Been a busy week, so I'm going to rock the bullet points, Phil Nickinson style.

• The picture up top is from last night. I went to see the live version of Dreamworks' How to Train your Dragon, and to say it was spectacular would be to do it a disservice. They combine 20 projectors (at $100k a pop), an incredible wire rig, and several full sized, brilliantly realized animatronic dragons into something you truly have to experience to believe. Watching Toothless take off did indeed make me believe a dragon could fly. If it comes to a city near you, check it out. And if you're up for it, stick around and meet the dragons afterwards. They're state-of-the-art-of-FX, and will not fail to impress.
• Apple vs. Samsung is winding down in the U.S., but Motorola vs. Apple is picking up. While some may wish everyone involved would just cut it all out, they're big businesses and big money is involved, and until there's patent reform and much better precedent, it isn't going anywhere, any time soon. So he question is, how does iMore cover it? Regular updates? Ignore the law and focus on interesting tangents like iPhone and iPad prototypes? Ignore them completely? What kind of coverage would you like to see?
• As promised, we're continuing to roll out iMore 2.0 features. Here's the latest -- you can now subscribe to comments and get email alerts only when someone responds to you, or when any new comment is made on a post you've subscribed too. Consider it a beta for now, but try it out and let me know what you think of it, and how useful you find it?
• So Twitter tightened the ropes on 3rd party client developers one step further this week. I've already given you my opinion, and linked to what other journalists and developers are saying. But to drive it home a little more sharply, I plan to crank up my app.net and Google+ activity from now on. Good services turn bad only when users sit by and do nothing. Give me your feedback, but do it @reneritchie and +Rene Ritchie for change, how about that?
• The iPad mini looks like it's the real deal, but while we've learned it's going to be announced on September 12 alongside the iPhone 5, we haven't heard when it's going to ship yet, other than "October" (and that was a long time ago -- schedules can and do change). We also learned it was going to be $200 to $250, but that was back before the Amazon Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7 failed to achieve any significant traction in the market. So here's the question for this week -- when exactly will the iPad mini hit store shelves and what exactly will be the price?

Now I got me some dragons to train...

Siri with iOS 5 was a decidedly iPhone 4S-only affair, with Apple choosing not to make anything more than Dictation available, even on their 2012 new iPad. That might have been due to the challenges involved in scaling Siri up from the full, albeit small iPhone interface, to the bigger iPad screen. With iOS 6, however, Apple has done it, and Siri is fully launching on the new iPad.

Not only will the iPad 3 get almost all the Siri functionality already available, but also all the new sports results, movie info, restaurant reservations, and Twitter and Facebook sharing, and app launching, iOS 6 has to offer.

The only thing Siri on the iPad will be lacking are the phone call features of the iPhone. Because: no Phone app or voice connection. However, FaceTime works and could fill in for the phone when "calling" other iOS users.

From the mockups shown on Apple.com, it's easy to see how Apple has addressed the Siri interface on iPad -- pretty much how they addressed Notification Center. What we haven't yet seen is how they'll handle Siri's network connection requirements on non-cellular devices.

Right now, Siri is only on the iPhone 4S, which is expected to have cellular data available when Wi-Fi isn't -- so Siri can theoretically always connect to Apple's servers to bring back results (even if, practically speaking, it's a completely different story). While there are LTE 4G/3G enabled iPads, there are also Wi-Fi only iPads.

If you put an iPhone 4S in Airplane mode and try to use Siri, you get a network connection popup, similar to the one you get if you try to use Safari, Mail, or any other internet connected app. It's possible, perhaps even likely, a Wi-Fi iPad that's not on Wi-Fi will spit up the same error.

However, neither Safari nor Mail are attached to the Home button and marketed like a Pixar character, so the error could be more unexpected. Could Siri have a small, localized, canned response to stay in character while informing us it's off the network?

We'll find out soon enough. iOS 6 is scheduled for release this fall, perhaps as soon as September 19.

In the meantime, for more on iOS 6 and Siri, check out:

• Siri: The ultimate guide
• Everything you need to know about iOS 6
• iOS 6 discussion forum

About a week ago Mat Honan shared how is digital life was annihilated thanks to a hacker, and the lackadaisical security policies of Apple and Amazon. Now, Honan has shared how he restored his Dropbox account and security information stored in 1Password, reclaimed his Twitter and Google accounts, and most importantly reclaimed the priceless family photos he had stored on his laptop hard drive and never backed up. The details of how Honan got his digital life back are all up on Wired.com, and include:

Five hours after the hack started, still locked out of everything, I flipped open the lid of [my wife's] computer, and nervously powered it up. And there it was: my Dropbox. And in it, my 1Password keychain, the gateway to my digital life.

