Markup
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Sony shrinks its Digital Paper E Ink tablet
Sony is one of the few companies persisting in E Ink stylus devices, despite the fact that they're way less practical than a tablet and surprisingly expensive. It has just unveiled a new model, the DPT-CP1 that helps (a bit) on the latter count. It's much the same as the A4 (13.3-inch diagonal) DPT-RP1 released a year ago, but has a smaller, 10.3-inch diagonal (A5) sized screen instead.
New in Yosemite: Mail Drop, signatures and annotations in OS X Mail
Mail in OS X hasn't gotten a lot of love over the last few years, with its feature set remaining pretty inert. Finally, with the release of Yosemite, Mail has received some very nice and useful updates. One of the most compelling features in Mail is a feature called Markup. Once you add a graphic or a PDF to an email message, you can then add various shapes like squares, circles, stars, arrows and more. There's also a tool that lets you insert your signature using your laptop's trackpad or even a camera. I did it on my Mac Pro using my Bluetooth trackpad. To get it going, you click on the trackpad graphic and then sign your name using your finger. It might take a little practice, but you'll get a good signature very easily. I created two signatures, one with my first name only and one with my full name depending on how formal the document is. The only drawback of this feature is that you can only sign a graphic or a PDF. It would be even better if you could just insert a signature anywhere in a blank mail, so any note that you send could have a signature. Of course you can create a signature graphic and drag it into any email, but Apple could make this much easier. The other new and important feature is Mail Drop. It comes up as a pop-up menu when you add an attachment that is too large for a regular email transfer. Mail Drop allows you to send any file up to 5 GB in size by bypassing your ISP and using iCloud as the means of transmission. If you are sending the large attachment to another Mac the process is seamless, but if you're sending to another kind of computer the recipient will get a link to click on. It's similar to Dropbox and some of the other cloud-based services, but Mail Drop is free. Mail Drop also does not take up space on your iCloud storage allotment. It looks like you can send as many attachments as you want, without any penalty. Mail Drop works on any email service, including Gmail Yahoo and Microsoft Exchange. These new features are significant updates to Apple Mail, and I think most people will find their use of mail improved.
How the iPad 2's gray market works
You may have noticed, as you were queuing for your shiny new iPad 2 over the weekend, that you were surrounded by rather a lot of people of a foreign persuasion. There is, it turns out, a reason for this -- the gray market in selling iPad 2s abroad. Because the latest magical product from Apple came out in the US first, a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the world, foreign dealers were keen to scoop up as many as they could and quickly ship them overseas to make a killing. M.I.C. Gadget has done an interesting analysis of how the process works. Hong Kong vendors are making a killing -- bottom-of-the-line 16 GB Wi-Fi models sell for over US$1,000, which is more than twice the original price. "Mr. Lo, the 'master' of the gray market in Hong Kong, who distributed hundreds to thousands of iPhone 4s and iPads to China's gray market last year, has already received 200 orders before the launch," they say. He paid eight couriers in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles to hop on planes to Hong Kong after securing about 200 iPads, which he planned to have on sale by March 13. When asked why he can charge more than double for most models, Mr Lo replied, "Apple fanboys are willing to pay our prices to have the iPad 2 earlier. That's how we earn money." [Via CNN]
GameStop demonstrates 1:1 'gouging' motion for MotionPlus
Did you buy a Zapper from GameStop? Then you paid $5 over MSRP, just for the "privilege" of being able to visit GameStop (unless you bought it used, of course). It appears that the retailer will employ the same pricing scheme of "$5 more than" (what it's supposed to be) for the MotionPlus attachment.GameStop's website currently lists the peripheral at $24.99, five bucks over the price announced this morning. The retail listing uses an image matching the new appearance of the device (inside a new, larger Wii remote jacket), suggesting that GameStop has had time to update the price to match Nintendo's announcement -- but hasn't. Of course, there is a chance this isn't GameStop's final price.If you don't mind waiting, Gamestop is taking preorders of the Wii Sports Resort/MotionPlus bundle for the recommended $49.99 price. If you do mind waiting and you don't want Resort, then ... go pretty much anywhere else.[Via GoNintendo]
