When it comes to giving presentations, teaching classes, or even watching videos or photos in a group environment, there's still nothing to replace the traditional PC projector. Sure, there are little pico-projectors out now, but they lack the sheer power and features of the magic black box that can push out 2,800 lumens of illumination

When your job (or schoolwork) involves giving presentations to rooms full of more-or-less interested parties, you know how hard it can be to maintain a constructive level of audience attention. The economical cloud audience response system (ARS) provided by the mad scientists at PollEverywhere is a great way to spice up a session with quick, engaging multiple choice and full-text questions. PollEverywhere's polls display wonderfully on the web (if you've got the Flash player) and do well in Windows versions of PowerPoint, where the appropriate ActiveX control to embed the remote Flash animation is available

Our Dave Caolo likes the idea behind Disney's AppMates cars but felt the cost ($20 street price) was a bit steep for what is, essentially, a cheap car with a few capacitive pads. He challenged me to see if I could turn a basic Matchbox unit into an AppMate-compatible iPad accessory. I created an aluminum band around a Matchbox car's belly, attached two "pads" (folded Kleenex wrapped in aluminum foil), and ran the app in "Paper" car mode -- which requires only two points of contact on the screen at any time

We haven't heard very much from PopCap on iOS lately. There was the Zuma's Revenge launch a little while ago, and before that was just the Bejeweled shakeup last year. So it's good to see the company is still working on the platform.

Apple released its third-generation iPad on March 16th and I purchased mine one day later on the 17th. There were no lines at my local Best Buy when I went to buy the new model.

One of the best places to get 1) fun, 2) useful, and 3) fun (did I already say that?) photo accessories is Photojojo.com .

Some sharp eyes have once again discovered something new and cool in Apple-land.

Inglorious Apps is well-known in the webOS world for its work on Notes, Voice and Glimpse, a multi-tasking app for the Touchpad that lets you divide up the screen and use several different widgets at the same time.

There are several perspectives on the iPad as a productivity tool. Some knowledge workers thrive on a suite of native apps ; others can't really get comfortable within a text or code-based workflow without a legitimate keyboard and mouse. The "third way" of iPad productivity provides a hybrid environment: familiar Office apps or remote access to existing computers, with varying degrees of customization to incorporate the touch UI atop the traditional desktop

As this holiday weekend draws to a close, the unfortunate fact is that we may be dealing with the largest Mac-centric botnet ever documented in the wild . While the Flashback trojan is easy to find and simple to prevent -- in fact, a stock Lion installation includes neither Java nor the Flash plugin, cutting down dramatically on the attack surface for malware of this kind -- there are still thousands of compromised Macs out there. Given the requirements of a Java installation to enable the trojan's exploit, it looks like a nontrivial number of infections have hit experienced Mac users