In a collaboration with Macrumors, CiccareseDesign has produced a papercraft mockup of what the rumored 7.85-inch iPad Mini would look like… and you can even print it out and hold it in your hands yourself.

With CES only a few weeks away, we’re preparing ourselves for what is surely going to be an Android extravaganza. With Android activations surpassing 700,000 devices per day, it would be unwise for any company to ignore its strong market presence. This leads us to believe CES 2012 will be chock full of Android goodness. We’re going to dive into a few products and announcements we expect to see this year, along with a few things we’re keeping our fingers crossed about.

https://www.cultofmac.com/136008/switch-to-two-week-view-in-ical-os-x-tips/

I’ve never particularly cared for iChat. It’s less full-featured than free alternatives like Adium, and since it can’t easily be skinned, if you hate all the bubbles and aqua in the UI, there’s not a lot you can do about it. Luckily, over at OS X Daily, they’ve put together a fantastic and simple way to replace the iChat Aqua Text Bubbles with a flatter, less idiosyncratic matte version. Check it out: this is really the way iChat should look by default.

Still don’t have a Christmas present for a loved one? Cash running low, so you need a good deal? You’re not going to beat this: Walmart is offering a $50 iTunes gift card for just $40, essentially giving you an extra $10 in downloads for free. Not only can the card be used on apps, music, ebooks, movies or even television shows, but the code is delivered to you digitally, meaning that you don’t have to wait for the post-office to deliver it to you: it’ll be available instantly. Slap that code into a Christmas card and you’re done!

[via 9to5Mac]

These days, Steve Jobs’s business acumen is legendary, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, when Steve first went on a fund-raising expedition to get money for the original Apple I in natal Silicon Valley, he was described as a secretive “joker” who couldn’t trust anyone and had a “flakey” partnership with Steve Wozniak.

Here’s a neat trick for iCal which can be useful for those who find the default list of views (day, week, month, and year) a little too limiting.

Apple has just posted a new support document outlining everything international customers need to know about iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match availability. Customers in the United States were given public access to iTunes Match back in November, and Apple has been rolling out its cloud services for iTunes to international markets since then.

After countries around the world were given access to iTunes Match last week, Apple has officially outlined both iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match international availability, including the types of media that are offered to customers in each country.

Wahoo’s popular ANT+ Fisica dongle, which allows the iPhone to read signals from fitness gadgets like heart-rate monitors, pedometers and bike sensors, is probably most widely used fitness iPhone accessory since its release a little  over a year ago. And today, Wahoo took the first step toward killing it.

One of the unfortunate byproducts of owning an iOS device is that your Home button can become a little sluggish over time. When you get your new iPhone or iPad and use it initially, the Home button works smoothly, but it can eventually become less responsive.

Fortunately, there’s a subtle trick in iOS for recalibrating your Home button. After performing this tip on your personal iOS device, you should notice that your Home button is considerably more responsive when you’re navigating throughout iOS.

We’re all familiar with Apple’s iconic white earbuds, and those of us who’ve popped for their $80 canalbuds are familiar with how Apple makes higher-end earphones. But Apple doesn’t make headphones — If they did, would they be like the new Incase Sonic ($150) set?

Mercury News is reporting that Apple is preparing construction on a new “prototype” retail store in Palo Alto, California. The store will be built about a block away from an existing Apple Store at 340 University Avenue.

With work set to begin “any day now,” the new store will reportedly feature a glass skylight and plenty of stone and metal. The $3.15 million project received its building permit on December 12th from the city of Palo Alto.

Many have called Steve Jobs the father of modern computing, but some would argue that the true credit goes to Jacob Goldman, founder of Xerox PARC. Under Goldman’s guidance, Xerox become responsible for the technology that inspired Steve Jobs to create computers like the Lisa.

