It appears as though Apple’s FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) for iBooks has been cracked, allowing iBooks to work on non-iOS ePub readers. MobileRead Forums reports:

It is now possible to remove the DRM from epub ebooks bought in Apple’s iBooks store. “Brahms”, has recently released a new version, 3.3, of his Requiem software, which has been able to remove DRM from music and videos bought in the iTunes Music Store for a long time. This new version can also remove the DRM from Apple’s epub format ebooks.

DRM cracking has been a long standing problem for Apple and other platform owners, originally with iTunes music and video content, later with App Store apps. While Apple dropped FairPlay DRM from iTunes music in 2009, it’s remained in place for everything else.

DRM protects authors and other creators from illegal distribution of their content (we all like to get paid for the work we do), though when poorly thought out or overzealously implemented, it can also stop legitimate customers from enjoying the content they purchased.

FairPlay tends to be pretty liberal, allowing up to 5 Mac or Windows PCs to be authorized for iTunes content, and up to 10 iOS devices, including iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV to access services like iTunes Match.

It’s likely Apple is investigating the issue and will have a FairPlay fix put into place via a software update for iTunes and the iBookstore in the near future, but it’s a cat-and-mouse game so we probably haven’t heard the last of it.

Source: MobileRead Forums via CNET

Phil, Simon, and Alex have splashed down in Barcelona and are ready to assault Mobile World Congress 2012, Mobile Nations style, and bring you back absolutely everything Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, (and even iPhone and iPad if they can find it!). Listen in!

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Agenda

• Complete Android coverage
• Complete BlackBerry coverage
• Complete iPhone/iPad coverage
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Hosts

• Phil Nickinson (@philnickinson) of Android Central
• Simon Sage (@simonsage) of CrackBerry.com
• Alex Dobie (@alexdobie) of Android Central

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Credits

Our music is pROgraM vs. Us3R by by morgantj.

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“Whether you’re new to jogging or are a seasoned marathoner, there are tons of great iPhone apps and accessories will help you to be the best runner you can possibly be.”

The iPhone is the perfect companion for those looking to get into jogging or running, or those looking to keep their long-term training fun and fresh. Since it’s health and Fitness month here at iMore and the Mobile Nations network, we’re going to take a look a the very best accessories and apps that’ll help you get the most out of your experience.

One important thing to remember before getting started is to always keep yourself properly hydrated when going on a run. Keeping a water bottle with you is a great idea, but if you can’t, make sure to get a good amount of hydration during your warmup and cool down periods. The fact is, when you run, you sweat. A lot. Whether it’s just a quick jog or a long, 10-15 mile run, proper hydration is absolutely essential to keeping your body going without over-stressing your cardiovascular system.

Tune Belt Sport Armband for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S

The Tune Best Armband is the best armband out there for both heavy running and light jogging. It features a protective window cover and washable material, with support for right side up or upside down orientation to match every type of workout you can imagine. Attach it to your arm or even your thigh with the EX3 length extender pushing it beyond the default 9-17 inch adjustment options if needed (EX3 sold separately). The dual-orientation also makes for a more convenient way to access your iPhone without requiring you to remove it from the armband. Just extend your arm up to eye level, and you can navigate through your iPhone without the hassle of stopping, removing it from the case, and tapping through to what you need.

The great thing about the Tune Best Armband is the stretchable form-fitting material, which supports newer iPhone models as well as the older, bulkier iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. You’ll never have to stress about your iPhone being exposed to water damage if you’re running out in the rain or snow with the water-proof design, and the protective front cover ensures a scratch-resistant environment in case you happen to slip or fall while you’re out on a jog in less than ideal weather.

For safety nuts, the Tune Best Armband includes a highly reflective logo for night jogging, and you won’t have to worry about your earbud cord getting in the way with the built-in cord organizer. Just wrap your earbud cable around the flap for a tangle-free experience! For runners, the Tune Belt Sport Armband is definitely the way to go.

• Protective cover with waterproof design
• Earbud cord organizer for tangle-free running
• Form fitting to older iPhones
• Reflective logo for safety

$14.99+ — Buy Now

Polk Audio UltraFit sports headphones

There’s nothing worse than headsets that fall or flop out of your ears when you’re running. It completely takes you out of the zone and leaves you fumbling for your music rather than focusing on your run. Enter UltraFit, a range of high performance headsets specifically engineered to stay in your ears, even if you’re running cross-country (or jumping on a trampoline!)

Polk offers both cheaper and premium alternatives, and because of the design, the UltraFit don’t block out all noise — so you can hear cars getting close or friends complaining when you leave them in the dust. The hire end models also include remote controls on the cables to easily control your audio apps without fussing with your iPhone.

