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A jailbreak tweak called "Protect My Privacy" informs you when an app attempts to access your personal information without prompting you.

Path recently sparked a huge controversy over user privacy violations in popular App Store apps, and the media firestorm that resulted has now promoted The California Attorney General to enforce new standards for informing users about app privacy policies.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and RIM will now be implementing new policies that developers must comply with when publishing apps online. All information that’s collected from the user will be outlined in the app’s privacy policy and made viewable in app stores before downloading.

This agreement will allow consumers the opportunity to review an app’s privacy policy before they download the app rather than after, and will offer consumers a consistent location for an app’s privacy policy on the application-download screen. If developers do not comply with their stated privacy policies, they can be prosecuted under California’s Unfair Competition Law and/or False Advertising Law.

The agreement further commits the platforms to educate developers about their obligations to respect consumer privacy and to disclose to consumers what private information they collect, how they use the information, and with whom they share it. The platforms will also work to improve compliance with privacy laws by giving users tools to report non-compliant apps and committing companies to implement processes to respond to these reports.

In the near future you’ll be able to easily view any app’s privacy policy before you download, and any developer that doesn’t comply with the policy can be charged under California law. “By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used,” said the Attorney General.

Apple’s App Store is actually one of the worst platforms for displaying an app’s privacy permissions plainly. The Android Market and other popular apps stores display app permissions much more visibly, but it’s nearly impossible to find privacy information in the App Store before actually installing an app.

This new ruling from The California Attorney General will hopefully spur technology companies and developers alike to disclose privacy information more transparently.

• Google Updating Its Privacy Policy And TOS In March – One Policy To Rule Them All
• FreeiPods.com Sued For Email Fraud
• iPhone LocationGate Prompts Senate Hearing (Google Too)
• Apple Spells Out Geo-Data Gathering Policies to Lawmakers
• FreeiPods.com Denies Email Abuse

Good news for the heartbroken Adele: Colombia Records has announced that the singer/songwriter has become the first artist to go double platinum on the iTunes Store. She recently sold a staggering 730,000 copies of her album within a week after winning 6 Grammys Awards The album has been purchased on iTunes 2 million times in under a year.

As the first artist to achieve such a digital milestone, Adele can confidently say that her debut album includes 16 million singles sold in the United States alone.

Her album, 21, has coincidentally spent 21 consecutive weeks at number 1 on The Billboard Top 200 Album Chart, making it the longest running number 1 album by any woman in Billboard’s history.

Adele was on vocal rest for months leading up to her performance at the last Grammy Awards after undergoing an intensive surgery. She tied with Beyonce’s record at the last Grammy Awards for the most awards won by a female artist.

You can buy 21 on the iTunes Store for $10.99.

(via The Loop)

• How To Stream The Grammy Awards Live Tonight On Your iPhone And iPad
• UPDATED: Michael Jackson’s Albums Storm The Charts On iTunes
• iTunes Has Sold 2 Million Beatles Tracks So Far
• Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is First Double Platinum Digital Track
• iTunes Preview Now Available For iPhone apps

I’m excited to announce Cult of Mac’s shiny new audio podcast, The CultCast — made with absolutely 0% child labor!

Why should you listen to The CultCast, you ask? Simply put, it’s the best 30 minute conversation about Apple you’re going to hear all week. Join Leander Kahney, Buster Heine, and me, Erfon Elijah, as we banter about all the most popular Apple news, rumors, and products. Hear the stories behind the stories of our favorite Cult of Mac pieces, and get caught up on all the best things from the world of Apple in a fun, 30 minute chunk each week.

Our maiden CultCast episode will be released Thursday night, but you can subscribe right now on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode. We’ll have a new CultCast for you every Thursday evening!

• Everything You Need To Know About Cult Of Mac’s New Design
• Oprah: “The iPad Is My Favorite Thing Ever.”
• Time to Move On [Personal Note From Ed Sutherland]
• Bob Lefsetz On The Cult of Mac
• This American Life And Jon Stewart Take On Foxconn

Amidst concerns about trademark battles in China, an unprecedented factory audit of Foxconn, and the question of potential stock dividends, Apple is scheduled to meet with AAPL shareholders tomorrow at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. All investors are encouraged to attend.

