The New York Times is reporting that ABC will be the first of the major broadcast networks to put all of its programming online to be streamed live to an iPad app. ABC, which was one of the first networks to release an on-demand video app for tablets when the iPad was first released in 2010, will debut this streaming service for its New York and Philadelphia viewers. That means that every second of video that those users would otherwise watch on their local ABC television station will be accessible via ABC's new "Watch ABC" app.

But this is no cord-cutting measure.

Here are the caveats to this plan, which ABC executives say was already in development prior to the announcement of Aereo and the litigation that has followed. First, only cable and satellite service subscribers will be able to tap into the ABC livestream, and will have to sign in to authenticate their subscription in the app, much like HBO subscribers have to do with HBO Go. Second, ABC says that making this content available (both in livestream and on-demand formats) in an app means that it'll gradually withhold that content from free-to-view services like Hulu and even its own ABC.com site. This would be to sweeten the deal for cable and satellite providers who want to ensure that users keep paying for that subscriptions.

Also, the livestream will have advertisements, but it won't be the same ads that are piped to broadcast viewers--they'll be digital ads like you'd find on ABC.com. And finally, ABC will only be able to expand this service to other markets if it can work out deals with the owners of its 200 affiliate stations. In the case of the east coast, many of those affiliates are owned by Hearst, which ABC has a good relationship with. There are many stakeholders that need to be appeased in making this happen, and the consumer is rarely on the top of that list.

There will be no Adobe CS7. Today, Adobe announced its new Creative Cloud apps and services, which will be the only way to get the newest versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro. After a decade of Creative Suite programs, Adobe is going subscription only with the CC family of apps and services. If Creative Cloud sounds familiar, that's because it's not new. Adobe introduced the service last year as a complimentary offering alongside Creative Suite--Creative Cloud consisted of both free and subscription-based versions of Adobe's core products. Starting today, though, Creative Cloud will be the only way to get the newest versions of those products. For Photoshop users, that means tapping into hyped features like Camera Shake Reduction and Smart Sharpening.

So how does it work? Pricing is obviously the first concern. Adobe announced that Creative Cloud will cost $50/month for access to all of its apps and services. Owners of CS3 or newer products will be offered an introductory price of $30/month for one year before having to pay the full $50/month. Pricing is slightly different for groups who need more cloud storage and students--education pricing is set at $20/month for all access. The subscription will allow you to run CC apps without an Internet connection, though Adobe will run checks to provide software updates. Offline use just means you won't get software updates or cloud service access. And if you really don't want to use Creative Cloud? CS6 licenses will still be available for sale, though Adobe will not continue to develop for it, aside from bug fixes and ensuring that it works on the next versions of Windows and Mac OS.

The more interesting announcement was that of Project Mighty and Napoleon, two pieces of prototype hardware that will eventually be real consumer products. Mighty is a pressure-sensitive stylus designed to work on the iPad in concert with Adobe iOS apps. Styli accessories for the iPad have traditionally not been great, due to the fact that the iPad uses a capacitive touchscreen and doesn't have native pressure detection. Mighty incorporates pressure sensitivity in its tip, relaying that information to the iPad (and Adobe's cloud servers) using Bluetooth. The video demonstration shows that it works, but still has a degree of latency and a soft touch that you wouldn't see on a Wacom (or even the Microsoft Surface Pro). Napoleon, on the other hand, is another bluetooth connected device that works as a ruler on the iPad. It projects digital guides onto the drawing app, allowing you to draft perfectly straight or curved lines using the Mighty.

Watch Adobe's promo video for Mighty and Napoleon below, which does a good job showing how these tools will work on the iPad.

Now this is really interesting. Adobe--whose MAX conference is going on this weekend--revealed on an online photography show that it is working on an iOS version of its RAW image processing software Lightroom. Apppearing on Scott Kelby's The Grid, Adobe Group Product Manager Tom Hogarty demoed an early internet app that could read and process RAW files from a Canon 5D Mark III, "developing" it using tools from Lightroom's Basic Development panel (eg. Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Vibrance, etc). While other RAW photo readers on iOS exist, like Apple's own iPhoto, Lightroom compatibility would allow photographers to sync edit paramaters between mobile and desktop, where copies of the RAW files would live. Performance is also a big concern for Adobe, said Hogarty.

