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ExtraBITS for 20 February 2012

Interesting bits this week include a look at the new iTunes U, another Tech Night Owl podcast for Adam, Apple’s latest insane app rejection, video of a “Parenting in the Mobile Internet Age” panel from Macworld | iWorld, a humorous look at the downsides of ebooks, and Glenn’s explanation of why the recent security flap about insecure keys isn’t that concerning for readers.

Driving the Classroom with iTunes U — Fraser Speirs digs deep into iTunes U now that the service has graduated beyond offering free iTunes Store lectures to its own iOS app. Speirs teaches at a private school in Scotland, and is an Apple Distinguished Educator whose schedule has lately been packed with travel and speaking engagements related to how he’s implemented a program that provides an iPad for every pupil.

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Bookle, Apple’s Bugs, and the Paperless Office on the Tech Night Owl Live — Adam once again joins host Gene Steinberg on the Tech Night Owl Live to discuss the release of Bookle, the problems Apple has had with Security Update 2012-001 and Mac OS X 10.7.3, and how the iPad may finally be ushering in the age of the paperless office.

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Air Dictate 2.0: Latest Insane App Store Rejection — The story so far: Avatron created the Air Dictate app to use the iPhone 4S’s speech dictation for dictating into apps running on your Mac. After initially approving it, Apple pulled the 1.0 version from the App Store, citing Avatron’s use of a non-public method of invoking Siri, so Avatron revised Air Dictate 2.0 to eliminate that interface approach. Now Apple is rejecting the app for lack of compliance with Apple’s trademark guidelines, despite the fact that the app nowhere uses the word “Siri,” the Siri icon, or anything other
than the standard iOS interface of starting dictation when you raise the iPhone to your ear.

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MacVoicesTV Parenting Panel from Macworld | iWorld — Tonya Engst discusses raising children in the age of screentime as part of the “Parenting in the Mobile Internet Age” panel discussion from Macworld | iWorld 2012, moderated by Chuck Joiner of MacVoicesTV.

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The Unexpected Downsides of Ebooks — With tongue firmly in cheek, Cracked (yes, Cracked) delves into the pitfalls of our societal move away from printed books to ebooks on iPads and Kindles — from no longer having an extra support for your IKEA bed to the declining impact of book burnings.

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Web Certificate Flaw Not Dangerous — Two sets of researchers revealed that insufficiently random choices of the prime numbers from which encryption keys are derived for Web site SSL/TLS certificates mean that the private parts of the keys can be derived. Fortunately, it’s not a flaw in an algorithm, and seems to affect only a small number of sites. Read the whole explanation in Glenn Fleishman’s account at Boing Boing.

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