There have been whispers of dividend payouts over the last few months, and Apple has said that it’s considering such shareholder options. Considering that the company has $100 billion in cash on hand, investors are wondering how Apple can continue to not let its funds “burn a hole in its pocket.”

The Fair Labor Association is conducting a highly-covered audit of Apple’s supply chain partner Foxconn in China. ABC’s Nightline ran a report on Foxconn last night, and the FLA has voiced concern over the factory’s working conditions. Apple is also in the middle of a heated trademark battle with Proview that could result in a halt of iPad sales in China.

You can see 2011′s Annual Meeting of Shareholders by checking out this PDF.

AAPL stock soared past $500 for the first time less than two weeks ago, and Apple’s market cap is valued at about $480 billion.

Make sure to come back tomorrow for Cult of Mac’s report on the Apple annual shareholder’s meeting and what occurred there.

(via Reuters)

• Apple Plans Jobless Annual Meeting
• Apple Stock Reaches New Highs, Veteran Investors Dancing in Aisles
• Report: Apple Ramping Up iPad Product to Meet Upcoming Demand
• Apple Shareholders Re-Elect Board, Sing to Steve at Annual Meeting (UPDATED)
• Apple Downgraded, Estimates Lowered Ahead of Annual Meeting

Securing business data on employee-owned devices like the iPhone and iPad is one of the biggest challenges for IT departments when it comes to operating bring your own device (BYOD) programs. The mobile device management (MDM) approach taken by most companies is an excellent starting point because it aims to make devices themselves more secure. Unfortunately, it also tends to impose limits on what workers can do with an iPhone or iPad that they bought and paid for out of their own pockets.

Another approach to the challenge is to carve out a specific niche of secure storage on each employee-owned devices. Good Technology has always offered this mechanism for securing business emails and related technologies like shared contacts and calendars. This week, Good took that concept and made it available to iOS developers in a product called Good Dynamics.

Good’s products use industry standard encryption to secure business content. The company also offers an MDM service that plugs into the MDM architecture that Apple introduced in iOS 4 and expanded in iOS 5. This combination allows companies to secure business data on the device as well as the ability to apply any standard iOS management options. Like all iOS MDM solutions, Good allows business data to be wiped in the event that a device is lost or stolen. If an employee leaves the company, however, Good can wipe business data from that person’s iPhone or iPad without wiping the entire device.

This approach has multiple advantages, but the most important is that it allows organizations to scale back on whole-device restrictions. Since a separate passcode is needed to open any of Good’s apps and access business data, organizations don’t need to enforce complex passcode policies to unlock an iPhone or iPad. That can, and should, be encouraged but since unlocking the device doesn’t unlock any business data, IT departments can consider relaxing overall device security. This strategy has made Good’s initial products a good fit (pardon the pun) for BYOD programs involving iOS devices as well as other platforms like Android.

As native business apps have made gains for accomplishing a range of tasks on iOS and other platforms, there has been an increased amount of business data being stored by these apps on user devices. Most apps don’t use a secure storage mechanism for data, however. For some developers building reliable encryption for on-device data is too big a hurdle to consider. For others, there may not be enough return on the investment to create an encrypted data store.

Good Dynamics offers a solution for both developers and IT professionals. Good has built an SDK library that can easily be added to third-party apps using Xcode. As Herve Danzelaud, Good’s Vice President of Business Development, told me recently, the SDK is simple and flexible enough that one of Good’s partners was able to implement Good Dynamics features while on a flight from New York to California. That’s a pretty good testament to Good making the process fairly easy and painless.

While encrypting stored data is a big part of what Good Dynamics is about, its SDK doesn’t stop there. It also allows developers to build management options into their apps. Those options can then be centrally managed from Good’s MDM console. This actually extends past Apple’s MDM framework, which doesn’t offer control over third-party apps running on an iOS device.

