The website AppDevice claims to have proof that Apple will offer 30.000 free e-books in the iBooks Store for the iPad. All titles no longer have copyrights. The books come from the archives of Project Gutenberg: an initiative to offer free books digitally from the public domain.
Apple earlier announced digital books will come in the Open ePub format, also used by Project Gutenberg. Those e-books can be read by importing the books via iTunes. Apple probably wants to prevent a strong number of Gutenberg-bookshops to appear by offering these books in the App Store.
Movile Inc announced they are going to release ‘BoardBox’ for the iPad. It includes all kinds of board games like Chess, Checkers and Tic Tac Toe. BoardBox is being described as a realistic looking board game set for the iPad.
There are over a dozen different board game (see list below). There will be multiplayer, 3 unique board styles, rules and game history provided by Wikipedia and more.
15 board games, including:
Chess
Checkers
Reversi
Tic Tac Toe
Go
International Draughts
Xiangqi
Westernized Xiangqi
plus 5 Chess and 2 Go variants!
And probably the best feature of them all: BoardBox will sell for only $3,99 on the iPad launch day.
Not wanting to buy the iPad via Apple. Don’t worry, there will be other online shops who will sell the iPad. But who is going to sell the iPad besides Apple? It seems both Amazon and Best Buy are preparing for the April 3rd iPad launch.
Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy has reportedly begun preparations for the launch of Apple’s Wi-Fi iPad models on April 3rd, providing its retail store employees with details of events leading up to the launch. Sources report that the iPad will initially be carried only at Best Buy locations offering devoted “store-within-a-store” Apple Shop sections. Approximately 675 of the company’s over 1000 U.S. locations offer such dedicated sales areas for Apple products, and other locations and bestbuy.com will not carry the iPad at launch.
Best Buy locations will also not be opening early on launch day, as the company believes that it would offer little benefit due to a lack of sales competition while incurring additional operational expense. It appears at this time that only Apple and Best Buy will be carrying the iPad in retail stores at launch.
Display materials for the iPad launch are reportedly scheduled to arrive at participating Best Buy stores early next week, and store planograms indicate that two notebooks and an iMac will be displaced from the usual Apple Shop layout to accommodate four iPad demo units and associated accessories for display.
Reports curiously indicate that the demo units encompass four separate SKUs, while Apple is launching only three Wi-Fi iPad models on April 3rd. The identity of the fourth model to be demoed is unknown, although it is possible that stores may be receiving a Wi-Fi + 3G model, scheduled for launch in late April, for demo purposes.
Yesterday I posted information about the monthly costs of the Wall Street Journal on the iPad. The same article also explains that companies like Coca-Cola and FedEx are going to place ads in the WSJ newspaper. The video below shows how these ads might look like. The way we look at ads is going to change drastically, because ads will become interactive.
Video ads can be played, games can be played, tweets can be viewed, all in the same window. The goal is to keep readers viewing the magazine or newspapers and not sending them away via external links.
It comes to no surprise maybe that Imangi Studios has developed an iPad version of their most successful game in the App Store. Harbor Master will hopefully be available on April 3rd. The iPad version, obviously, has ‘HD’ added to the title of the game.
Below is a screenshot of the iPad version of Harbor Master:
click on the picture to see a larger version
In this popular game you must guide ships to the right docks by drawing lines. The ships are not allowed to touch each other. After they release their cargo they also have to be guided of the map, again by drawing lines. Updates have added several maps and options like cyclones and pirates. The iPad version will offer more docks and ships on a single map.
