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If you’re a big fan of surf, snowboard, and skateboard games on the iPad, and want to take your gaming experience to the next level, the Apstik might be what you’re looking for. It’s a laminated 12-by-32-inch wood platform mounted on a dense foam pad that lets you operate your iPad surf, snowboard, and skateboard games with your feet. Simply place your iPad in the board’s indented mounting area, stand on the board and lean in the direction you want your character to move, and the iPad’s accelerometer will do the rest.

While this is certainly a novel idea, I wonder how comfortable it would be to play a game standing up while looking down the entire time. Fortunately, there appears to be space for you to plug a VGA cable into your iPad’s port so you could watch your game on a display in front of you, which could make things more enjoyable.

Another consideration: since the iPad must be placed on the board, its touch controls will be inaccessible, limiting you to games that rely solely on accelerometer control. Apstik’s creator recommends games such as Traction Games’ Pro Surfing, Ubisoft’s Shaun White Snowboard, and Golden Hammer Software’s Big Mountain Snowboarding for use with the board. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 will also work, but is limited to turning, since tricks are executed via touch control.

The Apstik sells for $148, so only the most avid iPad boarders should consider it. But if you’re still not sure if the Apstick is right for you, maybe this video of it in action will sway you. Surf your app, indeed.

Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 4 only eight days ago during his WWDC 2010 keynote, and it is now ready for pre-order. Well, at least one of them is.

The black iPhone 4 is available to pre-order today with free shipping or in-store pickup on Thursday, June 24. The white iPhone 4, however, is “currently unavailable for pre-order or in-store pickup,” with no word on when it might be ready.

The 8GB iPhone 3GS, which will replace the iPhone 3G at the lower $99 price point, is also available to pre-order today with free shipping or in-store pickup. it arrives alongside the iPhone 4 on June 24.

Apple released the iPhone 4 for pre-orders sometime in the early hours of Tuesday, June 15. The company’s online store has apparently been fighting heavy traffic, however, as it has been up and down over the past few hours. Scattered reports indicate the checkout process failing during one step or another.

Apple’s store is intermittently available as of this writing, so if you’re itching to pre-order your phone as soon as possible this morning, you may be in for a bumpy ride.

Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visit Computerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center.

Suddenly, there are two kinds of people. The first kind loves location-based social networking services like Foursquare. They speak in an alien language about “Mayors” and “Badges” and broadcast their locations to the world.

The second kind is trying hard to ignore these services and their fans. But it’s getting harder to do because autogenerated Foursquare posts are increasingly showing up on Twitter and Facebook.

Foursquare’s iPhone app

While Foursquare is the most popular of these services, some people are using competitors like Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, Yelp, Whrrl and Google Latitude.

If you avoid location services, or are even actively hostile toward them, I’m here to deliver some bad news. Chances are, you’ll eventually switch sides and become a user.

I’ll tell you why in a minute, but first let me explain how Foursquare works at its most basic level.

You install an app on your location-aware phone. When you launch the app, the service figures out where you are, more or less. You’re presented with nearby locations, which are mostly businesses. If you’re in one of them, you pick it. If you’re not, you can create your own location.

From that location, you can “check in” by pressing a button. Optionally, you can type in a Twitter-size message. This check-in alerts your friends on that service where you are. If you’ve connected Foursquare to Twitter or Facebook, messages are posted in your stream or on your wall telling of your location and status.

Whoever has the most check-ins at a specific location becomes the Mayor of that location. Other users can see who the Mayor is. And Foursquare awards “Merit Badges” based on where you’ve checked in and how often, such as “Gym Rat,” “Super Mayor” and “I’m on a boat!”

All this checking in, Mayor selection, merit badges and posting on social networks sounds pointless—or at least like a slow, boring game. To others it feels like a whole lot of creepy stalking. But Foursquare and other location-based social networking services are about to morph into something entirely compelling and different.

What’s happening now

Marketers intend to make location-based social networking services worth your while by luring you in with coupons, discounts and exclusive deals.

The most obvious marketing program involves prizes for Mayors. For example, a coffeehouse might give a free latte to every new Mayor, providing an incentive for users to become repeat customers. Domino’s Pizza in the U.K., for example, is doing this and will give a free pizza each week to the Mayor of each restaurant.

