Although Amazon’s Kindle platform seemed to stumble a bit in the wake of the iPad’s debut, mostly from surprise, they’ve since rallied and continued to increase their lead as the biggest e-bookstore on Earth. In fact, according to Amazon’s own metrics, they now sell more Kindle e-books than they do paperbacks.

How’d Amazon compete with iBooks? Ubiquity: Kindle software is available on almost every modern OS out there, and a Kindle book purchased on one can be read on another. Amazon managed to achieve this feat by cutting middlemen out of the transaction entirely: if you purchase a book in-app, you simply are directed to an Amazon webpage. It’s all done on the Internet.

If a new report coming from The New York Times is anything to go by, though, Apple may be ready to strike Kindle on iOS down for the count unless it agrees to utilize iTunes’ own in-app purchase system, though.

Samsung may have helped Android attain the top spot in smartphone sales, but the open-source operating system from Google hasn’t done the same for the handset maker’s attempt to rival Apple’s iPad tablet. According to one analyst firm, 16 percent of Samsung Tab devices are being returned.

“Consumers aren’t in love with the device,” ITG Investment Research analyst Tony Berkman told the New York Post recently. ITG tracked sales of the Tab between its November debut through Jan. 15. By comparison, the iPad sold through Verizon, reportedly has a 2 percent return rate.

I think performer/journalist Mike Daisey has very important things to things to say about Apple, the electronics industry, and modern industrial production.

Go see his hilarious but upsetting one-man show at Berkeley Rep, or watch this great TechCrunch interview:

The one news network that can be counted upon for on-the-ground reporting in the ever-volatile Middle East is Al Jazeera — the Arabic language’s answer to FOX, CNN and the BBC.

Fortunately, for those who do not speak or understand Arabic, the preeminent Middle Eastern news network funds a team of English speaking journalists who broadcast under the network’s imprimatur, and whose content is available to Apple iOS device users via the free app, Al Jazeera English Live.

More than a million people could march in Egypt Tuesday, a response to calls dating back two weeks, when young dissidents posted a protest event on Facebook in the wake of the ousting of Tunisia’s authoritarian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

As the situation in Egypt began to heat up seriously Monday, with the government systematically shutting down ISP and mobile communications services, as the country’s military refused to fire upon the citizenry protesting dictator Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year rule, and his Vice President indicated a willingness to “speak” with the opposition — there’s no time like the present to try and keep abreast of events as they unfold.

UPDATE: this post has been edited from it’s original text to reflect a more accurate depiction of Al Jazeera’s English-language broadcasting.

Apple started it. In the most famous and expensive TV commercial to date, the company hurled the first “Big Brother” accusation (not to mention a giant hammer) at IBM and the IBM-compatible world, as it was called at the time.

In the commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, an attractive blonde 80’s girl wearing Hooters shorts, a Mac T-shirt and the kind of ankle-length socks people used to wear back then with their “jogging shoes” smokes a gaggle of goons in an all-out sprint for the most depressing cineplex ever where she unleashes her sledgehammer at the screen with equal parts ferocity and femininity.

Since then, various other tech companies have accused each other of being “Big Brother,” and Apple is often the one accused.

Most recently (i.e. possibly this coming Super Bowl Sunday), Motorola will essentially accuse Apple of being Big Brother in this commercial.

The problem with all these “Big Brother” accusations is that they’re always based on sloppy, mushy thinking — including Apple’s original ad, which didn’t seem to have anything specific in mind about how IBM resembled Big Brother, exactly.

Macworld staffers Christopher Breen and Ben Long wowed attendees at iPad Supersessions during Macworld 2011 last week, illustrating their talks with pristine images projected directly from their iPad’s screen interface.

Breen revealed their dirty how-to secret, which had been the subject of some oblique chatter in the Expo’s Media Center after their talk, in a post Monday on the Macworld website: they used a jailbroken iPad and “illicit” software to accomplish the feat.

In his web posting Breen wrote “only Apple [has] the secret for projecting an [iPad’s] entire interface,” suggesting there may be a method for projecting images from an iOS device using “display out” data transmitted to a standard projector without jailbreaking. But so far as anyone interested knows, Apple treats that as proprietary information.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, however, and into the breach, as usual, goes Cydia and redsn0w.

It’s time for yet another Monday iPhone App Giveaway brought to you by Appular! If you’re into hamsters and zombies, you are going to have your mind blown with the apps we’re giving away. Just checked and the hamsters are actually FLYING hamsters. Good Lord!