The Good Dynamics SDK can be implemented in public apps available through the App Store as well as in private apps developed by companies for purely internal distribution and use. Good has been working with several partners to implement the technology in business-oriented public apps. The most notable being Good’s partnership with cloud storage provider Box. The result of this partnership is an app that can be managed to ensure cloud data is secured on the device and can be limited in terms of how that data is shared with others (if sharing is allowed at all).

Given the how commonplace personal devices are becoming in the workplace, Good Dynamics offers a viable solution to many challenges. The ultimate effectiveness will come down to how broadly the platform is implemented by third-party developers. Even if just a handful of companies that provide core business functionality sign on, Good Dynamics will have the potential to make an impact on mobile devices in the enterprise, but more apps based around the platform will certainly drive interest and adoption.

• How The iPhone Saves Money For Businesses (And Why Android Can’t)
• BYOD Challenge: How IT Can Keep User-Owned iPhones And iPads Secure In Enterprise [Feature]
• Creating An App Store For Your Company Just Got Easier… And Free
• iPhones & iPads: A Big Challenge To IT, But Vital To Business
• Apple Shuts Out Google Owned AdMob From Collecting User Ad Data

With a plethora of options available for any taste, it’s a better time to be a digital music fan than ever before. iTunes Match. Spotify. Rdio. Soundcloud. Grooveshark. There’s a streaming music service for every taste, a place for every song in the cloud no matter how obscure.

With all of these competing services floating around, though, finding music in your library isn’t as easy as it once was, though… mostly because you probably don’t have a central music library. Some of your favorite albums are on iTunes, while others might only be available on Spotify, or knocking around as demos on Soundcloud.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an iTunes-like media manager to consolidate all of your music? An app you could use to just find that song on all of your services, no matter where it’s stored: just type it in and hit play?

There is. It’s called Tomahawk. And it’s awesome.

Here’s how it works. Like iTunes, Tomahawk lets you play any music stored on your computer, and can also slurp in songs on your local network from playing remotely. Unlike iTunes, though, it scans your whole computer for MP3s automatically.

Where Tomahawk gets really cool, though, is that it can be extended to use a huge number of external music sources in addition to your local music. These are called resolvers, and there’s a number of them to choose from: Spotify, Grooveshark, YouTube, Dilandau, Soundcloud, 4Shared, Jamendo, Last.fm, Official.fm, Ampache / Owncloud and Ex.fm, for starters. And by choosing the Extended Network, you can access any friend’s library who is also using Tomahawk. You can even connect to friends using Twitter and Google.

It’s a really neat little bit of software, and the latest version 0.3.3 also gives you the ability to listen along in real-time with your friends’ music choices (sort of like DJing in Turntable.fm) or even make radio stations.

Tomahawk is for Mac and Windows only right now, and it can be downloaded here. I love it, but if only it had Rdio support!

[via Evolver.fm]

• Spotify Is Everything That iTunes In The Cloud Should Be [Review]
• Spotify Goes Social, Adds Streaming Libraries and Inboxes
• Sonos Gets Everything Right With Play:3 Wireless HiFi System
• Check The Status Of Your Music In The iTunes Match Cloud [OS X Tips]
• Spotify Is Officially Coming To The States

GEVEY has announced the Ultra S unlock for the GSM iPhone 4S. Unlike an unlocked iPhone you have to buy at full price from your carrier, GEVEY’s $55 solution turns your iPhone 4S into a plug-and-play device for any GSM network around the world.

Jailbreakers have been able to unlock their iPhones with a software tool called UltraSn0w, but an unlock for the iPhone 4S has yet to be provided until now. The GEVEY Ultra S does not require a jailbreak, and it’s definitely the easiest way to get your iPhone unlocked for cheap.