On a related note, one of the problems I'm running into with my iPad photo workflow and RAW is the inability to choose what files to import using the camera connection tool. Since I'm shooting all my photos in RAW now, the iPad only allows me to import both RAW and JPEG while the SD card is connected, even if I only want to import the JPEG for viewing and light editing. And once a photo is imported, there's no way just to delete the RAW or JPEG version on the iPad. My current solution is to plug that SD card into my desktop and move all the RAW files to a separate temporary folder, then sync just the JPEGs to my iPad before moving the RAW files back again for Lightroom import on the desktop.

Adobe MAX being this weekend, and we're expecting to see many more new products and features announced from Adobe at the show. Can't wait to see more of Photoshop's upcoming deblurring tool!

I like reading magazines. I like reading magazines a lot. It's my baby bear's porridge of content consumption--a perfect distribution of content formats that's not too shallow or requires too much time investment to digest. The mix of short form "front of book" stories, long form features, illustration, and photography is just right. Plus, coming from a magazine background, I really appreciate the craft that goes into designing and committing to print a publication that people hold in their hands to read every month. Anyone who's worked on a magazine staff can attest to the nuance that goes into laying out words and images on a page, especially when it come to the cover. In many ways, I think of Tested and similar websites as a magazine--a digest of stories about topics we care about presented in a (hopefully) beautiful way.

That's why even though I'm on a computer for 10+ hours a day reading an endless river to blogs and online posts, I still subscribe to several magazines: Wired, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, and Smithsonian just to name a few. Magazine content is less overwhelming to consume than the web--you can read at your own pace for from month to month and not feel like you're missing out on 99% of what else is out there. The tangibility of a magazine is paramount as well; folding the pages (essential to the venerable Mad fold-in), placing physical bookmarks for future reference (eg. for recipes), and tearing pages out (Pinterest IRL) are quintessential print magazine experiences.

Of course, you can also read them in the bathroom. Magazines have a disposability that make them great as travel companions--their natural state is rumpled in the back pocket of an airplane seat or in the basket next to the bathroom sink. But despite their disposability, I--and many other people--archive my magazine collection in plastic bins and shelves. Actually, let's call it what it is: hoarding. And despite having hundreds of pounds of magazines stored up, I can count on two hands the number of times I've pulled an old issue out to read a favorite story. The reason I do it is because magazines, moreso than books and other types of print media, are ephemeral pieces of work. And with new forms of digital periodicals that aim to replace the physical magazine (see: The Magazine), magazine publishers have been trying to find a way to transition print to digital while retaining the things that magazine readers love about the format.

Next Issue, a digital magazine subscription service that launched last year, is less a digital simulation of a single magazine than it is an entire magazine stand like the one you'd find in your local supermarket. I've been testing it for the past month and a half, using it in place of my existing magazine subscriptions to see if it can replicate the things I like about reading physical issues. Long answer short: it can't, really. But it's a service that I quite like.

F.A.A. regulations on electronics have always seemed to follow a very loose, very scientific old adage: Better safe than sorry. There's never been much in the way of proof that Kindles or GameBoys or MP3 players affect the sensitive electronics of an airplane, but that hasn't stopped them from insisting that passengers turn off everything for takeoff. Now that blanket ruling from the F.A.A. might be changing--but not on the scale most people would like to see.

Photo credit: Jetstar Airways

According to the New York Times, insiders say "the agency hopes to announce by the end of this year that it will relax the rules for reading devices during takeoff and landing. The change would not include cellphones." The new ruling, if it comes to pass, would allow passengers to put reading devices in airplane mode rather than turning them off. "Reading devices" presumably covers Kindles and other tablets like iPads, but doesn't mean smartphones. We wouldn't be surprised if the rule fails to make a distinction between tablets with built-in 3G radios and those without.

Defining what "airplane mode" should entail would allow for more general guidelines with different types of devices.

The F.A.A. has obviously been under pressure to change its electronics rulings for years, and the Times reports that the agency has been working on the issue with a number of associations including Boeing, the F.C.C., and Amazon, since last year. They're expected to unveil their findings by July 31st.

Senator Claire McCaskill plans to introduce legislation to update electronic rulings if the F.A.A. doesn't move quickly enough. Ideally, the F.A.A. will institute a broad set of rules that will apply to future devices as well as current electronics on the market. They'll also be determining what, exactly, "airplane mode" should entail, which will hopefully allow for more general guidelines with different types of devices. But if the ruling allows for Kindles and not for cellphones, few passengers will be satisfied unless the F.A.A. makes a stronger case for cellular signals interfering with airplanes. Better safe than sorry isn't going to last much longer.

