iPad 2 is (rumored) to be released in the first quarter of 2011. Apple has so far sold 16 million iPad units since it’s launch and it controls around 70% of the tablet PC market right now. Needless to say, iPad is a huge hit (in a positive way for Apple and negative way for Microsoft). Out of these 16 million iPad units sold, about 10.5 million units are iPad 3G models which proves that users want internet connectivity all the time and connectivity should not be tied to the availability of the Wi-Fi network.

Before this year closes, make sure you get all of at least most of these really useful apps on your iPad. Currently there are more then a million apps listed on the App Store and you will find a couple of lists around the web listing some essential apps in different categories. In this article I have compiled a list of apps categorically put in News, Music, Gaming, Reading and a bunch of other categories. If there’s an app you think is missing from the list and should be added in the essentials list then do suggest!

Web 2.0 is here to stay and the web technologies that made it “2.0” have also matured enough to move on to Web 3.0? Web is more intelligent, user friendly and interactive. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) have successfully caught the users’ attention and brought the desktop experience to browser. The transformation of desktop experience to browser played a key role in quick adoption of web 2.0. In this article we will take a look at some of the JavaScript APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that made it all happen.

You can convert your whole set of DVDs that have collected over the years into iPod compatible formats without losing any quality at all and without the need for iTunes at all! This simple software is a one-stop solution to all your audio/video conversion needs. Since all these formats work with iPhone and iPad, you’re good to go!

Earlier this year, Steve Jobs was grilled at the D8 regarding the faulty iPhone 4 antenna and he was not sure whether his engineers will come up with a fix. Initially, around the release of iPhone 4 when hundreds of thousands of users reported that they could not maintain their phone call for more then 30 seconds even in areas where they’re good coverage, Apple denied all that, blaming AT&T’s overcrowded networks but with time it became clear that iPhone 4 has some antenna issues.

Here’s a Christmas present for the Angry Birds addicts. The new update version 1.5.0 adds a whole lot of new features, the most prominent of which are the 15 new levels added so that you won’t run out of levels.

HTML5 is gaining a lot of steam lately but it’s ultimate test would be to bring to the browser what it’s rival Flash is already doing – Interactive browser based games. So I thought of compiling a list of browser based games that have been released or are in testing phase. All of these games are purely coded in HTML5 and most of these are even Open Source so if you want to try out building something for your own idea, you can use their codebase.

This app has to be the best app of this year. One word describes it: Stunning. A small design studio called QuestVisual that consists of only 2 programmers (apparently) has just released an app called WordLens. So what’s so stunning about it? You can translate anything into multiple languages with your iPhone camera and the translated text is embedded back into the image and you won’t even notice that something has changed, it’s so natural! Just in case, this is what Virtual Reality is all about, embedding artificially generated content into the real images.

If you are starting off with writing some JavaScript, the first step is to choose an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). An IDE typically includes a Compiler, Code Editor (with/without Intellisense) and a Debugger. There are tons of additional features that almost every IDE now includes but these are the basic components. Let’s start with a list of possible IDEs you can use for writing JavaScript and debugging them.

What better gift for winters then the gloves that would work with capacitive touch screens (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). A while back there were reports of Apple filing a patent for capacitive-touch-sensitive gloves. Guess what, you don’t always need a patent to launch such a simple utility. You can grab your pair from “Agloves”, the company behind these capacitive-screen-sensitive gloves.

Out of a total of 100 million iPhones out there, 10% or 10 million use Cydia as an alternative App Store or where they find more then 30,000 apps (or packages as they’re called) which is approximately 1/3rd of apps listed on Apple’s App Store. Saurik (the developer behind Cydia) calls it the App Store for jailbroken iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. After revolutionizing the mobile app business with App Store for iDevices, Apple announced that it’s going to launch App Store for Mac. Following on, Saurik just announced at the 360|MacDev that he is going to launch Cydia for Mac.

Do you suffer from excess of remote controls spread all over your home? You’re not alone, there are millions who have at least 2-3 remote controls for all the different devices they own (Television, DVD player etc). What if there was only one remote control? And that too not exactly a remote control but a gadget that you always have in your pocket. Yes, with UnityRemote app from Gear4, you can now control your TV and almost all other gadget that this app supports with your iPhone or iPod touch!

If this is going to be the UI of the next iPhone (5?) then it definitely is something that resembles a lot to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 UI. Not that it’s bad to get inspiration from a great UI design but just that to file a patent in your name claiming it to be your own design is something that is not so peculiar to Apple but yet this latest patent filed by Apple detailing a new UI design for it’s next generation of iDevices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) is a testament that WP7’s UI is awesome!

Want to watch Vimeo or maybe Dailmotion and Hulu among a couple of others on your iPhone but when you log on to these websites all you see is a big blank box instead of the video or maybe just a thumbnail and then Apple forces you to believe that Flash is gone, it’s history. Well guess what, someone somewhere came up with this quick hack that lets you watch Flash videos on these and a couple of other websites right inside your Mobile Safari in iPhone (3G/3Gs and 4).

What if your notebook or desktop does not has a webcam? How about using your iPhone 4 (or iPhone 3Gs/3G for that matter) as a wireless HD webcam? There’s an awesome App on the App Store that lets you do exactly that.