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Steve Jobs held the belief that great design and user experience provide a significant competitive advantage. Apple’s products reflect this mantra and I think we’d all agree – it’s working. We’ve recently brought you some amazing instructional courses on how to build your dream startup ideas. Much of what those courses teach are the core mechanics or the “back-end” of projects.

Our newest deal is an instructional video course that focuses on the art of moving from the idea stage through the various steps of designing the user experience. But it doesn’t stop there, it goes on to provide you with specific actions to follow at the end of each stage. No creative skills needed, and no design tools required. Just a pen and paper or a whiteboard and markers, and you’re all set to go. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and this course put that on display for me personally.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is having a personalized iPad app built by programmers inside the Cabinet Office that will provide him with the latest information he needs to run the country, The Telegraph reports. The app, which was inspired by advisers after a trip to the U.S., will compile real-time information like NHS waiting-list figures, crime statistics, unemployments numbers, and more all in one place.

Apple has begun issuing its employees with Apple-branded hoodies as a thank you for all their hard work during a terrific year for the Cupertino company. In addition to a free hoody, employees also got extra vacation time over Thanksgiving, and some departments were given personalized noted from higher-level staff, according to 9to5Mac.

How many Android-powered devices are in use? Android promoter and Google Vice President Andy Rubin shed some light on the question Tuesday night. Rubin said 700,000 devices are being activated by carriers each day. However, the figure could confirm reports earlier this week that Android’s growth has slowed following a red-hot summer.

Google has issued an update to its Google Voice app for the iPhone today to introduce support for devices connected to Sprint, and multi-recipient texting — a feature that has been available in Google Voice for Android more than a month — a multi-line text entry field, and one-touch copy and paste within the Dialer.

If you’ve been looking to get some great music at a ridiculous price, now’s the time. Google Music has kicked off their “Music Blowout Sale,” discounting over half a million albums to $4.99 and over ten million tracks for only $.49! Now that’s a deal worth listening to. I’ve already perused over a bunch of discounted tracks and I’ve found a plethora of alternative classics from Radiohead, Beck, and Nirvana.

If you thought Android was on a roll and RIM was toast — surprise, surprise. The mobile operating system that Google built continues to cool down while Apple and the Waterloo, Ont. gang that can’t shoot straight gain momentum. Just half of November mobile ad requests came from Android-based devices, a new report shows.

Remember the Motorola Xoom tablet, Google’s first attempt to compete against Apple’s iPad? It was only a bad dream. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is now promising a purely Android tablet “of the highest quality” in six months.

The New York Times reports that Apple is “secretly” working on a number of wearable devices including a new “curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist.” The devices will have Siri built-in allowing us to control them with our voice, and may even relay information back to our iPhones.

It isn’t easy being Android when you’re a fugly green humanoid robot and mad as hell. These protesters braved ridicule by dressing themselves as Google’s green mascot to bring attention to a thorny tech issue.

A new corporate accountability consumer group called SumOfUs wants Google to exit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. If the CoC sounds about as uncontroversial as Main Street and apple pie, think again.

The Android-clad activists want the Mountain View, California tech colossus to pull out of the Chamber, for a number of reasons, including because the CoC “aggressively supports” SOPA.

When Google first released their native Gmail app for iOS, it was just a total mess: an HTML5 web app that not only had less innate functionality than loading up Gmail in Mobile Safari, but couldn’t even do its one selling point — push notifications — right. Heck, it even gave error messages at boot. Iit was so bad Gmail pulled the app within hours of release.

A little while later, Google released an updated version that fixed everything wrong with the old Gmail app, but it was still a total snoozer of an app. But today’s update to Gmail for iOS actually brings some cool new features to the table that might persuade some folks to switch from Mail.app.

Apple’s new Siri assistant has really revolutionized the way in which we interact with mobile devices using our voice. It’s no wonder, then, that rivals are scrambling to introduce their own alternatives. Google already has one for Android, according to some reports, called Majel, and it’ll debut during the first quarter of 2012.