All you need to do is follow @cultofmac and @appular on Twitter and tweet this phrase to be entered, “Big ups to @cultofmac and @appular for making it rain with free iPhone app codes!” A 5 random twitterers will be chosen to win this app bundle. We’ll choose the winners at 11:59pm on Tuesday and notify through Direct Message on Wednesday.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

The 150-year-old catalog giant Hammacher Schlemmer has released a classy iPhone stand that turns your device into a desktop handset.

Hammacher’s iPhone Desktop Handset looks good for cradling under your chin, and definitely does away with iPhone 4 proximity sensor issues.

Seems like old-school handsets are making a comeback. The handset is reminiscent of the iFusion Smartstation office phone/dock that premiered at Macworld last week. But the Hammacher handset plugs into the headphone jack instead of working via Bluetooth.

The Hammacher handset is $60, which seems a bit steep, but is cheaper than the $200 rotary-style iRetrofone Base.

Via Laughing Squid and Ubergizmo.

Confirming our exclusive report back in October, Woz says the white iPhone 4 weas delayed because of light leakage into the camera, ruining photos.

But not to worry, the white iPhone 4 is coming soon Woz told the Engadget Show last night.

Rumors suggest Apple has fixed the light leakage issue with new paint, and the white iPhone 4 has recently been showing up in inventory systems at AT&T and Best Buy.

Via VentureBeat.

Proving that fact is always more interesting than fiction, ad man Steve Hayden remembers the making of Apple’s 1984 ad in AdWeek this week.

Marking the 27th anniversary, Hayden describes the utterly chaotic process behind the making of what’s been called “the best TV commercial ever.” Everyone hated it, and no one wanted it to run except Steve Wozniak, who offered to pay half the costs himself.

The first version of the spot was more Jetsons than Metropolis. The intention was to remove people’s fears of technology at a time when owning your own computer made about as much sense as owning your own cruise missile. We wanted to democratize technology, telling people that the power was now literally in their hands.

AdWeek: ‘1984’: As Good as It Gets

Back in 1984, Apple introduced the Mac with its famous 1984 Superbowl ad. Now Motorola is invoking some of the same ideas to promote its Xoom tablet, but this time, Apple is Big Brother.

Motorola’s new Superbowl Ad , “Goodbye 1984,” says that 2011 looks a lot like 1984:

One authority. One design. One way to work.

It’s time for more choices. It’s time to explore. It’s time to live a free life.

Learn more about Motorola XOOM: https://moto.ly/xoom

The ad is pretty bare-bones, and it’s not clear whether it will run during the Superbowl or is just a teaser or a trial balloon.

Funny how often Apple is compared to Big Brother these days. Over the weekend, The New York Times invoked Microsoft in its heyday with its market-crushing “platform” — a position Apple finds itself in now, says the Times.

Here’s Motorola’s ad below, and Apple’s original 1984, just for comparison purposes.

We start a new week and the last day of January with deals for the iPhone, the MacBook and the iPod. First up is the latest batch of price drops from the iPhone App Store, including “Slingo Supreme,” a game that combines slots and bingo. Next is a group of MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $999 for a 2.4GHz 13.3-inch unit. We wrap up the spotlight deals with an 8GB iPod nano (current model) for just $120.

Along the way, we also check out a deal on iTunes gift cards, including a $100 card for just $85. We also have some bargains on iPod touch cases, a mobile iPod stereo speaker and some software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Back in the web’s Dark Ages, before anyone even dreamed of creating a logo for a markup language, and when messing around with default link colors was adventurous web design, the closest thing anyone had to online video was the animated GIF.

It was just a small series of still image files glued together, but when played in sequence they looked like movement. A million “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” animated signs bloomed across the early web.

Since then, the animated GIF has gone out of fashion. You don’t see them so much. But you might see more soon, and enjoy making your own, thanks to a new photo toy for iPhone called GIFvid.

The UK’s first iPhone photo show in a gallery called “An Exhibition for Hipstamatics” has been held over until February 11 at the Orange Dot Gallery in London.

The show features 157 prints – the same number of Hipstamatic 100 analog cameras made in the early 1980s that inspired the iPhone app – considered the best works from web site Hipstamatics.com. The site allows contributors to share and showcase their best hipstamatic shots alongside some inhouse originals.

And, if you love the pic so much you’d like to hang a copy, you can also buy prints online.