• Tangle free, planar cables
• SecureFit to stay in place
• Moisture shields
• Two cable choices, 14 and 41-inches

$49.95 – $99.95 – Buy Now

RunKeeper

RunKeeper is quite possibly the best app out there for runners. RunKeeper uses the GPS included in the iPhone to measure distance, elevation, duration, speed and pace of your run, and more. It also follows your routes on a map and gives you the ability to plan your route ahead of time, giving you a much better overall idea of how easy or difficult your run will be — all before even getting started! RunKeeper also comes with the following features:

• Social Network Sharing
• Personalized Dashboard
• Target Pace with built-in coaching (via headphones)
• Interval workouts/runs

The app also includes full iPod integration, so you won’t have to jump out of the app and into music library in order to change tracks or switch to another playlist.

In addition, RunKeeper includes audio prompts that cycle through your headphones to give you information and updates on your run without any user input required. If you’re new to running or if you’ve been running for a while, RunKeeper is definitely the first app you’ll want to look into.

Free — Download Now

Get Running (Couch to 5K)

Get Running is an app for new runners. This little gem of an app will get you running for a full 30 minutes, non-stop, by integrating three daily workouts over a nine-week period, starting slow and building up to the ability to finish a full 5K run!

• Social Sharing
• Set up a personalized plan
• iPod integration for working with or without your music
• Full activity and achievement log

Get Running is the only 5K running app that coaches you up like an actual human coach would, so you’ll feel more motivated to keep progressing as you go through the program. By encouraging you to keep moving forward, you’ll be able to run a full 5K stretch in no time!

If you’re new to running and want to make the process a bit less scary, Get Running is the app for you!

$2.99 — Download Now

iMapMyRun+

iMapMyRun is a more basic running app that does exactly what the title implies. It maps your run and gives you information related to your run, such as pace, distance, caloric output, nutrition information, elevation, heart rate stats and features a live route map update in real-time as you go.

The app offers great social integration as well, so if you’re into building up your bragging rights amongst fellow runners, iMapMyRun+ offers an always up-to-date list of the latest runs you or your friends have been on.

Just like RunKeeper, iMapMyRun+ features voice prompts to update you with all of these stats on-the-go so you don’t have to stop and check the app to see how you’re doing. You also have the option of posting bragging rights to Twitter and Facebook if you want to keep your friends up to date on how you’re doing. It also includes full iPod integration with a GPS camera. The free app comes with ads, so you’ll have to purchase the full app if you don’t want that to become an annoyance for you.

$1.99 — Download Now

Now get running!

Whether you’re new to jogging or are a seasoned marathoner, there are tons of great iPhone apps and accessories will help you to be the best runner you can possibly be. I’ve been using these apps and accessories to help get in shape, and I couldn’t have picked a better device to assist in the process. The iPhone — paired with these apps and accessories — is the perfect solution for running and jogging.

If you have any additional accessories or apps that you consider the best-of-the-best, make sure to mention them in the comments below. And if you're joining us for Mobile Nations Fitness Month, and P90X is your plan of choice, jump into our Health & Fitness Forum and work out with us!

Fake iPhones are starting to become a common sight on the streets of New York as criminals look to cash in on the huge demand for the latest Apple device. The problem however is that the iPhones being sold by illegal vendors are probably fake. The latest discovery took place on Ninth Avenue at 39^th Street a few weeks back where an NYPD officer approached a vendor who was trying to sell a brand new boxed iPhone 4 for just $150; of course it was a fake.

The iPhone in question looked like a fake with a much inferior build quality, smaller screen and ill fitting buttons. Remarkably the fake iPhone did turn on and run apps. The apps of course were not iOS apps but some horrible copy with blurry screens; certainly not retina quality that's for sure! NYPD later discovered that the illegal vendor also worked out of a store and promptly acquired a warrant to search the premises.

Officers raided the store on Feb. 9 and found what the police described as among the larger inventories of fake Apple electronics for sale on the East Coast. They said there were 436 iPhones, 21 iPads, 128 iPods — all fake. An official from Apple showed up to verify as much. "If you walked in and said, 'I want a 32-gigabyte white iPhone,' they had it," Sergeant O'Connell said. "The iPad was the size of a Kindle screen." Some devices turned on, while others appeared to need to be plugged in first. The police said they also found $2,400 in cash, a bunch of security cameras and two people working, Cindy Liu, 25, and Mo Ling, 36, who were arrested.

The fakes are all believed to come from China with some even being assembled from parts stolen from official Apple assembly lines. One thing is for sure, these are not iPhones and not manufactured by Apple. Of course some people actually like the fake devices and are well aware of what they are getting into. For others, it could be a nasty surprise when they open the box expecting a genuine iPhone despite the low cost!