AT CES in January we got to look at (but not touch) Ubuntu for smartphones, Canonical's big attempt to expand beyond Linux desktops and laptops and take a stab at a hotter market. An Ubuntu smartphone OS isn't such a wild idea--after all, Google's Android is built on Linux, too. Now, not too surprisingly, Canonical has announced plans to put Ubuntu on tablets. Ars Technica reports that developer previews of Ubuntu for smartphones and Ubuntu for tablets will be released this Thursday. The OS builds can be installed on the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus phones and Nexus 7 and 10 tablets.

Ubuntu for tablets targets devices with screens measuring six inches to 20 inches. Installations for an early build of Ubuntu will be available at Ubuntu's app developer site, and Canonical plans to update its SDK to support tablet app development.

Ars notes that tablets and phones running Ubuntu will be able to dock with a keyboard/mouse/monitor setup to serve as a portable PC. This will require at least a quad-core Cortex A9 or Intel Atom processor and a gig of RAM in the smartphones; Canonical hasn't said what Ubuntu for tablets will require to dock and turn into a PC, but we'd expect similar spec requirements.

The PC mode definitely targets business users, as it offers access to some Windows applications by operating as a thin client. Ars also writes that the mobile OS will support disk encryption, multiple user accounts and IT management software.

Canonical expects Ubuntu phones and tablets to ship around this time next year, but the software itself will be available around October. Supposedly just about every phone that runs Android could run Ubuntu, so we may see quite a burst of activity in the Android hacking scene this fall.

Over the weekend, Sony Mobile of Japan announced the Xperia Tablet Z, the second tablet from Sony to carry the Xperia brand. This 10.1-inch tablet will run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (likely Sony's own build), and runs on a Qualcomm quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM. The previous Xperia Tablet S released last September used a Tegra 3 processor. It will also have a 1900x1200 resolution 16:10 screen, 8MP camera, microSD card slot, LTE capability, and NFC (thanks to the Qualcomm chip). Sony is also touting waterproofing (possibly similar to the Xperia Z phones), though you may remember that the previous Xperia Tablet S had manufacturing defects that affected its water resistance.

The tablet's most notable feature, however is its size and weight. The Xperia Tablet X reportedly is 6.9mm thick, making it the thinnest tablet of any size (very comparable to the iPad Mini's 7.2mm thickness). It's also supposed to weigh 495grams (1.09 pounds), which is the lightest any 10-inch tablet weighs. As a two-handed tablet, that's pretty good. Blog of Mobile is attributing the small size to a 6000mAh battery, though we'll have to wait until the tablet is released to see if Sony compromised battery life for size and weight.

The Xperia Tablet Z is only announced as an LTE tablet for Japanese carrier NTT Docomo, so no word on whether it'll be available stateside. Curious that it wasn't debuted at this month's CES.

If there's one piece of technology we regret missing the chance to touch at CES, it's the Tactus touchscreen. Physical contact is crucial, in this case, because the touchscreen Tactus Technology had on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show offered a groundbreaking fusion of physical keyboard and smooth multitouch surface. Tactus' dynamic touchscreen is indistinguishable from any other smartphone or tablet display at first glance, but when you pop open the software keyboard, small gel bubbles form on the surface of the screen, placing real physical feedback at your fingertips.

No one's been sticking it out with the BlackBerry this long for the software experience, but there are a few text and email addicts who never want to give up the speed and accuracy of a hard keyboard. RIM tried to replicate that with the "SurePress" keyboard on its touchscreen Storm, but pushing down on the screen to create a "click" didn't replicate the feeling of a real keyboard. And now there's the Tactus, which could finally bridge the conflicting desires for physical keys and smooth touch surfaces.

Image Credit: Anandtech

Tactus Technology is designing its tactile panel for OEMs, with the idea that it will replace the existing glass and touch layers that rest atop existing tablets and smartphones. The white paper explains:

"It is essentially a thin, flat, smooth and transparent cover layer varying in thickness from about 0.75mm to 1mm that has certain special properties.

Made of a thin multi-layer stack, the top-most layer consists of an optically clear polymer. A number of micro-holes connect the top layers of the panel to a series of microchannels that run through the underlying substrate. The micro channels are filled with a fluid whose optical index of refraction matches that of the surrounding material, making it fully and evenly transparent when light from the display passes through.

