Ever wondered what you could do with your iPad or iPhone that other phones and tablets can’t do?  Well wonder no longer – you can use them to fly a sort of indestructible helicopter.

The firm of Kogan here in Australia is offering their online customers a radio controlled helicopter and a sort of dongle-like thing to attach to your iPad or iPhone in order to control the helicopter.

This has to be the ultimate toy for all you Apple fiends, so that not only can you do all the normal things with one or other of those Apple gadgets, but you can also amaze all your friends by flying this silly helicopter as well.. and as they are careful to point out, owing to the sort of flexible cage around the helicopter, you can merrily smash it into things at no risk.  sounds fun.   And all of this joy for no more than $49 AUD.

As they put it on their website:

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Any day now, your iPad Mini will plop through your letter box, so you will need a case to protect it.   Well, The Joy Factory have already got a whole range of various cases to protect your Mini from the bang, knocks and bashes of daily life, and make it look good at the same time.

The Joy factory, who make all manner of covers and wallets and so forth for pretty well any ereader or Tablet you can think of, have leaped from the gate and got their Mini covers on the market with impressive speed it seems to me.

The have about 7 different types of Mini cover, and several of those models come in a small range of colours or designs – and prices of course.

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A video spoof ad for the shiny new iPhone 5 – Steve Jobs must be revolving enough in his grave to generate enough power to work all the iPhone 5′s in the world.

I couldn’t resist sharing this video with you all, it is seriously funny and to the point.  I hasten to add that I am in no way anti-Apple gadgets, but enjoy anyone having a go at the sacred cows of the world, including Apple, which this funny video does remarkably well.

So, sit back and enjoy this somewhat different advertisement for the latest toy from Apple.. The iPhone 5 in all its glory.

So, did you enjoy that as much as I did?   Or were you offended by its irreverence for the Great and Good Apple Corp?

Share with us:

Does this spoof actually hit a few bulls-eyes do you think?  Do let us know your thoughts on it.

In an ad that will shortly be seen all over the world, Samsung, far from lying back and accepting their various lost legal fights with Apple, are fighting back with a remarkably unKorean bit of humour, which I simply had to share with you all.

My position on the battles between Apple and Samsung is rather more of a somewhat bemused observer rather than a supporter of one or the other party in all those rather silly law cases they seem determined to wage against each other.

Anyhow, here it is in all its glory… enjoy it.

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As you may know, the American Department of Justice (DOJ) has been considering taking legal action against the big 6 of the publishing world for some time for what they consider to be illegal collusion to fix the retail price of ebooks, the so called Agency Model.

The way that paper books are sold to book sellers is based on a system in which publishers set a wholesale price, normally about half the cover price, and then the retailer can decide how much they actually sell the book for.  In the early days of ebooks, this system was also used for ebooks.   But this changed about the time the iPad came along, at which point at the urging of Steve Jobs of Apple, the main publishers and Apple adopted what has become known as the Agency Model

What is the Agency Model?

The Agency Model is one in which the publishers sell the ebook to a retailer and set the retail price of the ebook, and base this on about a 30% mark up for the retailer.  The point at contention is that the publishers insist that the retailer sells the ebook at the price they (the publishers) set.  This is the heart of the legal case against them, as this is price fixing between producers of a commodity, and as such is illegal as it is seen as removing any sort of competition between publishers.

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Rich Adin, in his always intriguing and diverse blog – An American editor – has posted an interesting article about the infamous Agency Pricing Agreement for selling ebooks.

This structure, which is currently the subject of legal inspection in the USA, Europe and the UK has caused a real stir over the last year, as it is seen as a form of price fixing, aimed chiefly at preventing Amazon from taking over the entire world of ebooks, and in passing, to give Apple a fighting chance to break into the market as a result of the launch of the iPad.

From the point of view of the consumer, it has had the effect of frequently pushing the price of ebooks up to levels higher than many paper books, which, not surprisingly has caused a lot of anger and resentment.

In this post, Rich gives a rather more nuanced view of this system, and it is because of this broader view of it all that I felt it might be of interest to you to read – assuming you have not already seen it on his blog, of course.

So, the word is with Rich now….  Read on.

eBooks: Is Agency Pricing Good or Bad?

Recently, there has been a lot of focus on the “conspiracy” between 5 major publishers and Apple regarding agency pricing and whether these 6 entities have violated antitrust law. The focus is not on whether agency pricing is good or bad, but whether the parties colluded. That question I’ll leave for the US Department of Justice.

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