Starbucks has a “Barista Badge” you can unlock if you check in at one of their locations five times.

Foursquare has established branded partnerships with the History Channel, CNN, Bravo, MTV, VH1, Zagat, The Wall Street Journal and other content creators.

The U.K.’s Financial Times is planning a campaign on Foursquare that offers premium content to people who check in at various coffee shops near business schools. The idea is to hook business students on the Financial Times newspaper so that when they enter the business world, they’ll want to be subscribers.

Six Flags Entertainment is really going nuts with the idea, offering a Foursquare “Six Flags Funatic Badge” and “Exit Pass” that lets users essentially cut in line for rides. The Mayor of each Six Flags park will win a free pass for an entire year (2011).

Foursquare badges are displayed on Bing Maps.

A start-up called Topguest is using check-ins from just about all the major location services to award hotel travel reward points.

A travel content company called PlanetEye has been running trials with Foursquare for using check-ins to identify spots popular with locals in Toronto and New York City.

What’s great about this idea is that it can identify popular locations that have become popular only very recently — festivals, concerts and other popular events, for example. That means when you’re a visitor in a strange city, you could find out where the nightlife is, where the cultural events are and where the locals go.

Eventually, location services like Foursquare will become like Costco membership. The only way to get access to low prices at some businesses will be to participate. Since it’s free and easy, people will do it.

Network effect

Enthusiasts and marketers are driving adoption. But another driver is something called network effect. As more people use services like Foursquare, using the service becomes more valuable.

A fast-growing number of users will leave notes, engage in location-based chat and use the services as an alternative to communicating via e-mail, text, chat, Twitter or Facebook. If you want to be in the loop, you’ll want to join.

If you’re at an event—such as the World Cup, a boat race or a school function—you might want to interact with other people there. Location services automatically create a temporary social network of whoever is near you.

If you attend industry conferences, you may find an increasing number of them putting all conference communication on location services. You’ll be able to find colleagues, discuss presentations and find out logistical information—but only if you join.

Resistance is futile

The reason I say you’ll soon use Foursquare or some other location service is that even if you don’t embrace a location-based social networking, one is likely to embrace you.

The products, services and businesses you enjoy will increasingly offer incentives to persuade you to use location services. Companies, conference and event organizers, family and friends will be using location-based social networking.

Credible rumors suggest that Facebook has had discussions with Foursquare about acquisition. That’s one way in which a social service you’re already using every day might soon be simply location-enabled in some profound way.

Location-based social networking is here to stay. And if you can’t see any good reason why you might want to join one, just wait a bit. Someone will eventually come up with a reason for you.

You will be assimilated.

[Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture.]

The leader of a security research firm and AT&T traded angry words Monday in the wake of last week’s data breach that exposed the e-mail addresses of 114,000 iPad 3G users. The carrier called the behavior of Goatse Security “malicious,” while the security firm countered that AT&T was “being dishonest about the potential for harm.” But both sides have plenty to answer for in how they’ve handled this security situation.

Last week, Gawker published an article describing how Goatse—named after one of the Web’s most infamous Websites—had been able to extract the e-mail addresses of some 114,000 iPad users by piggybacking on a Web-based service provided by AT&T.

Designed to simplify the sign-up process for adding a 3G data plan to an iPad, the service accepted the unique ID associated with the SIM card in a iPad Wi-Fi + 3G and returned the e-mail address of the corresponding customer (presumably based on data collected at activation). By guessing a large number of IDs, Goatse was able to capture the e-mails addresses of tens of thousands of users, including celebrities and high-ranking political and military officials.

Goatse claims to have disclosed the information to AT&T through an unnamed third party so that the company couldn’t take any legal measures aimed at silencing them. The cellular provider, for its part, has lashed out at the security group, stating—both in a press release and in a letter to affected customers—that the security group behaved unethically and pointing out that the only information the exploit yielded were the e-mail address of each user and the unique ID associated with users’ iPads. Separately, the FBI has opened an official investigation into possible criminal activity connected with the security breach.

