During a keynote presentation Monday morning in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to bring a whole host of new and shiny Apple stuff to a massive crowd of cheering fans/developers. Since this was a developer conference, the most important thing was, of course, the announcement of the next gen of iOS called iOS 7.

But that wasn’t all. Also announced was an update to Mac OS X called Mavericks, Apple’s new streaming service called iTunes Radio and  new hardware including revamped MacBook Air laptops as well as a completely reimagined Mac Pro.

Here’s a list of all the announcements:

• New version of Mac OS X called Mavericks. That’s right, no more cat names. Now, cool surf spots in California instead.

• New version of iOS called iOS 7. No cute nickname but lots of innovative features and a new, fancy UI design.

• Updated MacBook Air laptops. Longer battery life and better WiFi speed with 802.11AC

• Completely reimagined Mac Pro desktop. For those who need to do some heavy lifting. It looks like a round version of the tower in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In this modern world of instant videos, tweets, Tumblr, Vine, Instagram and more, reading the printed word in a book can sometimes get left behind. Fortunately, the folks at Lucasfilm/Disney haven’t forgotten just how important reading is. In fact, in conjunction with partners like Del Rey, Scholastic and Dark Horse Comics, they’re helping celebrate reading by dedicating an entire day to it.

What are we talking about? Well, read on from the official press release to find out:

New York, NY – Lucasfilm, Disney Publishing Worldwide, and its publishing partners announced today the second annual Star Wars Reads Day to be held this October 5, 2013. Last year, 30 authors and 1,500 costumed volunteers participated in over 1,200 Star Wars Reads Day events across North America. On October 5 of this year, Star Wars fans, authors, and artists will again come together in this multi-publisher initiative that celebrates reading and Star Wars. Participating publishing partners include Abrams, Chronicle Books, Dark Horse, Del Rey, DK, Quirk Books, Random House Audio, Scholastic, Titan Magazines, and Workman.

“Star Wars Reads Day is the kind of initiative that we at Lucasfilm love to support” says Carol Roeder, Director of Publishing at Lucasfilm. “Reading and Star Wars have gone hand-in-hand since 1976, when the novelization of the original Star Wars movie was released. Over the years, many fans have discovered the joy in reading through Star Wars books, and we hope to continue encouraging more people to read.”

Geeks and LEGO go together like Pizza and Beer. Or, like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. Speaking of Luke Skywalker, a LEGO replica of his favorite fighter, the X-Wing , was recently unveiled during a ceremony in New York’s Times Square.

This amazing feet of engineering is the world’s largest LEGO model and is a 1:1 representation of the X-Wing. The massive replica took 32 master builders, five million LEGO bricks and over 17,000 hours to complete.

The model weighs nearly 46,000 pounds, stands 11 feet tall and 43 feet long, with a wingspan of 44 feet. This was done, in part, to help Cartoon Network kick off their new TV series The Yoda Chronicles on May 29th.

The model itself will be heading to the LEGOLAND California Resort where it will be installed through the remainder of the year. Check out more pics of this awesome LEGO X-Wing after the break.

Google is a major player in the tech world. So much so that they have their very own convention, called Google I/O. At this convention, which takes place in San Francisco from May 15-17, developers and other Google-enthusiasts gather to discuss, learn and get a glimpse of what Google has in store for Android and its other ventures.

As of late yesterday, the company has posted the full list and schedule of sessions avilable at Google I/O. With ove 120 choices ranging from Android and Chrome to developing for Google Glass and Google Wallet.

In short, if you’re a developer (or a Google-enthusiast) you won’t have any trouble finding something interesting and informative to see and do.

Sadly, if you don’t already have a ticket to Google I/O, you’re out of luck. They’re sold out. However, you can be sure most of the major sessions and keynotes will be available live via streaming or later online at Google’s Developers Live.

Even though we’re big Apple fans, we’re very interested to see what Google unveils at this event. They do create some pretty cool stuff.

