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Wet Nose Design has created an adorable app called Santa’s Big Helper, designed to support your kids’ belief in Santa while giving them activities to pass the time while they wait for the big day. The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It requires iOS 5.0 or later. It is available in English…

Phishing scams are efforts to trick users into voluntarily giving up login information, passwords, or account numbers. They can many forms, but the most common tend to be emails the bad guys hope you will either reply to or emails that include links to pages set up to spoof legitimate businesses. In this case, the…

Verbatim’s Bluetooth Mobil Keyboard (97872) is made for traveling. It folds in half and comes with a travel case. When open it measures 12-in. When closed, 6.5-in long and 4-in. wide. The keys are full size, and there are numerous function keys included: arrow keys, tab keys, and sound controls. There is no forward delete.…

Reports claim there wasn’t a fire associated with the explosion, according to Reuters, and Apple is launching its own investigation into the incident. The factory was located in Shanghai’s Songjiang industrial park.Several people were injured at an iPad 2 parts factoryApple spokesperson Carolyn Wu commented, “Our hearts go out to the people who were hurt…

The bill would make it surprisingly easy to get court orders to shut down any website suspected of participating — directly or indirectly — in copyright infringement. Internet service providers would be required to block access to sites that host or link to other sites suspected of copyright infringement, and unauthorized streaming of copyright-protected content…

The point of the company’s “Outrageous Predictions” list is to identify events that are “unlikely to happen,” but that have more chance of happening than the markets are currently accounting for. The firm says that it believes investors should consider such events that have “under-recognized probabilities.” So what better headline grabber is there than the…

Here’s another Apple venture that’s doing really well, the Apple TV. Don Reisinger reports that of the nearly 12 million “set-top” boxes sold in 2011, Apple’s take was 4 million Apple TVs. We don’t often think about market share in that category, and Apple has about 32 percent. Here’s the story: “Apple TV the king…

“I appreciate the responses I received, but I’m still very troubled by what’s going on,” Senator Franken said. He added,People have a fundamental right to control their private information. After reading the companies’ responses, I’m still concerned that this right is not being respected. The average user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software…

The Kindle Fire was announced in September as a US$199 tablet based on a forked version of Android. The company built a custom interface with hooks into its digital music, movies and TV shows, and the title digital content, Kindle ebooks. The 7” device offers limited features compared to Apple’s iPad 2, but it’s been…

International iTunes Match launch: Not so goodCustomers in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were initially able to sign up for iTunes Match on Wednesday, but that option has since been pulled. Apple has been telling customers that signed up during the brief window when iTunes Match was available that they will receive a…

Frame from Steve Jobs Speech in 1980 The video was donated to the Computer History Museum by Regis McKenna, the public relations maestro who worked with Steve Jobs throughout his career in the areas of marketing and public relations. Most of the semi-prepared segment of the presentation talks a lot about general computer industry in…

Andrea Jung Source: Avon Ms. Jung was once a shining star in the executive world. She took over the helm of Avon in 1999, and her company’s stock more than tripled during the first six years of her tenure. In recent years, the company’s stock has suffered, in part because the firm is facing bribery…

Apple may be buying another chip design companyAnobit is a chip design company, much like PA Semi — another company Apple purchased in 2006. The flash memory storage solutions Anobit designs have found their way into mobile devices and the enterprise market.The company states that its Memory Signal Processing tech ” is comprised of proprietary…

iTunes & iTunes Match The update is a 16.6MB download in Lion through Software Update. Apple has added the update to its Downloads site, but that currently resolves to the 10.5.1 download. The update is, however, available at the iTunes download page. iTunes for Windows was also updated to version 10.5.2.

It seems that OSes are always on a roller coaster. First, we get something really good, but then the developers mess with it or load up too much agenda. It sucks. There’s customer push back, and the developers relent. Then the OS gets good again. One TMO reader commented that he thought Lion was Apple’s…

New details of the case have emerged since coverage of the verdict itself. For one thing, there’s the basis for why Apple thought it could sue its way into a trademark registered more then ten years ago in China. According to documents released by the court, Apple originally bought what it thought was the worldwide…

Verbatim’s Wallet Drive looks like a standard leather wallet. It measures 4.5 by 3.35-in. It’s black with red stitching. Verbatim’s Wallet Drive  – two viewsThe drive has 640GB of storage and includes a short USB 2 cable. You do not need an AC adapter, and it is backed by a seven year limited warranty. The…

The iPad decrease has been the subject of most of the attention Mr. Wu’s research note has garnered. The analyst told clients that he was lowering his forecast from 15 million iPads during the quarter down to 13.5 million units. Behind the decrease are two main factors. The first is that he believes Amazon’s Kindle…

Poor performance? Not in my bookWhile waiting for my Kindle Touch, I began reading reviews of the new Kindle models. Most of them complained of the Kindle Touch’s poor performance relative to its cheaper Kindle 4 sibling. In the end, they recommended going with the Kindle 4.Jim Tanous, writing here at TMO, lamented: “Due to the…

Consumer Reports: AT&T has meh customer satisfactionAccording to the survey, Verizon left customers more satisfied with texting and data plans compared to other U.S. carriers. CR electronics editor Paul Reynolds added, “Our survey indicates that subscribers to prepaid and smaller standard-service providers are happiest overall with their cell-phone service.”Despite AT&T’s low customer satisfaction rating, the…

The Senator asked the companies to explain what information they’re gathering from customer’s phones, and whether or not that data is being shared, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. CNET received confirmation of the letters from Sprint on Tuesday.Carrier IQ came under fire when Trevor Eckhart showed that the software was logging all of the…

Most of Apple’s and Samsung’s legal filings and briefings have been filed under seal, but Judge Lucy Koh has released some of those documents with small and large passages redacted. What happened over the weekend is that a PDF of a document was released that contained a major flaw: Though the document appears redacted, viewers…

The problem, Mr. Coward said, is that carriers are collecting the sensitive data in a log file and passing it on.“When a piece of information is sent to us from the operation system, we do not need it to go through that log file,” Mr. Coward told The Verge. “There is no value to us…