Hasta La Gadget!

If you start wasting somebody’s time at NASA, this is how they’re going to get you out of their office. Or, it’s how JPL engineer Mark Rober will, anyway. This hacked Nintendo console will definitely put you on notice. More »

Apple announced a new milestone for its iTunes U online digital education outlet, which has just crossed the 1 billion download mark. Alongside the announcement, Apple has also informed us exclusively that the company has so far sold more than 8 million iPads directly into educational institution worldwide. iTunes U became a standalone app, complete with its own course marketplace and catalog in June 2012.

At the time, iTunes U had served up over 700 million downloads. The additional 300 million downloads mean that the pace of engagement for iTunes U is growing rapidly. iTunes U was introduced in May 2007, meaning that it took the educational product a full five years to rack up just a little over twice that amount. The rapid growth over the last nine months has likely been the result of a combination of factors, including the introduction of the standalone app and an increase in the adoption of iPads in educational settings.

AllThingsD reported earlier that to date, Apple has sold more than 4.5 million iPads to U.S.-based educational institutions, a figure which Apple confirmed to us as correct. Thanks to some clever calculation on the part of 9to5Mac’s Jordan Kahn based on publicly available information, it looks like the vast majority of that number was sold recently, over the past year in fact. Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly stressed how important the education market is in the context of the iPad, and the fact that it’s doing so well with institutional sales both at home and abroad backs that up.

Apple also shared some details about school participation in iTunes U today, noting that more than 1,200 universities and colleges, and over 1,200 K-12 schools host over 2,500 public courses on iTunes U, along with thousands more private courses available only to enrolled students. Some big institutions are embracing iTunes U with particular vigor, Apple notes, including Standford and The Open University, both of which have racked up over 60 million content downloads alone. Some of the more popular individual courses have around 250,000 students enrolled, Apple noted.

Greg noted in a recent article that online education is fast replacing physical colleges, with startups like Coursera reaping many of the benefits. Apple has the advantage of being a very early player in this space, and the ubiquity of its iPad tablet is clearly helping the company add a lot more momentum to its efforts to help institutions embrace online learning.

Microsoft has just announced a piece of good news for those of you living in areas where you have yet to catch a glimpse of the Surface RT or the Surface Pro tablets – by saying that from late March onwards, the big marketing machine at Microsoft will be rolling into new markets, hoping to expand the availability of the Surface tablets across the board. Other than current areas where you are able to pick up both the Surface RT and Surface Pro without blinking at the moment, the coming months will see the Surface RT appear over at Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan.

As for folks who are looking for something with a little bit more firepower, well, the Surface Pro will soon be available beyond the borders of the US and Canada, making its way to the ends of the earth – namely Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Between the two, just which model do you think suits you and your lifestyle best?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Acer Wants To Ship 7 Million Android Tablets And 3 Million Windows Tablets In 2013, The New York Times Gets Flipboard Treatment On Android And Kindle Fire,

Just how tough is Gorilla Glass and its sequel? Sure as heck ain’t strong enough to withstand a drop from a reasonable height, for sure! Well, this particular video that you see above will hopefully be able to answer some questions that you have concerning durability and quality of most modern day handsets. Remember the Vertu Ti that we talked about not too long ago? Well, the Vertu Ti certainly did not wow when it came to the hardware specifications, but one thing did stand out – a display made of synthetic sapphire.

It is said that single crystals of aluminum oxide such as this will feature a Mohs scale hardness of 9, which means you will need something as hard as sapphires or diamonds to scratch them. The video above shows that a rock is useless in scratching the sapphire screen, while the Corning Gorilla Glass 2 failed miserably when faced with the same rock. Thing is, good things do not come cheap, and cheap things, most of the time, are not good. At least the sapphire display can help justify a bit of the $10,000 that you would have to fork out for the Vertu Ti.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Galaxy S4 To Be Available In White/Black And 16/32/64GB Storage Options, Acer Wants To Ship 7 Million Android Tablets And 3 Million Windows Tablets In 2013,

Check out this Batmobile monster truck. It chases and then crushes any villain’s vehicle in it’s path. All I can say is I’m glad that Christopher Nolan was in control of the recent Batman movies. Otherwise we could have ended up with this ridiculous beast in one of those movies.

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