Could be pretty exciting indeed.

He’s not Steve Jobs (obviously) but he plays him in a movie. Of course, we’re referring to none other than the ex-misses Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher.

While Kutcher is certainly no Steve Jobs and Josh Gadd, the guy playing Apple co-founder and Segway addict Steve Wozniack is no Woz, the duo will be taking to the stage at next week’s MacWorld | iWorld Expo at the Moscone Center in San Fancisco headlining a session about the iconic co-founders.

The best part? They will be doing the session in character as Jobs and Woz. Yep, you read that right.

The session, titled “Playing Steve & Woz,” will take place on the main stage, room 2005 on Thursday, January 31 at 9:00 AM Pacific. Oh boy, that can’t be good, right? Or, will it be so bad, it’s gonna be great? Who knows but it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Macworld | iWorld 2013 runs from January 31 to February 2 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s a great event and definitely worth checking out.

As expected, at an event in San Francisco today, Apple VP Tim Schiller took the wraps off the company’s newest mobile device: the iPhone 5. In addition, the company announced a new version of iTunes, an update to its mobile iOS software, dubbed iOS 6, and more.

But really, the more isn’t that important. What people are really interested in is the new iPhone. So, here’s what we know:

The iPhone 5 is 18% thinner than the iPhone 4/4S. It is also 20% lighter than the previous model. It’s made of all aluminum and glass. Since the display is taller, with a 1136 x 640 resolution (aka 16:9 like your HD TV), there’s an extra row of icons and the pixels per inch are 326.

All of Apple’s apps are updated to support the larger resolution, and apps that aren’t yet updated will simply run at normal resolution with small black bars surrounding them. In other words, letterboxed.

The iPhone 5 supports almost every cellular and Wi-Fi band in the world including GSM/GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/EV-DO/HSPA/LTE and Wi-FI a,b,g,n with dual-band. It also features a new Apple A6 processor that’s twice as fast as before, and offers twice the graphics performance with 22% less physical footprint.

The new device will also sport an 8 megapixel camera with improved low light, color processing and lens, and, panorama mode. As for battery life, Apple claims better performance than the iPhone 4S, which is actually pretty good. It remains to be seen how that will stack up during real world tests with 4G LTE on all the time, however.

Pricing for the device, which will be available in both black and white, starts at $199 for the 16GB version, $299 for the 32 GB and $399 for the 64GB model. You will be able to use it with Verizon, AT&T or Sprint in the U.S.

iOS 6, the latest version of Apple’s mobile software, will be available on September 19th for current iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.

As a Mac OS X user, I’ve moved away from Apple’s Safari web browser and have been using Google’s Chrome for pretty much all of my daily browsing. It works very well, for the most part. But until today, one thing has been missing in the seamless Chrome experience: the Chrome browser on the iPhone and iPad.

Fortunately, Google has remedied that issue and announced Chrome for the iPhone and iPad during day two of its I/O conference in San Francisco. Chrome for iPhone and iPad, which needs iOS version 4.3 or higher, will be available later today.

Another new thing Google announced today which I’m particularly excited for is the Google Drive app for iOS. With the Drive app on iOS, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you’re on the go. You can also search all your files, share them with collaborators, and make files available offline.

That last bit is really cool. Offline files is an awesome development which makes this service even better. No internet connection? Don’t worry, just make changes to your document and the next time you have a connection, it will sync. Awesome.

More from Google’s I/O event as it comes to us. In the meantime, I’m hitting refresh on the iTunes Store until Chrome is available for download.

With all the advancements in technology coming along the last few years, especially from Apple, whenever the company has an event of any kind. it’s big news. Following that is the announcement today that Apple has officially confirmed the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote will be held at 10:00AM on June 11th at Moscone West in San Francisco.

The news of a keynote for this Apple Developer event isn’t very surprising considering they have one every year. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that the company has not confirmed who will be delivering said keynote.

