Zagg, a company that makes high quality keyboard cases for iPads that we’ve reviewed in the past, today introduced two brand new keyboard cover and folio designs for iPad mini. Zagg says both products are ultra-thin Bluetooth keyboards that take advantage of “a unique, patent-pending hinge system that enhances the iPad mini user experience with a full range of viewing angles up to 135 degrees.” Get full details on both new products below:

ZAGGkeys Cover: The first product Zagg is showing off today at CTIA 2013 is the ZAGGkeys Cover (pictured above). Zagg says its the thinnest Bluetooth keyboard on the market at 6.3mm and it also features backlit keys in 7 colors and three brightness settings (Zagg already makes one of our favorite backlit keyboards for iPad with similar features). It also includes magnets to keep the case closed and secure when in transit and up to 3 months battery life with normal use.

Zagg will be selling the ZAGGkeys Cover for $99 in both silver and black.

ZAGGkeys Folio: The second product for iPad mini is Zagg’s latest Folio design. It includes everything that the new ZAGGkeys Cover offers but will presumably be a little thicker to provide “full body protection to help keep an iPad free from scratches and dings.” It will also sell for $99 when it lands in black and white (more colors coming soon) when it launches at retail.

Both products are expected to land by summer.

We already reviewed Zagg’s Mini 7 and Mini 9 for iPad mini and quite enjoyed the Mini 7. 

Update: Live coverage of the Senate hearing on Apple’s offshore tax practices is above.

As things heat up in the row on alleged tax avoidance by Apple, Ireland has denied a claim made by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that it had agreed a special deal with the company to allow it to pay corporation tax of just 2% on its Irish earnings.

The denial was made to Yahoo! Finance reporter Conor Humphries:

According to the congressional report, Ireland had also agreed a special 2 percent rate for Apple’s Irish taxable profits instead of the normal 12.5 percent, but a spokesman for Ireland’s finance department, when asked how and why this had come about, said: “Ireland’s tax system is statute based, so there is no possibility of individual special tax rate deals for companies.”

This appears to flatly contradict a statement by the Senate subcommittee that accused Apple of …

Negotiating a tax rate of less than 2 percent with the government of Ireland – significantly lower than that nation’s 12% statutory rate

Apple yesterday published its testimony to the committee, which states:

Apple does not use tax gimmicks. Apple does not move its intellectual property into
offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US in order to avoid US tax; it does not use revolving loans from foreign subsidiaries to fund its domestic operations; it does not hold money on a Caribbean island; and it does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

There is no direct reference to the 2% claim in Apple’s testimony, but it will almost certainly be addressed when Tim Cook appears before the subcommittee later today. C-SPAN is covering the hearing live - which is now underway.

Burstly‘s grand vision coming out of its TestFlight acquisition is getting full reveal today with the announcement of the company’s new corporate structure, which rebrands Burstly’s monetization tools as SkyRocket, and opens them up to all mobile developers and publishers with a new self-serve option, whereas previously they’d been accessible only to the biggest fish in the app ecosystem pond.

Burstly’s new corporate structure puts its three products under the larger brand, including TestFlight, FlightPath, and now SkyRocket. Together, these represent a full cycle of support covering the entire development process, from beta testing straight through analytics for shipped software, and on to monetization tools to help capitalize on insights gleaned from the analytics to increase conversions and revenue.

There’s cross-functionality between each of the three components as well; including the TestFlight API in a mobile app means that it’s available to plug into and use for the FlightPath mobile analytics suite, and devs can use custom user segments created in FlightPath to then build different monetization options in SkyRocket. So, that means you could, for instance, see high flight risk users like those who have consistently run into crashes or been frustrated by bugs and target them with in-app rewards, or even unlock additional content for high value users to keep them pleased and spending.

The new Busrtly suite will help the company funnel users between and across its products, but each will still remain available independently from the rest. But the sales funnel is remarkably clever, and TestFlight co-founder Ben Satterfield explained that it is indeed the hope of the company that customers will see the use value of embracing the whole cycle, versus just one or two components. Still, the flexibility is there to pick and choose.

Burstly’s triple-threat play couldn’t come at a better time; at this year’s Google I/O developer conference, Google revealed that it would be including a beta testing dashboard and provisioning portal on its site. But that is primarily aimed at release candidate testing, which does occupy a role that’s quite different from what TestFlight offers in a number of ways. Still, also having the full-featured three-part platform as an additional bonus can’t hurt its ability to stand out as distinct from Google’s own developer tools.

The new SkyRocket offers free add mediation, with as many partners as a developer needs, Satterfield says. There’s also a simple management platform that automates the process of setting up different partner accounts, and sends you a unified monthly check in exchange for a 10 percent monthly commission. “Some developers don’t have the bandwidth to manage multiple ad partners and our goal is to make this turnkey for a small percentage,” Satterfield explained regarding the pricing structure.

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

I study a theory called N=4 super Yang-Mills.

When I say this to someone, I have a pretty good idea of how the conversation will go. First, the person will spend a few moments trying to pronounce the theory’s name. Giving up, they'll then try to bring things back to something they’ve heard of.

“N=4 super… umm… so, is that something they’re testing at the Large Hadron Collider?”

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