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This is/will be/will never be the iCam, an un-product from the mind of Antonio De Rosa that combines a sleek future maybe-iPhone and a chunky interchangeable lens camera system.

The media is constantly comparing Apple’s incredible bottom line to other companies and industries. At one point, it was said that Apple was worth more than the entirety of the U.S. government. Apple’s market cap recently reached a staggering $370 billion, and things don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.

We all have a pretty good understanding of what Apple is larger than. But who has less market cap than the moneybags in Cupertino?

Your average Apple Store is stuffed with a pulsing biomass of customers clamoring for attention, so how do Apple employees know that you’re the guy they are tasked to help?

Well, how does Apple solve any problem? They leverage cutting-edge technology at the problem, and their system is totally ingenious, if a little frightening to the privacy obsessed.

We’re hearing loads of reports from both readers and Twitter that iCloud Mail & Notes is down. According to Apple’s iCloud System Status page, they are aware the issue is affecting “some” users and are working hard to get service restored, but between the various Siri service outages and now this, it’s clear Apple’s been having issues lately keeping their servers up against strong demand.

Is iCloud down for you? Let us know if you’re having issues in the comments. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.

Thanks, Jørn!

If you are a gamer like me, chances are you’ve spent the last couple of weeks pretending to be a slight-of-build, slightly effeminate elf or oil-slathered beefcake of a Nord in Bethesda’s new epic RPG, Skyrim.

The game (which sadly isn’t available on OS X) is detailed to the point of absurdity, but here’s one of the details that most emphasizes exactly how epic in scope and minutely detailed Skyrim is: in Skyrim, there are hundreds of in-game books to be found, equalling thousands of pages of text total. And most players never read a single page of them, because who wants to sit around in a game and read when there are orcs to hit with a flaming hammer?

If you’ve got an iPad (or Kindle, or iPhone, or Mac), though, there’s no reason these beautifully written in-game texts need to languish in obscurity. Just download this ePub file and read all of Skyrim’s text on your device of choice, not in some grubby dungeon somewhere.

If you have a teen, you know getting gift suggestions can vary somewhere between monosyllabic and “hand over the credit card”. So you don’t stroke out aimlessly wandering the malls, we offer as a public service this tip: get thee to an Apple Store. According to a new survey, Apple products are among teens’ top three most wanted gifts with almost 10 percent of teenagers.

Saucytime is the latest company to pair sex with Apple’s handy videoconferencing technology FaceTime.

Apple’s desire to keep their devices G-rated hasn’t kept adult chat services from trying. But iP4Play, the first company to launch a porn chat service over FaceTime went bust after just a few months, citing low FaceTime adoption.

The latest come-hither chat service is the UK-based Saucytime. To my American ears, the name promises more Benny Hill-esque titillation than graphic raunch. That’s intentional, says co-founder Lei.

Here’s a cautionary tale that should turn you into a hoarder: a contract of a nearly bankrupt tech company in the mid-1990s is now headed for the auction block with a $150,000 price tag. The company is Apple and the document is the tech giant’s founding contract with signatures of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — who must be kicking himself at this very moment.

Look, we hate crappy iPad knock-offs as much as any red-blooded Apple fan, but we’re going to make an exception in this case. Why? Sure, the knock-off tablet looks gaudy, but the Chinese student who built it didn’t make it to cash in on Apple’s brand: he made it for his girlfriend out of love.

Ever gone a trip overseas and felt silly trying to talk to locals who didn’t speak a lick of English? Yeah, me too. It’s actually become a bit of problem for me because I love traveling to different countries, but hate not being able to communicate with the locals. Today we’re offering a heat-seeking deal from Ultralingua. If learning a new language has ever crossed your mind, this buy one, get one free Cyber Monday special is a definite piece of gold!

Ultralingua dictionaries are available in dozens of language combinations, and they make a great gift for students, business professionals, teachers, and travelers. Use this deal for yourself or any of the language lovers on your gift list! Each language app includes a variety of reference and learning tools in a beautiful and simple interface.

For only $35, you’ll get two Mac App Dictionaries of your choice!

Your options include:

It’s probably good that Apple is in the gadget creation business and not jobs. Turns out, the $1 billion data center the tech giant built down in North Carolina created just 50 full-time local jobs, working out to around $200,000 per spot. Although iCloud and other services likely to come from the site have plenty of tech fans, you won’t find too many “I Love Apple” bumper stickers in a town with double-digit unemployment.