The New York Times is reporting that Jacob Goldman passed away this week at the age of 90. He was Xerox’s chief scientist and founder of the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center — the very place Jobs took his team in December of 1979 to get a demonstration of the technology that drove him to create the first successful personal computer.

Intuit has announced that its popular finance application, Quicken, will be updated with Lion support in “early spring” of next year. The 2007 version of Quicken for Mac will be updated with Lion compatibility and Intuit promises that it will focus more on Mac development in the future.

Quicken for Mac doesn’t work on Lion because Apple discontinued support for Rosetta apps that are based on PowerPC architecture. The updated version of Quicken for Mac 2007 will finally run natively on Intel hardware.

We looooove Rockstar Games’s new iOS port of their seminal classic Grand Theft Auto III. Heck, here’s the proof. It was already worth at least ten times each penny that was being asked of it’s initial $4.99 asking price. Now though? It’s just a little under three bucks. That makes you a downright idiot if you don’t start downloading right this second. Do it!

With iOS 5, iPhone and iPad users started noticing a new curious behavior: app icons that suddenly started “Cleaning…” themselves. Facebook does it. Instapaper does it. Even Twitter does it. But what the heck does it mean?

This video of Steve Jobs from 1990 is an interesting artifact for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, it’s the clip in which Steve pioneered his famous “bicycle for the mind” analogy, which I’ve always felt is one of the most beautiful things ever said about computers.

What is also interesting, though, is how gung ho Steve Jobs is about video games in this clip, even going as far as to suggest that video games are the future of learning, and even the future of the Library of Congress.

Remember the infamous Steve Jobs put-down of 7-inch tablet screens, telling reporters buyers would need to file down their fingertips in order to use the darn thing? Although we don’t see tinier fingers becoming the in-style for Christmas, suppliers are pumping out more 7-inch screens for the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet and fewer 9.7-inch displays for the iPad 2.

Sitting in front of the tree on Christmas morning with a DVD of a roaring fireplace looping on your television? Tacky!

Sitting in front of the tree on Christmas morning with an 8-bit interactive fireplace roaring on your Mac? Awesome!

We’ve long loved Skitch, the screenshot and image editor that we’ve been using on our Macs in one way or another since 2007. A few months back, the guys behind Evernote bought out Skitch, which raised some questions about its future as a stand-alone app, but we needn’t have worried: not only is Skitch its own Mac app, but it’s now become a shiny iPad one as well.

Remember how digital cameras did in film? That progression appears now to be in its second-generation as the iPhone and other smartphones seem destined to do away with the ubiquitous point-and-shoot digital camera. A new report finds phones take a third of all photos as phone-based photo quality dramatically increases.

Does talk of the Euro economic crisis make your eyes glaze over? Perhaps this will get your attention: The down European economy is costing the iPhone marketshare as consumers keep a tight hold on their cash. The bright side: the U.S. and U.K. love of everything Apple has become stronger.

So you wanna be the next Zuckerberg, eh? But, let me guess, you’re a “business guy” who doesn’t know how to program? You’ve thought about it, but you don’t even know where to start, or you just “don’t have time”. Stay on this path and you may end up finding yourself seeking out a code monkey! Trust us, nobody wants that.

Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to help you out by introducing you to the HTML/CSS guru himself, Mark Lassoff. The man is energetic, skilled, and a dynamic online presenter; plus, he’s provided programming instruction to some of America’s largest corporations.

This course is a stellar opportunity to learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS you need in order to whip up that creative, high-quality website you’ve been mulling over for years! Normally this course costs $49, but we negotiated a sweet deal with Mark. For only $29, you’ll get Mark’s HTML and CSS expertise jam-packed into nearly 4 hours of video instruction that includes highlighted lab exercises, so you can apply the very skills taught from the course.

Can Apple save print journalism? That’s the question in our minds upon learning the parent company of USA Today has hoarded thousands of iPhones and iPods to provide newsrooms in January. The aim is to help journalists focus on a faster news cycle, including increased use of video to tell stories.