California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced today an agreement with Apple and five other tech companies including Google, Amazon, HP, RIM, and Microsoft, that will see all companies implementing new standards for displaying privacy policies for apps that collect personal data.  The press release described the agreement:

The agreement with the platforms is designed to ensure that mobile apps comply with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. The Act requires operators of commercial web sites and online services, including mobile apps, who collect personally identifiable information about Californians to conspicuously post a privacy policy.

The new agreement will force Apple and the other companies to implement a method of displaying a privacy policy to the user before an app is downloaded. The announcement noted all platforms will include the feature in a consistent location on the “application-download screen.” The news follows an FTC report criticizing privacy issues regarding mobile apps for children, and lawmakers issuing a letter to Apple following privacy concerns over Path’s use of contacts in the iPhone’s address book.  The Attorney General plans to meet with the companies in six months to assess the progress of the agreement, and we of course will wait to hear from Apple on exactly developers and the App Store will implement the privacy policies. The press release said a recent study found only approximately five percent of all mobile apps have a privacy policy. Attorney General Harris talked about the agreement:

Apple may be focusing heavily on China these days, but that doesn’t mean the tech giant is losing sight of its global retail conquest. As it turns out, just days before the long-awaited iPad 3 will likely make its debut on the world’s stage, Apple will once against expand its retail presence to a new geographic location – this time, in beautiful Amsterdam.

With well over 350 retail stores now open around the world, Apple is presently less than two weeks away from pushing its retail footprint into the twelfth country to welcome an Apple store.

On Wednesday, Gary Allen of ifoAppleStore.com confirmed that the new facility will open March 3rd on the ground floor and mezzanine of the “historic Hirsch Building in city center.” Based on what observers have reported at the scene, the store will be another lush retail location defined by ornate aesthetics that reportedly take a page right out of Apple’s Paris store.

The Amsterdam store has been on the drawing board for close to two years, with construction having begun in May of 2011. Finally, just this week, the words “Coming Soon” were emblazoned across the front of the building, confirming the March 3rd grand opening at 10 a.m. local time.

Source: ifoAppleStore

ABC shows us a little more than we’ve seen before – 5 minutes total.  The rest will be on ABC tonight at 11:35PM on ‘Nightline’.

As a preview, it doesn’t look like ABC found anything too damaging. You can hear Anchor Bill Weir say at 3:40:

“Although we didn’t find any egregious violations, if the Fair LAbor Association finds any violations, we’ll report those going forward.”

We’ll update with the full video when available.

As we addressed earlier today, current reports peg the iPad 3 debut for March 7th at a soon-to-be announced Apple media event in San Francisco. Although the iPad will debut in North America before it hops across the pond to stir up another sales frenzy in Europe, Apple fans in Germany may not have to wait much longer than their American counterparts to gain access to the third generation tablet.

German-language tech news site iFun.de reported today that sources in the know have alluded to a March 23rd release date for the iPad 3 in Germany. This revelation flies in the face of an earlier report saying that Germans would have to wait until early April to get the iPad 3.

Although it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone today that Apple is reportedly planning to bring Siri to the iPad 3, it would all but certainly come as a shock if Apple didn’t deliver the beloved personal assistant to the third-generation tablet.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look like any shock is in store. On Tuesday, Apple.pro revealed that one source close to the next-gen iPad admits that Siri voice control will be one of the biggest selling features of the iPad 3, not to mention a dual-core “A5X” processor, and a 1080p camera with image stabilization.

In this regard, the iPad 3′s new bells and whistles will look very similar to the upgrade between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Although most of the hardware will remain the same in appearance, a few stellar tweaks to deliver a powerful new iOS experience will bestow all the compelling sales mojo Apple will need to make the iPad 3 a huge commercial success.

Current estimates call for the third-generation iPad to ship with iOS 5.1 around the middle part of next month. As of this writing, most industry watchers and observers believe the iPad 3 will be unveiled to the public and made available for preorder around March 7th – two weeks from tomorrow.