Via The Apple Lounge

Google apparently is hiring outside developers and reassigning some employees in an all-out effort to match Apple’s long-standing iOS application lead. The head of Google product management is leading the charge to create Android applications ranging from games to social-networking tools – all free, but with embedded advertising, according to a Monday report.

Although Google has created just 20 apps so far – the majority based on well-known properties, such as Google Maps, the Mountain, View, Calif. Internet giant intends to “hire dozens of software developers,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites unnamed sources. But the app race between Android and Apple is about more than pride. One analyst firm predicted apps could become a $15 billion market this year.

With competing products like the Samsung Galaxy Tab finally making their way onto store shelves, the iPad’s no longer the only tablet in town… and consequently iOS is starting to lose some of its dominance.

In fact, Android tablets were able to increase their market share over tenfold in the last quarter. The result? Apple’s dominance over the tablet market has shrunk from a commanding 95% market share to “just” 77%.

Don’t cry too hard about Android’s ascension as king of smartphones and Apple losing a few share points. The Cupertino, Calif. company is crying — but it’s all the way to the bank. Although Apple has just 4.2 percent of the entire cell phone market – not just smartphones – the company pulls in 51 percent of the profit.

Earlier Monday, research firm Canalys announced Google’s Android pushed Nokia’s Symbian out of smartphone No. 1 position, selling 32.9 million smartphones, compared to 31 million for Symbian. Although Apple’s share of the smartphone market slipped to 16.2 percent, Asymco’s Horace Dediu points out Monday Apple’s share of the overall mobile phone market has increased to five percent – up from 4 percent in October of last year.

Although wildly popular where it’s available in Europe, streaming music service Spotify has had a hard time breaking into the United States, having missed their self-imposed, end-of-year 2010 deadline due to music label recalcitrance.

Recent reports indicate that Spotify has finally managed to sign a deal with Sony, and it’s expected that more labels will soon follow suit. But why did it take so long to make this progress? Spotify’s head of business development Faisal Galaria thinks it’s because of Apple.

We’re starting to reach a speculative consensus on what sort of hardware changes we’ll be seeing in the iPad 2, with the latest analyst report claiming it will contain a better quality (but non-Retina) display, faster chips, separate CDMA and GSM SKUs, and iPod Touch style dual cameras when it is released in March or April.

Google’s upstart Android operating system has toppled Symbian, as the most-used smartphone operating system. Symbian, created by cell phone giant Nokia, held the position for a decade. Nearly 33 million Android-powered smartphones sold during the previous quarter – seven times that of a year ago. Meanwhile, Symbian sales totaled 31 million during the last three-month financial period of 2010.

Apple placed third in the smartphone rankings, selling 16.2 million iPhones during the same period, compared to 8.7 million the previous year, according to research firm Canalys. The growth was overshadowed by Android’s gargantuan 615.1 percent increase over 2009.

A dad whose daughter ran up his credit card while playing the Smurfs’ Village app has launched a Facebook group to convince Apple to ban in-app purchases in kids games.

The fledgling group – as of this writing, it has 20 members – started after Tobias Feldt’s daughter bought a load of Smurf extras by accident.

Feldt says Apple refunded the purchase immediately, with no questions asked – as it often does in these cases – but he decided the incident shouldn’t end there.

Feldt has tried to teach his two children to play games responsibly. His oldest daughter, age nine, was “devastated” when she found out that she had run up a bill playing the game.

Skype for Mac version 5 was released last week, and while it added group video chat to the popular VoIP applications, it also takes a way a pretty big system feature: the ability for Flash-based app to access the web cam when Skype is running.

Reports of the problem have been flooding into Skype’s developer database since early November, when Skype for Mac 5 was still in beta.

Nonetheless, the problem not only persists in the final version, but according to Skype, the app’s insistence on hogging the camera even when it isn’t being used is by design.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — They call themselves the “Kickstarter Kids.”

They’re the group of entrepreneurs backed by Kickstarter, the group funding website — and there were a bunch of them at Macworld.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here’s a surprising statistic from Macworld 2011: about 40% of show goers don’t have a smartphone.

That was the number given to me at a meetup on the show’s last night. It was from someone who ran a competition all week in one of the booths. To win a prize, entrants had to download an app to their smartphone — and about 40% didn’t have a device that could download apps.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Down on the show floor, I ran into podcaster Tim Chaten, who was using an iPod touch to record video.

Chaten had his iPod touch mounted in a home-made camera rig, complete with an external microphone.

It looks like a pretty good setup for shooting quick and easy videos.

Here’s how he put it together: