In the News: 2012-01-23

Mac News: 350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple’s iBooks in Three Days
Though nascent and unproven, Apple’s new textbook initiative appears to be gaining lots of momentum – and quickly, too. Within days of its debut, Apple’s iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads. Same thing with the company’s textbook authoring tool.
Read full story => All Things D

Technology News: App Testing Catches Up With the New Era of Gesture-Based Input
Gesture-based input is the present and future of computing. We have added whole new meanings to words like swipe, pinch, zoom and flip. For mobile developers, reconciling touch-based input with design and functionality goals in apps has become a problem. Testing gestures in an app is time consuming and problematic.
Read full story => ReadWriteWeb

Programming News: Use the new and shiny responsibly
Look up HTML5 features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them – with polyfills, fallbacks or as they are. “When Can I Use” tells you the browser support story, while “Modernizr” gives you the power of feature detection. HTML5 Please helps you out with recommendations for polyfills and implementation so you can decide if and how to put each of these features to use. The recommendations represent the collective knowledge of developers who have been deep in the HTML5 trenches.
Read full story => HTML5Please

Standards News: The water challenge – How ISO standards help
ISO’s solutions for addressing vital global water challenges are the subject of a new brochure, ISO & water. The four-page document provides a concise overview of International Standards available and how they can help.
Read full story => ISO

Other News:
If the feds can shut down Megaupload, why do we need SOPA?
For more than a year, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America have argued that existing laws were insufficient to deal with the problem of “rogue sites” hosted overseas. They’ve been pushing bills like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act as essential weapons in the fight.
Read full story => ars technica