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Google Maps and Google Earth just got their second update of 2012 to add 45º imagery, which now covers 17 U.S. and seven international cities. These 45º views cause buildings to cast shadows and rotate with real perspective. It's an almost-3D view that makes the satellite view of a place more realistic while still supporting most systems.

45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.

These days, the smartphone wars are typically viewed as a competition between the platforms of two companies: Apple and Google. Despite its years-long dominance of the desktop, Windows has hardly been a blip on the smartphone marketshare radar, where it clocks in at just under 2% of the market.

That's all set to change within three years, according to a growing chorus of analysts. The latest to vouch for the impending growth of Windows Phone is iSuppli, who last week predicted that the platform could outperform Apple's iOS by 2015.

It's hard to wrap my brain around the cold cynicism of Apple's releasing a new tool to democratize the publishing of eBooks today, only to include in the tool's terms and conditions a prohibition against selling those books anywhere but through Apple's own bookstore. There's just something so achingly awful about it.

Portland, Oregon iOS developer Dan Wineman calls it unprecidented audacity. Writer Ed Bott calls it "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil." I just find it very, very sad.

Apple revolutionizes stuff. It's practically conventional wisdom in the tech world that, even if they're not first in the game or necessarily even the best, the Cupertino-based giant has a tendency to make a noticeable impact. They didn't invent the MP3 player, smartphone or tablet, but they sure have redefined all of those products. Even if this tendency is strong, it's not necessarily always how things play out. For an example, look no further than the Apple TV.

Today, the company set their sights on textbooks, an industry Steve Jobs himself described as being "ripe for digital destruction." True as that may be, is what Apple planning to do in the space really all that disruptive?

Having already done their part to shake up several industries, Apple officially unveiled what the company hopes is the next phase in textbooks. Starting today, iBooks 2 will be available in the iTunes App Store. The update will provide access to Apple's new breed of interactive textbooks, which are aimed at high school students and will cost $14.99 each. To help populate the store, the company is also launching iBooks Author, a self-publishing application for authors.

Apple's new digital textbooks will be available through the iBookstore and will feature much more rich and interactive components than their existing, consumer-focused e-books. In a demo at today's press event in New York City, the company demoed a science textbook complete with video, rich graphics, multitouch support and thumbnail-based navigation.

The unveiling of the third generation of Apple's iPad is still, unofficially, weeks away. That isn't stopping the company from taking a crack at the way tablets and other mobile devices could change the way people learn. Tomorrow, Apple is expected to reveal its latest plans in the education space at an official press conference in New York City.

Exactly what they'll unveil tomorrow isn't yet known, but some hints and leaks have started to paint the picture. That the event is centered around education is no mystery, as the official press invite wasn't shy about making that point. As for which area of education is set to be targeted by Apple, all available evidence points to the textbook.

The king of digital devices is ready to impose its will on the rest of the ecosystem in 2012. It is lining up billions of dollars in investments and is rumored to be in on every significant acquisition or partnership. Its empire sprawls across televisions, smartphones, laptops and computer processors. What is Apple doing now, you might ask. That would be the wrong question. The biggest influencer of the entire digital ecosystem does not hail from Cupertino. Look across the Pacific to South Korea. There, you will find Samsung.

Cory Doctorow's "keynote to the Chaos Computer Congress" and follow-up post (Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing) on BoingBoing raise the alarm about keeping the Internet and PC "free and open." Doctorow makes excellent points and if you haven't watched the keynote or read his essay, you should do so right away.

I'm generally in agreement with Doctorow, but I'm not really sure that he goes quite far enough with Lockdown. Doctorow's focus on the copyright war we're facing with things like SOPA and PROTECT-IP is well warranted, but I'm not sure it covers everything.

Amazon has launched a more touch-friendly, Web-based iPad Kindle Store. A tablet-optimized Kindle store was available through the HTML5 Kindle Cloud Reader Amazon launched last August, but the new iPad Kindle Store is a standalone Web app. Upon visiting amazon.com/iPadKindleStore from Safari, a pop-up prompts the user to add it to the home screen. This is the most seamless way for Kindle users to buy books on the iPad.

Apple's in-app purchasing rules prevent e-book sellers from offering stores in their native apps (without giving Apple a 30% cut). The route around that was to include a link to the Web store inside the native reader app. Last July, Apple forced Amazon and other e-reader apps to remove this link, so users of e-book platforms other than Apple's iBooks must buy their books in the browser, in a separate place from where they read.

A low-profile Silicon Valley startup beat Microsoft in delivering an application that allows users to access MS Office documents on their iPads.

CloudOn launched its eponymous iPad app Tuesday. Working in conjunction with DropBox, CloudOn lets users access and create MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on their tablets. Unlike CitirixReceiver and other desktop access apps, CloudOn is designed to work specifically and only with Office.

Microsoft originally said it would try to take on Apple's iWork suite of productivity applications by developing an iPad app when the original device was first introduced. By the time it was launched in 2010, however, Microsoft had changed its mind. In November, citing unnamed sources, The Daily reported that Microsoft planned to launch an iPad Office app in the first half of 2012.