The Griffin Binder Insert Case for iPad is a brilliant idea. I'm actually shocked I haven't seen more of these! It seems like the prefect accessory for those headed back to school.

The basic idea for the Griffin Binder Insert Case is this -- take an iPad case, press three standard spaced holes along one side, and make it perfectly fit a school or work binder. I love it. There's even a built-in pen holder which you can use for a regular pen to take your paper notes, a stylus to take your iPad notes, or even better, a hybrid stylus pen that lets you do both all in one.

The Griffin Binder Insert Case makes it easy to get your iPad 2 or new iPad in or out. It's also bi-directional, with the same cutouts on both sides, so it doesn't matter which way you put it in. It has a soft, plush suede-like interior to protect your iPad's back, and a really nice looking stitched black faux-leather exterior so it works well not just for school, but in business and executive settings as well.

The construction on the Griffin Binder Insert Case is really solid, even the stitching. It's not real leather, but that cuts down on the price and makes it more environmentally friendly if that's a concern. In my tests it held up to all the binder-thowing, desk tossing, and (not locker) door slamming I could come up with. Depending on how thick your binder is, and how many notes you have in it, the paper even works as extra protection.

And stealth! What better way to hide an iPad than in the plain site of your workbook?

The good

• Good looking and durable
• Easy to use
• Convenient

The bad

• Not real leather
• Won't appeal to non-binder users (of course!)

The conclusion

If you or anyone you know has an iPad and uses binders, be it for school or for work, the Griffin Binder Insert Case is an excellent buy. It lets you keep your digital workbook and traditional workbook -- your iPad and papers -- in once convenient place, with room for your stylus, or pen, or stylus pen as well!

$24.99 - Buy now

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads, it's giving cool iPhone and iPad accessories and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have...

Weekly Photo Contest: Shadows!
LaPs

Congratulations LaPs! You'll be contacted during the week with information on claiming your prize. This week's photo challenge is Silhouettes. If you'd like more information and to enter, you can head over to the forums at the link below.

Enter iMore's Weekly Photo Contest: Silhouettes

By default, iMessage and SMS messages will show previews and alerts on the Lock screen and Home screen of your iPhone, and iMessage previews and alerts on your iPad and iPhone. If you'd rather keep your messages -- be they big business dealings or super secret sextings, we don't judge! -- away from prying eyes, and give yourself some privacy, it's easy to do.

How to turn off iMessage and SMS previews on your iPhone and iPad

By default iOS will show a short preview of your iMessage (or SMS) on both the Lock screen and Home screen. If you'd rather have your notification only show the sender's name, however, you can easily adjust the settings of the Messages app to do so.

1. Launch the Settings app from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad Home screen.

2. Tap Notifications and then Messages.

3. Scroll down to Show Preview.
4. Toggle the option to Off if you don't want iMessage or SMS previews. That will make sure only the sender's name will show in the notifications.

How to turn off message alerts on your iPhone and iPad

If you'd like to additional privacy when it comes to iMessage and SMS, or just want to conserve battery life by minimizing the amounts of alerts you get, the Messages app also allows you to customize the kind of alerts you receive and how often for both iPhone and iPad.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.

2. Tap Notifications and then Messages.
3. Under the Alert Style section you can change the type of notification alerts you receive. For maximum privacy you can completely disable alerts by selecting None.

Changes will affect both iMessages and regular SMS messages. Even though you turned off the alert notification, unless you disable sound separately, a tone will still play, however, no alerts will pop up.

Not only will this add more privacy but it'll maximize battery life by not waking up the screen every time you receive an iMessage or SMS.

Veister, a company specializing in USB cables, has posted a photo to their Twitter account of what could be the sync cable for the next generation of iOS devices and revised versions of current products that will work in conjunction with the much expected micro dock connector.

The cable in question could be what we'll see ship with the next generation iPhone. How many pins the dock will have is still up for debate but most sources claim 8 or 9 pins even though this would greatly reduce backwards compatibility with current accessories.

Regardless, we should find out in a little under a month from now when Apple is expected to make an official announcement.

Source: 9to5Mac

The iMore Show returns LIVE tonight and we'll be talking about what LTE means for the iPhone, and what the iPad mini means for our holiday shopping plans! Plus, we'll be answering your questions so leave them in the comments below, #imoreshow them on Twitter, or email them to podcast@imore.com.

So join Rene, Georgia, and Seth, and the best looking chat room in mobile, LIVE tonight at 6pm PDT, 9pm EDT, 2am BST for all the action.

We'll also have a live ZEN and TECH Parenting for you tonight immediately thereafter. Topic is children and food/eating, so stay tuned!

Seriously. Set an alarm. Bookmark this page. Be there.

Want to go full screen? Head to iMore.com/live. Want to watch via iPhone or iPad? Grab the Ustream app and search for "mobilenations"!

The value of a company is whatever people are willing to pay for it. And for public companies like Apple, that value equates to an open market stock price times however many shares there are in existence. Street lingo for this is market capitalization, or simply "market cap".

