As the first World Backup Day winds down, we've got one last giveaway, but it's a doozy. If you've followed our urgent pleas for better backup behavior today, your patience may now be rewarded.

Whether you back up to the cloud, to a local drive or RAID array, or to a stack of CD-Rs, spare a few minutes between now and midnight to think about your digital footprints.

How much would you lose, irrecoverably, if your hard drive coughed and died tonight? Which pictures, videos, projects would be gone? What source code, designs or daydreams would evaporate? Take a moment, make a plan, back up. It's hard to say it any better than Merlin Mann did last year, so go read his exhortation, then come on back and enter our giveaway.

The final prize is within reach: the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 1 TB external drive, a quad-interface model with enough room to keep you backing up for weeks. Just leave a comment telling us about your best backup 'save' and we'll enter you to win.

Official Rules:

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, and residents of Canada (except Quebec) who are age 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment on this post.
• The comment must be left before Saturday April 2nd at 11:59pm EDT.
• You may enter only once.
• 2 winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One OWC Mercury Elite-AL 1 TB hard drive (ARV $147.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

World Backup Day: 1 TB hard drive giveaway from OWC originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

BusinessWeek had a chat recently with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, and he told them that the pending merger with T-Mobile would have the intended effect of improving service and capacity on the networks for all of AT&T's devices, including, of course, the iPhone. "Virtually on the day you close the deal, getting a 30 percent lift in capacity in New York City: that's a significant improvement in call quality and data throughput," he said. That's a nice big promise to make -- something that will be easy to check up on the day the merger gets closed.

Stephenson also speaks to the merger's opposition, saying that the cell phone service providing market is plenty intense. "It is intense before we do this transaction, it will be intense after we do this transaction." Stephenson also suggested that the deal might lower costs for AT&T customers overseas (since potentially, the international arm of T-mobile would be ready to do deals with the US arm that AT&T will own). He's obviously got some good reasons for the merger, but then again, he stands to make plenty of money if it's approved. If the deal does go through, AT&T has said it expects to finish everything within a year from now.

[via 9to5Mac]

AT&T CEO promises improved service from T-Mobile deal originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gameloft has announced that it has licensed the Unreal Engine for four upcoming games set to be released in 2011 & 2012.

Gameloft hasn't announced which games will be running on the Unreal Engine, but Pocket Gamer seems to believe that one of the titles slated to be released this year is their next followup to the popular-and already impressive looking-sci-fi shooters N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance & N.O.V.A. 2.

Last year Epic Games started dropping jaws when it released Epic Citadel as a proof of concept showing off the Unreal Engine running on iOS. Epic then followed it up in December with the stunning and widely praised Infinity Blade, a game many have claimed looked as good as current generation dedicated gaming consoles. After all, it's the same engine that powers many blockbuster games like Gears of War, Bulletstorm, BioShock 2, despite more limited hardware on iOS devices.

Continue reading Gameloft's NOVA 3 rumored to be built on Unreal Engine

Gameloft's NOVA 3 rumored to be built on Unreal Engine originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We think this might be cheating a little bit, but we'll let you decide: 9to5Mac reader Jordan C. wrote in to say that he's proposed to his girlfriend courtesy of a custom-engraved iPad. He ordered one with "Will you marry me?" engraved on it, and when it showed up last Monday, he carted his girlfriend out (in the California rain we had last week, no less) to the Redwood Forests, and knelt down to propose to her with Apple's magical device underneath "the largest tree in the world."

Very cute story, and congrats to the happy couple. But Jordan's now-fiance Jessica reportedly was a little more excited for the tablet than the nuptials, following up her "yes" with a "Now give me my iPad!" Oh, Jordan. You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into, buddy. Above is a picture of the bride to be, with her true love presumably standing just off camera. But then again, she sure does seem to love that iPad, right?

Wedding proposed via engraved iPad 2 originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Love Apple gear? Like math? TUAW's Doing the Math series examines the numbers and the science that lie behind the hardware.

One of the new features we first saw in the developer beta of Mac OS X Lion back in February is long-overdue in this correspondent's humble opinion: it finally supports TRIM on solid-state drives.

