I’m waiting for a couple of iPhone 4 BeyzaCases to arrive for a review. Meanwhile, it’s really nice of them to provide me with a 10% discount code to Craving Tech Readers. If you are looking for a good high quality case for your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, or other devices, have a look at cases from BeyzaCases and use the CRAVINGTECH10 should you decide to purchase one.

iPhone 4 Case:

iPad Case:

There is also another great offer at the moment until 10th of September 2010; you will get a free iPhone 4 case if you purchase an iPad or a MacBook case/bag from BeyzaCases!

Wow, it must have been busy months at Apple! They have announced new range of products (or the upgraded version, if you like):

• iPod Touch – iPhone 4-y look, retina display, FaceTime, front-rear facing camera
• iPod Nano – New look with Multi touch screen
• iPod Shuffle – New design, more colors
• Apple TV – New product from Apple
• iTunes 10 – Adds social networking (as if we haven’t had enough already!) and AirPlay

Some screenshots from Apple’s official site:

Apple’s new iPod Shuffle

Apple’s new iPod Nano

Apple’s new Apple TV

Apple’s new iPod Touch

Apple’s iTunes 10

It’s not too long before we had a contest to win some BitDefender Total Security 2010 licenses here at Craving Tech. The team at BitDefender has launched a newer version of the Total Security software. Check out what ‘s new in BitDefender Total Security 2011 from the official press release.

BitDefender launches Total Security 2011, offering consumers a simple yet comprehensive solution to safeguard their online world

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – August 31, 2010 – BitDefender®, an award-winning provider of innovative internet security solutions, today announced the launch of BitDefender Total Security 2011 in Australia, offering comprehensive protection against the latest viruses, spyware, phishing and identity theft attacks.

Right out of the box, BitDefender 2011 offers users a simplified experience and more helpful information to answer questions about online security. All of BitDefender’s 2011 products include helpful user tips and a video library of tutorials that are designed to guide you through the product’s features and configuration in an easy, step-by-step format.

BitDefender’s adaptive design user interface allows you to customise the product to match your needs and technical knowledge: basic, intermediate and expert. You can also customise the product’s dashboard by adding shortcuts to your most frequently used actions, such as laptop and gamer mode.

To help you get the most out of your PC, Total Security 2011 has a host of new features to ensure that your computer is always running at its best. Performance Optimiser shows which applications are slowing down the PC, and suggests corrective actions to improve performance while BitDefender’s Tune Up feature can remove unnecessary files and registry entries to free up system resources. In addition, Smart Scanning & Scheduling detects the level of activity on your computer, and will suspend scanning or backups during busy periods to keep you safe without slowing down your gaming or media experience.

Vince Hwang, global director of product delivery, BitDefender, said: “Technologies such as social media, online gaming and collaborative tools have all taken personal computing into new realms. BitDefender’s 2011 range of products addresses this shift in the security landscape by providing comprehensive protection from online attacks that spread across new and emerging technologies, whilst offering major performance improvements in a highly-customisable user interface suited for families to enthusiasts.”

Other BitDefender Total Security 2011 enhancements include:

• Enhanced detection – every product in the BitDefender 2011 family provides multi-layered, proactive technologies to hunt down and eliminate the latest threats in seconds.
• QuickScan – detects malicious activity using through-the-cloud technology. QuickScan takes a snapshot of your computer’s running processes and checks it using BitDefender’s cloud-based scanning service in 60 seconds.
• Search Advisor – the BitDefender 2011 family of products automatically scans links and displays phishing warnings for search results, as well as safety ratings for all websites that may contain spyware or inappropriate content.
• Parental Control – manage children’s access to the Internet or individual programs from any computer or 3G mobile phone.
• Network Management – automatically detects other PCs with BitDefender 2011 installed and add them to the administrator network. Manage the security of all the PCs at home from a single place, and conduct tasks (such as scanning and back-up) across all terminals with ease.

Rounding out the BitDefender 2011 family of products are BitDefender Internet Security 2011 and BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011.

BitDefender Internet Security 2011 provides Internet-connected families with the latest protection against Web-based attacks, faster performance for secure online gaming, and unrivaled parental controls. BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 gives PCs fast, proactive protection against the latest viruses, spyware, and identity theft attacks—all managed through a user-friendly and customisable dashboard.