Several huge improvements are included in the GEVEY Ultra S, including a re-engineered SIM interposer. The people at GEVEY note, “It’s true plug-and-play functionality, so just pop it in and unlock your phone with the original sim card.” You don’t have to cut or physically modify your SIM card anymore, as the GEVEY interposer has been made small enough to fit into your iPhone properly.

The GEVEY Ultra S is only for the iPhone 4S on GSM networks, which isn’t really an issue since the majority of the networks around the world use that standard. In the United States, you would be able to use your iPhone 4S on T-Mobile’s network. GEVEY’s unlock will let your iPhone 4S switch between 2G and 3G GSM frequencies, although potential users should be warned that “there is no phone unlocking solution that can guarantee connectivity to every data network.”

Another new feature called “learning mode” allows the GEVEY Ultra S to automatically learn your iPhone’s network configuration and unlock it. If you ever change your internal SIM card for a different carrier, you will need to unlock again with GEVEY.

Perhaps the most significant update to the Ultra S is that you no longer need to dial ’112′ on your iPhone 4S during installation. In many countries, including the United States, it is a violation of telecommunication abuse policies to dial and hang up on an emergency number.

All iPhone 4S devices on iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1 with the 1.0.11, 1.013, or 1.0.14 basebands can be unlocked with the GEVEY Ultra S. (You can check to see what baseband you have under Settings > General > About > Modem Firmware) Power consumption has been increased and reception has been improved with this latest release.

Applenberry is taking pre-orders for the Ultra S now, with shipments expected to arrive between March 3-7. Here’s a somewhat lengthy demonstration of the new unlock in action:

(via iDownloadBlog)

• Unlocking Your iPhone Just Became A Lot Harder in iOS 5 Beta 2
• Apple Stores Could Start Selling Carrier Unlocked iPhone 4s On Wednesday
• iOS 5 Bug Lets You Unlock Your AT&T iPhone 4S For Free, No Jailbreak Required [Update]
• Unlocked iPhone 4S Will Be Available in the U.S. From November & Is GSM Only
• Canadian Readers: We Need Your Help On iPhone 4 Story

Like many Apple fans, I love the idea of the an iPod nano watch. I adore the fact that an idle comment from Steve Jobs about how the new nano is so small it can be worn as a watch got turned into a cottage industry of Kickstarters fashioning a multitude of hip new watchbands.

The only thing is I don’t want to wear the damn thing. I’m not a wristwatch kind of guy: I’m the sort of person who prefers pulling something out of his pocket, like my iPhone. So I wonder why it took someone so long to think of this incredible idea. Instead of a wristwatch, why not turn the iPod nano into a pocket watch?

That’s the ingenious thinking of Edwin Conan, a young industrial designer in Melbourne who is trying to get the iPW, or iPocketWatch, off the ground on Kickstarter-like crowdfunding site Pozible. Here’s the pitch:

Last year Apple updated the iPod Nano 6th generation with additional watch faces in its watch function. One of which is the classic roman numerals. Such a classic watch face needs a classic watch case to match and celebrate, and the most classic watch of all time is, of course, the pocket watch. The idea of turning the iPod Nano into a multi-touch, multi-function, high tech, modern day pocket watch was born.

The classic men’s watch will always be the pocket watch. While everyone else wears the iPod Nano as a wrist watch, why not bring a bit of yesterday to your style and distinguish yourself from the rest of the world by fashioning this admirable iPW (iPocketWatch)?

This looks great, and the enclosure is both classy, modern and in-keeping with an Apple-esque aesthetic. I’d be tempted to buy one of these.

Right now, Conan is looking for donors to make the project a reality. He only needs to get $6000 AUD to get the project off the ground, with a March 19th deadline. A $39 donation will get you an iPocketWatch when they are released, which is a pretty good deal considering Conan intends on selling these for $59.99 when manufacturing is off the ground. If you’d like to boast a more classical, elegant iPod nano watch solution more appropriate to pulling out of your dinner vest at the Drone’s Club, consider giving Conan some of your loot.

