Siri is often quite helpful in relaying information about your contacts. However, Siri has difficulty recognizing and articulating foreign names. There is a great way to teach Siri proper pronunciation of such names. Sandro Cuccia shows you how.

John Martellaro, Senior Editor for Analysis & Reviews at The Mac Observer, will be a guest on The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg, Saturday night, March 9th on GCN Radio. He'll talk about why the iOS needs a new paint job, the apparent shift towards the iPad mini, why he doesn't use Facebook, the problems with Java on the Mac platform and his own experiences working for Apple from his home office.
 

Like your news more social? Vern Seward point out 3 iOS apps that should fit the bill in this week's Free on iTunes. News Republic, Thirst, and Rockmelt. Check it out.

While Java remains an important tool for the Enterprise, its fate on the personal computer for home users is all but sealed. John Martellaro explains.

Everyone knows that Android has all the market share in smartphones and has achieved near parity or parity with Apple's iPad in tablets. Bryan Chaffin want to know what the heck people are doing with those devices, because they clearly don't use them to surf the Web or use Internet-connected apps.

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) was an American science fiction writer who, amongst his many achievements, also noted that "ninety percent of everything is crap." Coined as "Sturgeon's Law", it applies to fiction, but has come to be applied to most anything else. From what John Martellaro has been reading, it also applies to current day writing about Apple.

Apple's MacBook Pro and MacBook Air charger is great because it includes a built-in way to wind up its MagSafe cord. The problem is that it's kind of easy to bend and fray the cord over time where it goes into the power supply, even with the extra reinforcement Apple added. Thanks to a quick winding technique, however, you don't have to worry about frayed cords and potential electrical hazards.

Apple doesn't like the idea of Judge Lucy Koh potentially delaying its second U.S. patent infringement lawsuit against, so the company filed an objection earlier this week. Judge Koh asked both Apple and Samsung for their thoughts on the potential delay while waiting for the appeal process to complete in the first trial between the two companies.

App coders come in all shapes and sizes, but  girls have historically had a hard time getting into the game because the developer world tends to favor men. App Camp For Girls aims to change that by teaching girls the coding skills they need to pursue their passion, and that it's OK to be a coder regardless of whether you're a boy or girl. The project is the brain child of Smile Software's Jean MacDonald and she's planning on kicking off the first camp this summer in Portland, Oregon. 

Apple released updates for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for the iPhone and iPad on Thursday, letting users know they haven't forgotten about their productivity apps for iOS. The updates are minor and the release notes only say they include "stability improvements and bug fixes."