SSD recovery wasn't so easy. It involved sending the hardware to DriveSavers:

The bottom line is that I have all my photos and all the home movies I've shot. Every one of them. And seemingly all of my most important documents as well. That felt like a miracle. The bill for all this? $1,690. Data doesn't come cheap.

Honan is back up and running now, and is setting up more secure, better backed up policies for himself and his data. He hasn't gotten any satisfactory explanations yet from Apple, and is justifiable nervous about the elements of his security and data that are out of his hands.

I've already switched on two-factor verification for Google, and changed a lot of my passwords to newer, gnarlier 1Password generated pseudo-random blobs. Check out the complete story via the link below and let me know -- has what happened to Honan caused you to change you security at all?

Source: Wired.com:

The SuperTooth Buddy is a simple no-nonsense Bluetooth 2.1 device that will connect up to 2 iPhones (or other phones, if for some reason you're not all in on the Apple gear) for hand free use in a car, truck, or other vehicle. Since more and more jurisdictions are forbidding talking or otherwise using a mobile device in your hands while driving, accessories like the SuperTooth Buddy are becoming essential for everyone from those who drive all day for a living, to those who drive to work, to those who drive the kids around.

The SuperTooth Buddy offers full duplexing, digital signal processing to eliminate echoes, and double noise reduction to give you the best sound quality possible over a Bluetooth connection. It also features support for volume control, for call waiting, voice control, and last call redial.

You can either clip the SuperTooth Buddy to your car visor, but it also contains a magnet so it can adhere to any magnetically attracted surface as well. Since it's so small, it's easy to find a convenient place for it, and once attached, the Supertooth Buddy stays out of your way until you need it.

It takes roughly 3 hours to charge the SuperTooth Buddy's lithium-ion battery over USB with the included cable, and that gives you 1000 hours of stand by time and 20 hours of talk time. In my tests, that was pretty good.

Since this is such a no nonsense hands free device, the SuperTooth Buddy does not come with a FM transmitter. In today's market, however, I think the FM transmitter is kind of a necessity to be competitive.

Also, while the SuperTooth Buddy can connect with up to two iPhones (or other Bluetooth enabled devices), the second device that gets added to the unit is greatly limited functionality -- it can only accept or reject calls.

To power up the SuperTooth Buddy, you hold down the power button for about 1 second. Keep holding it down for 5 seconds and you put the SuperTooth Buddy into pairing mode. As with most Bluetooth devices these days, pairing with iOS is simple and straight forward. You go to Settings, General, Bluetooth, wait for the SuperTooth Buddy to show up, and tap on it to connect.

Once paired, you have your standard 30 foot ranger over Bluetooth 2.4GHz, but since the SuperTooth is intended for in-car speakerphone use, that's more than enough.

There is an End button on the SuperTooth Buddy as well, but that feels almost old fashioned at this point. Frankly, they could have got away with omitting the End button entirely by simply using the talk button to accept and reject calls with a second tap.

The volume buttons on the SuperTooth Buddy are large and easy to use, and the talk button will bring up Voice Control on an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, and the Siri personal assistant on an iPhone 4S.

The good

• Extremely small and light
• Easy to set up and use
• Can adhere via magnets

The bad

• No FM transmitter
• Provides limited functionality for second device

The bottom line

The SuperTooth Buddy is a small, no frills Bluetooth speakerphone system designed for those who want to quickly and easily connect up to two iPhones (or other phones) to stay safe on the road. No more, no less. If you're looking for fancier features, like FM transmitters or big, blasting speakers, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a well designed, well built, incredibly portable, incredibly inexpensive speakerphone so you hands can stay on the wheel, where they're supposed to, check out the SuperTooth Buddy.

$32.79 - Buy now

Apple has responded to questions raised by pod2g earlier this week over an SMS vulnerability he discovered in the latest iOS 6 beta 4. The SMS vulnerability could allow someone to abuse the protocol for SMS in order to spoof or send fake text messages. The exploit has been an issue since the incarnation of iOS and is still present in iOS 6 beta 4. Apple issued a statement to The Loop which explains that the problem was not an iPhone specific problem as first thought but down to the SMS protocol used by all phones.

"Apple takes security very seriously. When using iMessage instead of SMS, addresses are verified which protects against these kinds of spoofing attacks," an Apple representative told The Loop. "One of the limitations of SMS is that it allows messages to be sent with spoofed addresses to any phone, so we urge customers to be extremely careful if they're directed to an unknown website or address over SMS."

So there you have it, the problem is not with just the iPhone but it is an SMS problem for every phone. The idea of using iMessage for all messaging on your iPhone sounds like a great one. Unfortunately, from my experience it is not exactly reliable; some messages never reach their destination or the iMessage servers are down when I want to use it. The other problem of course is that if the recipient doesn't have an iPhone then SMS is your only option.

Source: The Loop