Ever since carriers became just a pipe for Apple’s iPhone, they’ve attempted to regain some of their lost control over customers. Now comes word that two-dozen major carriers – including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint – want to build an App Store rival, enticing developers with an unspecified “open technology platform.”

Analysts are already sounding warnings, cautioning with so many sharks swimming so close together, there’s bound to be trouble. “I do question whether such a large group of mobile operators will be able to achieve the level of cooperation and integration required to make this initiative a success,” said Informa Telecoms analyst Mark Newman.

It appears Apple has stepped-up its battle with hackers, reportedly banning at least two App Store accounts for “security reasons.” The action comes after a long-running tug-of-war between the Cupertino, Calif. company and hackers releasing ways to avoid iPhone security.

Monday, a hacker known as “Sherif” told his Twitter followers Apple had banned his ID. “They must be really angry, he wrote, following the comment by a smiley face emoticon. Another hacker, known as “iH8sn0w,” and the person behind the XEMN tool said to unlock iPhone 3.1.3 baseband for the 3G and 3GS, also reported being banned from the App Store.

Mango Tango’s Flavour laptop bag helps you to throw the smart, hot and professional look together in seconds. The bag is perfect for looking serious while also looking hot. With its generous dimensions of 15-1/4″ Wide, 11-1/4″ tall and 3″ deep, you will find almost any sized laptop will fit inside here but its lightweight construction won’t weigh you down.

Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.

I must admit I love the BBP Hybrid Hampton bag, possibly my favorite of the year, in terms of style at least.

BBP’S Hybrid Hampton is the company’s flagship laptop bag featuring the Bak2Pak system that converts from a backback to a messenger bag in no time at all.

I’ve been on the lookout for a bag that is cool enough to be hip ‘with the kids’ while grown-up enough to take to business meetings without feeling like mutton dressed as lamb. And this bag is what I’ve been waiting for.

Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.

The great people at TechSmith want you to stop using wanna-be screencasting applications and start using proper software to make your presentations much more professional. So the company is giving away four copies of its Camtasia screencasting software (worth $99) and five copies of its quick-video recording and sharing app, Jing Pro.

“Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich gave something for his seat mate to gawk at as he sat at 36,000 feet editing the latest animated tale of plaything adventures.

With not a second to waste — the release date is June 18, 2010 —  Unkrich worked on a MacBook Pro, with what looks like shortcut color codes for Avid Media Composer.  (Crane as I might, all I ever see are Excel spreadsheets. Need to get upgraded from Economy more often, perhaps.)

Apple products often feature in Pixar movies (perhaps in a nod to history?), the trailer for Toy Story 3 already has a nice bit of iProduct placement.

Valentine’s Day is almost over but maybe you have someone on your list who might appreciate your going uber-digital in your expression of affection, even if it’s a tad belated.

Then you might want to check out QR loveCode, a quirky little free app for iPhone and iPod Touch that gives you a choice of several love messages you can embed into QR coded thought bubbles on a series of stylistic digital art pieces you can share via email.

QR codes are big in Japan, where many cell phones come equipped with QR decoding software that works through the phones’ camera.

Here in the US, the recipient of your QR loveCode message will need to download QR scanning software in order to read your message. But guess what?

There’s an app for that.

The digital version of Wired Magazine for the iPad and other devices will be a “game changer,” Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson said Friday.

Showing off a demo of the digital magazine at the TED conference on Friday, Anderson said the interactive magazine brought print’s high-production values to digital for the first time.

“We think this is a game changer,” he told the audience.

Anderson said the digital magazine is on track for a summer release. The iPad is expected to be on sale by the end of March.

Via Wired’s Epicenter.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Saturday is the last day of Macworld 2010 and you can bring a friend for only $15 when you use priority code SHARE. The Expo Hall hours are from 10:00am to 6:00pm.

If you want to show the kids a good time do the following:

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Steven Chan and his wife gave their three kids the same initials: M – A – C.

There’s Maxwell Alexander Chan, his brother Matthew and sister Megan.