But the story doesn’t end there. In the latest salvo in this saga, Goatse leader Escher Auernheimer has hit back at AT&T on the group’s blog, claiming that AT&T failed to disclose the issue until Goatse went public, and that its response downplays the real security implications of the security breach.

Auernheimer goes on to say that the group has found a flaw in all versions of Safari that has, as of yet, gone unpatched on Apple’s mobile devices and that there are likely other attack vectors that could be used to take over an iPad, making the device inherently insecure.

Auernheimer also claims that one of these vulnerabilities could be used in conjunction with the leaked data to take over iPads in the attacker’s physical vicinity by scanning for a device’s unique ID. Of course, the level of knowledge and resources needed for this exploit don’t make it a likely concern for most users, but it could be a significant issue for high-profile targets.

With all the accusations flying back and forth and little, if any, objectively reliable information, it’s difficult to tell who’s at fault in this story, but one thing is certain: there is plenty of blame to go around.

The real problem with AT&T’s disclosure is that it wasn’t caused by an inadvertent fault in their programs. Technically speaking, the Goatse researchers didn’t have to “hack” or breach any systems, because the system was designed to work in an insecure way.

Rather than an embarrassing one-time occurrence, this episode appears to reveal a fundamental lack of regard for security in the company’s development practices; this, in a way, is much scarier than finding out that a skilled security expert has been able to circumvent a sophisticated but flawed security mechanism.

It’s the equivalent of walking by your bank on a Sunday and finding out that the door to the vault is being held in place by Scotch tape: it doesn’t take great expertise to breach something that is not secure in the first place. The company’s slow response and its refusal to take responsibility for what has happened in a timely manner and reassure its customers by performing an internal review of its security practices is also unlikely to raise its profile.

For its part, Goatse also has some questions to answer—such as, for example, why it needed to download 114,000 e-mails to satisfy itself that the security disclosure was real, and why it decided to disclose all 114,000 to third parties. A few selected e-mail addresses should have been sufficient to convince anyone that the security issue was real and that AT&T should be alerted and given an opportunity to correct its mistake.

In addition, the group’s communiqués have been, at times, so belligerent that one cannot help but wonder whether a better approach could have helped them make this serious issue public without giving AT&T public-relations ammo with which to fight back.

Tuesday marks the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the most important gaming show of the year, and Macworld is here covering every announcement, reveal, and demo we can get our hands on.

Centered in the spacious Los Angeles Convention Center, the biggest and best publishers and developers are all vying for time on stage to show their wares. With such a transformative year for Mac gaming, there are still many questions that need answers, but here are three big ones that will hope be resolved by the end of the week.

What is Valve’s big reveal?

Valve has already canceled its big announcement party and delayed Portal 2, but the company that brought us Portal and Half-Life still has a “surprise” in store for us. Valve has shot down many of the rumors, but some of the whispers have to be pretty close to the mark.

Left 4 Dead 2

For those who haven’t been paying attention, there were rumors of Valve using E3 to announce Left 4 Dead 3. Left 4 Dead 2 is barely a year old, but Valve seems more willing to update and expand that franchise than others. There’s also been speculation that Half-Life 2: Episode Three will finally get a release date. That’s only speculation, of course, and Gabe Newell has flatly denied it. Still others have conjectured that it’s time for Valve to announce its Source Engine 2, the next generation engine for its games. The original Source engine was used to build pretty much everything Valve has become known for, including its Half-Life 2 series of games. This last rumor is perhaps the most intriguing, as it would mean that Valve is actively developing a new, big title (Half-Life 3?) with graphics and gameplay that are a step above what it can offer on its Source engine.

Will Nintendo or Sony respond to Apple?

Mac gamers may roll their eyes when they hear of fanboys geeking out for Nintendo or Sony announcements, but Mac gamers have a reason to pay attention this year as well. Apple has quietly started eating into Nintendo and Sony’s mobile gaming market but so far the gaming giants haven’t responded. Nintendo’s various DS launches have had mixed success, so it’ll be interesting to see if it doubles down on the DSi XL or goes with something different. Sony’s PSP Go is a sad Band-aid trying to heal a mortal wound.

