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Microsoft opened doors on its first retail store in Northern California just a few steps away from an Apple store.

Apple employees at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara must have had a strong sense of  déjà vu watching people camp outside waiting for the doors to open on Microsoft’s 4,000-square-foot shop today. The proximity is unlikely to go unnoticed, since the mall is about 7 miles away from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

“I feel bad for those guys in Apple,” said Blake Contreras, a 12-year-old from San Jose who stayed overnight so he could be first in line for the grand opening. “Microsoft’s having this big party and the Apple employees just have to sit there and watch.”

Reallymet is a new app that claims to be about making those real-life social contacts important – but perhaps the real utility is showing your boss or your spouse that you really are where you said you’d be.

The free app is billed as a “check-in service” for people suffering from cyber-friend fatigue (“Do you ever get tired of the long list of friends you don’t really know on your social network service?) and seems plagued with the usual gamefication features (you earn points if your friends confirm the check-ins; “It’s the social game of your real everyday life!”).

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDAP1OQ9Zw

This TEDTalk was given by Thomas Suarez at TEDxManhattanBeach. Thomas is in the 6th grade at a middle school in the South Bay, and he’s made several apps for the App Store and established his own company, CarrotCorp.

Besides his fantastic presentation skills, Thomas is an amazing testament to how the younger generation is shaping the world of technology. What a smart kid. Steve Jobs would be very proud.

And we’re downloading his app, Bustin Jieber, as we speak. It looks fun.

One of Tim Cook’s first changes as Apple’s new CEO was the introduction of a corporate matching program for charitable donations to nonprofits. Apple pledged to match donations of up to $10,000 per US employee per year.

In less than two months, Apple and it’s employees have already raised $2.6 million for nonprofits.

Over at the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal puts the enormous gains in the electric efficiency of computation (or how much power a computer draws) in perspective using the example of Apple’s new MacBook Air.

Imagine you’ve got a shiny computer that is identical to a Macbook Air, except that it has the energy efficiency of a machine from 20 years ago. That computer would use so much power that you’d get a mere 2.5 seconds of battery life out of the Air’s 50 watt-hour battery instead of the seven hours that the Air actually gets. That is to say, you’d need 10,000 Air batteries to run our hypothetical machine for seven hours. There’s no way you’d fit a beast like that into a slim mailing envelope.

When Steve Jobs called the MacBook Air magical, this isn’t what he meant, but after reading this article, it’ll be hard to look at the wafer-thin ultrabook on my desk the same way ever again.

The iPhone is an incredible, world-changing device… but it’s never been cheap to own one. That’s just as true with the iPhone 4S as it has been with any other iPhone, which means every saved penny counts.

Figuring out which carrier to go with when you sign up for an iPhone 4S requires considering many different factors. For the best bang for the buck, though, Sprint is the way to go: their $79.99 Everything Data plan includes 450 minutes per month, free nights and weekends, as well as unlimited data and text.

Think that’s a pretty good deal? That’s nothing. Follow this guide and we can not only help you save up to $240 dollars on your Sprint iPhone 4S contract over the course of two years, we can even help you get more minutes for less money!

Interested? Read on.

After iOS 5 came and broke Stanza good and proper, it seemed almost certain that Amazon intended on killing off their world class e-reading app once and for all.

Thankfully, Amazon has taken pity on fans of the app with a long overdue update finally fixing Stanza under iOS 5, but with that reprieve comes a dose of bad news: according to Amazon, this will be the last Stanza update.

Well, that didn’t take as long as some of us feared. Apple just released iOS 5.0.1 to the public, fixing the well publicized iPhone 4S battery life issues.

Here’s what is new:

This update contains improvements and other bug fixes including:

– Fixes bugs affecting battery life
– Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
– Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
– Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation

The update is available through iTunes or Over The Air using Settings > General > Software Update.

Remember, if you want to jailbreak your iPhone 4S in the future, you may want to hold off on this update.

Anyone noticed any improvements with their iPhone 4S battery? Let us know in the comments.

Appcessories. Just the word sounds cool, blending the popularity of apps with the omnipresent accessories for your Apple device. But can a word create a trend? You decide. The idea is being promoted by a hardware developer that iPhone apps controlling hardware devices could be as big as that watermelon-flavored case or the Nike+ iPod add-on. Indeed, the Apple Store could feature the category soon – or not.

Wow. Between Twitter for iPhone, the iOS 5 camera app and Instagram, a huge 40% of all pictures shared on Twitter actually originate from iOS. In fact, it could be more, since other Twitter clients are not broken down by platform.