• The Proof Strap Makes Your iPod nano Waterproof And Introduces Bluetooth
• This Gorgeous iWatch Concept Is Part Dick Tracy, Part Blade Runner [Gallery]
• Geek Trend – The iPod Nano Becomes the iWatch
• New iPod nano: More than Just a Pretty Wristwatch
• Teardowns of new iPods nano and classic

Nike has extended its Nike+ range with two new shoes that cover basketball and training. Aptly named Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training, they’re the first shows to take the Nike+ technology beyond its traditional focus on running.

Both shoes feature a clever pressure sensor built into the sole that works with the existing motion tracking technology to provide details that weren’t previously offered by the Nike+ system, such as jump heights and other useful factors.

This information allows athletes to monitor their game like never before, and when accompanied with the Nike+ apps, all sorts of fancy things can be achieved. Electronista explains:

Basketball players can now track much more of the game and even have a Showcase mode that will record a dunk on video with stats overlaid both for reference and for boasting. Nike+ Training is considered more of a game and provides short but intense exercises with feedback on direct activity as well as the option of setting a daily goal.

You can continue to use the system with the Nike+ app for iOS devices and anything else that’s compatible with Nike+, however, some features, such as the Showcase and exercise modes, will need a device like the iPhone to work.

There’s no word on pricing for these just yet, but first of the Nike+ Basketball set, named Hyperdunk+, will arrive on June 29 in the U.S., mainland China, France, Germany, and the U.K.; accompanied by the Lunar TR 1+ for men and the Lunar Hyper Workout+ for women from the Nike+ Training range on the same day.

• Measure Your Daily Activity With The Nike+ FuelBand And Fuel Up Your Life With Nike+ Fuel
• MacBook Pro Helps Turn Nikes into Music [Video]
• Nike+iPod Marks the Future of Advertising?
• Are Apple and Nike Falling Out?
• Apple Targets “Sneaker Hackers” with DRM Patent for Clothing

Mobile devices are now so common in the workplace that we’ve reached a tipping point where providing mobile options for many desktop apps has become a requirement for businesses. That’s the findings of a new survey from Symantec on mobile device use in business.

The survey, initially reported by InfoWorld, identified that not only are the numbers of mobile devices increasing, but also that the tasks they perform are increasing. A dramatic number of companies are now seeing core business tasks being completed on mobile devices. That’s driving the need for companies to develop comprehensive mobile apps for access to corporate information systems.

The survey included responses from IT professionals in 6275 organizations in 43 countries. It also included a mix of enterprise companies and smaller businesses.

The results offer a picture of how important internal mobile apps have become:

• 71% of companies are discussing their options for custom apps
• 59% are running line-of-business applications on mobile devices
• 66% are considering creating corporate app stores to distribute internal apps to employees

While those numbers clearly show that internal app development is already a need for almost all businesses, the survey also found that half of the respondents view mobile development and management as an extremely challenging.  Mobile security remains a top concern for IT departments according the survey.

The survey didn’t account for whether development is centered around corporate devices or employee-owned options, but Brian Duckering, senior manager with the endpoint management and mobility group at Symantec did note that BYOD programs are becoming more common. The survey also didn’t address whether development was centered around a single platform like Apple’s iOS or if plans involved support for multiple smartphone operating systems.

Ultimately, this illustrates why mobile development is one of the most in-demand technology skills. It also highlights that issues like creating good iOS or Android apps and granting users access to company resources from mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Android handsets have become real business needs. Perhaps the most telling point of the survey is that half of the respondents described handling these issues as being extremely challenging. That underscores how quickly the mobile business landscape has changed over the past two or three years and that successful strategies for handling today’s mobile technology are still evolving.

• More Companies Let iPad Beyond IT Velvet Ropes
• More And More Businessmen Are Chucking Their Laptops In The Trash For iPad
• Group: 70 Percent of Companies in 2011 Will Have Macs
• Survey: 26 Percent of Mobile Workers Plan to Buy an iPad
• It’s Like a Mullet: Blackberry for Business, iPhone for Pleasure [Study]