iPad Spawns an Industry of Apps and Accessories
(Newsweek) — One of the most popular apps for Apple’s iPad was designed in the snow-covered forests of Siberia. In an old Soviet-era research institute, a team of scientists managed by Victor Toporkov worked for six months in the fall of 2008 to create Star Walk, a program that lets you hold your iPad up to the sky and see descriptions of the stars and planets in your gaze. Think telescope plus planetarium, with a dash of encyclopedia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Toporkov, a computer scientist at the Institute for Nuclear Studies, saw the move to a free market as a boom time for Russian researchers. Today,Vito Technology, his tech company, is poised to be a winner in another era of transformation: the iPad Age, which comes with an entirely new economy of iPad accessories and applications galore that let you play, learn, work, read books and newspapers, and watch shows.