Source: The New York Times

There’s nothing like getting up close and personal, and that holds true for photography, even iPhoneography. Life is full of small, interesting things — a flower, an insect, your newborn’s tiny toes — and these things make for great photography.

This week’s iPhone photography project is, you guessed it — macro! Macro simply means close-up photography — not zoomed, but the lens being physically close to the subject. The keys to good macro photography, even on an iPhone, are becoming familiar with the focus distance of your lens and nailing that focus, light, composition, and making your subject stand out.

Don’t get too close

Macro photography is, by definition, close-up photography, but that doesn’t mean you can get as close as you want. If you get too close, the lens will not be able to achieve a focus. I don’t know the exact distance, but somewhere around 4 inches is the minimum focus distance of the iPhone’s lens. So if you’re struggling with locking a focus, back up.

Use AE/AF lock

How many times have you attempted to focus on your subject only to have the the lens tease you by immediately losing focus or losing focus while you’re busy perfecting your composition. This is why taking advantage of the somewhat hidden AE/AF lock feature is so helpful with macro photography.

When enabled, AE/AF lock preserves the focus and exposure on the lens so that you can recompose your shot without either of these settings being changed. To enable it, just hold your finger on the screen at the spot you want to be in focus until the blue square pulsates. When you release, “AE/AF Lock” will appear at the bottom of the screen.

I recommend always use AE/AF lock when taking macro photos for composing your shots, but you can also use it as a way to combat those times when your iPhone refuses to focus. When this happens, find something else that your iPhone will focus on (keys usually work and are something I always have with me) and trigger AE/AF focus on this object. Then remove that item from the frame and move closer/further to your subject until it’s in focus. Then fine tune your composition and trigger the shutter!

Don’t block your light source

Light is the most important element to good photography, but since macro photography means you’re getting close to your subject, it’s very easy to accidentally block your light source. Be aware of this and make it a priority to allow as much light as possible to fall on your subject. Sometimes this means positioning yourself in a very awkward way, but trust me, it’s worth it.

Use shallow depth of field to add interest to your photo

You may have heard of terms like “bokeh” and “depth of field” thrown around in regards to photography. Bokeh refers to the part of the photograph that is out of focus (more specifically — the quality of the out-of-focus area) and the range of focus is called “depth of field”. A photo with a shallow depth of field means that the range of focus is very small. This is often times a very desirable trait for a photograph to have.

Obtaining a shallow depth of field is a combination of focal length, aperture, and distance to your subject. With an iPhone, the only thing you can control is distance and since the closer you are to the focused area, the shallower the depth of field, macro iPhoneography is your opportunity use the out of focus area to enhance your photograph.

One thing that people commonly forget is that the surroundings and background of your photo have a great impact on the final image. If the out of focus area of your photo is related to the main subject, it ties everything together nicely and makes for a more interesting photo.

Now go out and shoot!

Your assignment for this week is to go out and take some killer macro shots then head over to the Photography Forum, ask questions, share your results, and offer feedback to your fellow iPhoneographers!

Why would Microsoft make Office for iPad, and why would Apple want it?

There’s been a bit of a brouhaha this week over the possibility of Microsoft Office coming to the iPad. It’s been teased, denied, rumored for a keynote spot at the anticipated iPad 3 event, summarily dismissed and otherwise masterfully debated everywhere from blogs to social streams and back.

But does it even matter? Is it merely the significance and symbolism of the idea itself — having Office on iPad — that’s important, or is anyone actually expecting killer software when years of Office on Mac still haven’t provided a truly excellent, fully compatible experience?

Why would Microsoft make Office for iPad?

While education has always been a stronghold of Apple’s, and according to their Q1 2012 conference call, almost the entire Fortune 500 is testing or deploying iPads, for everyone from students to enterprise, having a real, compatible Microsoft Office suite on Windows 8 Tablets could very well sway consumer dollars in Microsoft’s direction.

Why then would Microsoft want to release Office for iPad — Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — when making Office an exclusive for their upcoming Windows 8 tablets would boost Microsoft’s own platform and give it a fighting chance against the Apple incumbent?

Because Microsoft is a software licensing company. It’s what they do. Sure, they talk a good platform game, and they’ve succeeded in building platforms, but at their core they’re the guys who licensed DOS and BASIC to the world.

Take Exchange ActiveSync as precedent. Exchange was Microsoft’s attempt to displace BlackBerry from the enterprise. It was the crown jewel of Windows Mobile, the predecessor of Windows Phone. And Microsoft gave it to Apple, Google, and others.

They hurt — badly hurt — Windows Mobile to help — really help — Exchange ActiveSync. They chose software licensing over platform success. They chose beating BlackBerry over helping Apple and Google.