“We’re in the printing and graphics business and we just loved the Mac from the very beginning,” said Chan. “Its the tool of our trade, so…”

In a dozen years reporting on Apple, the Chans are the first people I’ve met who named their kids after their favorite computer company. Although there have been rumors of kids named after Apple or the Mac — Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple, for example — it has become an urban myth, often rumored but never verified (if ever). I don’t know of another documented case.

I met the Chans on the Macworld show floor. They’d driven up from Southern California for the Expo. The Chan’s printing business is in Riverside County.

“We’re both fanatics,” Chan added, laughing. “There’s five of us but we have eight Macs in the house. There’s more Macs than people.”

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Here’s some of the sights and er, more sights, of the Macworld 2010 show floor.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — The guys at Topaz Labs thought business would be slow at the first Macworld without Apple, so they packed only 250 CDs of their software.

They sold out in the first few hours of the first day.

Worried it was just an opening-day rush, and that day two would be dead, they had just 250 more overnighted to their hotel. But those too quickly sold.

“It’s been awesome. I’m exhausted,” laughed Ivan Randall of Topaz Labs. “It’s been a great show.”

Almost all the vendors we talked to told the same story: Macworld 2010 has definitely been worth the money. Many had low expectations, but turnout has been great and business is brisk.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — The second day of Macworld 2010 was another big day with throngs of showgoers crowding the show floor.

Some vendors had worried that the big crowds on day one would thin significantly on the second day. But there was steady stream of attendees and brisk business for vendors.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — You’ve probably seen the late pitchman Billy Mays on late-night TV smashing his hand with hammer while it’s wrapped in Impact Gel — a super cushioning material used for insoles.

In fact, Impact Gel was featured in the first episode of PitchMen, the Discovery Channel show featuring Mays and his partner Anthony Sullivan.

Now, Impact Gel is being used to make a laptop sleeve that can be hit with a hammer and dropped without damaging the contents.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — One of the most welcome aspects of the post-Apple Macworld is the absence of the giant booths devoted to iPhone accessories.

In recent years, Macworld was in danger of becoming the iPhone case show. Many of the biggest and most prominent booths on the show floor were devoted to cases and screen covers.

This year, they’re mostly absent. While there were about 100 case and accessory makers at CES in January (in the iLounge pavilion), the 150 iPhone developers at Macworld are mostly software publishers. It’s a welcome change.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Macworld 2010 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces on the show floor.

Above: These two Macnewbies are enjoying Macworld for the very first time. They’re impressed.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Much of the buzz on the Macworld floor this year has to do with audio and how Apple products and platforms create a nearly endless array of creative possibilities to leverage audio in documenting and networking people’s lives and endeavors.

One of the more exciting products we’ve come across in that regard is the new Mikey from Blue Microphones, an external stereo microphone for iPod and iPhone that brings stunning clarity and flexibility to portable audio recording.

Just moments after getting a review copy of the device and downloading Blue Microphones’ free field recording app from the AppStore, we recorded this interview with Stanford University professor Dr. Ge Wang talking about Smule, his iPhone app company, the future of music collaboration and Apple’s upcoming iPad.

Check the clarity of Wang’s responses and how they stand out from the cacophony of dozens of other people yapping within feet of us as we chatted on the Macworld expo floor.

SAN FRANCISCO — Veteran Mac programmer Bill Atkinson took the stage at Macworld for the first time in 23 years to show off PhotoCard — an app for sending fine-art postcards through the mail.

Written by Atkinson himself (he’s the genius behind early and great Mac software such as QuickDraw, MacPaint and HyperCard), PhotoCard allows you to write a postcard on your iPhone. When you hit send, a beautifully printed postcard is sent through the mail.

Modern day hippies and endless jamming may not be among the first images that spring to mind when you think about Apple’s products and customer base, but check this promotional video for the premier Jam Band confab in the United States, the High Sierra Music Festival, and see how well the two play together.

High Sierra impressario David Margulies does a quite credible job of mimicking the classic Steve Jobs Keynote presentation method introducing the 2010 festival, to be held 4th of July weekend in Quincy, CA — he even incorporates images of the highly anticipated iPad to excellent effect and coins a new catch-phrase especially suited to his product: there’s an act for that!

