Software, Tablet Apps | featured news

Britain's government says experts are considering developing a bespoke iPad app that would deliver key data straight to Prime Minister David Cameron's tablet computer....

Google‘s long-awaited answer to Flipboard, the “social magazine” exclusively on Apple‘s iPad and iPhone, just debuted today. Google Currents offers a similar appearance, except it works on Android devices as well as iPads and iPhones. It’s the latest in a long string of applications, most recently Yahoo‘s Livestand, that seek to turn online content into something resembling print magazines, but without all those dead trees and with 20th century innovations like, say, video.

What was born just before YouTube and Twitter, powers whole websites with open source code and has now been downloaded 25 million times? Joomla! The popular Content Management System with an exclamation point in its name passed a major milestone this month and now says its future will be based on helping developers build all kinds of other apps.

CNN announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Zite, a Canadian tablet software developer.

The Finns behind Angry Birds seek global domination... “We think we can hit a billion downloads by the end of next year,” Vesterbacka says, casually. Then, almost as an aside: “We think we can be the leading entertainment brand in China by 2012.” Excusez-moi? “We think we can be bigger than Disney in China,” he clarifies. As growth projections go, this sounds absurd. Rovio grossed $20 million (the company is profitable) in the first three months of 2011. Disney will spend that amount every ten days for the next five years building its 1,000-acre theme park in Shanghai.