There are hundreds of millions of iOS devices on the market. The revenue that could be realized by selling Microsoft Office licenses at $30 a pop (assuming a price similar to what Apple charges for the full iWork suite) to those hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users is compelling. Even if Microsoft begins solely with an iPad version of Office — as Apple did with iWork — tens of millions of licenses is nothing to sneeze at, not even for Microsoft. It might even make up for a lot of ~$15 Windows 8 Tablet licenses Office on iPad costs them. Software licensing over platform success.

And hey, if Office on iPad helps Microsoft compete against Google Docs, all the better.

Office on iPad could also be similar to Office on Mac — a second class experience that leads users, and enterprise, dependent on Microsoft’s software to switch over to Microsoft platform to get done what they desperately need to get done.

Of course, Microsoft doesn’t make Halo for the PlayStation 3, so it’s possible Office for tablets will be considered in the same way, but if iPads are really the mainstream consumer computing appliance of the future, Microsoft will want their software, and revenue stream, to be on it.

Why would Apple want Office on iPad?

Microsoft owned, utterly and completely owned, the last wave of personal computing from the operating system that still runs 9 out of 10 PCs to the Office software the powers a massive percentage of work and home productivity alike. Having Office on iPad could pull people away from Apple’s existing iWork software and take money from their pockets.

Why then would Apple want Office released on iPad when it would eclipse Apple’s own iWork suite — Pages, Keynote, and Numbers — with a far more established, more functional competitor on Apple’s own platform?

Because Apple is a hardware company. It’s what they want. They make razors and rely on compelling but convenient and commoditize razorblades to increase the attractiveness of their products. They’re the guys who give iOS away for free and run iTunes and the App Store at just above cost.

Take Office on Mac as a precedent. Office on Mac mattered so much that, upon his return to Apple, Steve Jobs let Bill Gates dwarf him on the keynote stage to announce the deal that would keep Office on the Mac for years to come. It didn’t matter that then, like now, Office on Mac wasn’t great software (consider iTunes on Windows revenge) it only mattered that it was Office and it was on the Mac. It was good enough for most of the people most of the time. It checked a box and removed a barrier to purchase.

The same holds true for Office on iPad. There is a segment of the market, consumer and enterprise, who simply won’t buy or use something that doesn’t run Office. Put Office on it and that box gets checked, that barrier to purchase gets busted down.

Does any of that matter?

If Microsoft can work a Windows 7-class miracle and make a fantastic multitouch version of Office, then absolutely it matters. It’d be a fantastic win for everyone. Microsoft’s reputation for tablet software would grow, which would encourage consumers to give Microsoft’s other offerings, including their platform, a chance. Apple would get more killer software to help them sell more iPads. And customers would get a really great Office suite to work with.

If Office is as middling as it is on Mac, Microsoft’s reputation for poor off-platform software will persist, but Apple will still get a massive name on the App Store, and customers will get an app that may frustrate them but will still be familiar and somewhat comforting.

That’s assuming Microsoft is even making Office for iPad.

The symmetry of an Office for iPad announcement at the iPad 3 event makes for compelling conjecture.

The last time Microsoft appeared on an Apple stage it was to rescue Apple from near bankruptcy and pledge Office to Apple’s user base to mitigate Microsoft’s anti-trust concerns. If Microsoft appears again, it would be to acknowledge Apple’s unprecedented success in consumer electronics and offer Office to Apple’s massive user base.

If it doesn’t happen during the iPad 3 event, it could still happen by way of press release and sudden appearance on the App Store. I don’t have any specific information one way or another, my guess is it will happen.

Microsoft is a software licensing company. Apple is a hardware company. It’s what they do. It’s what they want.

Feels like it’s just a matter of time.

Update: Guy English has a smart take, and killer closing, on this as well on Kicking Bear

It’s not long before Facebook will require everyone to switch to the new timeline profiles and Cover Photo Maker for Facebook is here to help you design the perfect header for your timeline.

It comes equipped with 16 templates sized perfectly for a Facebook Cover photo. Each template is a collage of 1-5 photos with customization of border thickness and color. For even more personalization, Cover Photo Maker for Facebook has over 30 unique and stylized fonts for text. When your cover is ready, you can upload it directly to Facebook, email it, or save it to your camera roll.

Cover Photo Maker for Facebook is very easy to use and is a quick and easy way to create a unique cover for your Facebook timeline. However, it’s not quite perfect. The biggest disappointment being that the resolution of the final image leaves a lot to be desired. I’m a photo snob, though, so the results may be more than satisfying for someone else.

It would also be nice if the app overlaid a box exactly where you’d expect your profile photo to be, so that can make sure none of the important elements of your cover photo will be hidden behind your profile picture.

If anyone picks this one up, we’d love to see your results in the iMore Photography Forum!

$1.99 – Download Now