Source: Apple.pro

iPad 3 is going to look a lot like iPad 2… Until you turn it on, that is. If the purported iPad 3 front glass spyshot on the top is an indication, the third-generation iPad (rumored for the March 7 unveiling) will sport virtually identical appearance to its predecessor. Discovered by Apple.pro, a pretty reliable source for Apple hardware rumors, the front glass part shows literally the same 9.7-inch size and shape as iPad 2, down to the home button and the round bezel. Another image allegedly representing digitizer assembly (seen below), reveals a longer ribbon cable than on iPad, going all the way to the side of the display. Apart from that, the iPad 3′s front should be indistinguishable from iPad 2. It is widely assumed that iPad 3 will rock a 2048-by-1536 pixel resolution display and a set of manufacturing spyshots suggest that, surprisingly, Samsung is manufacturing those high-resolution displays rather than Sharp or LG Display, as previously thought.

As Apple doesn’t keep al its eggs in the same basket, the company could (and probably will) source iPad 3 panels from multiple suppliers. Interestingly, Samsung’s board of directors today approved plans to spin off the company’s LCD display business into a new entity. The wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, the new company will be named Samsung Display Company and will merge with Samsung Mobile Display and S-LCD in order to improve their competitiveness. The South Korean consumer electronics conglomerate said in a statement that“the display market is undergoing rapid chances with OLED panels expected to fast replace LCD panels to become the mainstream”.

Now, some media outlets speculate Apple will make a mistake by advertising iPad 3 as Retina-capable, arguing a 2048-by-1536 display doesn’t meet Apple’s Retina specifications. We’re deconstructing this myth right after the break.

If you’re fond of handy little helper apps for your Mac like MenuTab for Facebook, Tab for Google+ or  MailTab for Gmail, you will definitely want to consider adding Rasmus Porsager’s QuickMailer to your daily productivity arsenal. Don’t you hate having to launch a full-blown email client just to fire off a quick email message? Worry not, QuickMailer comes to the rescue (via Cult of Mac). All this little Mac app does is sit at your menu bar and wait for a keystroke combination.

As seen above, up pops an elegant, clean compose window with the TO, SUBJECT and BODY fields and options to attach a file, access preferences and send your message. The program works through your primary Mail.app account and looks up previous recipients to provide auto-completion. Also handy: QuickMailer can remember individual fields for your next message. A 99 cent download from the App Store, QuickMailer is a real life-saver. One more screenshot is right below the fold.

Corroborating earlier reports, Rupert Murdoch’s tablet-only magazine The Daily apparently saw a work-in-progress version of Microsoft’s native Office app for iPad, and the publication posted the above screenshot to prove it exists. The Daily’s first impressions?

The app’s user interface is similar to the current OneNote app, but it has hints of Metro, the new design language that can be seen in Windows Phone and in the as-yet-released Windows 8 desktop operating system. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited locally and online.

According to unnamed sources, the team wrapped up the project and will soon submit the app for approval. An Android version of Office is not in the works, “sources familiar with the matter” said, but the Windows maker is putting the finishing touches on the new OneNote iOS app said to sport the Metro user-interface overhaul. When Office for iPad finally arrives, it will compete with the likes of Documents to Go, Quickoffice and Apple’s own Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps, which at $9.99 each might be hard to beat.

Here are the best jailbreak creations for the week of February 13th until today, February 20th as per the opinion of our staff.

1. AssistantConnect/AssistantConnect4S – FREE

AssistantConnect is a tool brought to life by iOS developer Bilal S. Sayed Ahmad to make Siri simpler to set up on older iDevices running Spire. To use it you merely need to have access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S and a jailbroken iDevice running iOS 5 with Spire installed on it. From there, you can use the AssistantConnect application on both iDevices to construct a link for Siri without ever needing to set up a proxy server or having to pay for an external server that hosts Siri for Spire. As it appears, you will have to refresh the information within the application on a daily basis so that your Spire device gets the updated iPhone 4S information that it needs since Apple makes it valid through only a 24-hour window. It’s a great way to get reliable Siri functionality on an older iDevice for free.

In their own roundup of iPad 3 rumors, MICGadget includes photos of a purported iPad 3 shell. This shell is shown in comparison to an iPad 2 back shell. Notable differences include a 1mm-1.5mm thicker design, depending on where on the iPad 3 you are measuring. Also, more tapering is shown. This will likely make the iPad 3 feel thinner than the iPad 2 while being held. While not visible in the images, the report claims the iPad 3 bezel will be slightly narrower than the iPad 2′s bezel.