Apple iPad, Applications and Accessories

In this week’s podcast, Brian X. Chen and Dylan Tweney discuss the Verizon iPhone, AT&T’s new tethering and hot-spot features, and News Corp.’s new iPad newspaper. First up is our review of the Verizon iPhone , which really does have better coverage based on our tests . Suddenly, the iPhone is a phone, Brian says — although when you can get a signal, the AT&T iPhone has much faster data download and upload speeds. We talk about the Verizon iPhone’s hot-spot feature : For an extra $20 per month, you can share your wireless connection with up to five devices via Wi-Fi. That compares to AT&T’s tethering option, which costs the same amount but only lets you connect one other device.

With the new Wi-Fi hot-spotting feature in the Verizon iPhone which – will almost certainly be coming to GSM iPhones – there’s one less reason to jailbreak your device. Sharing your 3G connection with your laptop or Wi-Fi-only iPad was possibly the number-one goal of jailbreakers. Still, that hasn’t stopped the hackers, and the latest way to crack your iPhone is Greenpois0n, a tether-free jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. Untethered means that you can reboot your device without have to plug it into a computer. Greenpois0n is Mac-only right now, but Linux and Windows versions should be on their way soon enough. One tip: this hack isn’t recommended for anyone who has carrier-unlocked their iPhone, or who plans to do so

> Title: Canalisations d’Eau en Poly-Métal Designer/Artist: Walter Thor Year: circa 1900 Country of Poster: France Dimensions: 29 x 44 in IVPDA Member: Galerie Documents, Paris, France > View all It may be hard to believe as you read Wired on your iPad, but heating oil and metal plumbing pipes were hot tech topics just 100 years ago. They were businesses, too, on which inventors pinned their hopes and corporations placed their bets in the form of factories, salesmen, and marketing budgets.

This is the Robo-Rainbow by artist Mudlevel, and its purpose is to brighten your day – whether you like it or not: There’s not much to explain that can’t be gleaned from watching the hypnotic video, a piece of production as beautiful as the robot itself. Powered by a cordless drill, the torque is transferred to a counterweighted arm which lifts six paint spray-cans in an arc. What looks like an Arduino circuit-board controls the speed of the arm as it traces an arc across the wall of your choosing, and triggers the servos that spray the paint.

> > View all These photographs, leaked by the iFix Your i iPhone 4 repair service, purportedly show a new LCD panel for the iPad 2. The surprises are almost on-existent: The size and resolution are the same (gleaned from parts numbers) 9.7-inches and 1024 x 768 pixels, and the unit is both lighter and 1mm thinner than the current screen. The bezel, too, has been shrunken slightly, but that will likely just allow for a change in the shape of the case edges or just more space inside, rather than a smaller bezel on the finished iPad – one of the problems with the Samsung Galaxy Tab is the small bezel, which forces you to cover the screen with a thumb just to get a comfy grip. And those hoping that the new screen would be less reflective will be disappointed. It’s as glossy as the current one.

The Dell Streak 7 will be available from T-Mobile starting Feb. 2. For those of you with lengthy tech-toy wish lists and not-so-deep pockets, T-Mobile’s new tablet offering may provide the answer you’ve been waiting for. Beginning Feb. 2, the Dell Streak 7 tablet will be available for $200, after a $50 mail-in rebate and two-year contract, T-Mobile has announced.

> > View all A fake leather-bound book-shaped case for a laptop computer is pretty dumb, but then the MacBook Air isn’t really like any other laptop computer. Instead of winding up with a huge behemoth of a case desperately trying to squeeze a computer inside, like a portly gentleman trying to hide his belly with a tent-like shirt, you can slide the tiny MacBook Air anywhere you like. And one place we like is inside the new Pad & Quill Cartella case.

                    This week’s episode of the Gadget Lab podcast packs a healthy mix of mobile goodies. We take a quick look at Sony’s new version of the PlayStation Portable, dubbed the Next-Generation Portable . It’s equipped with an OLED display, two touch panels and a cartridge reader, similar to the Nintendo DS. Most interestingly, it features a quad-core Cortex A9 processor — a hell of a lot of power for a portable gaming device, which makes me wonder about the battery life. I segue into the upcoming Verizon iPhone and just how much it will cost compared with the AT&T iPhone .

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed (left) and Rovio “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka (right) have cracked the App Store code. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of profiles about hit apps and the successful programmers behind them. See Also: How Flipboard Turned Web Noise Into iPad Gold You can’t go a day without hearing someone mention Angry Birds . Fans on Twitter share pictures of cakes they decorated with the Angry Birds characters

2011 marks the second year that the annual Apple-centric trade show Macworld must go on without Apple. The conference, which starts Wednesday, is smaller than it once was — and its biggest celebrity speaker is C-list comedian Sinbad — but it’s still alive and kicking. For app vendors, makers of iPhone and iPad accessories, and OS X software vendors, it’s still a good way to get in front of a crowd of eager Mac addicts. After Apple announced that 2009 would be its final Macworld , 2010’s trade show saw major shrinkage.