The High Sierra clip is obviously a spoof, but it actually works to engage the viewer in the content, suggesting the elements of Job’s presentation style — if not, perhaps, the mock turtleneck and jeans — lie at the root of any successful product pitch.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Programmer Bill Atkinson, one of the lead authors of the original Mac system, says the iPad will be a big success — and that you have to play with it to understand the magic of the multitouch interface.

“This guy is going to be a real winner,” he said, holding up a model he’d made for himself to visualize how his PhotoCard app would look on the device. Atkinson took part in Guy Kawasaki’s Friday morning keynote presentation.

“Once you get it in your hands and play with it you don’t want to set it down,” he continued. “I think Apple’s got a hit on their hands here.”

Atkinson said he’d played with an iPad for a couple of hours. It’s not a laptop and its not an iPhone, he said, but an entirely new, third device. The magic is in using your fingers to directly manipulate elements onscreen.

Returning to using a mouse is like using a remote control, he said — clumsy and awkward.

Highlighting another awkward portability problem the iPad may have — like that condom case — these prototype pants give one that dangerous did-you-just-mess-yourself look?  But worn this way, the iPad would provide excellent lumbar support.

Via Alltop

Our own lovely modern-day Beatrice, Miss Nicole Martinelli, made passing reference to the latest fad to grip South Korean iPhone owners earlier today, but just in case you missed it: they’re using a particular brand of snack sausage as iPhone styluses so they don’t need to remove their gloves in the winter.

The snack sausages, made by South Korea’s own CJ Corportation, are electrostatically compatible with the iPhone’s touchscreen…. and it’s apparently a useful enough solution to cause sausage sales to surge.

True, some might get squeamish at the thought of carrying around a cigarillo of unwrapped meat in their pockets at all times… but I think this is brilliant. On the other hand, this is perhaps the first practical way to merge both my Slim Jim and Apple hardware fetishes. Kudos, Korea!

We cap the week with a trio of top deals. First is Apple’s 802.11n Airport Extreme wireless base station for $129 from the Apple Store. Next up: Mac Pro Xeon Workstations starting at $2,549 for a 2.93GHz quad-core. Finally, a new batch of App Store freebies, including AmAze, a GPS worldwide turn-by-turn app.

Along the way, we’ll look at other bargain gadgets, such as the 4 Door Media Road Mouse and Low Grav Racer 2. As always, details on these and many other deals are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

It’s just so charming when programmers forget about the App Store and universal binaries for a second, blow the dust off that old Apple IIc+ in the basement and code up something new… like this awesome wavetable synth, programmed, compiled and sold by chiptune musicians 8 Bit Weapon.

Called the Digital Music Synthesizer, the application isperhaps the only wavetable synth for Apple’s 8 bit machines, and runs on the Apple IIe, IIc and IIc+, with support for up to eight voices including acousting piano, vibraphone, acoustic guitar, electric bass, trumpet, clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, and the banjo. You can listen to a sample of what the Digitial Music Synthesizer can do here.

The best part? You can order a 5.25-inch floppy of DMS from 8 Bit Weapon for only $19.95.

True, it’s probably only of real interest to chiptune artists interested in generating the most accurate retro-bleeping sounds possible, but it’s still wonderful to listen to songs performed on software freshly programmed for Apple computers that may be dead, but not forgotten.

[via Technabob]

Facebook Chat is a wonderful little service opening you up to the incessant, sub-literate, real-time blatherings of the wide array of superficial acquaintances you’ve coalesced over the many years: the dim-witted teenage cousins, the sociopathic ex-boyfriends, the senile but sweet grannies, the LOLing old high school friends.

Or at least that’s what it is like for me, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve already turned Facebook Chat off. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, to find out you’ve got a more articulate gaggle of Facebook friends. So good news! Facebook has just posted instructions on how to access Facebook Chat through iChat, even when you’re not signed in to Facebook proper.

The set-up is pretty easy. All you do is go to the iChat’s “Preferences”, menu, click “Accounts” add a new account, select “Jabber” from the pull-down menu and then type in your screen name ([email protected]) and password. You then edit your “Server Options” to point to chat.facebook.com at port 5222, unticking SSL as you go. Click OK and you’re all set to harass and be harassed by Facebook friends through iChat at any time. You’ll be being brow-beaten for never responding to their chats in no time.

[via 9to5Mac]