Increasing the fluid pressure causes the fluid to push up through the holes and against the top polymer layer, making it expand in pre-defined locations. This enables an array of physical and completely transparent buttons to rise out of the surface. A small internal controller that interfaces with the processor of the touchscreen device controls the rise and fall of the buttons. The controller allows a proximity sensor or a software application to control the state of the buttons. For example, the buttons could be triggered to rise whenever the software calls for the virtual QWERTY keyboard."

Physical keyboard? Very cool. But the potential for something more? Even cooler. Tactus could theoretically design the gel to come up in any number of different formations. We could see this eventually leading to a braille e-reader, as long as the fluid can form in shifting configurations. Tactus' white paper reveals that the keys are currently limited to a specific formation set during manufacturing, but there's still plenty of variety there:

Intel's serious about portability. If doubt lingered in the minds of anyone at CES 2013, the company's press conference this year reinforced its focus on smartphones, tablets, and Ultrabooks, Ultrabooks, Ultrabooks. And, not so surprisingly, quite a few tablets that are also Ultrabooks. And this is a good thing: After struggling to push the notebook industry towards thinner and lighter designs, Intel's finally building processors with the speed and power efficiency to make it all worthwhile.

Lightweight, battery efficient systems hogged the spotlight at the press conference, and Intel chose to stay mum about the desktop flavors of its next generation Core platform, Haswell, to focus on ultra-low voltage and Atom chips. The good news is, everything Intel has planned for mobile computing looks great, and the chipmaker had one welcome surprise to announce during the press event: the immediate launch of a new low-power 7 watt Ivy Bridge chip for tablets and convertibles.

Intel revealed back in December that it planned to release 10 watt chips in the Ivy Bridge series, lowering power draw far below the 17W TDP of its existing ULV chips. Today they announced those chips are currently available, and they're even more power efficient than we expected, drawing only 7 watts of juice.

To tout the advantages of a 7 watt processor, Intel pulled out an Acer Aspire Ultrabook that weighs 20 percent less (and is 20 percent thinner) than its predecessor. The Ultrabook weighed only 1.76 pounds. Intel also briefly showed off the Lenovo Yoga 11S, an 11.6-inch version of the popular Yoga convertible. Lightweight ULV devices arriving in the spring will run on this new Ivy Bridge chip, while systems launching later in the year will be on the next generation Haswell platform.

The Yoga has done more to sell the touch UI of Windows 8 than just about any other device, and Intel has apparently decided that touch and laptops are meant to be together. Haswell is the first generation of the Core i platform to be built specifically with touch support in mind, and Intel's mandating that anything and everything under the Ultrabook brand must include touch controls. Ultrabooks may flock to the convertible design with that requirement in mind--if you're making something with a touchscreen, might as well make it as useful as possible. WiDi, or wireless display, will be another requirement.

Thankfully, Intel promises Haswell will deliver the energy efficiency for all-day use. The company claims that Haswell represents the largest generation-to-generation increase in battery life in its chipmaking history, and their tablet/Ultrabook reference design North Cape hits 13 hours of runtime.

While a 7 watt TDP is positively minuscule for a computer, it's still far higher than the 2 watts or so that most ARM-based mobile devices draw. Intel's finally getting competitive with the 2 watt Atom Z2760 for tablets, which the company claims is five times faster than Nvidia's Tegra 3 (Nvidia says its newly announced Tegra 4 is six times faster than its predecessor, so it's hard to say which is faster until real products are on the market). The 1.8GHz Z2760 is aimed at tablets, and the advantage of an x86-based tablet is obvious: it can run the full Windows experience, not the limited ARM version found in the Microsoft Surface. Still, we'd hold off on Atom-based tablets until the end of 2013. That's when Atom moves down to the 22nm process with a new chip, codename Bay Trail, which will double performance.

This is basically a straightforward year for Intel: Everything's getting faster, and mobile will see the big gains. By the end of the year, touch will be an Ultrabook standard and 10+ hour battery life should be along for the ride. Haswell's battery efficiency will also benefit other ULV-based systems like Apple's MacBook Air. Expect the new stuff to arrive in the fall and winter of this year, as usual; we'll no doubt learn about what Intel has in store for desktops in the next few months.