As a part of its upcoming operating system release OS X Mavericks, Apple is bringing iBooks to the desktop. The expansion will allow readers who have purchased books through iBooks on their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to read their library on their Mac computer and vice versa. Readers who want to shop on their computers for books, can also access the titles on their other iOS devices.

Apple is catching up with the competition with this new offering. Amazon already has a desktop reading app for Kindle, and Barnes & Noble offers one for Nook. But Apple’s share of the eBook market is growing. Apple revealed in court testimony today that they own twenty percent of the eBook market. The company offers more than 1.8 million titles in the iBooks store.  Read more

Apple’s new icons for iOS are worth examining as a minor, yet indicative nature of the design overhaul for iOS 7. Whether you like the new look or not, the changes are coming and they are definitely worth noting since apps will need to be redesigned to match the new style criteria.

In this graphic by design student Niels Boey, icons from iOS 6 is laid next to their new versions in iOS 7 for easy comparison – you can easily see how much work went into the new look. It’s drastic, but not exactly as flat as icons from Microsoft or Google. In fact, by using a gradient palette for all of the colors, the new icons maintain some of their three-dimensional, skeumorphic origins. Read more

Facebook has added clickable hashtags to its site allowing members to click on a hashtag to view conversations on specific subjects in real time. The idea is to make socializing around events such as the Super Bowl or the season opener of Mad Men reach beyond a Facebook user’s own social network.

Like on other social networks, when you click on a hashtag on Facebook, you’ll be able to see a feed of what other people and even pages are saying about that topic or event. Facebook users will still be able to control their privacy settings, so only hashtags that are made public will be available for full public consumption.

The social network has plans to roll out additional conversation features in the near future. Here is more from Facebook’s blog:

Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations. We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world’s conversations.

We’ve written about the technology behind Google glass before, but this teardown Scott Torborg and Star Simpson is the first glimpse of the small computer as independent electronic components. Their reaction?  “It’s surprisingly simple.”

Not only was the duo able to safely disassemble Glass, they were also able to re-assemble Glass and make it functional.

Much of the disassembly ahead was specialized, and required a certain precision in dexterity to pull off. That said, if you’re careful and familiar with disassembling consumer products, Glass did not seem to present any major lurking hazards of inadvertent disassembly damage to components. As a testament to this, we were able to reassemble Glass after this teardown and it still operated perfectly, albeit with cosmetic damage.

Read more

Will 4K HD change the way we watch television?

At Sony, you can buy a 55-inch 4K Ultra HD TV for $4,999.99 or an 84-inch model for $24,999.99. On the Morning Media Menu today, TVNewser editor Alex Weprin talked about the implication of this super high definition television. Check it out:

See more on TV than ever before with over 8 million individual pixels (3,840 x 2,160) compared to about 2 million (1,920 x 1,080) on your current HDTV. Advanced picture processing also ensures that each of those pixels displays images with superb brightness and authentic detail. It’s the highest resolution picture Sony has ever produced on a TV … Suddenly, everything looks better. Sony’s unique 4K TVs upscale your favorite TV shows, DVDs and Blu-ray™movies – even YouTube® clips and smartphone videos – for higher quality, stunning results. The new 4K X-Reality™ PRO chip enhances HD (and lower resolution) images by analyzing and refining images with beautifully natural detail and astounding colour.

Read more

Topapps.com has created an infographic called, “How Mobile Apps Have Changed the World,” which explores how the app business has evolved in the last couple of years and where the business is expected to go.

It explores the various different app markets and how they have grown over time and illustrates that the app business has only just begun. According to the graphic, in 2010 there were 10.9 billion app downloads. By 2014, that number is expected to hit 76.9 billion. In addition, revenue from apps was $7.3 billion in 2011 and is expected to rise to $36.7 billion by 2015.

We’ve embedded the entire infographic after the jump for you to explore further. Read more

Bird Zapper joins the top free iPhone apps list this week at No. 1, according to research from AppData. The gaming app from Namco Networks America challenges players to zap birds who have hijacked the power lines.

Below, we’ve listed the top free iPhone apps of the week. The list links to Inside Network’s research about the individual apps, including historical charts, developer information and download information.

To support Mediabistro’s Media App Summit, we spotlight the top free apps every week–helping our readers discover, enjoy and analyze successful content. Read more

Image of PRISM slide from The Washington Post

In response to reports that the government has direct access to the servers of a number of leading technology companies, Google and Microsoft are calling for more transparency as it relates to their relationship with the NSA. These companies are among others to deny that the government has direct access to their servers and they want to be able to publish security requests to prove it.

Yesterday, David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google published a letter addressed to the attorney general and the head of the FBI. He wrote:

We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide. Read more

Penguin Young Readers Group is bringing its Penguin Young Readers leveled reading program to iOS devices with the launch of a new app. The Penguin Leveled Readers app, which works on both iPhones & iPads, is designed to help readers at different levels find different books to read across the groups various imprints.

The books include enhanced editions of Penguin titles with features such as narration tools, and a draw and record technology which lets young readers create their own stories. (You can save up to 3 recordings per title).

The app is free, and includes a free book for each reading level. Additional titles are available through in-app purchases. At launch the app includes seventy-five titles including Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, Young Cam Jansen by David Adler, Amanda Pig by Jean Van Leeuwen, and The Barker Twins by Tomie dePaola.

Mozilla–the makers of the popular Firefox browser and other apps–has launched a campaign against the NSA’s recently uncovered Surveillance project.

Joining with a host of other groups, Mozilla’s Stop Watching Us campaign asks that “the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.” If you want to support the campaign, you can sign a letter to U.S. Congress at this link. Check it out:

Technology has also been getting better at providing additional controls and transparency. Mozilla, for instance, provides tools like Do Not Track,Persona and the Collusion Add-on for Firefox, among others. However, exposures resulting from government-sponsored online surveillance are entirely separate from whether we choose to share information and what those sites say they will or will not do with our data. That’s because, at least in the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not.