We’re over halfway through Mobile Nations Fitness Month, so it’s time to spice up your fitness routine with some Salsa dancing. Pocket Salsa is an iPhone and iPad that will have workin’ your moves, burning calories, and having fun all at the same time.

Pocket Salsa is filled with over 150 instructional videos that teach everything from the basics of salsa dancing to intermediate level dance moves. I am probably the furthest thing possible from a dancer, and even I’m able to learn from these very clear lessons.

Watching videos on your iPhone or iPad is great and all, but you can enhance your learning experience by sharing the lessons to your television with Apple TV.

In addition to videos, Pocket Salsa also includes a list of salsa rhythms making it real easy to quickly turn on some music to practice your new moves. You can also watch the latest video podcasts from addicted2salsa to learn even more salsa moves.

Most of lessons are for couples, so go grab a partner, tell them to get on board with Mobile Nations Fitness month, and get dancing!

$3.99 – Download Now

As if raising a child wasn’t stressful enough, baby products like cribs, car seats, and strollers are constantly being recalled and it can get overwhelming to keep track if you own a recalled item. With Recalls Plus, you you can relax knowing it will notify you if any of your products have been recalled.

Parents aren’t the only ones who need to concern themselves with recalls, however. That’s why Recalls Plus also keeps track of allergen recalls. Whatever your concern might be, Recalls Plus lets you search recalls by category or specific items. You can also create a custom list of products you own and Recalls Plus will send you a notification when an item from your list is recalled.

What I like about Recalls Plus is that after I added all the products I’m most concerned about for my daughter’s safety, I just buried the app away in some folder and know I don’t ever have to think about it again — the piece of mind is priceless.

Free – Download Now

Apple is rumored to be sticking to a September or October 2012 release cycle for the iPhone 5 — or whatever they end up calling the next-generation iPhone — just as they did with the iPhone 4S in 2011. Japanese news site Macotakara reports:

According to Asian reliable source, the next iPhone will be released in September or October, and this cycle seems to be kept for years.

Previous to the iPhone 4S, Apple historically held to a summer release cycle, with the original iPhone hitting on June 29th, 2007. Subsequent releases of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS were in mid July and late June respectively, with the iPhone 4 following up on June 24 of 2010.

With the iPhone 4S, however, Apple switched to a to an October release window, moving away from the summer cycle they’ve been accustomed to and taking the Holiday spot previously reserved for the iPod. Given that Apple announced a record-breaking quarter with over 37 million iPhones sold after the iPhone 4S hit consumers late last year, it was likely a smart move and it makes sense for Apple to continue on this path going forward.

iMore previously reported on an October 2012 release date for the iPhone 5.

Source: Macotakara

My iPhone is the perfect cycling companion. It entertains, informs and keeps track of where I go and how long it takes me to get there.

February is Health and Fitness Month at Mobile Nations, and my exercise program for most of my adult life has been cycling. Living on Cape Cod, I am treated to some beautiful vistas, ocean views and a fair share of challenging hills. During the warmer months, I can be at the ocean in about seven minutes and then continue for 20 – 30 miles along the coast.

My rides would be far less enjoyable without my iPhone as my entertainment/navigation system and ride recorder. I use the heck out of my iPhone for pretty much every ride. Seeing as though we have pretty much avoided "winter" this year, I can continue my outdoor rides – even on a February afternoon!

Monitoring your general health

I have been pretty fortunate for most of my life in that I have stayed at virtually the same weight for the last 15 years (as long as I stay active.) I do have some fluctuations and occasionally use apps like the Fitter Fitness Calculator to keep track of things.

Fitter – $0.99 – Download now

Getting the right music

While riding with earphones is not always the smartest thing to do on a bike, most of the roads I travel are pretty empty; so I usually "plug in" when I ride. Often I will just put in one earbud and let the other hang so I can still hear the traffic.