No wonder Twitter struck a deal with Apple to integrate their micro-blogging service into iOS 5. If all of the iPhones suddenly disappeared from Earth in some sort of Cellular Rapture, Twitter would lose a devastating chunk of their user base!

[via The Next Web]

The inability to sell the iPhone is hurting T-Mobile USA. The only one of four U.S. carriers not offering the Apple smartphone, T-Mobile announced it saw a drop in new subscribers due to the iPhone 4S launching at Sprint, Verizon Wireless and AT&T in October.

Introducing your friends to the hottest new bands on your iPod isn’t much fun when you have to share one set of headphones. According to a newly-surfaced Apple patent, however, this may be a thing of the past, because future iPods could feature integrated speakers so that everyone can enjoy your music on the subway.

Since the unveiling of its iPhone 4S back in October, Apple has received heaps of praise for one of its new features in particular: Siri. The digital assistant is by far the most impressive voice recognition service built into a mobile device, and it seems everyone has been blown away by it.

What many of you may not know, however, is that Siri is one of the few Apple products that wasn’t created by the team in Cupertino. Instead, Siri was created by Dag Kittlaus, a 34-year-old man from Norway, and it has made him a multimillionaire.

Want Siri-like abilities on your Mac? Nuance has just launched their latest Dragon product onto the Mac App Store. Called Dragon Express, the $49 app brings Nuance speech recognition to your menu bar… the same powerful engine Siri uses to crunch your voice!

Apple’s iPhone 4S is one of the hottest smartphones available right now, spawning lengthy launch-day queues outside of Apple stores all over the world. In Hong Kong, where the device goes on sale in just a few hours’ time, police have been called to settle violent fights that broke out with a group of South Asian “professional queuers” who attempted to push their way to the front of the line.

Apple doesn’t really like it when its employees speak to the press. Like, at all. So it’s interesting to see a British voice actor who provided the male voice For Siri — arguably the voice of Apple these days — openly speaking to journalists about how he came to speak for every iPhone 4S on Earth, especially considering Cupertino tried to muzzle him.

Our newest Cult of Mac Apple-inspired tee will have you repeating that famous line from Jerry Maguire to all your geeky friends. Well, maybe not but your girlfriend other will think it’s cute. And if you’re single you could always just wear it to Macworld. I mean iWorld. It’s called iWorld now, right?

Unisex Tees are finely crafted right here in the USA, are limited in quantity, and are just $22 each. You can pick up our new tee and other fruit-inspired graphic tees right now over at MightTees.com.

Apple is in the cat bird seat when it comes to dominating personal computer sales in China. A new survey by Morgan Stanley finds more than 20 percent of Chinese consumers looking to buy a computer want a Mac. There’s just one hitch: few of China’s citizens are willing to pay more than $1,000.

A Hulu Plus application seems like the perfect addition to Apple’s $99 set-top box. While the device already comes packing a native Netflix app, the only way users can access current TV shows is by using the iTunes Store. According to some sources, however, a Hulu Plus app is ready to go, but Apple may not release it.

It seems that panoramic camera feature isn’t the only thing Apple is hiding inside its latest iOS 5 software. There’s also an autocorrect keyboard feature just like that found on Android devices, which suggests words as you type making it quicker and easier than ever to type on an iOS device.

Yes, cloud computing is all the rage these days; question is, d’you plonk all your stuff down on a distant server, or keep your digital junk safe and dry inside your own home, with your own personal cloud? If you picked the latter, Akitio’s new NAS device might appeal to you.

Ever faced with one of those situations where you need to give out your phone number, but you feel a bit iffy about doing it? RingShuffle is a free app that’s ideal to have on your iPhone for exactly those occasions.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsyOlwmHt5E

We told you last week that Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview would be making its way to theaters in the US starting November 19th. Now, an official teaser trailer for the upcoming movie has been posted for the world to see.

The interview consists of missing footage of author and journalist Bob Cringely with Steve Jobs from the 1995 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds. Landmark Theaters will distribute the movie in 19 cities, including where Steve Jobs lived, Palo Alto.

Election officials in Oregon are giving an “aye” to an iPad scheme that helped disabled voters cast ballots in yesterday’s elections.

Some 89 disabled people were able to have their say in choosing a representative to Congress thanks to Apple’s tablet computer, Politico reports.

One voter was “just so tickled with the iPad he’s committed to coming back in January to mark his ballot,” Secretary of State Kate Brown said.

Remember when Samsung requested that Apple hand over its carrier agreements in the Australian court? Bloomberg is now reporting that the judge has sided with Samsung in the case and is demanding that Apple hand over the juicy details on its iPhone contracts.

Apple is opposing the disclosure, calling Samsung’s request “a fishing expedition.”