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Just a few days ago, Apple has announced iBooks 2 at today’s event held in New York City. The app is now live and it will feature newly designed fullscreen books with interactive animations, diagrams, photos and videos. Will also allow you to use your fingers to highlight text and take notes.

iBooks is an amazing way to download and read books. iBooks includes the iBookstore, where you can download the latest bestselling books or your favorite classics – day or night. Browse your library on a beautiful bookshelf, tap a book to open it, flipthrough pages with a swipe or a tap, and bookmark or add notes to your favorite passages.

Features:
• Download many of your favorite books from the included iBookstore
• In addition to standard text, the iBookstore also offers books that are fully illustrated, and enhanced with audio, video, and animation
• Experience gorgeous fullscreen Multi-Touch textbooks designed for iPad. These textbooks are filled with interactive features, diagrams, photos, videos, and more
• Read a free sample of any book on the iBookstore before making it a part of your collection
• Reorder your books on your bookshelf or browse them in a list sorted by title, author, or category
• Organize your books and PDFs into personal Collections. Swipe left or right to jump between Collections
• Easily adjust your screen brightness to find the perfect lighting for any environment
• Change the font size and pick from six included type faces to make your books more comfortable to read
• Find a word, character, or phrase anywhere in your book with the built-in search feature
• Keep your bookmarks, notes, and your current page wirelessly in sync between iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the automatic
bookmark syncing feature
• Quickly find a specific page using the page navigator at the bottom of every page
• Read your books on white or sepia colored pages
• Switch to full screen to remove all distractions, or read in white-on-black with the nighttime mode
• Choose left or fully justified text layout from Settings
• Highlight your favorite passages and add notes with the built-in bookmarking features
• Add books in the industry-standard ePub electronic book format to iTunes and sync them to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
• Add PDF documents to iBooks from Mail, or add them to iTunes and sync them to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
• Print PDF documents and notes you’ve written in iBooks using AirPrint
• Use iBooks with the amazing accessibility features in iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch – such as speaking the words on a given page

Requirements:
• iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch must have iOS 4.2 or later
• An Apple ID is required to download from the iBookstore
• Automatic bookmark syncing requires an active Wi-Fi or cellular data connection and an Apple ID
• iBooks opens books made with iBooks Author, ePub books, or PDF documents
• To add books from outside the iBookstore, they must be DRM-free and synced using iTunes 9.2 or later. To sync books made with iBooks Author, they must be synced with iTunes 10.5.3 or later.
• iBooks textbooks can only be viewed on iPad and are currently available to customers in the United States
• Some PDF documents may not be compatible with iBooks

iBooks 2 is available for free in the app store.

The iTunes U app gives you access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools — plus the world’s largest digital catalog of free education content — right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Whether you’re majoring in molecular biology at a university, taking Spanish in high school, or just interested in European history, you now have a valuable tool to help you learn anytime, anywhere.

Features:
Free courses in a wide array of subjects
• Take free courses created and taught by instructors from leading universities and other schools
• See all assignments and updates from the instructor in one place, and check off assignments as you complete them
• Take notes and highlight text in iBooks and see them consolidated for easy reviewing in the iTunes U app
• Access course materials, including audio, video, books, documents & presentations, apps, and new iBooks textbooks for iPad

The world’s largest catalog of free education content
• Choose from more than 500,000 free lectures, videos, books, and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoology
• Browse collections from education and cultural institutions in 26 countries — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, UC Berkeley, MoMA, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress

iTunes U is available for free in the app store.

This quick tip came from iDB which apparently allows you to recalibrate you device’s Home button. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Home button getting more laggy and unresponsive as time goes on. Most would credit it to wear and tear while others may think that this problem is software based. As it turns out, this particular problem can be alleviated by simply recablirating the Home button. I’ve tested it myself and it does made my Home button more snappier than before. You should try it out, the steps are rather easy.

Steps on How to Recalibrate Your iPhone’s Home Button
1. Launch any of the iOS’s stock applications like Weather, Stocks, Settings etc.
2. Once the app has been launched, press and hold the Power button for a few seconds and the “Slide to Power Off” screen should appear.
3. Now press and hold your iDevice’s Home button until the “Slide to Power Off” screen disappears followed by the stock app force quit. After that the screen will return to the Springboard.

And that’s pretty much it! Your iPhone’s Home button should be calibrated now. This quick tip works with pretty much all iOS devices, so go ahead and give it a try.

Let us know if it worked for you or not in the comments section below.

For the iPhone 4S hopefuls that doesn’t want to be tied with telco contract plans, you can now purchase it directly from Apple and have it shipped direct to you.

The RRP listed on Apple store is lower than the telcos with pricing as follows:

iPhone 4S 16GB – RM2199
iPhone 4S 32GB – RM2499
iPhone 4S 64GB – RM2799

You would have noticed that Apple Online store is selling the iPhone 4S 32GB & 64GB cheaper than the telco’s RRP of RM2590 and RM2890 respectively. After all, RRP is merely a “recommended retail price”. Delivery is written as 1-2 weeks and it is limited to 2 per customer.

Interest?

DiGi commences registration of interest for iPhone 4S. Register here.

Finally DiGi too is joining the Malaysia iPhone 4S party. At the stroke of midnight, DiGi has placed a teaser for the upcoming iPhone which indicates that they are still in the race.

So now we have heard from Maxis, Celcom and DiGi. As mentioned earlier, Celcom is looking at being the first to offer iPhone 4S in Malaysia.