I need to have the right tunes – especially on a longer ride – so I have a few options. I have a standard "Bike Riding" playlist that I made in iTunes, which usually does fairly well for me. There is nothing worse, though, than landing at the base of a hill and having a slow ballad come on. I try to keep all the music at a good beat to keep me motivated.

I also use Pandora stations and Spotify playlists on occasion. Everyone's musical tastes are different, but for me, the Led Zeppelin station on Pandora usually suffices.

Free – Pandora – Download now

Free – Spotify – Download now

Keeping Track of the Ride

I like to monitor my progress through the riding season. I set goals for distance, speed and calories burned. Fortunately, there are two great apps that I use to help me with this.

Strava Cycling is a great app and provides lots of useful data. It keeps track of where I am and where I go, how fast I'm going and what my average speed is. At the end of the ride, the path and stats of the ride are uploaded to their server, for easy reference later.

Another great feature is the Explore button that shows you other rides uploaded in your area by Strava users.

The other app I use is Road Bike Cycling Computer. It keeps track of each "Session" you ride and adds calories burned and rpm's to the data. You can touch the History button to see your rides. One nice feature with the Road Bike Cycling Computer app is that you can input data for weather conditions and the type of surface upon which you were riding to help monitor your progress.

Get cycling!

My iPhone is the perfect cycling companion. It entertains, informs and keeps track of where I go and how long it takes me to get there. While there are certainly days where I leave the phone at home and ride with friends – most days you can see me pedaling along the shore, plugged in and monitoring my ride with one of the apps listed above.

Remember to jump into our Health and Fitness Forum and let us know your goals and how you are doing. You can even enter to win an iPod nano, and IOU for an iPad 3, or an XBox 360 Kinect!

Fraudulent apps are a a complex, entangled, messy piece of business that harms Apple, developers, and consumers.

Recently there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of fraudulent apps getting attention — even top sales positions — in the iPhone and iPad App Store. Some scam apps are copy-cats that duplicate as closely as possible the name and icon of popular games in order to confuse consumers and get them to buy a scam app instead of the real thing. This costs the consumer money for the scam app and developers money for the lost sale. Others scam apps appear to be byte-for-byte copies, stolen whole-cloth and offered for sale side-by-side with the original. This still costs the developer money for the lost sale, and while consumers get a functioning app, it’s likely not one with any support going forward. Still other scam apps rip off the copyright of a popular brand (like Pokemon) for bogus apps that do nothing but cheat customers out of their money.

They all combine to damage confidence in the App Store, and harm the experience of the iOS platform.

For a developer, it’s just one more risk they need to consider when developing for iOS — even if they make a superbly crafted app, avoid dilution and downward price pressure from lower quality apps in the same space, and hit the jackpot by landing on a top seller list, their marketshare and customer base can be quickly assaulted by scammers.

For consumers, it’s just one more hurdle to face when trying to find the good apps — even if they hear about something fantastic from a trusted source, even if they manage to find the right app, they now have to worry if the one they find is the right, right app.

For Apple, it’s just one more problem they have to figure out in order to maintain the appeal and value of their ecosystem — even though they have a curated system that makes it easy to sell and easy to buy, they now have to deal with scammers damaging both the selling and buying trust of their store.

Right now, from the outside, Apple’s approach seems to be that of YouTube — approve any app that meets technical criteria and then respond to publicity or legal takedown demands from copyright holders when and if they come in. It’s one of the smartest, safest approaches, legally, for Apple. They certainly don’t want to take on the responsibility of pre-emptively moderating intellectual property, and then have their necks on the lawsuit line when something slips through and the rights holders sue both the offending party and Apple.

It’s also open for abuse by large companies misusing infringement claims to remove competing apps by smaller companies who can’t afford the litigation.

So it’s a complex, entangled, messy piece of business that harms Apple, developers, and consumers. The fault lies entirely with the scammers making the fraudulent apps — they’re the ones to blame. But ultimately Apple will have to fix it, because it’s Apple’s store.

