At last, someone seems to have discovered the true benefit of the new technology – when push comes to shove, the iPad is a remarkably good thing to hit your annoying brother very hard in the face with.

Its lightweight build means you can swing it towards the face with some force and that flat screen will cause untold pain.

The same swinging motion, when performed with a heavy laptop, will allow the little terror to escape. Try it with a mobile phone and you won’t cause a scratch.

So now we have the perfect repost for anyone questioning the unique technical differences of the iPad. If anyone tells you the iPad is a redundant piece of kit, you can make their face redundant as per the video below.

And if you want your stinking little brother to really suffer, use the reflective screen side as the ‘hitting’ side so that he is confronted with his own terrified, soon-to-be-pummelled face just before impact.

Please note, NMN does not advocate the use of violence with technology of any shape or size. Bare fist fights are, of course, supported.

Popular group messaging service Palringo is looking for an iPhone / iPad developer to join their tight knit team.

With more than 11 million users sending billions of messages each month, Palringo allows anyone with a mobile phone, PC or Mac to chat with all their friends, regardless of location, device or network.

The team works hard to roll out cool features to an audience of many millions and they generally work in quite an informal, open atmosphere where everyone can contribute to the continued growth of the company.

About the Job

Your responsibilities will be to develop and maintain features of the mobile Group Messaging Application, which is receiving widespread international usage.

You will be expected to write Objective C code for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X platforms, as well as utilise cross-platform libraries written in the C++ programming language.

You will be knowledgeable, enthusiastic about technology and your work, eager to learn, hard-working and capable of working both individually and within a start-up team structure.

Salary details disclosed upon application. You will be expected to work full-time from the company’s offices in Nelson Park Industrial Estate, Cramlington. You will receive 25 days holiday per year.

Requirements

You will be expected to have excellent familiarity with the Objective C programming language, and the ability to write well structured, efficient, and maintainable object- oriented code. You will be familiar with common object oriented design patterns.

Familiarity with the C++ language and STL library and prior experience developing for mobile platforms will be seen as a strong plus.

Apply with CV and covering letter to Jennifer Mills-Ball: jennifer@palringo.com

A YouTube video of a baby fiddling with an iPad and print magazines shows us just how intuitive new technologies can be.

The video features a 1-year-old baby trying to press and swipe her fingers across images on print magazines in frustration.

According to Jean-Louis, the internet activist who posted the video, it’s a ‘humble tribute’ to Steve Jobs.

“Technology codes our minds, changes our OS. Apple products have done this extensively”, he wrote.

“The video shows how magazines are now useless and impossible to understand, for digital natives.”

“For my 1-year-old daughter, a magazine is an iPad that does not work. It will remain so for her whole life. Steve Jobs has coded a part of her OS.”

Based in Castle Eden, my Client is an up and coming specialist agency. They are a small but creative agency with lovely blue chip clients.

The role has the potential to expand into team management for the right person. Some international travel would be required and client liaison.

Required skills:

• iPad ios developer with proven apps to show
• Distribution experience
• 4-5 years work experience within web development and app development
• Ability to work as part of team and on own projects
• Some travel will be required
• Ability to speak to clients in meetings and on phone

Preferable additional skills:

• PHP
• MySQL
• CMS development

Personal skills:

• Conscientious
• Eye for detail
• Personable
• Professional
• Confident in their ability

The benefits package includes lots of social events as a team, a competitive salary around £30k – £35k depending on experience, holidays are 20 days a year plus break between Christmas and New Year and bank holidays.

If you are interested in the advertised position please apply by contacting Sharpe Recruitment.

Sharpe Recruitment is a North East based consultancy, dedicated to placing professionals in rewarding jobs throughout the North of England across a variety of disciplines including Digital Media, Creative Advertising, Sales & Marketing, PR, IT and Business Operations.

Aimed primarily at school students, the tablet would cost $420 – a saving of $250 on the cheapest iPad.

The device, which would be produced by a Russian state company, is designed to be considerably lighter than its competitor.

The new tablet is set to use plastic or organic electronics, developed at Cambridge University in the 1990s, and would feature no glass, not even in the screen.

According to Apple’s main distributor in Russia, Re:Store, there’s little to worry about for the tech giant that currently holds 60% share of the tablet market in the country.

“I can be certain that a Russian tablet computer will not get more than a 10 per cent share of the market,” Re:Store’s CEO Tikhon Smykov told Reuters.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

A North East manufacturer of customised iPad covers is looking to expand its business after winning a national award.

Set up by Simon Barker and Leonie Cunnington in 2010, Slotzz is mixing web technologies with high-quality craftsmanship allowing customers to design their own iPad and iPhone cases.

The Gateshead-based start-up was one of February’s Shell Live Wire Grand Ideas award winners. The award scheme is aimed at helping fledgling businesses, giving young entrepreneurs a £1000 cash injection.

In their winning elevator pitch, Barker and Cunnington said they would use the award money to add personal monogramming and corporate branding services as well as paying for the specialist equipment and marketing required to reach the new target audience.

“Many customers have been asking about extra personalisation options beyond the material choices recently so we have been exploring monogramming options”, Barker said in an business community blog ‘If we can, you can’.