Apple is the world's most valuable company. Period. Not just among technology companies, but among all companies in the world. Apple is worth a staggering $624 billion as I write this paragraph. It's stock price is hovering around $673 and since there are 937 million shares outstanding, multiplying those two numbers together gives us that immense market cap.

To hit a $1 trillion market cap, the stock price needs to climb to $1067, which is 59% higher than today's price. Of course, one trillion dollars is an arbitrary number. But lots of public companies are worth over $100 billion, and the next zero to be added gets you to a trillion. So it's psychologically important. Will Apple be the first company to achieve it?

I've said before that I think they will. Back in February, when I said, "I'm in the camp that believes Apple will become the world's first trillion dollar company", the stock price was about to reach a new high of $500. We're already up 35% since that date. And while the stock price gyrates, and Wall Street gets upset with Apple's latest financial guidance (yet again), the growth continues.

Apple's creation of iOS has single handedly transformed the company from a Mac + iPod business into a mobile computing business. In the last year (Street folks call this "trailing twelve months"), Apple generated revenue of $149 billion. iPhone and iPad sales account for the majority of this.

China is one factor fueling Apple's growth. On the company's Q2 conference call, held back in April, Tim Cook talked about how sales in China had grown threefold year over year. China had gone from nowhere to 20% of total company revenues in one year.

As much as the iPhone has driven huge sales, I am honestly more excited about the iPad. Compared to a laptop computer, the iPad is infinitely more portable, always on, delivers much better battery life, and costs a lot less. Consuming content on it is much more comfortable. Parents worry less about their kids getting their grimy hands on it, or spilling a bit of apple juice onto its surface. In education, it offers to dramatically reduce the cost of textbooks. In short, the iPad, for many people, is superior to a laptop in many use cases.

Despite Android dominating the smartphone market in China, the iPad has over 72% share of the Chinese tablet market. But this is still a tiny market, with Apple selling less than 3 million iPads last quarter in a country with well over a billion people.

The tablet market, including iPad, is also small on a global basis when you compare it to the PC market. Apple sold only 17 million iPads last quarter (Q3 fiscal 2012). Annualize this and you get 68 million. The PC market is closer to 500 million units. Industry analysts expect units sold in the tablet market to exceed the PC market by 2015. I'm not sure if the date will turn out to be accurate or not, but I have no hesitation in adopting the view that tablets will outsell PCs at some point in the next few years.

This is the revolution that matters, and Apple owns it. Look back to the Mac vs. PC battle of decades past. Apple always held onto about 6% of the market. But today, in mobile, they're set to hold onto a much larger chunk. Who knows what the percentage share will settle at, but I think we can all agree that it will be a lot more than 6%.

Right now, Apple has held onto its pricing power, to boot. How has it done this? Part of it is sexy hardware and great software, as usual. But the real reason comes down to ecosystem. iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac, iTunes, iOS apps and iCloud all play well together, by design. Apple has a strangle hold on its users, even though we (as users) probably think of it as more of a cuddle, less of a choke.

So how high can Apple's stock go? That really depends upon the time frame, I suppose. But if Apple can actually own 30-60% of the mobile computing market while hanging onto its fat profit margins, then we're going to look back at the one trillion dollar market cap goal and laugh. For investors ... laughing all the way to the bank.

AT&T has responded to concerns about their new FaceTime Over Cellular policies which will require their customers to be on a mobile share plan in order to utilize the feature. While many believe this restriction violates the FCC's net neutrality laws, AT&T doesn't think it does.

While the FCC does restrict companies from blocking apps, AT&T says that only applies to downloadable apps and not pre-installed apps. Since FaceTime comes pre-installed on every iOS device, they have the right to restrict use.

The FCC's net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability to customers of applications that are preloaded on phones. Indeed, the rules do not require that providers make available any preloaded apps. Rather, they address whether customers are able to download apps that compete with our voice or video telephony services. AT&T does not restrict customers from downloading any such lawful applications, and there are several video chat apps available in the various app stores serving particular operating systems. (I won't name any of them for fear that I will be accused by these same groups of discriminating in favor of those apps. But just go to your app store on your device and type "video chat.") Therefore, there is no net neutrality violation.

Whether or not the FCC will agree with AT&T isn't yet clear. The New York Times recently stated that AT&T actually is in violation of FCC regulations and that the carrier can not block applications that compete with a carrier's own voice or telephony services.

Regardless whether the app is pre-installed or not, FaceTime should probably be considered a competing service. The fact that a specific data plan is required in order to use it is another contention point. Data is data and regardless what tier you're on, you're paying for the same bits and bytes. It still begs the question, why should one tiered data plan be treated different than any other? If customers go over their allotment, charge them appropriate overages and call it a day. Forcing customers on a plan they don't want or need doesn't seem to be in anyone's best interest.

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A rare Apple iPhone N90 prototype, the code name for the iPhone 4 series, has appeared for sales on eBay with a very strange logo on the back panel. Rather than the usual Apple logo which we all know and love, this prototype has a logo which appears to resemble the Death Star from the Star Wars movies.