TRIM (which, despite the capital letters, isn't an acronym) is a way to speed up SSD access by performing important housekeeping tasks in the background or on file deletes, rather than leaving it until the user is writing data to the drive. Since then, TRIM has also appeared in 10.6.6 for new Macs with Apple-supplied SSDs only, and with third-party tools it's now possible to get TRIM running on any SSD under 10.6.7.

This raises the question: what exactly is TRIM, and why does it matter? If you've been wondering what this seemingly arbitrary abbreviation is, and why it matters, then I'm here with my best Science Hat on to remove all that wonder (as we scientists so often do) and replace it with cold hard fact.

Continue reading Keeping SSDs in TRIM: doing the math

Keeping SSDs in TRIM: doing the math originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TechCrunch reports that two "solid sources" have said Apple will hold off on unveiling the next iteration of iOS, version 5, until this fall instead of debuting in the summer as in years past. If TechCrunch's sources are correct, the iPhone 5 is still likely to debut in the summer, but it will be running a flavor of the current v4 iOS.

In addition of launching in the fall, TechCrunch's sources state that iOS 5 will be a "major revamp of the OS" that will include:

• an heavily cloud-based iOS, with several new services
• a "music locker" service to coincide with the introduction of new iPods
• a location service that focuses on finding friends and family members

TechCrunch also states Apple will first discuss many of iOS 5's cloud-based services at WWDC in June, and Mac OS X Lion will likely include integration with those cloud-based components.

Until Apple makes an announcement about iOS 5 nothing is certain, but if TechCrunch's sources are right about a "music locker" service, it would make sense to hold iOS 5 until the fall when new iPods are traditionally launched. The extended timeline would also give Apple the time to devote sufficient resources to completing work on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which Apple has said will be released this summer.

Rumor: iOS 5 will be a 'major revamp,' won't debut until fall originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The official Twitter app for iPad has been updated to version 3.3.2, and it now allows you to take and share photos and videos directly from your iPad 2. This functionality was already in there for the iPhone, of course, but now that the iPad is outfitted with a camera, Twitter has made it easy to take and share video directly from Apple's magical and revolutionary device.

The update has a few bug fixes, including a fix that helps location sharing work a little better. What the new version doesn't do is get rid of the trending topics quickbar, a feature that still has some users up in arms after it was added into the app a little while ago. But that fight aside for now, I look forward to seeing some iPads putting video and pictures on Twitter.

Twitter update adds photo, video capture to iPad 2 originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Legendary Japanese game developer Square Enix has launched an internal studio called Hippos Lab, which will be dedicated strictly to making original content for smartphone platforms (specifically Android and iOS, we're guessing, but the company's obviously leaving its options open). The studio's been working on a title since March 7, and we're supposed to see their output very soon. Square Enix has already had a lot of success with its own content on the App Store, both original games and ports from other platforms, but this is a more formal dedication of resources to the mobile gaming market.

And speaking of Square Enix's content, the company has put a whole slew of its titles on sale to celebrate the Final Fantasy III release earlier this week. We already told you the first two Final Fantasy games were on sale, but the original Chaos Rings RPG is also half off (cheaper than I've ever seen it), as is the great old Secret of Mana title. And the puzzle/real-time strategy game Sliding Heroes has dropped to the low price of completely free. Some excellent deals from Square Enix on the store right now.

[via Engadget]

Square Enix launches Hippos Lab, puts App Store titles on sale originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Although third party AirPlay support debuted as part of the recent 4.3, apps that offer that support are now trickling in. AirPlay allows you to beam video from your iOS device to an Apple TV or to a 3rd party application like Banana TV without cables. The newly updated IMDB application (version 2.1) offers Watchlist, a way to keep track of movies that you want to watch, enhanced showtimes and ticket purchasing, and AirPlay support for trailers.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the new AirPlay features to watch Hulu or Amazon Instant Video, the way you can on desktop browsers.

Updated IMDB app gains AirPlay support for trailers originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Garage Band for iPad is, I'm pleased to say, another one of those apps. Software that melds so perfectly with the iPad hardware that when you show it off to someone, their natural inclination is to say "Oh, so that's why I should buy one of these devices."

I love finding those apps.

Follow the jump to find out why Garage Band qualifies.

Continue reading Garage Band for iPad: Using the app to show off the device

Garage Band for iPad: Using the app to show off the device originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.