As TechCrunch noted, last time Apple was spotted showing an effort in the field of education was last August, when the $999 iMac for educational purposes was presented. However, this announcement is not about Apple’s hardware, it’s certainly about their iBooks and textbook publishing.

Reports have it, this one won’t be a major announcement, or a “Big” one. In any case, MacWorld experts sat around their round table and discussed what might be some topics at this Apple event. Here are some highlights of their discussion:

• Some deal between Apple, textbook publishers, and colleges and universities can be struck, and announced at this event. It’s worth to recall that none of the big textbook publishers are working with iBooks and Apple’s iOS ecosystem in any significant way, though Apple and the publishers have had on-and-off conversations for years.
•  iBooks for Macs might be introduced. The reasoning behind this prediction goes like this: if publishers start taking the time to create unique, custom books for iBooks, colleges may feel that Apple should make those books available to everyone. That is, Apple’s educational content could be not limited to just iPads and iPhones, but would be available across all Apple ecosystem.
• iWork suite may get access to iCloud.  iWork, with its Pages, Numbers, Keynote, was meant as a counterpart for MS Office’s suite and widely considered as needing substantial upgrades.

All in all, Apple has formidable opponents in their struggle for a slice of the educational market, Amazon Kindles (Fire’s, for example) look like they are in much better shape due to their low cost. Will this Apple event at Big Apple produce something big? A new tablet for students perhaps? We’ll see.

The post Apple Education Event Announced For Jan. 19 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There are a number of gaming platforms out there in the market, and you might be getting confused as to which one suits you. Your friends make recommendations, but these recommendations change. Well, it might be the right time for you to explore Quest.li.

Quest.li is “a gaming platform for smart people and smart games.” The people behind this platform believe that there are more fun ways of enjoying games than just controlling virtual objects on your phone or tablet. Quest.li added that their platform is all about self-realization. Whenever you play a game and you win, it is not because of just merely clicking buttons faster than any creature on the planet but because you are actually smart. Now, that’s another way of looking at the issue at hand, of course.

Quest.li is a mobile application founded by Danil Kozyatnikov with the aim to “turn real life goals into a game.” Just like painting a picture, Kozyatnikov and his team explains that it’s not just about painting with the best paint, canvas and brushes but also the feeling of satisfaction when you have already finished your masterpiece. Indeed, there is an attempt to make the application more personalized. This strategy by Quest.li is a way to attract more people into subscribing to their platform.

In the games created by Quest.li, you can set different goals that will enable you to earn points. Quest.li also promises to do everything it can to provide users with enjoyment based on self-realization. For creating an account, just choose a username, password and an e-mail address. Once you are through with this, you will be presented with the menu: Find, Play, Make, Bank.

Just recently, Quest.li was declared by the audience as the winner at TechCrunch Disrupt. Kozyatnikov traveled all the way from Siberia just to present at the event. He further elaborated that he had different goals to get Quest.li ready. Kozyatnikov also mentioned that users can create their own tasks in the application and that he envisions other people “paying to opt-in to other quests.” Eventually, the winner would gain some amount in return.

The founder also revealed that he does not understand why people compare Quest.li to Foursquare. This is because according to him, these two apps are entirely different. Kozyatnikov added that he wanted to establish a company that would change the gaming landscape. With a team of five more back in Russia, he is in the process of creating the game and making more improvements to cater to the demands of the users. They have been able to raise $225,000 so far, and this amount has been continuously increasing as days pass.

There’s only an email sign-up for now.

The post Quest.li: the social mobile gaming platform for smarties appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Imagine that you decided to take a trip over to Germany, but you don’t speak a word of German. You could whip out one of those phrasebooks, but there’s a good chance you’re going to butcher the pronunciation, not to mention that you won’t understand what the other person is saying either. That’s where Vocre comes in.

Presented at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, the Vocre app instantly translates your spoken word into another language. Just say what you want to say, and your smartphone will translate it on the spot and speak it out in the target language. You can then hold your phone in front of the local and have them do the same back to you.

This is quite the fascinating app. It’s not quite instant and you need to wait for the prompts, but it sure beats trying to communicate with charades and broken German. The speech to text part is handled by Nuance, but the translation is said to go beyond Google Translate, using crowd-sourced learning technology. The idea is to mak e the conversation a little more natural.

Right now, it looks like Vocre is being targeted for iOS only. You get your first 10 translations free and then additional packs of 10 more translations are 99 cents. Language support includes English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. More languages are on the way.

Although we interviewed Vocre and got a demo, the background noise was less than ideal and did not give accurate translations.  It seems Vocre works quite well in quite situations, but if in a noisy restaurant or busy street corner it may not be as accurate as shown in the video.

The post Vocre: The instant translation app for iPhone conversationalists appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Remember the JooJoo? It started out its life as the CrunchPad by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and via all sorts of legal hullabaloo, it ended up being sold only under the Fusion Garage banner when the Linux-based tablet launched in 2009. It didn’t do so well, but Fusion Garage is back with a couple of other offerings.

What you see here are the Grid10 tablet and the Grid4 smartphone. While they may appear to be just your run of of the mill Android devices, they’re not. Instead, Fusion Garage has taken the Android kernel and built around it to create a custom operating system called GridOS. As if we didn’t already have enough platforms already, right? Maybe they should have just done the skin thing like HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.

In any case, the Grid10 tablet features a 10.1-inch multi-touch display (1366×768) and is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor at 1.2GHz. That gets backed with 16GB storage, 512MB memory, microSD slot, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 1.3MP front camera, HDMI out, GPS, accelerometer, and 5800mAh battery, as well as optional HSDPA. The GridOS itself is gesture and wheel based: tapping on the screen brings up a wheel of options. Apps come by way of the Grid Shop, but apparently it supports Android Market apps too. Pricing starts at $499 for the WiFi-only model and an extra $100 gets you 3G. Shipping starts September 15.

The Grid4 smartphone is similar, only smaller and with a different processor. Behind the 4-inch screen is a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 and 512MB of RAM. Rounding out the specs are the 5MP camera and VGA front camera. The app support and GridOS are the same. Expect it to ship in Q4 for $399.

The post Fusion Garage follows JooJoo with Grid10 tablet, Grid4 smartphone appeared first on Mobile Magazine.