Will Nintendo or Sony open up their platforms to third parties the same way Apple has? Or is it too late? Gaming on the iPod and iPhone has become so popular because virtually anyone can use Apple’s tools to design and build a game. Nintendo and Sony have used a more conventional development model for their mobile platforms, and while they have higher-end games, neither platform offers the quick-turnaround or low-development costs of Apple’s iPhone OS.

On an intellectual level, it’ll also be interesting to see how Nintendo will respond to Kinetic and Sony Move, who have in many ways closed the gap in motion-controlled gaming. Nintendo has to prove the Wii isn’t just a gimmick for casual gaming and show that the system can evolve and adapt to the changing gaming landscape. There aren’t many exclusive titles for the Wii that interest hard core gamers, and Nintendo needs to address that. While it’s likely the company will stick to announcing some bread and butter franchises (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc), the platform also desperately needs some new blood and some new icons. Increasingly, the old guard of gamers have migrated to Sony and Microsoft’s FPS-happy systems, but Nintendo may have some magic left. To mix metaphors, the ball is in Nintendo’s court: both Sony and Microsoft have come out with their guns firing.

How will OnLive change the industry?

Imagine using an old Mac Mini to play the latest hit games for PCs and consoles. Imagine seeing these games play with a flawless frame rate and their highest resolution. Imagine never having to invest in an expensive graphics card again, or dropping a thousand dollars for a new tower, or constantly having to update your hardware. That’s the promise of OnLive.

Due to a pre-E3 embargo, there hasn’t been much fanfare to greet the launch of OnLive, but don’t let that fool you: more than anything else this week, OnLive has the power to change the Mac gaming landscape. When the cloud-based gaming service was announced at 2009’s GDC, no one could believe that the company would make good on its promise: allowing people to play high end games on almost any machine, from Mac Minis to old Dell PCs to your TV set.

If OnLive can really produce fast, streaming content from its servers to your home and render the graphics card arms race a thing of the past, OnLIve will have changed the face of gaming forever. Imagine playing high-end titles like Crysis on your Mac Mini, or Arkham Asylum on your iPad. If publishers get on board, it could mean a complete shakeup of the conventional gamer model.

[Chris Holt is a Macworld associate editor.]

A Chinese developer gets a brand new iPad and a bonus e-mail from Steve Jobs, Apple reverses course on an App Store removal, and the iPad modding contest may have a winner. It’s the remainders for June 14, 2010.

Chinese developer gets robbed, Steve Jobs shows concern
(M.I.C. Gadget)

A Chinese developer got robbed while visting San Francisco for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and, in the ensuing struggle, his iPad screen was shattered. Fortunately, the Genius Bar replaced the unit and he even got a nice e-mail from Steve Jobs. I hope somebody gave him a hug—the developer, that is, not Jobs. Steve doesn’t do hugs.

Foxconn Chief’s Brother Plans 100 China Apple Stores
(Bloomberg)

We stay in China for this next story, about businessman T.C. Gou (brother to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou), who has announced his plan to open 100 stores in China that will sell Macs and iPods. On the one hand, all that hardware will get to make significantly shorter trips; on the other, that’ll really kill Apple’s frequent flier miles.

Facebook CEO disses iPhone
(Valleywag)

Mark Zuckerberg just got an iPhone, and the Facebook CEO is telling it like it is: “This weekend I got four chargers so I can keep it charged everywhere I go and a land line so I can actually make phone calls.” Whoa, whoa, back up: Mark Zuckerberg just got an iPhone?

Apple rethinks its ‘Ulysses’ ban
(New York Times)

After removing an illustrated Web comic version of James Joyce’s Ulysses from the App Store due to the fact it contains non-pornographic nudity, Apple reversed course and says it will approve the original version. However, in a tricky move the text will actually be entirely replaced with that of Finnegans Wake, but nobody will be able to tell because seriously, have you ever read Joyce?

USB Typewriter
(USB Typewriter)

An iPad modded into an iBook? Paugh. Modded into a Mac Classic? Whatever. We declare the USB Typewriter the winner of the best hardware mod for the simple reason that it works (video below). You can buy one of the existing models for $400-$500, get your own typewriter adapted for $200, or buy a kit for $150. We expect it to remain the uncontested champion until somebody comes out with a telegraph mod.