As expected, Apple announced their sixth generation iPhone today. The phone is called the iPhone 5 and has a thinner design with a larger screen, 4G LTE capability, and a new charging and data transfer interface called Lighting™.

“iPhone 5 is the most beautiful consumer device that we’ve ever created,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We’ve packed an amazing amount of innovation and advanced technology into a thin and light, jewel-like device with a stunning 4-inch Retina display, blazing fast A6 chip, ultrafast wireless, even longer battery life; and we think customers are going to love it.”

The phone features:

• iOS 6 with over 200 new features
• A6 CPU (2x faster than the A5 in the iPhone 4GS)
• 4-inch Retina™ display with a 16:9 aspect ratio
• 1136 x 640 resolution with 326 pixels per inch
• 8 MP back camera with 1080p video capability (30 fps)
• 1.2 MP front camera with 720p video capability
• 802.11a/b/g/n wireless
• Bluetooth 4.0

The phone will come in black  & slate and white & silver and ship with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage space.

You can pre-order your new iPhone starting on September 14th and they will ship on September 21st.

Here in the U.S., the new phone will be offered on the AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint networks.

Used with permission. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Used with permission. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Used with permission. Photo courtesy of Apple.

GoDaddy, one of the largest domain registrars and hosting companies, suffered a crippling Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack earlier today, temporarily leaving many of their customers without websites or email.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attack occurs when an attacker uses multiple computers to make a large number of requests one or more servers, with the goal of overwhelming them with so much traffic that they become inaccessible.

Today we remember Steve Jobs, a visionary whose commitment to simplicity changed the world.

It was 60 seconds that changed the world.

Or at least that is what Motorola executives were hoping for when they unleashed their grandiose commercial during the recent super bowl. If it wasn’t clear who Moto was gunning for before, it was make quite obvious after the commercial paid homage to Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Commercial.

First, we see everyone dressed in the same white gown, with our main character reading “1984″ (the same year the iconic Apple commercial was released). In the end, our hero breaks through the barriers and gets the fair young lady to remove her symbolic white headphones. Its quite clear that Motorola wants Apple’s share of the tablet market.

Not much is known about the XOOM tablet yet, but a few of the specs are available. For instance, the XOOM has a 10.1 inch display, whereas the iPad has only 9.6. The XOOM also beats the iPad in terms of display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution with 150 pixels per inch. Apple’s iPad on the other hand only produces 1024×768 with 132 PPI. Both tablets boast 720p HD video, but the XOOM is coming with both front and rear cameras.

The main differences will boil down to processor speed and operating systems. We already know that the iPad has a 1GHz Apple A4 custom processor, but what is still relatively unknown is how fast Motorola’s “dual-core” processor will be. Speed aside, the real battle is between the iOS 4, Apple’s mobile operating system, and the Android 3.0 “honeycomb” released by Google. We have all seen how sleek and efficient the iOS 4 has been, but many complaints have been made about the lack of 3G support. iPad users also complain about the lack of internet access for the Wi-Fi only models. Motorola seeks to remedy this problem by making the XOOM upgradeable to 4G coverage.

All in all, there is potential for both the iPad and XOOM to grow in 2011. Tablets are expected to continue to grow at an alarming rate through 2015, with an expected sales of 24.1 million units this year. The question, however, remains…who will be the dominant tablet provider after the XOOM’s expected launch at the end of February? Will it be the iPad, or will it be one of the many new tablets being made by Motorola, Acer, Asus, Samsung, Sony, and even Vizio?

Technology is constantly evolving and it is taking the notion of print media into a new dimension.

The mobile barcode is a new technology that takes print media into the future. Whether we are looking at an ad in the street or a magazine, we are restricted by what the picture shows us. However, with mobile barcodes print media comes to life. Once you scan one of the barcodes with your phone you instantly get more information through rich and useful content like videos, pictures, or even directions to a store. With this new technology advertisers can truly develop a company’s brand through an innovative medium.

The application is currently available for AT&T customers through the Blackberry App World, Android Market, and the Apple App Store.

Overall, the technology not only benefits advertisers but also consumers. We as consumers are always looking for a way to make things more efficient. With this technology we can process product details at an exponentially faster rate than regular print alone, limiting the time we spend searching for products and maximizing our time enjoying them.

As innovative as this new technology seems, there is still some speculation as to whether this idea will become widespread or not. Is this truly the future of print media, or will its current reachability issues limit its success?

With the upcoming Motorola Droid Bionic and HTC Thunderbolt, Apple will have to rely on their branding more than ever if they want to keep their market lead in the smart phone category. That being said, Apple’s loyal customers still set records when they beat Verizon’s single day product launch sales when the iPhone 4 went available online. The record was actually beaten in two hours between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.

However, Verizon fans will have more to look forward to in the upcoming months as the Bionic and Thunderbolt head towards the America’s largest 3G network. The 4G capable phones have screen sizes that are 0.8’’ larger than the iPhone 4 and, with additional storage, they can surpass the 32 Gigs of memory available with the iPhone. Not to mention a higher still resolution camera, better battery life, and the new Android 2.2 operating system that is flash compatible. A great spec sheet can be found here.

The iPhone 4 does have some things going in its favor however. On the Apple store, you can easily peruse through 300,000 available apps, as compared to 100,000 for Android phones. There is always the loyal apple network that shattered the sales record for Verizon. And then there’s also the innovative iPhone ad campaign that has a clear and distinctive beat, and sleek and smooth styling that just leaves you feeling as if you have witnessed innovation.

At the end of the day, because Apple was the revolutionary in the smart phone market, they will be perceived as a step above the competition. All smart phones that come after the iPhone 4 will have the distinctive aroma of copycats, most recently noted by the advent of the front camera on the Bionic and Thunderbolt. Although the iPhone’s competitors can claim superior hardware, their creators cannot claim superior innovation, and that is what I believe Apple will base its ad campaign around for the upcoming iPhone 4 upgrade, or even iPhone 5.