How to fix it is the question.

Paul Haddad from Tapbots had an interesting suggestion on Twitter: Start with the Top 100 lists. Keep those extra, extra curated. Scam apps in search results are more difficult to tackle problem, but scam apps in the Top 100, especially in games, is probably manageable. Get a team that knows the biggest classics and the hottest new games, and when something that looks like a scam app shows up in the Top 100, contact the developer and ask for proof of ownership and license, and contact the owner of the original app and inform them of a potential violation of their IP.

If the scammers can’t make money, they’ll be less inclined to spend time scamming.

It likely puts Apple in a more actionable position, will probably get them sued more often when a scam app slips through or when a non-scam app gets incorrectly targeted, but it just might be the cost of doing business to maintain a better, more valuable store for developers.

Apple could also make it easier to report a scam app via the App Store. You can currently report problems with apps and games you’ve purchased, but it would be great if you could flag inappropriate content right from the dropdown menu on ever app price sticker. It does take some of the shine off, and would result in a lot of noise for Apple, but huge spikes in reporting could also let them get some crowd-sourced help in finding offenders faster, ultimately letting them keep a cleaner, better store.

Chinese courts have quickly ruled in favour of Proview’s trademark infringement case against Apple’s iPad. One of the Intermediate People’s Courts in China’s Guangdong province has decided that local distributors need to stop selling iPads because Proview had a previous claim to the name. Of course, the case still has to go to Shanghai, where Apple will make a concerted resistance.

Apple has certainly had their fair share of trademark issues, but the fact that some courts in China are already calling for a ban on iPad sales shows this may be a tougher fight than usual. Of course, China will have a hard time blocking imports, but Apple has such a huge local retail presence that a permanent ban on iPad sales would be a considerable blow.  Massive population aside, China’s passion for Apple products is sizable, and even a slight lapse in sales could mean a lot of lost revenue. Here’s hoping Apple can squash this complaint when the case gets to Shanghai this week.

Update: It looks like Apple is threatening to countersue Proview with defamation if it keeps talking about how it owns the iPad name. Such a defamation claims seems like a bit of stretch since it’s begging the original question, but these kind of moves aren’t uncommon in protracted engagements. At very least, maybe a countersuit will slow down Proview enough that Apple will have enough time to further cement themselves in Chinese retail, making a ban unfeasible.

Source: Reuters

Nightline is going to be airing their big exposé on Foxconn tomorrow night, but the write-up of their visit to Foxconn is now available. Although Nightline reports that there are nets just about everywhere to catch anyone trying to commit suicide, depression is apparently not that common. The counseling center is sparsely used (most of the workers were simply tired from their 10-to-12-hour shifts), and despite the high profile of the suicides within recent memory, 18 attempts over the last couple of years actually isn’t that many considering the Foxconn employs and houses a veritable city of over 230,000 within Shenzhen. A counselor at Foxconn explained why some of the suicides happened.

“There are many reasons. We had many scholars here doing research. Of course some (suicide) has to do with the management. But they had more to do with the new generation of migrant workers from the rural areas, their state of mind and how they cope with society. Also it’s hard to make friends here.”

Nightline also got to ask about Apple’s independent audit of working conditions. The New Zealand firm in charge of it claims many of the responses are based on what the boss would want to hear, but since the sample size is so huge, and all of the surveying is done anonymously and online, there are many legitimate grievances which are being identified. As for factory inspections, the president of the Fair Labor Association, Auret van Heerden, says it’s hard to get  feel for what actual day-to-day conditions are like.

“I expect them to put on a show for us. That’s normal with every factory you go to, even if it’s just the time that it takes you to get from the gate to the factory floor, there’s always fifteen or twenty minutes of protocol to get in there. The special equipment comes out, they put the ear plugs in, they put the masks on, and they can transform a factory in twenty minutes, so we expect that.”