Just under 18 months after its launch, Apple is set to make more changes to its iAd mobile advertising service in a bid to attract more customers. The Cupertino company is hoping to claw back some of the ground it’s quickly losing to Google’s AdMob service by reducing the initial buy-in to iAd, and changing the way in which advertisers pay.

During an interview at the Le Web expo in Paris this week, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took a stab at Apple and insisted his company’s Android operating system is way ahead of iOS in a number of ways, including affordability and choice. What’s more, Schmidt claims that in six months, Ice Cream Sandwich will offer better functionality.

With access to over half a million apps in the App Store, getting things done on our iPhones has never been easier. So instead of running around like a headless chicken this Christmas Eve in a desperate bid to buy gifts for all your friends and family, why not sit back, stick your feet up, and do you Christmas shopping on your iPhone?

We’ve compiled a list of the App Store’s best apps for Christmas shopping that will help you plan, save, shop and send cards directly right from the palm of your hand.

One of the things that really stands out using an iPhone is just how smooth it feels compared to using Android. Where as Android is laggy, with a measurable interim between when you touch the screen and when the OS responds, iOS almost seems to anticipate what you want to do before your finger touches the display.

How has Apple managed this incredible feat? A better question might be: “How has Google managed to screw up Android’s multitouch so much?” According to Andrew Munn — a software engineering student and ex-Google intern — Android is so messed up that Google might never be able to match an iPhone or iPad’s performance. Ouch!

On Friday, Google opened a new Android store with Androidland in Melbourne, a place to hawk Android tablets and phones made by various manufacturers. So how’s it stand up against the Apple Store? Let’s see! (click to enlarge)

Apple Store (left) — Brightly lit, thronged with customers, tastefully designed with the finest materials and well-staffed with bright, enthusiastic employees at the top of their field who are constantly moving to help people with questions.

Androidland (right) — Dark and dimly lit, with a design more evocative of an early 90s Chuck E. Cheese arcade pit than a high-end retail store. Staffed by two disengaged lunkheads, who expertly manage not only to ignore the only customer on the floor, but to be at least fifty feet away from him.

Amazing.

Don’t miss Apple Store vs. Microsoft Store. It’s just as funny.

Hot on the heels of its Google+ update this morning, Google has issued another update to one of its iOS apps, this time in the form of a much-improved Google Shopper. Version 2.0 introduces Google Offers integration to the app, allowing shoppers to subscribe to and take advantage of the latest deals in their city.

Google has issued an update to its official Google+ app for the iPhone today, and in addition to a fancy new icon, the app now allows full resolution photo uploads, searching, and more.

Although it is widely believed that Apple refuses to license its patents to competing companies, it turns out that’s a huge misconception. In fact, the company licenses a patent covering iOS touch-based scrolling to the likes of IBM and Nokia, and it offered the same deal to rival Samsung, who wasn’t at all interested. If it had taken Apple up on the offer, however, it could have spared the Korean company a whole load of trouble in court.

Apple appears to be in the final stages of deciding to create a second data center. The tech giant is reportedly eyeing 160 acres in Prineville, Oregon for a 31-megawatt facility. The location would make Apple neighbors with Google, Amazon and Facebook, companies also locating data hubs in the Northwest state known for enticing tech firms with lucrative tax breaks.

Trapster is one of those apps that should be installed on every motorist’s iPhone. Not only does it alert you to speed traps, speed cameras, and road hazards, but with its latest update it finally knows where you’re going, and it’ll give you real time traffic overlays all the way there.

Apple and Google have chosen to opt out of a new industry-sponsored app ratings system developed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in favor of their own internal systems. CTIA-The Wireless Association and ESRB issued a press release announcing the new system today, but both companies were absent from the list of adoptees.

In 2012, Apple will roll out Near Field Communications technology (NFC) to their devices, allowing the iPhone 5 to finally function as an e-wallet. Big whup. Everyone’s already had that idea, even Google.

Here’s what will turn the mind-numbing technology into something that will blow your mind: NFC in the iPhone 5 will finally allow Apple to go live with their ambitious NFC-backed remote computing strategy which will totally blur the line between iOS devices and Macs.

The revamped Google Search app for iOS, which we reported on yesterday, is a huge improvement on what went before.