reports computerworld.com.

Google has certainly been making waves lately -  riding high on the success of its Chrome web browser and ferreting out an alleged Microsoft ploy to steal thunder (and actual results) from its ubiquitous search engine. Rewarding hackers who can break Chrome seems a fitting bookend.

Aaron Portnoy, who manages TippingPoint Technologies’ Security Research Team and helped develop the Pwn2Own contest, blogged about the upcoming contest and explained the special rules for exploiting Chrome:

“As for Chrome, the contest will be a two-part one. On day 1, Google will offer $20,000 USD and the CR-48 if a contestant can pop the browser and escape the sandbox using vulnerabilities purely present in Google-written code,” he explained. “If competitors are unsuccessful, on day 2 and 3 the ZDI will offer $10,000 USD for a sandbox escape in non-Google code and Google will offer $10,000 USD for the Chrome bug.”

Of course, Pwn2Own isn’t just about Google. Other prizes will be awarded for hacking IE, Firefox and Safari. Mobile phones are also fair game: hack an iOS-running iPhone or Nexus 6 with Android and you’ll walk away with a $15,000 bounty.

Pre-registration ends on February 15th. If your hacking skills are up to snuff and you plan on entering the contest, let us know in the comments.

More Apple HD TV Hardware Speculation

Could Apple’s recent $3.9 billion investment in display components signal an intention to enter the HD TV market? AppleInsider is reporting that Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster thinks this could be on the horizon.

With Munster estimating a “connected” TV rate of 48% in 2012, you have to admit the concept fits in with Apple’s convergence strategy for media delivery/domination. It also could represent some serious cash—like $2.5 billion—and a further diversified product line.

My only question is how would it be priced? With all their “retina” developments, you know the quality would be good, so maybe this is another approach to bring “non-apple” types into the cult by a more traditional route—the TV in the living room.

But is the Piper image below comparing function and price accurate? Why do I think an Apple HD TV could cost more than listed below? Because their products always seem to cost more than I expect.

Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It

Google has made a big deal recently about not making a big deal about the version numbers of Chrome. “It’s just a number” is the basic take these days. In fact, they can barely be even bothered to announce them at all sometimes. But today, they did actually take some time to acknowledge the latest version — and a funny partner who made it all possible.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 9, meaning the stable version of the browser has been updated to that iteration. They don’t make any mention of the number in the blog post about the update, but trust me, it’s version 9. Instead, Google focuses on the three new major features available to all in this build: WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store.

Many users will already be familiar with all of those as they’ve been on the beta builds of Chrome for a while, and the dev builds longer before that. But still, each is worth noting as all three are now a pretty integral part of the Chrome experience. WebGL brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics support. Chrome Instant brings Google Instant support to the Omnibox. And the Chrome Web Store is part of Google plans to push web apps farther.

But the more humorous part of the release comes from the Google Chrome Releases blog post. This post details the bug fixes that have come in Chrome 9. And in it, Google gives a special shout-out to the Reddit community for pointing out one critical bug. As Google notes:

Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game “Z-Type” that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug — see below!

Below, they detail the bug:

[69195] Critical Race condition in audio handling. Credit to the gamers of Reddit!

So there you go, while it wasn’t an “elite” bug or even a “l33t” one, it’s fun to see Google given credit to another service for pointing out their flaws.