Apps help create more than 450,000 jobs in the US

One of the biggest subjects throughout the presidential campaign for the Republican candidate has been the jobs that are leaving the United States, well according to new numbers Smartphone applications are helping the industry keep some of those jobs in country. For years, there’s been questions and speculation about just how many jobs Apple’s App Store and similar marketplaces for other mobile and web platforms have created. Well according to new numbers released by TechNet apps have created 466,000 American jobs since 2008.

Of those jobs, the highest percentage (23.8 percent) of the total are located in California. Other app hot spots include New York (6.9 percent), Washington (6.4 percent), Texas (5.4 percent) and New Jersey (4.2 percent).  These numbers include not only jobs created for iOS apps, but also those triggered by the development of apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Facebook.

Perhaps the politicians should spend more time trying to figure out how to keep these jobs in the country, instead of bitching about the jobs that have already left the country.

Those interested can read the whole report here.

Apple releases EFI Firmware updates bringing Lion Internet Recovery to 2010 Macs

For those who have been wondering why Apple hasn’t brought internet recovery to their 2010 Macs running Lion, here is some good news, Apple recently released three new EFI firmware updates bringing Lion Internet Recovery to the company’s Late 2010 MacBook Air, Mid-2010 iMac, and Early 2010 MacBook Pro.

Available firmware updates include:

- MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.3 (2.98 MB):This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Air (Late 2010) models and addresses an issue where the sys
tem could restart if the power button is pressed immediately after waking from deep sleep.

- iMac EFI Update 1.8 (3.02 MB):This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on iMac (Mid 2010) models.

- MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.6 (3.18 MB):This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Pro (Early 2010) models.

Originally Apple introduced Lion Internet Recovery on the new MacBook Air and Mac mini models that were introduced last July alongside OS X Lion itself. OS X Lion users might have noticed that  OS X Lion by default installs a recovery partition on the machine’s hard drive, however sometimes for unknown reasons this recovery partition becomes inaccessible, and therefore Internet Recovery provides yet another fallback option for Lion installation.

After one year “The Daily” logs 100,000 paid subscribers

Remember “The Daily” one of the first magazines to be published on the iPad, well it was launched one year ago, so it is time to look back at how the year went.

Honestly “The Daily” has had quite a rocky year. On the Launch date Rupert Murdoch states that he hoped the App would gain at least 500,000 subscribers within the first year, if that goal was reached he would consider it a success, well he must be a little disappointed to find out that currently the number of subscribers ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000.

Recently Publisher  Greg Clayman says that when the app originally launched, the goal was to make an experience unique to the tablet, therefore the company has taken almost a year before releasing the service on other platforms, it was only recently that Android support was added, via the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Furthermore  Clayman adds that The Daily is still headed for profitability “over the next couple of years,” which he says is actually better than most traditional publications.

It will be interesting to see where The Daily is one year from now, who knows maybe they will finally reach 500,000 subscribers, what do you think is there a future for The Daily? Do any of you subscribe to it?

App Review: GraviMaze – Gravity Puzzle Solving

If you love logic puzzles then this is just the game for you. GraviMaze the first game developed by hart[dev] has everything you would expect from an amazing App.

According to the iTunes page:

“Challenge your mind with GraviMaze, a gravity-based 2d puzzle game for the iPhone that will turn your brain upside-down.

Bend gravity to your will to collect the treasures of long forgotten mayan temples, but beware of the cunning traps that guard them!”

We were lucky enough to get to trial the game before it was released on the App Store, and after a week of twisting and turning, we can only conclude that this is one addictive game. Unlike other games you don’t actually turn your iDevice, instead you swipe your fingers on the screen to control the world. Pretty much the whole purpose of the game is to get the block from point A to point B. As the levels become more complex so does the steps you need to go through in order to beat the levels.

What makes GraviMaze great is the currently new types of levels that help the gameplay from becoming boring, which sometimes tends to happen with logic puzzles, where the levels end up being repetitive after a few stages.

You can check out the trailer below, GraviMaze can be purchased for an introductory price of $0.99 from the App Store.