The saddest part of the whole piece is that the factory workers rarely, if ever, get to use the final products that they’re all helping to build – nevermind own one. Considering one of the tenants of Ford’s original assembly line was that they price their cars so that everyone who worked on the line could afford one, it’s sad to see the biggest electronics factories in the world today don’t follow in that spirit.

This tour is a particularly big deal because Apple has traditionally never allowed press inside the factories where iPhone, iPads, and other Apple products are assembled, but an ongoing rash of bad press related to Foxconn has prompted  them to open up the doors, at least a little bit. Apple has got to be applauded for the unprecedented amount of effort they’re putting into improving working conditions throughout their entire supply chain. One can only hope that other manufacturers start doing the same before the world starts to learn that it’s not only iPhone factories that are harsh working environments.

Source: ABC

Celebrate President’s Day by saving 15% on that iPhone or iPad case you’ve always wanted, or any accessory from the iMore Store.

Simply shop to your heart’s content, and then apply the coupon code pres12 during checkout, and you’ll automagically save 15% on your order. And don’t forget about our fast, free shipping on US orders over $50.00!

Act now, the offer expires at midnight PST, tonight! (Monday February 20, 2012!)

Enjoy the Presidential Savings! Start your Shopping Now!

 

UK satellite TV broadcaster Sky has announced that it will be launching a dedicated app for the iPad to compliment its coverage of the 2012 Formula 1 season. Sky has recently secured the rights to show the Formula 1 racing which was previously shown exclusively in the UK on the BBC channels. Sky told T3 that not only would the live video stream of each race be available on its dedicated Sky Sports F1 HD channel but also on the iPad too. A dedicated iPad app would also deliver a whole host of additional content too.

Bolstering the broadcaster's Formula 1 coverage that, combined with the televised and website content, will come under the header of 'Sky Race Control', the Sky F1 application is currently under development ahead of release in time for the season's opening F1 GP on March 18th. "There will be apps," said Martin Turner, Executive Producer on the upcoming Sky Sports F1 HD channel in reference to the company's planned motor racing coverage. He tantalisingly added: "One of the things that is being developed for the app is the four-way split." Remaining somewhat cagey on the matter, Owen Williams Head of Projects in Sky Sport's Digital Media division said "There are certain things going on at the moment that will happen." He added: "The aim of Sky Race Control is to replicate the offering across all of our platforms.”

The app for the iPad should be available before the first race of the season; which takes place on March 18 in Melbourne, Australia. Sky has never been shy to embrace the iPad and harness what it can offer. Sky already offers apps like Sky Go, Sky Sports New and Sky News so expect the Sky Race Control app to deliver another excellent experience when it launches; especially if it manages to pull off the four-way multiscreen viewing.

Source: T3

Another week behind us, and it was quite full of surprises and iPad 3 news. In the middle of the week Apple introduced us to Mountain Lion, another step towards unifying the OS X and iOS experience into one. With tons of news coming at you, odds are you missed something, so let’s check out some of what took place this week.

iPhone news

• iPad's biggest competition isn't the Kindle Fire — it's the iPhone 4S
• Apple rumored to be improving fast Camera access in iOS 5.1

iPad news

• iPad 3 parts assembly point to Retina display, better camera, slightly thicker casing
• iPad 3 announcement March 7, quad-core, possible 4G LTE
• Apple rumored to be testing a smaller, 8-inch iPad
• 2048×1536 pixel Retina display examined, rumored to be iPad 3 bound

App news

• Death Call vs Warm Gun: iPhone steampunk western game shootout
• Clear review: bright, bold task list manager for iPhone
• Hands on with Messages for Mac beta
• Apple approved apps leak more private data than their jailbroken counterparts

How Tos

• How to get started with iPhone photography
• How to update jailbreak apps through Cydia
• How to take great looking portraits with your iPhone camera