In the past, Apple Co-Founder and CEO Steve Jobs did the honors. Since his passing, new CEO Tim Cook has taken over. This time around, though, with no confirmation forthcoming, it’s anyone’s guess.

Of course, it could just be that Apple hasn’t announced the keyote speaker yet because they are still working out the details. Or, and this is a scenario I prefer to believe, they are working on something really amazing for the event.

My vote for what this amazing thing could be: Hologram Steve Jobs.

To some, the arrival of the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE is even more momentous than the recent announcement of the Samsung Galaxy SIII. Count me as one in this camp.

As a Verizon customer I’ve been waiting for something cool to hit the network which sports a lot of great new features and runs on Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich). This new device from HTC just may fit the bill.

For various reasons, we are not at the CTIA conference in New Orleans right now. However, the folks at Droid Life are and they managed to get some pics and video of the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE (that’s a mouthful) and have graciously shard it with the world at large.

According the site, their initial reaction to seeing the device in the flesh (so to speak) was: “Smallish device with some great specs that will be a winner if priced right.” That pretty much jives with what we thought.

I would also agree with Droid Life’s assessment that this device isn’t the HTC One X or even the S. It fills a different segment of HTC’s market and will probably do pretty well.

If I didn’t hate AT&T so much I would consider an unlocked HTC One X or, perhaps, even this one with Verizon. However, for the moment, I will stick with the Galaxy Nexus unlocked on T-Mobile and my trusty iPhone 4S. I think that’s a great couple of devices.

Anyone have any other opinions? Also, be sure to check out the video after the break.

With big name film festivals like Cannes and Sundance often dominating the news, people sometimes forget that there’s a great film festival right here in the heart of the filmmaking community. That’s right, the Los Angeles Film Festival is coming next month and today the fest announced the full lineup of films and shorts showing in competition and having their premieres at the fest.

Among the highlights are Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love, which will open the fest, the world premiere of Alex Kurtzman’s People Like Us, starring Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks and Olivia Wilde, and Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, which will close the festival. For all the scoop on the fest, check out the full press releases after the break.

The Los Angeles Film Festival runs June 14-24 at downtown Los Angeles’ LA Live complex.

Add me to the list of people a bit perturbed about not being able to get a ticket for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June. Sure, I could have been more diligent or woken up super early to make sure I got a ticket. However, with tickets selling out in under two hours, it might not have made a difference anyway.

Plus, Apple could have also taken its West Coast developers into a bit more consideration when deciding the release schedule for tickets too. After all, Apple is a West Coast company, so that should count for something. Amiright? Maybe not.

Anyway, for those of you in the same boat who did not manage to get a ticket for WWDC, an alternative has presented itself. No, Apple hasn’t released more tickets for its event. Instead, some enterprising developers in San Francisco, who’ve dubbed their organization Indie Developer Labs, have decided to put on an iOS developer conference of their own.

“Indie Developer Labs is an open area where developers are provided with space to work, free Wi-Fi, and an open environment to connect with other developers. Our mission is to help foster the collaborative spirit of the Apple developer community,” the organizers said on their website.

The event will take place from June 12th to June 15th in San Francisco, during the same time and just blocks away from where Apple’s event will be held at the Moscone Center. We wish them well.

Developing apps for the iPhone, iPad and other iOS devices is a booming business. There’s also money to be made developing apps for the Mac and Mac OS X as well.

There’s so much to gain, and Apple wants to keep developers as happy as they can, that the company holds an annual developer’s conference in San Francisco to make sure everyone is on the same page and to help developers get all the tools they need to create great apps. In fact, the company just announced that its Worldwide Developer Conference will take place in San Francisco from June 11th to June 15th.

For the event, Apple is providing over 100 sessions on iOS and OS X, in addition to a student scholarship program. If you’re a first-time developer of apps for the iPhone or a seasoned veteran, this even surely offers a great deal of useful information and contact building.

Read on for all the details from Apple’s official press release.