“Weʼve found something that works fantastically well and we will use this money to push it to market”, he said.

We are looking for experienced game developers who have been specialising in mobile gaming and application development for the iPhone/iPad and/or Android platforms in recent years.

We are interested in hearing from developers who want to progress their career within this specialist field with a well established, forward thinking company based in Sunderland who is looking to move it’s successful endeavours online into the mobile market.

In order to be considered for one of the roles available your CV must include a list of the games  you have out on the relevant stores and your passion for the mobile development market really needs to come across.

These are relatively senior roles in the development team, so we expect people to be able to go in and get to work on building iPhone/iPad and/or Android games immediately with very little supervision.

iPhone/iPad Development Requirements:

Languages and Interfaces
Objective-C
Platforms and Operating Systems
iPhone, iPad, iOS, OS X

Android Developer Requirements:

Languages and Interfaces
Java
Platforms and Operating Systems
Android

If you are interested in the advertised position please apply by contacting Sharpe Recruitment.

Sharpe Recruitment is a North East based consultancy, dedicated to placing professionals in rewarding jobs throughout the North of England across a variety of disciplines including Digital Media, Creative Advertising, Sales & Marketing, PR, IT and Business Operations.

We are proud to be working with a Client based in the North East who has developed an award-winning rich messaging network, which enables you to send text, voice or photo messages to your contacts for free no matter whether they use services like Facebook, Yahoo, MSN or through their own fully fledged Instant Messaging service.

All the major mobile and desktop platforms are supported and in constant development. 
With tens of thousands of active chat groups, and millions of Users our client is a rapidly growing company, keen to recruit talented individuals to help the team deliver new features and services to its users across the globe.

We are keen to hear from people who are highly skilled, interesting people with a good understanding of and passion for the social networking and mobile space.

You will be joining them at a key stage in their growth and development cycle, offering you unprecedented opportunities for your own personal development and career progression within iPhone/iPad development.

This role requires candidates who have a strong underlying knowledge of programming on the iPhone and/or the iPad.

Due to the growth of the company you will be taking over from someone who has been working in this role for some time, therefore you will be given a handover during your probationary period. During which time it will be key to ask questions as ultimately you will be working unsupervised and therefore required to use your own initiative, whilst asking for help from senior team members as and when required as projects cannot be delayed.

In order to be successful in your application, you will need to demonstrate proven experience developing and programming on the iPhone/iPad platform and you will be expected to prove you have an excellent grasp of iOS Memory Management.

We are happy to hear from you if you have recently graduated and have gained some commercial experience programming on the iPhone, however we are also keen to hear from people who have a number of year’s relevant experience in this field as our Client is keen to grow this team and eager to meet with anyone either looking to start their career or progress further within the field of  iPhone/iPad development.

Our Client will be interviewing in early January so please apply by contacting Sharpe Recruitment as soon as possible in order to be considered for interview in the New Year.

Sharpe Recruitment is a North East based consultancy, dedicated to placing professionals in rewarding jobs throughout the North of England across a variety of disciplines including Digital Media, Creative Advertising, Sales & Marketing, PR, IT and Business Operations.

Photo by: Petrus Olsson / Adamsky

Everything Everything, a hot new band with its origins in the North East, became the first group to try out live HD streaming of a gig via an iPad app.

Fans were able to download the free app to watch their London Union Chapel concert on Wednesday in full.

Live web streaming of gigs is hardly anything new and even mobile phones have been able to receive live footage for a while now.

However, the high-resolution screen on the popular Apple device offers a completely new experience of watching a live gig on the go in high quality.

Jonathan Higgs, Everything Everything’s singer, said the band wanted to try something unique.

“The concert sold out and we wanted to do something special for fans who couldn’t get tickets”, he said.

“We couldn’t hijack a TV channel but now we can play live to people on the bus, or wherever they want to hear it.”

The technical details were taken care of by video production company LoveLive. They filmed the gig using six cameras as the band played alongside a 13-piece orchestra.

The concert will be available to download here or from the band’s website for three months after the gig.

Source: Guardian

Developed by a Newcastle-based creative agency Quiros, Fun Felt builds on the concept of making pictures out of colourful felt shapes and transports it to the iPad.

Users can create their own design from 50 pre-loaded friendly shapes. The intuitive platform promises that children from as young as four years will be able to get creative.

User experience in the heart

Chris Chatterton, Producer at Fun Felt, described the development of Fun Felt as a “labour of love”.

“I have a background in graphic design, so the user experience and the interface were very important to me”, he said.

“Throughout development we tested the app on a focus group made up of children of different ages. This helped us to find out what worked and what didn’t, meaning that the final version has a clean layout and is easy to use.”

Commercial potential

Fun Felt is the latest product to come out of NFM’s iPad Fund, which is the world’s first funding and development support initiative exclusively for iPad apps developers.

Tom Harvey, CEO of Northern Film & Media said the fund invites creative ideas that utilise the functionality of the iPad.

“Fun Felt delivers to brief and the result is an entertaining, nostalgic and educational product”, he said.

“I’m confident it will become a commercial contender in the hugely competitive apps marketplace.”

Have a look at Fun Felt here.