The eBay description states that the iPhone 4 prototype has a storage capacity of 32GB. The back panel is not screwed to the shell like the final retail version of the iPhone 4; this prototype uses a back clamp system which has been broken so the back panel falls off very easily.

We have seen a few prototype iPhone models before, but not many that are still operational. This one has had a battery replaced but does still turn on and is fully operational. When we say operational, don't expect to be able to make and receive calls or upgrade it to iOS 5. It only runs Apple's test software suite, SwitchBoard.

If you want to get your hands on a piece of unique Apple history, you can make a bid of $4500 or more. If you really want to make sure you aren't outbid you can contact the seller with an offer of $10,000 and it's yours. That's if Apple doesn't have it removed first.

Source: eBay via 9to5 Mac

ThinkO for iPhone and iPad is a mind challenging puzzle game that focuses on your cognitive skills. The goal is simple: to move the rows and columns of rings to match the same colored squares. The challenging part is that every time you make a move, more squares start appearing, so if you aren't efficient with your choices, you will trap yourself with too many squares.

Concentration, problem solving, processing speed and memory are all required for being successful at playing ThinkO. As the game evolves, the levels become more challenging, requiring more sophisticated thinking skills. For example, as you play the game, large rings will appear in the levels. The rings are a bit of a hindrance because each one takes up the space of four squares, thus requiring you to move the two rows or columns containing it at a time. To get rid of a ring, you must make a sufficient amount of matches that are the same color as the ring.

In addition to the above mentioned rings, ThinkO also has special rings that will help you in the game. They become available as you progress and can also be purchased as in app purchased. Here's a list of the different rings available:

• Rainbow rings are viral and contaminate adjacent ones
• Diamond rings remove an entire block
• Poison rings turn everything into green
• Thunder rings eliminate all blocks in their path
• Diamond rain drops single diamond rings everywhere

Although I haven't yet progressed very far in the game, I am really enjoying ThinkO. Puzzle games are my favorite because they require you to think, and ThinkO is no exception! ThinkO is definitely a great time-waster, but don't think of it as waste of time to play it -- by playing ThinkO, you are exercising your brain and improving your thinking skills!

$1.99 - Download Now

Nikon has announced a new Coolpix S800c digital pocket camera, but one with a twist -- it runs the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system.. That means not only can you take photos, but once you've taken them, you can do pretty much anything with them you could do with smartphone photos, including processing them and sharing them to your favorite social networks.

Now the iPhone 4S already has a pretty great camera, and who knows what the iPhone 5 will be packing, so do dedicated point-and-shoots even matter anymore? And this Nikon will be running a relatively old version of Android, quite a bit behind the current Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that all our friends over at Android Central are raving about. So... should this even matter to Apple?

I don't see Apple licensing out iOS to Canon anytime soon, but I don't see them making a traditional, dedicated camera any more either. That's the past and Apple is all about the future. We asked our resident product rendering expert, John Anastasiadis, what he thought. The image above is what he came up with -- using an iPhone as the "brain" for a camera attachment. It would slide onto a next generation iPhone and add profoundly better optics to the already excellent internet connectivity and interface.

Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs famously said he wanted to revolutionize photography the way he had computers, phones, tablets, and music. Did he mean making a camera, or making Apple's existing digital devices better at photography than conventional cameras? Or something else entirely?

What do you think? Now that Nikon has gone Android, does Apple need to get into the camera business? Would you buy an iOS-powered camera from Apple? An iPhone camera attachment? Neither? Something else? Vote up top and let me know the details below!

It's time to announce this week's photo contest -- Silhouettes! Last week, we focused on shadows and many of our (very awesome) entries were technically silhouettes, so it was only natural for us to move specifically to silhouettes for this week! silhouettes are often times very moody, dramatic, and/or romantic and are classic genre of photography. Although classic, in continues to be a favorite style -- and we want to see your style!

The prize: Glif tripod mount and stand!

In addition to a thumbs up from the iMore crew and all of us yelling about how great of a photo star you are, the winner of this week's photography contest will receive a Glif tripod mount and stand!

The rules

The rules of entry are very simple. The photo must have been taken with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch (we'll check the EXIF data of the original file to verify) and any edits must have been done with an iPhone or iPad app. No Photoshop CS6! If you have external lens accessories you are more than welcome to use them. You can submit as many photos as you'd like, but remember, this is a contest, so make sure you submit your best work!

Resources

Now, before you run off to take your photo, remember that it's not technical skill alone that will claim this prize. Even if you're not the best photographer (yet!), a great eye and a great subject can still get you the win.

However, a little help can never hurt, so make sure you check out these articles from our iPhone photography series for some tips.

• How to take great looking portraits with your iPhone
• How to make your iPhone photography more striking with the "rule of thirds"
• How to make your iPhone photographs more powerful with negative space

How to submit

Submitting your photos is easy. just head over to the iMore Photography Forum and post your photos to the official contest thread. Don't forget to state which apps, if any, you used to edit your photo!

That's it! Now go out and shoot!

ENTER NOW