Best Buy has launched a new ad that hopes to lure Apple fans into its stores this Christmas. In addition to Macs, iPads, iPhones, and iPods, the humorous “Everything Apple at Best Buy” ad also includes an appearance from old St. Nick himself.

While Apple’s iPhone is famous for packing a long list of fancy features, self combustion definitely should not be one of them. For one iPhone 4 user who recently took their device onboard an Australian airplane, however, that’s exactly what they got.

How did you spend your day after Thanksgiving? If you worked at any of Apple’s 358 retail locations, it was likely just a blur. Some rather outstanding statistics emerged from Black Friday sales of Apple gear, including the sale of 14.8 iPads every hour per store, and 89 every minute around the US – or 1.5 tablets each second. Stacked together, consumers bought almost a mile of iPads on the first day of holiday shopping, or a tower 900 feet taller than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

It’s been less than a week since Siri was hacked to work with potentially every Internet-controlled gadget out there, even your car. But if that’s too far out for you, the latest plug-in for Siri Proxy allows you to control your Mac desktop using your iPhone.

If you still have Apple products to purchase for loved ones this Christmas, then you’ll be pleased to know that you can now get free shipping on all items in the Apple online store. The company started the promotion today as part of its Christmas sales push, and it will run until December 22.

Cyber Monday is here, and along with it, MuscleNerd — only one of the very jammingest of console cowboys in cyberspace — has given iPhone 4S owners a nice little gift of hope: word that an iPhone 4S unlock is on the way.

While rumors surrounding a 15-inch MacBook Air have been circulating for a number of months now, we had no idea when Apple might be gearing up to launch the new device. Sources “from the upstream supply chain” are now reporting, however, that the 15-inch ultraportable will arrive during the first quarter of 2012 as part of a completely refreshed MacBook Air family.

While Apple chose to stick with the same 3.5-inch display for the iPhone 4S that it had previously employed in older iPhones, the Cupertino company looks certain to increase that for its iPhone 5. According to a source in Apple’s supply chain, both Hitachi and Sony have already begun shipping 4-inch LCD panels for a “new iOS device,” believed to be the sixth-generation iPhone.

Last week we announced another stellar Cult of Mac Deal – 40% off of the $79 Internet Security Barrier X6 suite of Mac Apps. We wrangled two free copies for our loyal Cult of Mac readers which are up for grabs during this weekend’s Deals giveaway! This contest will run from today till Tuesday, November 29th at 9AM PST. The rules for entering are incredibly simple; here’s what you got to do to enter.

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief strategy and research officer, recently said that Windows Phone 7 beat Siri to the punch. In an interview, Mundie argued that Apple only marketed Siri well, and that Microsoft has had the same technology for more than a year already.

Jason from TechAU has created a video face-off between Microsoft’s voice recognition software, called TellMe, and Siri on the iPhone 4S. We’ll let you guess which one actually works.

Apple’s series of heated lawsuits with Samsung have put the two companies at odds, and Apple has been reportedly looking to other suppliers for hi-res displays. Specifically, Apple now has Sharp on deck to supply screens for the upcoming iPad 3.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is adding Sharp to its roster of screen suppliers for the next-generation iPad. The displays will allegedly be of higher resolution and thinner than the screens found in previous generations.

There’s a new jailbreak app on the block, and it doesn’t place nice. MobileMonitor is perhaps the scariest activity monitoring tool we’ve come across for the iPhone, and it’s available for anyone to download in the jailbreak equivalent to the App Store, Cydia.

Once installed, not only does MobileMonitor become untraceable on the iPhone itself, but it records and uploads all of your personal data to a website that can be accessed by anyone with the correct login information.

ThinkGeek is celebrating this year’s Black Friday event by slashing the price of its popular iCade arcade cabinet for the iPad. The accessory would make the perfect Christmas gift for iPad owners who love retro gaming, and for a limited time only, it’s down from $99.99 to just $59.99.

1,000 workers at a Jingmo Electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, staged a strike earlier this week over long hours and poor working conditions. The factory supplies keyboards to companies like IBM, LG, and Apple, and China Labor Watch is now calling for these companies to improve the working conditions for the employees at the factory, focusing specifically on Apple.