The world is mad for smartphones. Everyone wants the latest and greatest smartphone that blows their mind with its ability to tell you where your friends are at, what they’re eating, their opinions on Rick Santorum’s sweatervests, and their favorite cat videos. But phones become outdated so quickly that we quickly toss out last year’s trend and pickup the next great mobile device more frequently than we change our car’s oil. It should come as no surprise, then, that pretty soon there will be more smartphones on the planet that humans. In fact, it will happen by the end of the year.

Apple has announced another promotion celebrating the 25 billionth download from the App Store. As the huge milestone draws near, Apple is encouraging customers to enter to win a $10,000 App Store gift card for hitting the lucky number.

If you’re fortunate enough to download the 23 billionth app, you could win $10,000 to spend in the App Store!

Can’t get enough of whizzing those Angry Birds through the air using your trusty catapult, knocking down the fortifications of those adorably cute, wonderfully evil, egg-guzzling Green Piggies?

Well, how are you going to do that without gravity in outer space, hmmm, smart guy?

Yup, that’s right, Rovio has just announced their upcoming Angry Birds sequel, Angry Birds Space.

Were you one of the people who freaked out about OS X Lion not shipping on DVD? Did you get outraged that the cost of a OS X Lion USB thumb drive cost $69.00, more than double the price of Lion through the App Store? Well, prepare to be incensed, because when OS X Mountain Lion ships, it’ll be a Mac App Store exclusive. That means it won’t even ship on a thumb drive anymore.

One of the big new Mountain Lion features is AirPlay Mirroring. This will let you beam your Mac’s desktop, videos and Keynote presentations to any screen connected to the Apple TV. This feature alone will probably sell zillions of Apple TVs into conference rooms the world over. But who wants to wait until OS X 10.8’s summer launch? With a couple of apps, you can use AirPlay on your Mac right now.

Pentax’ tiny mirrorless camera, the Q (full review coming next week), is an odd beast. Like Nikon’s 1 series cameras, it has interchangeable lenses which are inexplicably paired with a point-and-shoot-sized sensor (0.43 -inches on the diagonal). And now, with some new lens adapters, you can make it a little bit odder.

What do you do when you’re sitting on a mountain of cash and have a labor condition crisis that has resulted in terrible PR? Give your employees a couple more dollars and hope that satisfies everyone, duh! Apple’s manufacturing partner, Foxconn Technology Group released a statement today that they have raised the wages of their Chinese workers by 16-25% this month. This is the second time wages have risen for Foxconn employees, but the first pay raise still didn’t resolve criticisms over Apple’s labor conditions.

Way back in the mists of 1991, in the dark days when Kevin Costner somehow beat Martin Scorsese for the Best Director Oscar (Dances with Wolves vs. Goodfellas. Seriously?), WinZip was first launched. The frustrating, hard-to-use piece of shareware is still going today, and has just elbowed its way into the iOS App Store. That’s right: WinZip is now available for the iPhone and iPad.

Yesterday we showed you how in OS X Mountain Lion, Software Update has shifted from its own app to the Mac App Store. But how will that work with updating apps that weren’t purchased through the App Store, but were instead bundled with your Mac at point-of-sale or installed from a DVD?

As you can see in the screenshot above, Apple’s got it covered: the Mountain Lion App Store will automatically detect any app that has historically been updated through Software Update and ask to register it to your Apple ID, along with a unique hardware identifier.

One of the features that immediately caught my eye about Mountain Lion was AirPlay Mirroring. As I noted yesterday, this offers a powerful presentation tool for business users as well as a great classroom addition for teachers and trainers.

Of course, it’s also a great entertainment solution and one that has some dramatic advantages over AirPlay Mirroring on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Those advantages are likely to set the stage for a showdown between Apple and the entertainment industry.

The psychedelic Whale Trail for iOS has been updated with 32 brand new levels and more power-ups. As the lead developer of Whale Trail told us in a recent interview, the popular App Store game now includes a second Challenge Pack called “Baron’s Revenge.” Among other additions, players can now keep progress synced across multiple devices.

The new levels in Whale Trail 1.2 will take you to the dark side. Now that’s what we’re talking about!

If you live in a city, the people that you meet when walking down the street are often great photo subjects.

But if you, like me, have a hard time getting decent shots with your iPhone of the woman with the cascade of facial tattoos you pass every day on your way to work, check out a free workshop at San Francisco’s Apple store this Sunday.

Brad Evans and Travis Jensen will teach you how to add some street cred to your everyday iPhone photos. They’re a pair of veteran urban shutterbugs who teamed up for #iSnapSF Field Journal, which showcases 42 images from thousands snapped on the streets of San Francisco using the iPhone 4 and the Hipstamatic app. (If you can’t catch the workshop, stay tuned for Cult of Mac’s interview with Jensen for some great iPhone photography tips.)