Pricing details:

• BitDefender Total Security 2011 – $105 (3 PCs/1 year)
• BitDefender Internet Security 2011 – $75 (3 PCs/1 year)
• BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 – $60 (3 PCs/1 year)

For a limited time, purchase BitDefender Total Security 2011 online and receive a free backup installation DVD. For details and a full list of BitDefender 2011 features and benefits by product, please visit bitdefender.com.au.

Google just announced another creative solution to one of their online service, Gmail. This time, the feature is called “Priority Inbox”. It’s basically a smart algorithm that tries to predict which emails in your inbox are more important than the others and group them accordingly. As you continue using Gmail, you can “teach” Priority Inbox to be smarter and smarter.

The groupings consist of:

• Important and unread
• Starred
• Everything else.

It analyses how you use Gmail such as emails that you reply or ignore to determine whether an email from someone is important to you or not (and many others). Of course, it will be a hit and miss sometimes but as I said, it learns as you use Gmail more often.

Another thumbs up from the creative team at Google! This will be rolled out to everyone in a week. Since mine hasn’t got the update just yet, I can’t tell my experience or provide screenshots on my inbox with the Priority Inbox turned on.

Anyway, this is the official video from Google about the new feature:

Looking forward for another thing to play around with

To learn more, read more about Gmail Priority Inbox.

One of the main application to have on a smartphone is a to do application with reminders. As we grow old, we tend to forget things and I’ve always reminded you to stop acting young and face the facts of life! There are already a few to do applications for the iPhone but 2Do makes it different by adding location based to do task, great interface + effects, and the ability to send an email reminder from its own server.

2Do looks pretty and the layout really looks nice and well designed. It also groups tasks depending on how you want to group them.

The best thing is of course that 2Do can sync with Toodledo and in just a few seconds, 2Do has completely converted my Toodledo folders into groups respectively.

These groups appear as tabs or similar to a folder or a journal’s bookmarks. These groups (also called “calendars” in 2Do) can further be customised – by changing its color or the order that it appears on.

You can quickly see how many tasks are yet to be completed on each calendars and there is also a “Today” calendar/bookmark so you can quickly filter what you need to do just for today.

Everytime 2Do is opened, it will sync with Toodledo (if you have it on) but the syncing is fast, compared to PocketInformant that I reviewed before.

To add a new task, press the “+” button then add notes, due date, due time, alarms, and other details (if you wish). You can tailor these fields (by adding/removing them) to your specific needs and preferences.

Notifications (alarms) of the tasks can be set to be a message, sound, and/or email. You can set all three alarms to notify you when the task is due (or any other time you like). To be notified by email, you need to set your email address and 2Do will send a confirmation email to the specified email address. You need to validate this before 2Do can start sending you email notifications. My Gmail somehow thought the validation email as a spam so check your spam folder. However, notification emails are safely delivered to my inbox afterwards.

You can also add a location based task (appear on the Nearby tab at the bottom) but at the moment 2Do cannot notify you automatically when you are near that location. There might be such feature in the future although the battery will definitely suffer because the GPS has to be turned on at all times.

I’m really impressed  at all the details put in this application – the way you interact, the way you can customize certain fields and layout, and also tiny details like a few animations when you delete a task, etc. 2Do is well polished and there are many more small yet powerful features in it that I haven’t mentioned (for example, you can create projects consisting of tasks, or you can set a task to call or sms someone and pressing that task will automatically bring you to the address book or sms application, etc). Just make sure you read all the help notes to discover all 2Do hidden gems.

There are a few things that can be improved in future releases though:

• At the moment, new tasks are not synced straight away  to Toodledo.
• If you log in to Toodledo website, you see these “<2Do Meta> tags” everywhere on the tasks created in 2Do.
  
• Sometimes you are forced to use 2Do in Portrait mode (on some screen settings)

I’m pretty sure these are on the next to do lists for future updates (or they might have updated the application by the time you read this!)

If you are looking for a powerful to do application for the iPhone that can sync to Toodledo, flexibile, and looks good – get 2Do!

2Do at iTunes store

Note: Promo code provided for the review